Investigate, March 2007 by Investigate Magazine

INVESTIGATE

March 2007:

Hate Preachers • NZ Wines • Teenage Pregnancy • Heart Transplantation

Issue 74

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Volume 7, Issue 74, March 2007

FEATURES AL-QA’IDA’S MEN IN NEW ZEALAND

It’s the most in-depth investigation of the Muslim community in New Zealand. In an 18 page special report, IAN WISHART discloses how Islamic extremists and organisations with known ties to terrorism have slipped through New Zealand’s border security to preach to New Zealand Muslims and run youth training camps – the most recent of these just seven months ago

THE VINTNER’S LUCK

AND BABY MAKES TWO

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New Zealand and Australian wines are now among the most-sought after in Britain, but it has been a long road to success. SELWYN PARKER retraces the steps of the journey, and celebrates a downunder success story

The story of a 16 year old girl who fell pregnant and didn’t become a victim. MELODY TOWNS talks to author Bernadette Black about a new book designed to help kids who become accidental parents, become better parents

So often we hear of people who desperately need organ transplants. What we don’t hear about is what happened afterward. Now heart transplant survivor MARCELLA RUSSELL has broken her silence about the impact of the transplant on her life, and the need for better informed consent

With so much new technology at their disposal, teenagers are finding viciously creative ways to make others lives a misery, as MARIA ELENA BACA reports

Cover: Herald/Presspix

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 7, issue 74, ISSN 1175-1290

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

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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, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Design & Layout

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Editorial The roar of the crowd Miranda Devine on Greens Mark Steyn on Litvinenko’s death Richard Prosser on red tape Chris Carter on leaky homes Ian Wishart on human/animal hybrids

Laura Wilson is on leave this issue

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL The elephant in the room

t gives Investigate no great pleasure to bring you this month’s cover story – the most in-depth media investigation into New Zealand's Islamic community undertaken to date. But in the wake of the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary that screened in Britain last month, and a tip off from moderate Muslims to Investigate about similar issues here, we had no choice but to roll up the sleeves and get stuck in. Refusing to talk about the elephant in the room, you see, does not make the elephant go away. And the elephant in the room for New Zealand is just how much our Muslim community is in danger of being “Wahhabified” by Saudi extremists. Traditionally, daily media and even this magazine have held off taking a critical look at “The Government didn’t have the local Muslims for fear of proguts to pick up the phone and voking ill-considered actions or reactions. But dancing invite Muslim leaders in for a chat around the edges doesn’t about their houseguests” solve problems – only discussion and dialogue does that. The most shocking part of our lead story, and one that should be causing shudders to run down the spines of those in power, is that not only have people and organisations with proven links to terrorism been holding lectures and training camps up and down the length and breadth of New Zealand, but they have done so without any interference – and possibly without the knowledge of – the government's intelligence and border protection agencies. And if the government did know, then it did nothing to help the Muslim community identify the problem and nip it in the bud. For all the talk about open dialogue, apparently the Government didn’t have the guts to pick up the phone and invite Muslim leaders in for a chat about their houseguests. Investigate was the first organisation – media or government – to ever make that call. The media in Australia went into overdrive last month when one – that’s right, one – of their Muslim preachers, Sheikh Feiz, was mentioned in Dispatches (pun intended) calling Jews “pigs”, making oinking noises and suggesting they were all destined for the slaughterhouse when World War 3 comes. Australia, as anyone who remembers last summer’s beach riots caused by gangs of Lebanese youths, already has a growing extreme Islam problem. So does Britain,

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

even in its moderate mosques and even though Tony Blair has done everything possible to make Muslims feel welcome in Britain. Today, Investigate is revealing just how far extremist Wahhabis, bankrolled by Saudi Arabian charities working for al Qa’ida, have ingratiated themselves with a generation of Muslim youth in New Zealand. On the website of FIANZ, it lists the following organisations as affiliates: Islamic Da’wah Council, Philippines* Muslim World League, Mecca (Saudi Arabia)* World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Riyadh (Saudi)* Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Darul Iftah, Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) Institute of Islamic Thought, USA* The Islamic Foundation, UK Umm al-Qura University, Madina, (Saudi Arabia) King Abdul Aziz University, Jedda, (Saudi Arabia) Islamic University, Madina, (Saudi Arabia) Imam Mohammed Bin Saud University, Riyadh (Saudi) Al-Haramain, Saudi Arabia* ISNA, USA All are extremist Wahhabism, and the ones with asterisks have been actively linked to terror organisations and operations, and/or recruiting youth for terror cells and suicide missions. Additionally, NZ mosques have enjoyed vists, lecture tours, intensive Islam courses and/or youth camps involving the following firebrand clerics: Siraj Wahhaj*, Khalid Yasin, Bilal Philips*, Yahya Ibrahim. Wahhaj and Philips have both been named alongside Osama bin Laden as “unindicted co-conspirators” in a plot to blow up a string of New York landmarks using car bombs. New Zealand’s Muslim community is moderate. Their rights to devout worship and dress should be respected. But in return New Zealand needs to know the community can recognise the snakes in their midst and expose them. There's now serious doubt about that.

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VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES THE PM IS A VIOLINIST…

I was talking to a Kiwi mum whose son was buying a hamburger at Pakuranga. As he was ordering, a gang member started to provoke him and out of nowhere threw a blind punch. He fell and hit his head on the curb. The ambulance was called but the medics could not attend to the young man as there were too many gang members around, so the victim was left stranded and bleeding until Police arrived. We as a nation do not feel safe anymore. There are convicted murderers and armed villains walking the streets. How many more innocent Kiwis need to be killed, robbed, shot, terrorized and raped this summer before something is done? All politicians are guilty. Blood is on their hands. Since Helen Clark has been in office, when it comes to the security of the average working Kiwi, I see her as impersonal, uncaring and unresponsive. Would you like to know how the hamburger story ended? The young man was finally taken to hospital. Any longer and significant brain damage would have resulted. He is slowly recovering. He reflects our battered nation and the government won’t lift a finger to help. Steve Sunde, Manukau City

BUT THEY WILL BAN SMACKING

The supposed “violence continuum” disingenuously trumpeted by Public Health Advisory Committee head Gay Keating and Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro in their opposition to Section 59 of the Crimes Act has no basis in any credible research. A similar “escalation theory” used to be a core part of the ideology of the addictions field, and was called the “stepping stone theory”, now roundly condemned as “junk science”. Both theories subscribe to the fallacy that people enter a particular behavioural practice, and then increase the severity of the behaviour without being able to exercise either wisdom or self control to stop. Welding smacking and discipline to abuse and trauma simply illustrates Keating and Kiro’s combined ignorance of all four actions, and calls into question their competence to comment on these issues at all. I trust that those who have a genuine concern about the care of our children will take the time to read the full transcript of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary report with which Keating

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

and Kiro attempt to score political points, rather than simply relying on the deliberate obfuscation by two state sanctioned officials with an agenda to deceive. Steve Taylor (MNZCCA, DAPAANZ), Bachelor of Counselling, Bachelor of Alcohol & Drug Studies, Director, 24-7 Ltd

SMACKING NO, TERMINATION, YES

Right to Life New Zealand is disappointed that the Crown continues to seek to prevent six women who have had an abortion giving evidence in the High Court. The Crown also seeks the removal of the name suppression for these women. Right to Life is undertaking proceedings against the Abortion Supervisory Committee for the alleged failure of the Committee to fulfill its statutory duties by ensuring that the human rights of unborn children receive the full protection of the law. The High Court in a judgment of 21 December 2006 rejected the application of the Crown to rule the evidence of the women irrelevant and inadmissible. The Court also rejected the Crown’s application to remove name suppression. Also rejected by the Court was the application of the Crown to have the evidence of our Society’s expert witness, a specialist consulting Psychiatrist struck out as being irrelevant. The Crown has now lodged an appeal against the judgment. Right to Life supports the right of these courageous women to give important evidence on behalf of the women of New Zealand and unborn children. Women who suffer from abortion should not suffer in silence. The appeal will be vigorously opposed. Ken Orr, Right to Life New Zealand Inc.

THE AUTISM DEBATE

This Christmas I was given a copy of Investigate. I never knew it existed but am so pleased I have now “discovered” it. The articles are interesting and informative and I’ll be subscribing as soon as I can afford to. One article was particularly interesting, “The Autism Debate: why is Damien so naughty?”, although it’s not so much about a debate as it is explaining some aspects of Autism. But I do wonder why the author Claire Morrow twice

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states that Autism is not caused by vaccines. My question to Claire is how do you know vaccines are not contributing to autism? You haven’t given any evidence to back up your statement. I know there is a big debate raging on the benefits vs risks of vaccines and nothing is 100% conclusive.. so to rule out vaccines as a cause of some autism is unfounded. Telling parents to vaccinate their children because it won’t cause autism is reckless. Parents deserve the right to decide for themselves and to be given adequate information to make this choice. Your article does not give adequate information to blanketly say “vaccines are ok”. As an aside, I have vaccinated my own children, after careful consideration. But I chose to delay the schedule and omit some altogether. I am not convinced vaccines are harmless and can do only good. I saw my own daughter violently react to a vaccine. I have read countless items of anecdotal evidence showing links between vaccines and autism. I don’t discount them simply because they can not be 100% proved. The rest of the article was great. I have worked with several autistic and Aspergers children and always read articles I find on autism to increase my knowledge about these delightful and unique children. Rebecca Burk, via email EDITOR RESPONDS:

Rebecca if you check back issues for 2006 in your local library you’ ll find we published an extensive series on vaccines and autism during the year which you may find helpful.

KIDS BOOKS

I was surprised to read the querulous article by Agnes-Mary Brooke in the January issue of Investigate. For all her claims of being a commentator and a reviewer, she was surprisingly out-dated in her current appraisal of children’s literature in New Zealand. I work closely with children and readers throughout all of New Zealand as well as with readers in three other continents. I can authoritatively inform Ms Brooke that rather than social realism holding sway with children it is instead good old-fashioned fantasy that captivates today’s readers. In 2006 I conducted a reading survey, with arguably this country’s best readers, as part of the Kids’ Lit Quiz™ and found that fantasy was the genre most preferred by New Zealand children (49%). With over 6300 titles recommended this survey was perhaps the largest ever undertaken in NZ. The most popular titles (in order) were: Harry Potter series The Inheritance trilogy Alex Rider series A Series of Unfortunate Events Artemis Fowl series Deltora Quest series The Narnia series Lord of the Rings trilogy The Karazan quartet So apart from the Alex Rider series the most popular titles were all fantasy. Note that these are not stand alone titles as children

10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

universally love the depth provided by series or trilogies. The most popular New Zealand author and the most popular title was V M Jones’ Karazan quartet. Brooke overlooked both the popularity of this author and of this quartet. The most popular stand-alone title was Chinese Cinderella (marketed as Falling Leaves for adults), which was a realistic story of Yen Mah’s Chinese childhood. I attended this author’s lecture in Auckland, as did the hundreds of her fans that loved the realism she described. Social realism, that Brooke appears to undervalue, assists children in making sense of their world. Gee’s The Fat Man, a brilliant novel in my opinion, captured well the mood and time of the Depression era, especially the effects a legacy of bullying had upon a victimised child. Sadly Brooke devalued the works of Gee, Mahy, Cowley, Hill, Ihimaera, and Duder when all have received the highest national honours that an author can receive. True, these awards were conferred by their peers, but then who better to judge than one’s peers? Was Brooke aware that Mahy received the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006? This award often referred to as the “Little Nobel” was conferred on Mahy by an international panel of jurists in September in recognition of her oeuvre. Outside of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature it just doesn’t come any better than that. I’m afraid Brooke’s article just didn’t stand up. In my opinion she was out of date (she mentioned author role models such as: Lewis, Ransome, Johns, Blyton, West, Scott and Crompton all of whom are dead) out on a limb (what did Anita Roddick’s comments add to her argument on children’s literature?) and out of touch (since when has The Bone People been considered a book for children?). She failed to mention the following fabulous picture books: Hairy Maclary From Donaldson’s Dairy, The Gruffalo, Elmer the Elephant or Olivia which sell in millions. Incidentally I checked through the questionnaire and failed to find one of Brooke’s titles mentioned. Could a disgruntled author have written this article? Wayne Mills, The Kids’ Lit Quiz

WHY IS THE GOOD STUFF ALWAYS BAD?

I read the interview with Amy Brooke with interest. As a Christian parent and primary school teacher it was refreshing to see someone else is getting sick of the drivel that we are supposed to get excited about and recommend to our children. However when I previously taught in a Christian School I was equally dismayed at the drivel that those children were expected to read when all the ‘unsuitable’ books had been weeded from the library. My own daughter has been a churchgoer all her twelve years and reads stacks of books every week. She has read the Frank Perretti and Patricia St John books that I have dutifully provided and finds them rather tedious. She knows that Jesus loves her, she doesn’t need to be told it again and again in every book she reads. She has also read Tolkien, Lewis and ...Gasp and burn me at the stake if you will... all the Harry Potter books and lots of Terry Pratchett. She is more than capable of working out fact from fiction and it leads to lots of interesting discussion when she has questions. Please don’t put all educators in the same lefty liberal loopy basket. Most of us are very sensible people with as much passion for a ripping good yarn as Amy. My favourite books to read aloud are I am David and Good Night Mr Tom (yes, a war theme

but not particularly political, just the experiences of two young boys), Charlotte’s Web (does that make me an animal rights activist?) and The Wee Free Men ( it’s funny, OK?). I will have to read one of Amy Brooke’s books soon and see what I think. I loved Whale Rider by the way. It’s nice that we are still allowed our personal opinion. Trish Blair, via email

INVESTIGATE BRASH

The article by Ian Wishart in the January 2007 edition addresses the issue of personal lives of politicians by referring to David Benson-Pope and David Parker. Investigations by Investigate covered periods before either was a Member of Parliament. On the other hand, we have Don Brash, who has not denied allegations of a (then) current extra-marital affair with Diane Foreman – Vice President of the Business Round Table and apparently a member of the rival ACT Party! Has Investigate examined the implications of this, especially in light of (a) revelations of The Hollow Men, and (b) the spontaneous change of direction of the National Party? “News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising”, so he quotes Lord Northcote. I would probably say “everything else is public relations” because ... The relevance of this to Investigate magazine is obvious when looking at the reality behind the extreme fundamentalist right. Arthur Sullivan, via email EDITOR RESPONDS:

I would draw your attention to an error of fact in your letter: David Parker’s dishonesty took place whilst he was a Member of Parliament, right up to the end of 2005 in fact, and our initial investigation into David Benson-Pope was relevant to denials he had made whilst both an MP and Minister of the Crown, whilst our latest investigation covers behaviour whilst a Minister of Social Development. So again, perhaps you can tell me how you brush it aside as irrelevant?

A FURTHER EXPLANATION

Thank you for the reply Ian. I will try to explain. If you look at the impact personal scrutiny has had, you will see what I was trying to get at. Time has now gone by, yet David Parker and David BensonPope are reinstated Cabinet Ministers. There must be insufficient or nil groundswell in Labour caucus to vote in alternative ministers as they would be able to do. Whereas, Don Brash is gone – gone even from Parliament! His personal activities were also put under huge scrutiny, both through allegations of an extra-marital romance with a party political “rival” .. and through published e-mails. Implications are clear – firstly, he could well have been our PM when the storm broke – secondly, we have seen a radical repositioning of National coinciding with nothing more than a leadership change. No protracted soul searching – just like selling a car and buying a new one. In the Editorial of the same January issue of Investigate, you point out that the sudden change of direction for National (with Bill English again prominent) could theoretically mean a return from about 50% to 20% for the party polling. Why did the cau-

cus not tough it out? You in the Editorial and I now both wonder about that. Therefore, when asking about relevance of personal matters to being MP, surely one would not omit Don Brash as the prime example? He is the one that has suffered the biggest fall as a result, surely? Not only that, but the whole party has had to undergo some kind of shock treatment. Arthur Sullivan, via email

EVOLUTION OF THE ARGUMENT

Jason Clark (IM, Feb 2007) claims that ‘most evolutionists that write to Investigate are woefully ignorant’ and that Warwick Don in particular ‘is too lazy to do any real research’. Apart from noting that the sample space of ‘evolutionists’ who actually get their letters published in the magazine is very small, I suggest that if Mr Clark wants to accuse others of inadequate research he could do better than to base his letter entirely on quotes from Discovery Institute press releases. The ‘seven to ten peer-reviewed papers’ referred to by Mr Clark are in fact papers pointing out (alleged) gaps in evolution theory, not papers supporting Intelligent Design. This fallacy is known as “false dichotomy” and is commonly committed by supporters of ID. Problems with evolution are not support for Intelligent Design as science, and that is why the court agreed that there are no peer-reviewed papers supporting ID. Another misrepresentation in Mr Clark’s letter is his quote from the Discovery Institute that ‘90% of the text of Judge Jones’s … decision … was lifted virtually verbatim from texts supplied by the ACLU’. In fact the “texts supplied by the ACLU” were “proposed ‘Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law’” submitted by the plaintiff’s lawyers and it is entirely normal practice for a judge to incorporate such ‘proposed findings’ in his judgement when he agrees with those findings. Had the judge decided in favour of the school district, he would most likely have incorporated large parts of the ‘proposed findings’ that they had also filed. I expect that the Discovery Institute would (quite rightly) have had no problem with that; it is a pity that they chose not to disclose this in their media release. Richard Arrowsmith,Flagstaff Hill, South Australia

A SECOND EVOLUTIONIST WRITES…

Colin Rawle (February 2007) is hardly playing fair. He dares me to read an anthology (“all of it”) of C. S. Lewis, the late Christian apologist, in response to my suggestion in the Otago Daily Times that a certain correspondent could do with a dose of Dawkins. The correspondence essentially concerned the complexity of the human eye and the opposing naturalistic and religious views of its origin. But unlike Mr Rawle’s challenge, I referred the correspondent to the relevant section of Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable, not to the whole book! However, I suspect that anything Lewis may have to say about evolution from a religious viewpoint is more than likely to be immaterial to its scientific standing. Jason Clark (February 2007) cites a Discovery Institute (DI) document as confirmation that “90% of the text of Judge John E. Jones’ judicial decision… was lifted virtually verbatim from texts supplied by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union…]”. However, this document pertains specifically to Judge Jones’ sec-

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 11

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tion “on intelligent design as science”, according to the DI comprising 6,004 words. I’m prepared to give your correspondent the benefit of the doubt and conclude a misreading of the situation, although it is difficult to excuse such blatant misrepresentation given that the summation of the case amounts to something in the order of 30,000 words! Incidentally, the DI makes great play in their document of the fact that the eminent judge draws heavily on the ACLU’s “findings of fact”. But such procedure is legitimate, the DI itself acknowledging this. Most significantly, the conclusion that ID is not science is patently the correct one, which surely is all that matters when it comes to deciding whether it should be taught alongside evolution in the science classroom. The DI lists as one of its alleged peer-reviewed ID articles the one by Scott Minnich to which Mr Clark refers in his letter. However, it should be noted that in his testimony in favour of ID in the Dover case, Minnich admits that the paper in question was only minimally peer-reviewed as normally pertains to a conference paper. With reference to Stephen Meyer’s article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, also listed by the DI, it is pertinent to note that the Society itself has issued a statement to the effect that publication of Meyer’s paper was not in accordance with the journal’s established review process. We are informed that the principle of co-option (or exaptation) was addressed by Professor Behe in Darwin’s Black Box, and that it was always acknowledged as a possibility. Neither term is listed in the index, however, suggesting either the principle is not addressed in the book, or is given little consideration. I don’t recall seeing reference to it in the text – perhaps Mr Clark could enlighten us on this matter. Your correspondent alludes to scientific discussion on the possible order of appearance of the major components of the bacterial flagellum. But any scientific debate on this point is hardly grounds in favour of the claim that this structure is irreducibly complex. Why do I get the distinct impression that ID creationists are trying their level best to fudge the issue? They are clearly rattled by the court decision. I shall leave the interested reader to decide who in the end is relying “on bluff and bluster to confuse his opponents”. Warwick Don, Dunedin

wish to indoctrinate the children of this nation with? From then on your column is actually about Atheism vs. Christianity. I will not be so presumptuous as to call myself an expert on the subject of Christianity. But you may be wondering why I am a doubter. I am wondering how many Atheists supported the invasion of Iraq. Terry Toohill, Whangarei EDITOR RESPONDS:

Probably quite a few. Most of the Democrats did in the US at the time. But Terry, as to the main point of your letter, you seem to be drawing some kind of parallel between Maori mythology and GrecoRoman civilization. Much as I love the whakapapa of my children, I don’t think one can compare the two cultures in terms of civilization advances. You fall into a relativistic trap in suggesting that all cultures are equal. They are equal only to the extent that humans are involved in all of them, but there is a quantum difference between a Stone Age civilization and an Iron Age one. To that extent, we should be teaching kids in the West, and Maori in NZ are fully part of the West now, to rejoice in the heritage bequeathed to them. You and I are not Greek, and probably only a smidgeon of Greek or Roman blood still flows through our Anglo Saxon veins, (and let’s face it, the Celts, Angles and Saxons weren’t that advanced either), but we can still appreciate what those civilizations discovered and the impact that it still has on our daily lives.

DOES THIS ONE COUNT?

First of all, thanks for publishing my letter on MMP. May I now be so presumptuous as to edit the first sentence of your column “Atheism for Dummies”, Investigate Feb. 2007. I would like to add just three words: either, or, supporting. “It never fails to astound me each year how many otherwise intelligent people are sucked in by the latest pop-culture paperback book either challenging or supporting the truth of Christianity in some way”. Now, that’s much better isn’t it? You later write, “We are becoming so profoundly ignorant about the philosophies and histories that underpin our civilization … etc.” I agree. But these philosophies and histories include far more than just Jewish and Roman Christian beliefs. How about such philosophies and histories as Greek, Anglo-Saxon, Slavic, Maori, etc? You use the delightful phrase “Ministry of Thought Police and Child indoctrination, sorry, Education.” Please tell me again what is it exactly that you and your friends

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 13

SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE Firefighters’ anger still burning

t’s the talk of Dubbo. Last month, as a bushfire was raging through the Goonoo Community Conservation Area, an angry showdown between Rural Fire Service volunteers and National Parks and Wildlife Service employees threatened to derail firefighting efforts. The streets are abuzz with the story of how, at the height of the blaze, greenie NPWS workers drove their vehicles in front of a bulldozer driver trying to clear a firebreak in order to stop him damaging any more vegetation. And over the next few days, furious firefighters said every time they cleared a firebreak, a NPWS crew was behind them, infuriatingly pushing vegetation back onto the track. The fire was eventually extinguished late January, having ravaged 60,000 hect“In the bid to win an election ares of the national park with green votes, the actual and threatened adjoining farms. But the white-hot environment usually gets anger among local volunshort shrift” teer firefighters still burns. “There’s a lot of bad blood out here,” local farmer and retired RFS fire control officer Kevin Brown says. NPWS spokesman John Dengate says the story is simply a “misunderstanding” that has spread like Chinese whispers. He says it was only one vehicle, containing two NPWS employees who had driven from Sydney, who “happened to park their car in front of” the bulldozer driver. “The idea that Parks [and Wildlife] would try to stop the firebreak is ridiculous.” Dengate concedes there were arguments about the width of firebreaks, with NPWS staffers trying to tell bulldozer drivers to make them narrower, “because it’s faster and more effective”. He confirms that one overzealous NPWS employee was stood down. RFS incident controller Don Jenks, called in by Dengate to further clarify matters, says some firebreaks were so wide “you could land a 747 on them”. But he agreed his crew were upset when NPWS staffers started “refurbishing” firebreaks before the flames had been extinguished. As for the bulldozer incident, Jenks was initially furious, but later discovered only one NPWS car had stopped the driver because “they just wanted to talk to him”. Much of the disagreement stemmed from the fact that NPWS people thought a D8 bulldozer was too big,

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whereas the firefighters wanted a big dozer for wide tracks to ensure the fire wouldn’t escape to neighbouring farms, as it had to devastating effect from nearby Goobang National Park in December, 2001. It’s no wonder there is bad blood between the NPWS and local farmers, most of whom are volunteer firefighters. Only just before Christmas they settled out of court after 31 farmers launched a $7.6 million negligence suit against the NPWS and the NSW Government for allowing that fire to escape from the Goobang park in 2001. The fire killed 5000 sheep and 100 cattle and destroyed grazing land, sheds and hundreds of kilometres of fences on farms between Dubbo, Orange and Parkes. The farmers alleged the NPWS failed to conduct enough hazard reduction in the park and did not competently fight the fire. The settlement will have cost the NPWS a pretty penny, since the farmers’ legal costs alone are estimated at $2.5 million. But, as the recent row concerning the Goonoo park shows, NPWS doesn’t seem to have learnt any lessons. Freelance journalist Rob Darroch remembers a report he compiled for State Forests – now Forests NSW – after the January 1994 bushfires devastated the Royal National Park south of Sydney. He can’t forget “the hundreds of deer and other animals whose charred corpses were . . . revealed”. State Forests management wanted to demonstrate the benefit of its regime of regular prescribed hazard reduction burns to reduce fuel loads in the forest, so that when wildfire inevitably occurred, it would not burn so hot and destructively. Darroch says his report showed the bushfires had destroyed about eight times more National Parks’ land than State Forests’. (Hans Drielsma, State Forests’ boss at the time Darroch’s report was commissioned, was uncontactable overseas) Another report, published in 2004 by the Institute of Public Affairs, showed that wildfire burnt on average 235,831 hectares per year of national parks between 1992 and 2003, while burning just 65,757 hectares of State Forests’ land. State Forests had twice as much land as NWPS at the beginning of the period and half as much by the end. But Darroch’s report, full of such compelling facts, never was released. It was, he now says, “an inconvenient truth”. In the bid to win an election with green votes, the actual environment usually gets short shrift.

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www.mistralsoftware.co.nz INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 15

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN The bear goes walkabout

ou gotta love these alternative theories for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the late “Russian dissident” (and there’s a phrase one hadn’t expected to make a comeback quite so soon). Relax, say the Kremlinologists (and there’s another), it wasn’t Putin who had the guy whacked. It was rogue elements within the state apparatus who gained access to supposedly secure facilities and then contaminated five international jets and dozens of joints all over London in order to pull off the world’s first radiological assassination. Oh, well, that’s okay then. Nothing to worry about. The late Mr Litvinenko, on the other hand, added to the story some last-minute wrinkles of his own. On his deathbed, the former KGB agent “Russian men have record rates of converted to Islam and asked that one day his corpse be heart disease, liver disease, drug reburied in a peaceful and addiction and Aids; Muslims are independent Chechnya. Now what’s that about? the only guys in the country who Well, like many in Russian aren’t face down in the vodka” political and media circles – including his fellow murder victim Anna Politkovskaya – Litvinenko had become intrigued by the 1999 Moscow apartment-house attacks that killed 300 people and provided the pretext for the Second Chechen War: Were they, in fact, a set-up intended to advance the career of Vladimir Putin? In other words, his entire presidency is founded on a lie. One can understand why a belief in such a conspiracy might destroy one’s faith in one’s country, and even that it might lead one to embrace Chechen separatist leaders, as Litvinenko did. But it doesn’t entirely explain the Muslim conversion business. I say somewhere or other in my new book that, just as the export of Russia’s ideology was the biggest destabilizing factor in the last century, so the implosion of that ideology could be one of the biggest in this century. That’s to say, what’s left of the Soviet Union has hit the apocalyptic jackpot: the Middle East has Islamists, Africa has Aids and North Korea has nukes, but only Russia has the lot – a disease-riddled Slav population and a fast growing Muslim population jostling atop a colossal nuclear arsenal. The Litvinenko murder is only the first of many stories in which Islam, nuclear materials and Russian decline will intersect in novel ways.

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There are ten million people in Moscow. Do you know how many of them are Muslim? Two and a half million. Or about a quarter of the population. The ethnic Russians are older; the Muslims are younger. The ethnic Russians are already in net population decline; the Muslim population in the country has increased by 40% in the last 15 years. Seven out of ten Russian pregnancies (according to some surveys) are aborted; in some Muslim communities, the fertility rate is ten babies per woman. Russian men have record rates of heart disease, liver disease, drug addiction and Aids; Muslims are the only guys in the country who aren’t face down in the vodka. Faced with these trends, most experts extrapolate: thus, it’s generally accepted that by mid-century the Russian Federation will be majority Muslim. But you don’t really need to extrapolate when the future’s already checking in at reception. The Toronto Star (which is Canada’s biggest-selling newspaper and impeccably liberal) recently noted that by 2015 Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s army. Hmm. That’ll add an interesting dimension to the Chechen campaign. Say what you like about Russia but it doesn’t want for plot twists. It is, in that sense, a textbook example of Donald Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns”: a thing we know we don’t know. What will happen in Russia? A remorseless evolution into a majority Muslim state? Bosnian-style civil war? The secession of a dozen or so of Russia’s 89 federal regions? A Muslim military coup? Or a panicky attempt to arrest decline by selling off your few remaining assets, including national resources to the Chinese and nukes to anyone who wants them? None of us knows, but we should know enough to know we don’t know. The Russia of 15 years ago is already ancient history. Which brings me, alas, to the Iraq Study Group. This silly shallow report, of which James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the rest should be ashamed, betrays no understanding of how fast events are moving. It falls back on the usual multilateral mood music. It wants Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel and everything else to be mediated by the transnational jet set – the Big Five at the UN, the EU, the Arab League. Just for starters, look at the permanent members of the Security Council: America, Britain, France, Russia, China. What’s the old line on those fellows? The World War Two victory parade preserved in aspic? If only. By

“What will happen in Russia? A remorseless evolution into a majority Muslim state? Bosnianstyle civil war? The secession of a dozen or so of Russia’s 89 federal regions? A Muslim military coup?” 2050, Russia will be the umpteenth Muslim nuclear power, but the first with a permanent seat on the UNSC. Or maybe the second, if France gets there first. And, judging from London literary offerings like George Walden’s Time To Emigrate?, Britain might not be far behind. But, as I said above, forget the extrapolations: already, domestic Muslim constituencies are an important factor in the foreign policy thinking of three out of the big five. Are Baker and Hamilton even aware of that? As I always say, there is no “stability”. We thought we’d “contained” Soviet Communism. Instead, the social pathologies that took hold during the Russian people’s half-century of “containment” will have profound consequences for us and the rest of the world long after the last Commie is dead and buried. © Mark Steyn, 2007

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EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER The law of rules

had a birthday last week. This isn’t necessarily a big deal; it happens every summer at about this time of year. This time however, it was the Big One. It’s finally happened. I’m forty. That’s 40. Four Zero. My wife bought me a new office chair to mark to occasion. It has wheels, it swivels, it goes up and down, it’s a vast improvement on the old clunky thing I acquired at a garage sale several aeons ago, and reupholstered with an elderly car seat cover. If her choice of present was a subtle attempt to suggest that I spend too much time out here, in my cave at the end of the workshop off the side of the garage, then it may have backfired, because it’s a whole lot more comfortable than the old one was, as well. But I digress. My passing of this milestone is obviously significant for a number of “Whatever the motivation, over reasons. I’m not having a I’ve already done that the last few years we have created crisis; in bite-sized pieces over the a veritable army of busybodies in last eighteen months. But I New Zealand, who are, now, quite am now officially allowed to be a Grumpy Old Man. literally, running out of things to Furthermore, I am entistick their noses into” tled to have my opinions taken seriously. The frivolous thirties are behind me. Time will now be measured in decades, rather than insignificant and fleeting mere years. In the same way, I suppose, according to several commentators (and not just the kids, either) that any temperature below minus ten celsius is just cold, any age over 40 is apparently just old. Thus I am now a grown-up. I am responsible. I am ready to take my place amongst the pillars of society, to steady the foundations of conservative civilisation, to lead the next generation by example, to promote common sense and uphold the rule of law. Or, at least, so sayeth the tradition of our British colonial culture – though this is not, apparently, a view shared by our dear Labour Government. No, according to the academics, and the intellectuals, and the unionists, and the feminists, and the “educators” (not necessarily grouped in mutually exclusive categories, by the way), and all the other assorted elitist socialist control freaks who comprise the New Zealand Government, there is no room in this country for the recognition of common sense, no place for the discretion of the individ-

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ual. I cannot possibly know best. I must not be allowed to observe, comprehend, decide, and act, without the permission of Nanny State. I must be regulated. I must be legislated, qualified, registered, inspected, recorded, audited, instructed, and approved, at every turn and in every endeavour. Preferably in triplicate. What the Government has done in terms of increasing the number of useless pen-pushers and interfering seatpolishers since being elected in 1999 is a matter of public record. Quite why they have taken this course is perhaps more a matter for concern. Policy and administrative staff numbers have swelled by 95% in seven years. Health sector bureaucrats are up by 23%. Across the board, the Government payroll has increased by more than 50,000. Why? What for? What do these people do? Nothing useful, in this writer’s now respectable opinion; but worse than that, they are actually having a destructive effect on New Zealand, both economically and socially. It would be bad enough if all they were doing was wasting their lives, our money, and the Government’s time. But they’re not. Administrators by definition have to have something to administer, and that means regulations are required. New regulations. Lots of new regulations, to match the lots of new regulators. What are they regulating? Well, everything, it would seem – and above all, common sense and experience. These two things are obviously dangerous, and must be regulated away forthwith. Ten years of safe and qualified chemical handling and pesticide application have gone down the drain for Yours Truly. I now need a new bit of paper – obtainable after attending a two-day course, and naturally, paying the appropriate fee. Ditto twenty years of driving forklifts, fifteen of them with the requisite heavy licence; now, for some reason, I won’t know what I’m doing unless I obtain an OSH endorsement to that same licence. My old man, who did his time in the RAF and taught me everything I know about firearms, isn’t allowed to borrow my .22 to shoot blackbirds out of his fruit trees, unless I supervise him – because he doesn’t have the right licence. Does any of this make sense? A local contractor of my acquaintance has had to hire, at not inconsiderable expense, a compliance manager, who is employed full-time (and kept very busy) purely in ensuring that the contractor’s systems and procedures are in line with the systems and procedures of the firms and

Government agencies with which he deals, and who in turn must hire compliance managers to ensure that their own systems and procedures (which naturally they must have, in writing, logged, recorded, and constructed within an appropriate template) adhere to the requirements of various regulations which, quite frequently, are administered by another division of the same Government agency for which the work in question is being done. This is paperwork for its own sake, and it would be funny if it wasn’t such an utterly unnecessary waste of time and money. Much of what we now endure in the way of Government interference is done in the name of safety. It’s a serious buzzword and primary excuse for many control freaks in this Brave New PC World. Health and Safety. Food Safety. Road Safety. Cultural Safety (whatever that is). Everyone must now, apparently, be wrapped up in cotton wool. The rot set in with the likes of seatbelts and bike helmets being made compulsory. Good ideas, yes, and worthy of promotion; but mandatory, regulated, and enforced? I mean if I want to kill myself through stupidity, is it the taxpayer’s responsibility to stop me? Likewise the fencing of swimming pools; time was, we taught water safety, and made kids learn how to swim whether they liked it or not. Now, because we don’t do that anymore – presumably because it violates some United Nations human right or another – their safety has become the responsibility of every complete stranger with a fishpond. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly need to protect people from unnecessary risks and from the exploitation of unscrupulous employers; but at the same time, anyone dumb enough to climb a power pylon, or poke their head into a stump grinder, probably shouldn’t be in the gene pool anyway. Whatever the motivation, over the last few years we have created a veritable army of busybodies in New Zealand, who are, now, quite literally, running out of things to stick their noses into. Naturally, they are turning to that reliable old standby, the motorist. Don’t speed! Don’t cross the centerline! Don’t take Party Pills! You’re an idiot at intersections! We’re going to regulate you! Yesss. In the absence of a breath test for party pills, I will soon be able to demonstrate my relative ability to drive under their influence by walking a straight line and touching my nose – assuming that I was silly enough to want to eat a pill made out of cattle drench in the first place, though if I was, my days of buying them legally are probably numbered. Regulations are on the way. There is, incidentally, no law at the moment preventing me from nipping down to Wrightsons and buying a whole bottle of cattle drench to quaff at my leisure, though doubtless this will change when someone in Government realises that here is something else which they haven’t regulated yet. But party pills are not the only evil available over the counter in a bottle, it would seem. Vitamins and herbal supplements are next for the legislative lasso, with restrictions in the pipeline as to their composition and strength; this, we are told, is to “bring their sale into line with regulations in Australia” (why? I don’t live in Australia…?) – and presumably, in order to justify hiring even more inspectors, administrators, and managers. Misinformed Government and Police fixation with road safety has, I believe, made me a less safe driver. Time was, during the two million-odd kilometres I clocked as a sales rep and truck driver, my focus was on the road, fifty and a hundred yards in front of me; I gave not a second thought to pruning the inside

“So why is the Government doing all this? Partly, I would guess, to ensure their ongoing electoral support; every new pointless job is a potential guaranteed vote. Partly, to hide the true extent of unemployment, because most of these new pencil necks are actually beneficiaries in all but name. But mostly, I would guess, because they’re socialists, and all socialists are control freaks – and because control freaks, like other bullies, have self-esteem issues which they attempt to exorcise by dominating others”

off a badly-shaped corner. Now, in the age of demerits and ticket quotas, I drive with half an eye on the speedo, and force my vehicle to stay on the inside of a line painted on a road which was never designed for the automobile. A tarmac coating doesn’t change the reality that most of our roads were carved from the bush for the horses and carts of a century ago, and that picking the straightest course through their winding centre is often the safest option. Do the Government regulators and the traffic division really not know this? So why is the Government doing all this? Partly, I would guess, to ensure their ongoing electoral support; every new pointless job is a potential guaranteed vote. Partly, to hide the true extent of unemployment, because most of these new pencil necks are actually beneficiaries in all but name. But mostly, I would guess, because they’re socialists, and all socialists are control freaks – and because control freaks, like other bullies, have self-esteem issues which they attempt to exorcise by dominating others. That, of course, and the Nanny-Knows-Best attitude which typifies people whose experience of real life is somewhat limited, as demonstrated by everything from dog microchips to fireworks to smoking in pubs. And why are we putting up with it? This is not how the Empire was forged. The West was not won by men who needed a permit to break wind. New Zealand is drowning in a sea of red tape. The time and cost of compliance with ever more pointless bureaucracy and regulation is strangling small businesses and sapping the spirit of enterprise and innovation. This, as much as any monetary factor, is why we have a brain drain, and this, as much as issues of law and order, defence, and entrenched welfarism, is what the next Government must prioritise and deal with. The youth of a bygone age lived by but one edict, which was that A Breach of Common Sense is a Breach of the Rules. I suggest we go back to it, assuming we still trust ourselves to know the difference. That, at least, is what this grumpy old grown-up thinks.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 19

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER

Laying down the challenge over leaky homes

onald Trump, New York Squillionaire, enjoys a power almost completely unknown in our own little South Seas Paradise. If he spies from within his legion of employees any sign of incompetence or even plain stupidity, he invokes a phrase now forever to be linked to the Trump name “You’re Fired”. Which set me to thinking that if we New Zealanders were to be granted a Divine boon that above all else would straighten out the appalling administrative mess that currently we find ourselves wallowing in, the good Mr. Trump might suddenly appear amongst us to carry out this long overdue task. With this in mind, shall we draw up a short list of those currently lording it over we New Zealanders, which in truth, were there any “Just one thing though, how many justice at all in this land, would, as we speak, be conof your army of building inspectors templating a future life and their staff are you going to in rags and probably takup residency under a fire or transfer to your ditch ing motorway over-bridge. digging department?” Our “powers that be” ranks are now littered with senior political figures both at Local and Central Government level who, even collectively, would be struggling to achieve the IQ level of a moron. Not a day passes without a news story that tells us of yet another example of crass operational stupidity in the management of public affairs, and yet these be-suited practitioners of verbal onanism, (a form of self abuse), simply, by collective asscovering, remain inviolate in their exalted positions, from whence they are able to move on to further demonstrations of rank incompetence. Perhaps we could well begin to issue notices of instant dismissal from within the hapless Department of “Corrections”, a department that by the very PC nature of its title appears to have adopted the new age theory that truly evil people, by patter cake, caring and sharing methods, may, in relatively short order be returned to the community at large, where henceforth they will lead blameworthy lives of sweetness and light. Of course in the real world of men, anyone with even a half of a brain is historically aware that many criminals are genetically and psychologically incapable of doing anything else other than to rape and to pillage. Nevertheless, it appears that even more genetically and psychologically crippled people

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have taken over our prison system and despite the nationwide cries of rage and alarm being expressed almost daily by the public at large, these ultra liberal and clearly very dangerous people, persist in flinging open the cell doors of people who quite plainly should remain incarcerated for the whole of their lives. Worse, even taking into account the low value our courts seem to place on our citizens’ lives by the relatively light sentences given for frequently the most horrendous crimes that now have become endemic throughout the country, Justice and Corrections, completely out of step with the clearly expressed requirements and instructions of the voting public, simply continue on with the letting out of prison, dozens and dozens of murderers and major sex offenders, who then proceed in short order to add to their previous collection of innocent victims. That this current administration in both management and practice in the running of our prison/parole system is directly responsible for untold misery and criminal mayhem, leading to many deaths and ruined lives amongst completely innocent members of the New Zealand public, is inarguable. When taxed on an incident-by-incident basis for an explanation for the latest criminal outrage that the Department is clearly responsible for, the answer is now almost comical in its repetitiveness...“We shall hold an inquiry”, which of course they do, where equally comically of course no single individual or identifiable group is ever held to blame nor, perish the thought, fired. The Minister, Damian O’Connor, naturally continues on in office, safe in the knowledge that tradition protects him, as indeed it does all Ministers of the Crown, from even the clearest evidence of incompetence, although it appears that Mr. O’Connor, although nominally in charge of Corrections, is in fact more of a hostage of the real villains of the piece, the cabal of time serving civil servants who really run Corrections in any way that they seem to please. I suspect that were Donald Trump to be let loose on this department alone, that a convoy of buses would be needed to transport the recently fired to the nearest dole office. Then we might profitably set the good Donald on a hunt for those thoroughly deserving the bullet for their part in the economically crippling affair that is the Leaky Homes debacle. Once again a huge, very expensive to operate and even understand bureaucracy has evolved, to supposedly administer, and control the building of New Zealanders’

homes. Indeed a close friend of mine has recently spent over six months and thirty thousand dollars in council fees etc before the first brick was able to be laid for his new house on Aucklandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s North Shore. What do you get for all this time and money? Well to use the vernacular it appears, bugger all, well that is of course if you discount the stress, the mountain of form filling, the army of petty bureaucrats tromping hither and yon about your section, and all of this before the building â&#x20AC;&#x153;inspectorsâ&#x20AC;? proceed to ply their trade, which it appears, perhaps up until quite recently, they knew not at all too well. Seven or eight years back, in another life as it were, I took a well known and very experienced Queensland builder around an estate that was under construction north of Aucklandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Harbour Bridge. He could not believe that our regulations allowed for the construction, of, as he put it so succinctly, â&#x20AC;&#x153;such crapâ&#x20AC;?. The very materials that were obviously approved for use, the construction methods that plainly were within the inspected regulations he suggested would not have passed muster for a Queensland Woolshed. Why bother putting locks on the doors when a kid could force entry into these abominations by simply kicking a hole in an outside wall. Does it rain here, because if it does, these places are going to leak like sieves! All of this and much more he simply offered up as an observation rather than as an Aussie trying to take the mickey. He also pointed out by-the-by, that our builders are not just only OK, but that he reckoned from long experience with employing Kiwis in Australia that they are about as good as you can get, so that the problem had to be that your building regulations must be just horse dung! Well it appears that he, as a visiting expert, had it right in one, and of course during the next several years, hundreds and hundreds of very expensive yet fatally-flawed houses have been constructed, and all within government building regulations and specification, and even more importantly under the close supervision of the local councilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s building inspectors. OK, to the point! Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all very well to have had a recent court decision, that squarely lays the financial bill for all these leaky homes, to, as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;last man standingâ&#x20AC;?, the desks of the local councils, and like it or not we ratepayers look like we are going eventually to have to foot the massive bill. In our turn however, is it unreasonable to expect that the legions of dick-heads who over saw this colossal screw-up should all be clearly identified and then very publicly fired. I for one would like to pick up the local newspaper and see a full page of names and addresses of those that have been held accountable for this major financial disaster, and being by inclination a bit right of centre, the same people spending some time in the stocks having veges chucked at them could well prove to be a bit of an incentive for their replacements not to do it again! Tell me, why is it that clearly identifiable incompetence or plain official stupidity never ever seems to have the culprits losing their jobs? You and I stuff up and usually without so much as a bat of an eye the boss will give you your cards. Well in the above-mentioned stories of gross incompetence etc, perhaps we should remind ourselves that in the final analysis WE are these peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bosses. Bob Harvey, the genial Mayor of Waitakere City, a few days back to his credit said letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sort these leaky homes out, pay the bill and then get on with things. Very true, Bob, well said. Just one thing though, how many of your army of building inspectors and their staff are you going to fire or transfer to your ditch digging department? Perhaps you could replace them with inspectors from countries who have some idea as to what quality homes

actually look like. Then perhaps we could move anything to do with building regulations from the cloying grasp of Parliament, whereby ex-union secretaries, teachers, and political science students stuff around with things that they clearly donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a clue about, fire the major departmental culprits who signed off the regulations that have made the construction of so much rubbish possible, and then with all of the above done and dusted, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very real chance that many more homes in the future might well keep standing beyond the last mortgage payment! In closing, do we agree or not with the theory that people in power and authority, who by the way are usually very well paid, just have to be fully accountable for the jobs that they do. Do these jobs well and they should be fully rewarded, do them badly, then is there any good reason that they should not simply be fired, and then replaced with better people. Surely this is the whole basis of how to run an efficient system that is there to serve the people who pay the bills. Good Heavens, out of time and space, so The Donald will have to wait on his riding instructions on who else we need to fire, which by the way is not such a bad thing to have happen to you, getting fired that is...clears the mind and makes you take a look at yourself where you frequently become a much better person. Like, seeing weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve all become so used to the phrase once another â&#x20AC;&#x153;inquiryâ&#x20AC;? has taken place that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now time â&#x20AC;&#x153;To Move Onâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, that in the future we should also be equally used to hearing that such and such held responsible has been FIRED. Chris Carter appears in association with www.snitch.co.nz, a must-see site.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March1/26/07 2007, 21 1:50:18 PM

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART

The spirit of Josef Mengele is alive and well

n just a few short weeks (March 2), the deadline for public submissions will close on the thorny issue of creating or using human embryos for scientific experimentation. In virtually all cases of scientific experimentation, the human embryo will be killed as part of the process. The sterile-sounding Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology is the government quango tasked with listening to people’s views on this process, and just before Christmas it published a discussion paper entitled Use of Gametes and Embryos in Human Reproductive Research: Determining Policy for New Zealand: A Discussion Paper . Get hold of a copy and make a submission. The first part of the docu“We are living in a period of ment is spent explaining, in history where everything the Nazis equally sterile terms, how believes it can cure fantasized about is coming to pass, science this and that genetic disoronly the PR spin that accompanies der if only it can be allowed it is much more sophisticated” to create and then destroy humans in the laboratory. To be fair, the Committee notes that it is illegal to experiment on an embryo older than two weeks’ gestation, but nonetheless there is an underlying assumption that embryos less than 14 days in utero are somehow more worthy of being sliced and diced in the name of giving old-age pensioners better eyesight (see http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/investigate_articles/nov_ 05_nz_edition/index.html). Let me make something abundantly clear, and my new book Eve’s Bite is going to make it even clearer, we are living in a period of history where everything the Nazis fantasized about is coming to pass, only the PR spin that accompanies it is much more sophisticated. Whereas the Nazis had to pack people kicking and screaming into cattle carts destined for the gas chambers, in the modern West we’ve mixed Nazi Eugenics with user pays and slick advertising, to the point where people are queuing up to pay to be euthanized! In Europe, where the Nazi horrors arose and where the Nazi influence remains heavy on the medical and scientific community, euthanasia has just officially been extended to include mentally-ill people as well. Just to refresh your memories, Josef Mengele and his

22, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

team would select children, particularly sets of twins, and run medical and scientific experiments on them. One Holocaust website notes this: Eva Mozes-Kor, the president of Children of Auschwitz: Nazi Deadly Camp Lab Experiments Survivors (CANDLES), was, in her words, “a human guinea pig in the Birkenau laboratory of Dr. Josef Mengele.” Dr. Mengele conducted experiments with twins in whom he would inject one twin with a germ or disease, and if that twin died, they would kill the other to compare organs at autopsy. “Mozes-Kor almost died after a series of germ injections, but survived with her sister for liberation. She provides this pointed description of atrocity, among others: “A set of Gypsy twins was brought back from Mengele’s lab after they were sewn back to back. Mengele had attempted to create a Siamese twin by connecting blood vessels and organs. The twins screamed day and night until gangrene set in, and after three days, they died” (Tarantola, 1993). Many have noted that there was scientific interest in a lot of what the Nazis were up to, testing vaccines, early genetic experiments and the like. Nonetheless it is also abundantly clear that the Nazis lost total respect for humanity – Mengele himself would, once he’d finished his grisly tests, inject a lethal toxin into the hearts of the children standing in front of him, in order to kill them so he and his team could begin dissecting them. The children were nothing more than a means to an end, just a by-product on the road to scientific progress. In a world where we legislate away any responsibility to a higher power like God, and instead give the nationstate – the Government – supreme authority, this is the kind of sick society you end up with. It should be blindingly obvious that we don’t need a Government committee to decide on whether creating and destroying embryos is permissible – it should be written in our consciences. Tell the scientists to find a better way. From my reading of the discussion document, the Advisory Committee are falling into the trap of relativism. They quote extreme ends of the debate – such as my thesis in the preceding paragraph, and then those who say “anything goes”. They then talk about the need to find the middle ground. And they quote the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification: “The Commission argued that in a pluralistic society such as New Zealand, people will draw their values from differ-

ent sources and that it is not appropriate for one group to impose their values on another. What is important is to find some common core from which New Zealand can develop a framework for ethical decision-making.” What’s wrong with that statement? I’ll tell you what: it is complete and utter hogwash! Here’s why. The underlying assumption is that one group should not be able to impose its values on another. Hey, that sounds fair in a touchy-feely kind of way. But it depends entirely on what is being debated. Using that logic, liberating Jews from the Nazi concentration camps would have been illegal because the Brits and the Yanks were imposing their views on the Nazis and hey, that’s not fair! Who are we to say that genocide is wrong? The appeal to some kind of “middle ground” is a bogus, airyfairy, happy-wappy piece of liberal effluvium, which works on the basis of avoiding conflict by compromising. But just as we should stand up against child abuse, just as we should stand up against political torture, just as we should stand up against slavery, just as we should stand up for giving women the vote – so too must we stand up against other things that are just plain wrong. Doctors and scientists argue they could cure this and that if they’re allowed to kill a few babies. They don’t really know for sure, however, because if they really did know they wouldn’t need to do the experiments. But by the same token, we could solve world poverty in one night if we allowed all the have-nots to burgle the homes and bank accounts of the haves. Wouldn’t the

ending of world poverty be worth that compromise? What about applying the relativistic weasel-word position to air safety: would you rather fly with an airline whose engineers had the final say on whether a plane was safe or not, or would you prefer an airline where the decision on safety was a compromise one between the sales team (whose bonuses would be affected), the flight crew (whose union would be unhappy if they were stood down), the management (who need to make every buck they can) and the engineers (tasked with safety)? After all, why should the views of the engineers override the views of management? You can see how ridiculous relativism is. Now apply it to the real situation where we are actually creating human life purely to destroy it, or even worse, create human/animal hybrids, halfbeast/half man, so scientists can figure out how things work. Sounds a little too close to Mengele’s Siamese Twin experiment to me. Piece of advice: when you make a submission to the Advisory Committee, do not let them frame the debate in the way they are attempting. This is not an argument about finding a middle ground – about letting a someone be “a little bit raped” or “a little bit tortured”. Tell them, in no uncertain terms, that they must go into this prepared to accept that a middle ground may not factually exist, that the extreme position may indeed be the correct one. The website to visit is www.bioethics.org.nz.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 23

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

HELEN HOODWINKED BY PREACHERS OF HATE OSAMA BIN LADEN’S TENTACLES REACH NEW ZEALAND’S FIVE MAIN CENTRES IN MASSIVE BORDER SECURITY BREACH 24, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

Some of the world’s most extreme Islamic preachers, and organizations linked to terrorist groups, have spent seven years infiltrating New Zealand’s moderate Muslim community – running training camps and “intensive” courses – and the Government never realized. IAN WISHART has the extraordinary story that’s left local Muslim leaders shocked and embarrassed, and raised major questions not just about our border security, but whether al Qa’ida has been actively recruiting on the ground in New Zealand

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 25

massive breach in New Zealand’s national security has been discovered by Investigate magazine, with revelations that senior Islamic “preachers of hate”, some with links to al Qa’ida, have been able to come and go from New Zealand with no one in the media, the Government or even the security services apparently aware of who they were. Among the roll-call of dishonour that’s left the head of New Zealand’s Muslim community reeling and pledging major changes within mosque vetting procedures: two firebrand clerics named as “unindicted co-conspirators” in New York’s infamous 1993 Day of Terror case, when Ramzi Yousef tried to blow up the World Trade Centre the first time and a dozen other men planned to explode ammonium nitrate car bombs at other major New York landmarks. Additionally, Investigate’s inquiries have shown that a large number of the organizations listed as international affiliates of New Zealand’s mosques have been named by the United Nations, intelligence and law enforcement agencies as supporters, fundraisers and sometimes active participants in al Qa’ida terror plots. Yet members of these organizations have been able to come to New Zealand unobstructed, supply “educational and spiritual” literature to Muslim youth here and run training camps, as recently as last July. Undercover video footage taken by Britain’s BBC television of training camps run by the same organization overseas has shown children being trained to become suicide bombers. The President of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), Javed Khan, was doubly shocked to find out about the backgrounds of the extreme Wahhabi Islam visitors, because his organization had personally invited them here to help encourage local Muslims in their faith. For seven years, preachers, whose works include book urging followers to kill Jews, Christians, pagans and Hindus, have been holding “workshops” in mosques and university student halls up and down New Zealand, yet no one from the Government, Security Intelligence Service or police ever lifted a finger to ring Javed Khan and ask why moderate NZ Muslims were inviting the world’s most extremist clerics here. While Khan and senior figures in New Zealand’s Islamic community are now urgently reviewing their policies and links to overseas Islamic groups, there’s also growing concern about why, if the Government really regards the NZ Muslim community as friends, it never even bothered to have a quiet word in their ear. Worse, if the Government didn’t know about the backgrounds of the extremists visiting New Zealand, what implications does that have for national security? For most New Zealanders, the story of modern Islam and the government’s walk-on-eggshells approach to it, begins with September 11: IN THE BEGINNING As the smoke from the gaping holes that had been New York’s twin towers still swirled in an acrid mist across Manhattan, choking rescue workers with the fumes from 3,000 vapourised human bodies and thousands of tonnes of vapourised buildings, New Zealand’s acting Prime Minister when the Islamic terror campaign struck, Jim Anderton, raced to get a press release out. 26, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

“Acting Prime Minister Jim Anderton is urging New Zealanders not to associate New Zealand’s Muslim community or Afghan refugees with acts of terrorism in the United States yesterday. “One of the great things about New Zealand is our tolerance and the absence of political and religious extremism in New Zealand. I call on New Zealanders to remember that and not blame or associate people in New Zealand with the terrorism in the US on the basis of national origins. “It is reprehensible to link the terrorist attacks in the US to refugees in New Zealand, let alone to New Zealand’s Muslim community. Even if Islamic extremists are ultimately shown to be responsible for the terrorist activity, refugees to New Zealand are by definition trying to get away from persecution by extremist regimes and they can hardly be blamed for that,” concluded Anderton. Leaving aside a possibility that clearly hadn’t occurred to the Deputy Prime Minister – that refugees may simply be extremists from a losing faction fleeing persecution by the extremists of the winning side – the message of tolerance towards Islam became almost a national hymn throughout the West. A year later, just after the Bali bombings that claimed a further 202 lives at the hands of Islamic extremists, the Labour Government was once again calling for tolerance towards the real victims of terror – Muslims themselves. “I chose to [meet] with the Muslim community,” declared Ethnic Affairs minister Chris Carter in December 2002, “because Muslims everywhere have had a very difficult twelve months. The New York and Bali terrorism attacks have focused unwelcome attention on what is a fundamentally peaceful religion.” Among issues raised by Muslims for the government to consider, said Carter, were: “The fact that Arabic was not taught as part of the school curriculum, despite it being one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, [and] a lack of family counseling services that were sensitive to the cultural differences of the Muslim community.” On a number of occasions, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark has told the country that Islam is a religion of peace. One of the most recent of these declarations accompanied the history-making visit of the PM to the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ (FIANZ) annual conference at the South Auckland Mosque on May 28 last year. In a copy of the FIANZ newsletter sent to Investigate, Clark – who’d previously refused to say “Grace” at a state banquet for the Queen, broke royal protocol by wearing trousers, and had a run in with Maoridom over her place on the marae as a woman – is photographed wearing the Islamic hijab – a sign to Muslim men of her secondary status as a woman and submission to Islam’s requirements. “In her address,” says the FIANZ document, “she acknowledged and thanked FIANZ and the Muslim community at large for maintaining calm and building better relationships with others subsequent to attacks on Auckland masjids (mosques) after the London bombings. “Speaking on the diverse New Zealand people she said that migration over many years has resulted in a multi-faith and multi-cultural society. “Speaking of various initiatives by her Government she men-

tioned the special ‘Building Bridges’ programme by the Office of Ethnic Affairs, police recruitment of ethnic people, and the Ministry of Social Development’s ‘Building Cohesion in Society’. “Looking to the future she mentioned three priorities for Muslim kiwis: Modernisation and transformation of the economy; Building stronger family, young and old; Building a unique national identity of our diverse country. “In all three, the Muslim community has a part to play… Quranic classes are necessary for a sense of identity.”

ou would think such an important and history-making speech by the Prime Minister would be on the government’s website. It is not. No news release about the visit was sent out electronically to media, nor is there a report in Auckland’s journal of record, the New Zealand Herald. Instead, the only printed report of this visit is that contained in the FIANZ newsletter, which concludes: “We need to build a distinctive New Zealand with one identity built on each of us being sincere in who and what we are, where we come from, what our hosting home and culture are. Openness and dialogue are important to go ahead as a nation.” Elsewhere in the same FIANZ newsletter, the familiar refrains are echoed – “Islam means peace”, it declares in an article on outreach to the wider New Zealand community for Islam Awareness Week. Few New Zealanders would know, however, that the correct Arabic translation of Islam is “submission”, not peace. To a Muslim, peace only comes through submission to Allah, but the phrase gets shortened to “Islam means peace” for Western consumption. It is little PR shortcuts like this that make Islam an easier sell to young westerners: Islam is seen as the underdog, misunderstood and bullied by the West. But this is a carefully crafted façade largely driven worldwide by Saudi extremists and Saudi money. According to independent estimates, the Saudi Arabian regime has spent somewhere in the region of NZ$110 billion exporting Wahhabi Islam – the variety of Islam followed by terrorist group al Qa’ida – worldwide. That money, itself the proceeds of petrodollars, has been used to train Muslims in extremist Saudi universities and send them overseas as missionaries to train local Muslims in the most fundamentalist strains of Islam. To put this in perspective, bear in mind that 15 of the 19 hijackers killed in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi Arabian. Nearly all had been Saudi-trained. The tone of Saudi extremist Islam was recognized early by New Zealand, as the Prime Minister herself noted on 21 September 2001 when she followed President Bush’s lead in separating moderates from extremists. “President Bush made it clear that the teachings of the Islamic faith are good and must be distinguished from the terrorists who have blasphemed that faith and tried to hijack it. “I call on New Zealanders to make that distinction too. Our country also contains people of many faiths, and all those faiths and those of peaceful intent who follow them must be respected.” Clark did not explicitly state what al Qa’ida’s blasphemy was, but the group’s aims are on the record as being consistent with Saudi Arabian Wahhabi Islam: the submission of the entire world to Islam, as is predicted in the Qu’ran and which Muhammed instructed his followers to achieve; the introduction of Shari’a

“The clash of civilizations is a reality. Western culture…is an enemy of Islam” – Bilal Philips law worldwide; and a return to what Wahhabists see as fundamental Islamic values, such as women being forced to wear veils, and pagans, atheists and gays being stoned to death. Implicitly in the Prime Minister’s statement, these are the extremist blasphemies New Zealand was joining the US in fighting against. “President Bush has said that he sees this as an international effort. New Zealand is in it for the long haul too. What the United States is asking the whole world to address is a radical terrorist network which has shown its capability to deliver coordinated acts of hideous violence. New Zealand supports the United States’ determination to root out al Qa’ida and other terrorist groups worldwide. This will be a lengthy campaign,” declared Clark. Yet despite the tough talk, the New Zealand government appears to have been asleep at their posts as Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia quietly infiltrated the very same mosques Labour had been praising as moderate. BILAL PHILIPS In the very same 2006 FIANZ newsletter featuring Helen in the hijab is another, seemingly innocuous, article recording the July 06 visit of “Islamic scholar” Dr Bilal Philips. It wasn’t a random visit. Philips was expressly invited here by FIANZ as a warm-up act for Islam Awareness Week. “During his visit to New Zealand,” says the report, “Dr INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 27

“Bilal Philips, Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa were all named by the [US] government as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial”

Bilal held lectures in Dunedin, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland…He received his BA degree from the Islamic University of Madina and his MA in Aqeedah (Islamic philosophy) from the King Saud University in Riyadh.” Madina is to Islam what Medellin is to Colombian drug barons: the heart of the empire. For the record, and to give you an idea of the Wahhabi pedigree of Philips, the University at Madina is regarded as the most fundamentalist of all the Islamic study centres, and the King Saud University in Riyadh was also attended by Osama bin Laden. “The theme for [Bilal’s] lectures was “Muslim Minorities living in Western Civilisations”, notes the FIANZ report. “There were full attendances in all the Centres he presented his lecture. His lectures were very enlightening and educational. “A recurring advice throughout his lecture is for the Muslim community in New Zealand to join together to pursue an Islamic way of life in education, housing and commerce.” The newsletter records that Philips visited the Federation’s offices to hold discussions with local Muslim leaders Hanif Ali and Sheikh Amir, as well as discussions with Muslim students at Victoria University and intensive workshops on how to spread Islam with “a group of enthusiastic brothers and sisters” at Auckland’s Avondale Islamic Centre. “The visit of Dr Bilal was indeed very successful and FIANZ hope to continue in the tradition of welcoming respected overseas Islamic scholars/speakers to New Zealand to further enrich our community.” OK. That’s how local Muslims saw Philips through their eyes. But what does Bilal Philips really talk about on his sellout lecture tours? We might never have known had Philips not shot to fame on a major investigative documentary screened on Britain’s Channel 4 last month by the Dispatches programme. Neither TVNZ nor TV3 in New Zealand have run the programme yet, but it created huge waves in Britain and America because it exposed self-professed “moderate” Muslims at the UK’s biggest mosques preaching messages of hatred and jihad against the West as recently as just a few weeks ago. A Dispatches journalist went undercover for several months to secretly film lectures in the mosques given by Bilal Philips and others. In one segment of the programme, Philips was covertly filmed telling Muslim men it was OK to marry 9 year old prepubescent girls, because the prophet Muhammad did it. “The prophet Muhammad practically outlined the rules regarding marriage prior to puberty, with his practice he clari28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

fied what is permissible and that is why we shouldn’t have any issues about an older man marrying a younger woman, which is looked down upon by this [Western] society today, but we know that Prophet Muhammad practiced it, it wasn’t abuse or exploitation, it was marriage.” Philips later argued to the media he was only re-stating the Qu’ranic position, but it is clear from his comments above he endorsed it. But marrying pre-pubescent girls in the name of Islam wasn’t the only message Philips has preached. In 1991, as part of a Wahhabi infiltration of US military units stationed in Saudi Arabia for Gulf War 1, he led Islamic evangelism programmes – paid for by the Saudi government – that reportedly converted some 3,000 US soldiers to Islam, some of whom later joined Islamic jihad movements. This was first revealed in a Washington Post article on November 2, 2003, which quotes Bilal Philips. “The clash of civilizations is a reality. Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” Remember: this is a man hailed at the time as a leader and a scholar by moderate New Zealand Muslim leaders, and who held sellout lectures and workshops for young Muslims up and down the country last year. One spin-off from Bilal Philips’ efforts in 1991 however was that the Pentagon suddenly had to find Muslim chaplains to minister to its freshly converted Islamic US soldiers. “One architect of this initiative was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was indicted Oct. 23 on money-laundering charges for allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Libya, which is designated by U.S. officials as a state sponsor of terrorism,” reported the Post. An extra irony is that Alamoudi was an election campaign donor to both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton, evincing a “bob each way” mentality. The article goes on to say that the Pentagon is now “worried” about the loyalties of its Islamic troops. “Some military officials believe that the al Qa’ida terrorist network is trying to recruit Muslim members of the U.S. armed services and contractors who work with them. Other officers have expressed fears that some Muslim soldiers, sailors and airmen might one day decline to take up arms against fellow Muslims.” A news article listed on Wikipedia and sourced to Intelwire directly links Bilal Philips to known terrorists. “An al Qa’ida operative sought to recruit US veterans as paramilitary trainers and combat volunteers in 1992 and 1993, at the explicit direction of a cleric [Philips] who converted thousands of Gulf War soldiers to Islam on behalf of the Saudi government,” begins the report. “Clement Rodney Hampton-El was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York city landmarks in a 1993 terror plot linked to the World Trade Centre bombing in February of that year.” As an al Qa’ida trained explosives expert with ties to the first World Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yousef, Hampton-El (better known as “Dr Rashid”) gave evidence at his 1995 federal trial that he’d been summonsed to a meeting at the Saudi embassy in Washington in 1992 and told wealthy Saudis were bankrolling a project to recruit US soldiers as jihadists, and that he would be given a budget of US$150,000 for his role in

the project. He testified that Bilal Philips then gave him a list of US Muslim soldiers to approach and worked with Hampton-El to achieve the goal. Philips’ involvement is a matter of public record in the court documents (US vs Rahman, S5 93 Cr.18, August 2, 1995), yet he managed to slip through New Zealand immigration in July 2006 no problems at all.

ut wait, there’s more. In the mid-90s, Bilal Philips was teaching at an Islamic school in Cotabato, the Philippines – home territory to the deadly Abu Sayyaf terrorist group and an al Qa’ida recruiting ground for the Pacific (see Investigate, Feb 05). Osama bin Laden’s brother in law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa was documented by both US and Filipino authorities as funneling money to Abu Sayyaf via the Islamic Da’wah Council of the Philippines – an organization listed on the website of FIANZ in New Zealand as one of its international affiliates. “In May, 1993,” continues the Intelwire story, “Bilal Philips sent for Hampton-El, who was flown first to Saudi Arabia for a week, then to the Philippines for a week. “In Manila, Hampton-El testified, he met with Philips at an Islamic conference… sponsored by wealthy Saudis and the Islamic Da’wah Council of the Philippines. The Da’wah Council was one of Khalifa’s [Osama’s brother in law] charities. “On his return to New York, Hampton-El told friends that he was planning to move to the Philippines and join an Islamic militant movement there. According to testimony and surveillance tapes presented at his trial…he visited training camps in the south of the country during the May 1993 trip. He also described visiting a terrorist safehouse with Bilal Philips. “Bilal Philips, Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa were all named by the [US] government as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial,” reports Intelwire. For his part, Hampton-El is languishing in a maximum security penitentiary in the US where he won’t be eligible for parole until 2023. So Bilal Philips is a very strange houseguest for moderate Muslims in New Zealand to be inviting over. But it doesn’t stop there. The deeper Investigate dug into the moderate mosques in New Zealand, the messier it got. Of all the names of invited overseas scholars who’ve come here that it was possible for us to verify [due to variant English spellings of Arabic names], virtually none was a “moderate” – most were Wahhabi extremists and some, like Bilal Philips, have links directly to terrorists. SHEIKH KHALID YASIN In May 2005, another extremist Wahhabi preacher arrived in New Zealand as a guest of the Muslim Association of Canterbury, Sheikh Khalid Yasin. Trained, again, in Saudi Arabia, this American convert to Islam is well known for a verbal jihad in his lectures. And like Bilal Philips, Yasin also rocketed to stardom in Britain as a result of January’s TV documentary exposing preachers of hate. In Yasin’s case, the TV crew found DVDs on sale at “moderate” mosques in London where Yasin says women are worthless.

“This whole delusion of the equality of women is a bunch of foolishness…There’s no such thing” – Sheik Khalid Yasin “This whole delusion of the equality of women is a bunch of foolishness…There’s no such thing.” He also claims AIDS is a western conspiracy. “Missionaries from the World Health Organisation and Christian groups went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever, and they put in the medicine the AIDS virus, which is a conspiracy.” But despite being welcomed by moderate Muslims in New Zealand, Yasin had a tougher time being interviewed by Nine Network’s Sunday programme in Australia, which dragged out yet more video clips of his lectures from around the world. “There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend,” he told believers at one rally – which doesn’t gel with the gestures of friendship from the same local Muslim leaders who invited him to New Zealand. “If you prefer the clothing of the kafirs [infidels] over the clothing of the Muslims, most of those names that’s on most of those clothings [sic] is faggots, homosexuals and lesbians.” “How do you feel about the fact that the Government is saying we should set up some new rules to make sure that no potential terrorists are developed or cultivated. And also we want to see inside the mosque and places so we can see before something happens. How do you feel about that? Because that’s what’s being talked about. Now, if they didn’t say exactly that, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 29

“There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend” I’m telling you that’s what it means!” Naturally, young Australian Muslims digesting the question as he phrased it felt threatened, victimized and angry. Yet Yasin’s messages of hate are a very good reason for the Islamic community to be transparent. Despite Arab TV network al Jazeera broadcasting Osama bin Laden’s admission that he ordered the 9/11 attacks, Sheikh Yasin – who has lectured extensively in NZ mosques and universities – shows himself to be a 9/11 denier. “There has been no evidence that has surfaced, no bona fide irrevocable, irrefutable evidence that has been surfaced that showed that there is a group called al Qa’ida that did the September 11 bombings.” He told Sunday’s Sarah Ferguson that “sophisticated entities” blew up the twin towers. “Sophisticated entities means entities who themselves were governmentally instructed, equipped, motivated. We now know that the way the World Trade Centre fell, the way those buildings fell – they fell from internal explosive charges, the same way it’s done in a construction site.” Yasin calls for homosexuals and lesbians to be put on trial for immorality, “and if they are tried, convicted, they are punishable by death”. In his Sunday interview, and in his lectures to Muslim students in Australia, he preaches the message that Muslims everywhere are victimized. When Sunday raised the case of the Islamic bookshop in Sydney caught selling a how-to book on suicide bombing, Yasin simply denied it. “There is no books [sic] in no Muslim bookstore that says how to become a suicide bomber. This witch-hunt against Muslims is what we are against. I have not been able to find one single incident.” SIRAJ WAHHAJ Another Muslim scholar brought out to New Zealand in 2001 – just months before 9/11, was American convert Siraj Wahhaj, invited here by FIANZ. Wahhaj was once hailed as a “moderate” in the US, and became the first American Muslim to deliver the daily prayer in the US Congress, in 1991, as a recognition of his “moderate” views. But like Bilal Philips before him, Siraj Wahhaj was leading a double life: teacher’s pet moderate Muslim on the outside for the benefit of politicians and the media, die-hard radical extremist on the inside. Wikipedia records that Wahhaj was named by the US Department of Justice as another of several “unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments” including the World Trade Centre in 1993. As Salon magazine reported on September 26, 2001, Wahhaj had a close relationship with an Islamic terrorist, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdul Rahman, inviting him to speak at 30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

Wahhaj’s Brooklyn mosque and even testifying as a character witness for Rahman in court. Wahhaj, who like Philips slipped into New Zealand without opposition by the SIS, police or border security, is also quoted in Salon as calling the original Gulf War 1 – against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait – “one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history”, and “part of a larger plan, to destroy the greatest challenge to the Western world, and that’s Islam.” Comparing the fall of Soviet Russia to the current crisis in the West, Wahhaj warned America too will be crushed unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda”. Journalist Daniel Pipes, in The Danger Within, details a 1992 address Wahhaj gave to an audience of New Jersey Muslims. “If only Muslims were more clever politically, he told his New Jersey listeners, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. ‘If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own Emir [leader] and give allegiance to him…Take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us’.” So that was Siraj Wahhaj’s agenda just a year after reading the opening prayer in the same US parliament he was hoping to overthrow, and he is welcomed as an esteemed speaker by moderate Muslims in New Zealand. The website MilitantIslamMonitor.org has compiled its own research on Wahhaj.

“If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own Emir [leader] and give allegiance to him…Take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us” – Siraj Wahhaj

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“Wahhaj often writes and speaks on the subject of martyrdom in Islam. Some of his works are entitled: ‘Are you ready to die?’ ‘The blessing of Death’ ‘The easy way to Paradise – how to get there’.”

“Wahhaj extolled the joys of martyrdom in this Jihad website entry, ‘No one who dies and goes to Paradise is going to want to come back to this world, except a Martyr, a person who gave their life for Islam, for Allah, they will want to come back to the earth and die ten more times in the way of Allah, because of the great gifts Allah has given them in Paradise’. “Wahhaj often writes and speaks on the subject of martyrdom in Islam. Some of his works are entitled: ‘Are you ready to die?’ ‘The blessing of Death’ ‘The easy way to Paradise – how to get there’. “In addition to martyrdom Wahhaj is a proponent of polygamy and has produced many tapes on the subject.” While the latter topic might fit Labour Party policy in New Zealand, it is doubtful Wahhaj’s commitment to military jihad would. For his part, Wahhaj has told American media they’ve misunderstood him, that “Islam is a religion of peace”, and that he really is a moderate. ISLAMIC YOUTH TRAINING CAMPS In addition to general visits and lecture tours by people like Bilal Philips, the Muslim community has been seeking specialist input for the spiritual training of young Muslim men in New Zealand. The FIANZ Annual Report for June 2000 through May 2001 records one such “North Island” camp, held at the Kauaeranga Forest Education Camp on the Coromandel Peninsula between 12 and 14 January 2001. “The theme of the camp was ‘The Khilafah and man’s role as Khalifah’.” While the words may not mean anything to the average reader, the “Khilafah” is the Arabic word for the restoration of the Caliphate – worldwide Muslim rule under one Caliph. The last Caliphate fell with the collapse of the Ottoman empire in Turkey after World War One, and extremist Muslims blame the West for this. A “Khalifah” is the future leader of Islam worldwide, the one who will unite the planet under one crescent. “In accordance with Islam, it is the duty of the Muslims worldwide to elect a Khalifah. Such an appointment is seen as a duty (fard) similar to all other duties within Islam. The duty is seen as inevitable, and any divergence from the path is considered a grave sin, and therefore any neglect of this duty will be punished accordingly. The establishment of a Khilafah is seen as vital, because without it Islam cannot possibly be applied,” notes one Islamic scholar on the point. 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

Jemaah Islamiyah, the group responsible for the Bali bombings, is trying to establish a Khilafah state ruled by Muslims that covers Australia, through Indonesia and South East Asia, which is one of the reasons Prime Minister Helen Clark outlawed Jemaah Islamiyah in 2002. “Jemaah Islamiyah is an extremist Islamic organization…its stated goal is to create an Islamic state…the organization has established links to al Qa’ida, based on a shared ideology and cooperation in relation to terrorist activities and training,” said Helen Clark. Meanwhile, the FIANZ annual report detailing the NZ youth camp continues: “Sixty brothers, aged between 15 and 25, attended…to improve and encourage youth practice of Islam and also to foster a greater awareness of one another amongst New Zealand Muslim students.” Nor were South Island Muslim students left out. They had their own camp near Mosgiel in mid April 2001. “The theme of the camp was ‘Islam is the Solution’. Approximately 100 brothers and sisters attended.” There was another big training camp only weeks later, from 3 to 10 July 2001, arranged in association with Auckland’s Al-Manar Muslim Trust (affiliated to Mt Roskill’s Masjid-e-Umar mosque), which hosted 40 young Muslims from around the country. “Three Sheikhs from Saudi Arabia supervised it,” notes an Al-Manar briefing on its website. “The camp was very successful, the youths and their families expressed their gratitude for such an activity, where the principles of Islam, strengthening the brotherhood ties and the development of the youths’ skills were the main purposes of the camp. “At the closing ceremony of the camp, which was held in a very beautiful area in the north of New Zealand, prizes were given to the participants by Dr Anwar Ghani, the president of…FIANZ.” Similar camps have been held every year since, many of them with invited Saudi-trained preachers like Yahya Ibrahim, who inspired the youth at the 2004 Muslim Youth Camp held at Tui Ridge Park in Rotorua. YAHYA IBRAHIM A Canadian of Egyptian descent who currently lives in Australia, Ibrahim hit the headlines just over a year ago when US Homeland Security officials barred his entry to the United States on unspecified grounds. Ibrahim had been scheduled to speak at an Islamic rally in Texas, and had been seen by some as a “moderate”. Others, however, are not so sure. Fluent in Arabic, he specializes in translating the works of some of Saudi Arabia’s most extreme Wahhabi preachers into English. Among them, three books by Sheikh Abdurahman al Sudais, whose views and television broadcasts across the Middle East urge Muslims to kill “Jews and worshippers of the Cross” as well as “Hindus”. It would be fair to say Sudais is an equal opportunities genocidal maniac. Another of Ibrahim’s translations is Explaining the Hadith of Battling The Jews, a book often used by the terrorist group Hamas to justify suicide bombings and other attacks on Israel. The translation includes verses like “…the decrepit nation in which the scattered Jews of the world were gathered unrightfully and in oppression – the State of Israel – shall cease and be erased from existence.

“When we look around and see the society that we are living in, we see people who are committing fornication and Allah punishes them by giving them a disease like AIDS”

“Kill Jews and worshippers of the Cross…as well as Hindus” – One of Ibrahim’s translated works “It is abundantly clear that the big battle is inevitably coming and that the Word of Tawheed (Islamic monotheism) will be victorious without a doubt.” In another of his translations it is written, “Allah has cursed the Jews in the Qu’ran on numerous occasions, informing us of his anger towards them…the enemies of the Prophets – especially the Jews – shall not be given inheritance of the earth during their worldly life and they shall face a grievous everlasting punishment in the Eternal Fire in the next life.” In one of his own lectures, available on the internet, titled “How kuffars [infidels] try to take the light out of Islam”, Ibrahim himself tells Muslims they can have nothing in common with Western society, Christians or Jews, that all are “evil” – hardly the message of moderation when Prime Minister Helen Clark talked of the “peaceful intent” of Muslims. Then there’s the comments of Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter in January 2003, a full year before the New Zealand Muslim community invited Yahya Ibrahim here to train Muslim youth in January 2004. “New Zealand’s Muslim community should be applauded for their declaration of peace and goodwill today,” Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter stated. “Ten Muslim groups from all over the country have signed a declaration to all New Zealanders affirming their commitment to peace and stability, and to being an integral part of our nation.” The signed declaration Carter refers to was issued in the

name of FIANZ, but it was FIANZ a year later that brought in Ibrahim. One of Ibrahim’s taped lectures begins with a statement that the Qu’ran warns all Muslims who their “enemies will be”, and he then launches into a stinging attack on liberal western society, atheists, Jews and Christians. Further on in the tape, Ibrahim launches into homosexuals. “When we look around and see the society that we are living in, we see people who are committing fornication and Allah punishes them by giving them a disease like AIDS. We look again and we see the murders, we look again we see the drug addictions, we look again and we see the prostitution, we look again and we see the disbelief in the laws of Allah: there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet! There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet! These words stand for everything against that, stand against drugs and prostitution and disbelief. These words stand against all of that.” It is hard to reconcile the teachings of Yahya Ibrahim to kiwi Muslims on a youth camp, and his translation works heralding a coming world battle where Islam will reign victorious, with the stated declaration that Muslims are happy to be part of a New Zealand liberal society lead by a very liberal Labour government. As Canadian commentator David Ouellette remarked after Ibrahim was banned from the United States a year ago, “In Australia, Ibrahim is widely considered as a ‘bridge builder’ between Muslims and non-Muslims. Yet, publicly available information on Ibrahim appears to point to the profile of a hardcore activist of the Wahhabi strain working to spread in the West the hateful, terror-inspiring Salafi ideology, the likes of whom should not be welcome in free societies fighting Islamic extremism.” FUNKY COLD MADINA: SAUDIS IN NZ You could put down a visit by one of the men above as just an aberration, a mistake made by innocent Muslim leaders in New Zealand. But taken as a whole – given that the visits involved packed lecture sessions up and down the country, youth training camps in some cases, and that all of them are extremist Salafi/ Wahhabi firebrands – it does raise questions about what kind of Islamic society in New Zealand local Muslims are aiming for. Take Auckland’s Al-Manar Trust, mentioned earlier as a Saudi-backed organizer of the youth camps. On its website, Al-Manar says one of its prime objectives is the introduction of Shari’a in New Zealand – at least among Muslims. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 33

“One of the main objectives of the Al-Manar Trust is to expand the knowledge [of] Islamic Share’ah principles between Muslims in New Zealand. “To achieve that goal, Al-Manar Trust has organized the following Share’ah educational courses in co-operation with Saudi Arabian universities: The first educational session – in co-operation with the International Islamic Youth Association. “The courses were run by eight lecturers [who] came to New Zealand from the University of Imam Mohammed Bin Saud in Riyadh. There were 300 participants in the courses. “The second educational session – after the major success of the first session, another session was held in co-operation with Al-Haramain Charity Association, between 11 July till 21st of July 2001. “Over 250 attended the lectures given by Sheikhs from Saudi Arabia.” Take a moment to join some dots here. Early in the article under the “Youth Camps” heading you’ll recall Al-Manar Trust organized a national Muslim youth training camp from the 3rd to the 10th of July 2001, supervised by three Saudi sheikhs. Lo and behold, on 11 July a group of Saudi sheikhs from AlHaramain charity begin conducting intensive lectures for adult Muslims. By a process of elimination it seems highly likely it was Al-Haramain involved in the youth camp as well. Which makes the next piece of information we’re about to give you highly relevant. 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

It is true that New Zealand Muslims used to overwhelmingly be moderate, but in the last few years the balance has started to tip – only the media and politicians haven’t noticed it. The first public inkling of trouble came in late 2003 when genuine moderates in Christchurch warned the Government that extremist Saudi’s linked to the Al Haramain terrorist organization were infiltrating the local mosque. “An Islamic ‘charity’ involved in fundraising for al Qa’ida and the southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah is trying to set up a front organization in New Zealand, and may get approval to do so,” Investigate reported in November 2003. “Al Haramain operates in more than 60 countries worldwide, and its attempts to get a toehold in New Zealand hit the headlines last month when a group of Muslim community leaders sent a letter to the New Zealand government, warning that the Saudi-backed Al Haramain would bring chaos and disaster to New Zealand if their application is approved. “That application includes setting up an Islamic school to teach Wahhabi Islam – the radical branch of the religion – and establishing an ‘Islamic bank’ in New Zealand. “While daily news media have played down Al Haramain’s links to terrorism, Investigate has now confirmed an extensive relationship between the ‘charity’ and al Qa’ida. Those links include Al Haramain’s involvement in a series of al Qa’ida suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia earlier this year [2003] – the Saudi government shut down ten offices…as a direct response after discovering it was funding Osama bin Laden’s organization. “Additionally, a senior figure in Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah arrested three months ago [in 2003], Omar al Faruq, has told investigators that his organization has received extensive funding and moneylaundering services from Al Haramain.” The website for the Wellington mosque, iman.co.nz, noted in a 2003 news release (still on the web) that two senior figures from Al Haramain, Sheikhs Abdul Majeed Ghaith al Ghaith and Menea al Dakeel, toured NZ mosques in May 2003.

espite being warned of the threat, Labour’s then Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff dismissed the fears of the Islamic moderates in Christchurch, saying the government was “leaning towards the view that it’s mainly an internal conflict in the Muslim community in Christchurch that they need to sort out among themselves,” and describing Al Haramain as “largely a distinguished and peaceful charitable organization focusing on the education and welfare of the Muslim community around the world.” What neither Goff nor Investigate knew in late 2003 was that Al-Haramain didn’t have a toehold, but a stranglehold on NZ Islam and had been indoctrinating local Muslims for at least two years. Within months of making arguably one of the most ignorant comments of his career, Phil Goff could only watch from the sidelines in 2004 as the United Nations froze the worldwide assets of Al Haramain because of its strong links to al Qa’ida and other terror groups, whilst masquerading as a distinguished and peaceful charity. The damage to the Christchurch mosque, however, had already been done. Although the UN move kept Al Haramain officially

out of the picture, the Saudi financiers of terror and Wahhabi Islam simply fronted up with some other Muslim ‘charities’ to help New Zealand’s Muslim community and their mosques. The resulting tension has split the Muslim community in Christchurch into different factions. Disquiet was also voiced in the New Zealand Herald last year by local Muslim leader Abdullah Drury, who warned that 30 years of making the Muslim community a mainstream part of New Zealand was disappearing out the door because the huge influx of recent immigrants under Labour has changed the balance of power. Where once Muslims had a sense of their NZ identity, Drury says the new leaders’ “hearts, minds, rationale and prejudices are still firmly rooted in their home countries. More than one North Island critic has stated that some Canterbury Muslims think they’re still living in Africa or the Middle East. “Why are things falling apart now?” asks Drury. “The most significant contribution stems from the massive and poorly planned influx of immigrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East in the 1990s. Nobody in the local Muslim community ever anticipated or planned this.” From 13,000 Muslims in 1996, there are now almost 37,000, and the Islamic community has jumped 50% under Labour. Says Drury: “The pioneering Muslim families who established Islam in this country have been effectively overwhelmed: swept out of office by the superior numbers of the new faces, or entrenching themselves and encouraging newcomers to set up their own Islamic prayer arrangements. “There was also a substantial change in composition. In the 1970s most Muslims in New Zealand were…mostly from societies with long traditions of interaction with white Anglo-Saxon culture and customs: Indians, Fiji Indians or Pakistanis. “Now, there is a substantial bloc, often Arab or African, with considerably poorer education than their predecessors, with vastly different language skills and cultures to those this country has traditionally absorbed. “This,” warns Drury, “has exacerbated community differences along ethnic, linguistic or cultural lines inside mosques from Christchurch to Auckland…very quickly [the Arab/ African faction] use their disproportionately larger numbers to vote in their own leaders. Consequently, a fair number of mosques in New Zealand are currently being administered or dominated by people and groups who have arrived in this country within the last 10 years, some substantially less.” And if that’s a warning from a moderate Muslim worth listening to, consider this: the new leaders in New Zealand’s mosques have strong ties to Wahhabism. The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) website notes the Islamic organisations and educational institutions it is now affiliated to. The majority of those links, checked out by Investigate, track back to extremist organizations with known involvement in either exporting Wahhabism or terrorism. As the FIANZ annual report from 2001 notes: “Over July-August-September 2000 New Zealand was blessed, or more accurately blitzed, by several visits by various groups of scholars from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. “The first such group came from the Al Imam Mohammed

“The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) website notes the Islamic organisations and educational institutions it is now affiliated to. The majority of those links, checked out by Investigate, track back to extremist organizations with known involvement in either exporting Wahhabism or terrorism”

bin Saud Islamic University of Riyadh between 25 July and 12 August. They were led by Dr Abdul Aziz al-Omari.”

ry this as an interesting exercise: Google alOmari’s name and you’ll find it’s the exact match for a 29 year old Saudi hijacker killed on one of the planes that hit the twin towers a year after this NZ visit. Although unlikely to be the same person, you’ll find both Omari’s attended the same university. The FIANZ report continues: “Sheikh al-Omari ran an 11 day Islamic Seminar at the new Blockhouse Bay mosque. This group then split into three parties who traveled the country giving lectures and conducting brief courses in Aqidah, Fiqh and methods of Da’wah [spreading Islam]. “Between 23-25 August Dr Abdul Aziz al Shaum and Dr Mohammed al-Sawai al-Omari, also from the Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University, conducted a similar whirlwind tour of New Zealand, visiting Muslim communities in Auckland through to Dunedin in a matter of days.” The question of precisely why Saudi Arabian clerics from some of the most extreme, terror-linked Universities in the world, were sweeping through New Zealand every year remains unanswered. But they kept on coming. “Over 25-28 August, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the South Pacific Da’wah Council organized a Da’wah training course in Auckland featuring Dr Abdullah al-Malki, Dr Sayeed al-Ghamdi, Dr Abdul Rahman Mohammed alJarri and Brother Abdul Rahman al-Fifi of the King Khalid University in Riyadh. “Drs al-Malki and al-Ghamdi then went on to visit Muslims in Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington over 29 August-1 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 35

September. The other two scholars made corresponding visits to Hamilton and Palmerston North over the same period.” Sayeed al-Ghamdi’s name is similar to another of the 9/11 hijackers, although the two are not the same. But what of some of the organizations mentioned here?

The sanitized view of Islam in the West.

“Called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth,” writes Palast, “the group sponsors soccer teams and summer camps. BBC obtained a video of one camp activity, a speech exhorting kids on the heroism of suicide bombings and hostage takings”

36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

THE WORLD ASSEMBLY OF MUSLIM YOUTH Based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this charity (WAMY) is involved in education programmes for Muslim youth, including training camps, in New Zealand. “The Muslim Association of Canterbury (MAC) received an air cargo from WAMY, Saudi Arabia, that was intended to cover an Intensive Islamic course run by WAMY,” records a Christchurch mosque newsletter for August 2002, a year after 9/11. “On 16 July [2003],” a MAC report says, “four scholars from WAMY in Saudi Arabia visited the mosque and conducted a 10 day Intensive Islamic course. More than 300 brothers and sisters attended the course. There was a special scholar for the children.” The World Assemby of Muslim Youth is also listed as a special affiliate of FIANZ. But what does it really do? Left wing American journalist Greg Palast, no friend of the Bush administration’s War on Terror, nonetheless highlighted the ongoing involvement of WAMY in the US as a failure of national security: “On November 9, 2001,” wrote Palast in a 2004 dispatch carried by Scoop in New Zealand, “when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI ‘were told to back off the Saudis’. “We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked ‘SECRET’ across the top and ‘199-I’ – meaning this was a national security matter. “The secret memo released agents to hunt down two members of the bin Laden family operating a ‘suspected terrorist organisation’ in the USA.” The “suspected terrorist organization”, it transpired, was WAMY. “Called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth,” writes Palast, “the group sponsors soccer teams and summer camps in Florida. BBC obtained a video of one camp activity, a speech exhorting kids on the heroism of suicide bombings and hostage takings. While WAMY draws membership with wholesome activities, it has also acted as a cover or front, say the Dutch, Indian and Bosnian governments, for the recruitment of jihadi killers. “Certainly, it was worth asking the bin Laden boys a few questions,” says Palast, “but the FBI agents couldn’t, until it was too late.” Remember, WAMY has been actively involved in Muslim youth camps in New Zealand right up until now. But, as Palast points out, the “back off the Saudis” instruction meant the US headquarters of WAMY, in Virginia, wasn’t raided by the FBI until May 2004, long after the bin Ladens had fled, presumably taking with them all incriminating information. Although a squad of 50 agents reportedly surrounded and sealed off the WAMY office, they “seized mostly empty

files and a lot of soccer balls,” wrote Palast. Over on Wikipedia, the encyclopedia acknowledges WAMY’s claim to be nothing more than a football-mad bunch of Muslim boy-scouts, but then refers to evidence about WAMY that’s emerged from some of the Guantanamo detainee hearings: “The terrorists that plotted the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing kept literature handed out by WAMY. Here are some samples: ‘The Jews are enemies of the faithful, God and the angels. Teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors’. “Here are some examples of what specifically to teach the children: ‘In 1989 Abdul-Hadi Nemin carried out his own heroic operation while on bus #405 of Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line; he charged at the bus driver, chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is great!], twirled the steering wheel toward the cliff and caused the bus to take a big fall. As a result of his courageous act, 14 Israelis were killed and 27 were injured’.” This was the kind of “boy scout” training WAMY was caught teaching to Muslim youth. WAMY had been run by Omar bin Laden and Abdullah bin Laden.

he Muslim youth group has also been named in a major United Nations report, “Terrorism Financing: Roots and trends of Saudi terrorism financing”, prepared for the UN Security Council in December 2002. The report states that WAMY, Al Haramain and the Muslim World League – another ‘charity’ supporting New Zealand’s mosques – are all major fundraising arms for al Qa’ida and other terrorist entities. It is interesting, too, how these ‘charities’ are able to fly a dozen preachers all the way from Saudi Arabia to New Zealand just to run a youth camp or a few lectures. The Al-Manar Trust in Auckland acknowledged as much in its newsletter. “Al-Manar Trust was able to build a very friendly relationship with Islamic associations overseas. Some of these associations have provided Al-Manar Trust with valuable books and resources.” One of its goals, it says, is building an “Islamic nation” here. “The youth activities organized by Al-Manar Trust include [a] weekly lecture for Muslim youths, sports activities and camping. The activities’ aim is to reinforce the Islamic principles and to strengthen the brotherhood ties between them. AlManar Trust is very keen to continue providing these activities to our youth because we believe in the youths’ important role in building the future in our Islamic nation. “Protecting our youth from the influence of the western society that they live in is a very important factor in achieving our goal.” In other words, forget warm fuzzy talk from the government about common ground: whatever the Muslim leaders are saying publicly, privately some appear to be creating a state within a state, a kind of Islamic apartheid which will grow in significance as Islamic immigration grows, helped by theology and resources from Saudi Arabia’s extremist, terror-linked “charities”. Al-Manar has already used that expertise and resource to begin Islamification outreach programmes “at New Zealand universities and visiting prisons”. The Trust says it recognizes “the importance of introducing Islam and its principles to the New Zealand society. Therefore, the Trust intends to provide the public and university libraries with a set of Islamic books, which

Followers of the religion of peace in Pakistan. PHOTO: SHAYNE KAVANAGH/INVESTIGATE

“The report states that WAMY, Al Haramain and the Muslim World League – another ‘charity’ supporting New Zealand’s mosques – are all major fundraising arms for al Qa’ida and other terrorist entities. It is interesting, too, how these ‘charities’ are able to fly a dozen preachers all the way from Saudi Arabia to New Zealand just to run a youth camp or a few lectures” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 37

Signs like this outside churches in Sydney this month provoked debate, with the implication that the only way to defeat extremist Islam in the West is to spiritually convert Muslims in the West: PHOTO: ADRIAN NEYLAN/CABLOG.COM.AU are simple, easy to understand and very comprehensive. There is a lot of potential to spread the word of Allah in New Zealand. New Zealand is a very peaceful country where Islam has no enemies and the people are kind, simple and keen to read.”

mong the resources Al-Manar has, it boasts its library “has the full set of Dr Tarek Sweedan cassettes”. Sweedan, or under one of the many alternative English spellings of his Arabic name, Tareq Sweidan, hosted a TV show in the United Arab Emirates two years ago where he urged Muslims to find gay men and kill them: “Anyone caught committing sodomy – kill both the sodomiser and the sodomised. The clerics determined how the homosexual should be killed. They said he should be stoned to death. Some clerics said he should be thrown off a mountain. This is an abominable act in human life, and so the punishment is severe. “If moral values sink to this level, Man becomes lower than a beast. Therefore the punishment was extremely severe, and the position of Islam was clear and courageous. There should be no lenience in this case, and governments and countries must enforce the law strictly against anyone committing such an abomination.” New Zealand has certainly seen its fair share of stoned gay men in recent years, but the stoning Sweidan contemplates would be a vastly different kind of experience. Over at CooperativeResearch.org, Tareq Sweidan was named, along with Abdullah bin Laden of WAMY, of being involved in a US finance company allegedly raising money for terror. Under the heading, “Prisoner’s Library”, the Al-Manar newsletter says: “We have noted that the prisoners are the largest group in New Zealand to accept Islam as their faith…We believe there is a lot of potential work that can be undertaken in that area, such as a small Islamic library in each prison. Therefore we need support from Muslims around the world to help us by providing 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

the Islamic books, particularly the translation of the meanings of our Holy Qura’an and translation of various hadith.” The Sunday Star-Times published details of the Aotearoa Maori Muslim Association converting Maori prisoners to Islam three years ago, although the AMMA claimed its comments had been deliberately sensationalized by the newspaper. Nonetheless, a young Muslim woman calling herself ‘Penelope’ posted a message on the NZMuslim.net bulletin board warning of the dangers of prison outreach: “These converts are Maori gang members – drug traffickers, drinkers, wife beaters, thieves, rapists – you name it, they are the dregs of NZ society. The interviewer got it right – they are drawn to Islam because they perceive Osama Bin Laden as a hero, beheading videos as light entertainment and jihad as their cause against Christian/Judaic non-Maori New Zealanders. I think it is only fair to warn you that these despicable criminals are not interested in Islam as a religion – they are only interested in submission and power for themselves and their gangs and they will use the name of Islam to hide behind whilst continuing their evil and illegal practices. “FIANZ is doing the Muslim community in NZ no favours by financially supporting this “missionary of Islam” in his conversion of uneducated thugs. Do you really want these people in your community representing your religion? The sooner all NZ Muslims and the Muslim councils of NZ advise FIANZ to withdraw any support from this man the better, or you will all be tarred with the same brush. NZ does not need an Islamic Black Power or Islamic Mongrel Mob gangs – these men will never change their ways, drug-dealing and death are part of their lives – even their own people live in fear of them. “It is the responsibility of FIANZ to stop financing this madman before it is too late and he and his converts degrade the good name of Muslims in NZ. “Do not be flattered that these criminals are converting to Islam – they see Islam as a way to oppress and terrorise the good and lawful people of this land and Islam will eventually take the blame! Every decent Kiwi is certainly ashamed of them. “And don’t think it won’t happen, because if this man continues bringing these undesirables to Islam – it will!” THE CALL OF THE WILD ONES Naturally, we wanted to put all of these issues to FIANZ and its President, Javed Khan. To his credit, Khan just about fell off his chair in shock when Investigate began running through the list of people and organizations with terror links that FIANZ had brought out here. We began by raising the visit of Bilal Philips just six months ago, a man whose photo is in the latest FIANZ newsletter. Javed Khan was unaware of Philips’ videotaped comments about marrying nine year old girls, and was stunned to hear about his involvement in the Day of Terror trial. “No, I was not aware of any of that!” Khalid Yasin, who’s been to New Zealand on numerous occasions, was another whose statements took Khan utterly by surprise. When we told him of Yasin’s claim that Muslims were not permitted to have non-Muslim friends, for example, Khan was audibly disappointed. “Oh, gosh.” We took Javed Khan through the many statements of Siraj

Wahhaj, from his comments on martyrdom to his wish to overthrow the US government, to his involvement in the Day of Terror case and his desire for polygamy. “No, I was not aware of any of this, to be quite honest,” admitted Khan. On the links between World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and al Qa’ida, Khan told Investigate, “I am aware that at one stage WAMY was blacklisted by the US, as an organization which was affiliated with al Qa’ida or had some sympathy with al Qa’ida. But that blacklisting I understand has been lifted because after further investigation they found this allegation was not founded on any sort of concrete evidence.” When we pressed Khan’s memory further on the point, he told us that a letter had come from WAMY rejecting the US allegations. But in fact, there has been no lifting of the blacklist. Although WAMY continues to operate in 55 countries, including New Zealand, and works closely with the Western charity Oxfam, its literature for children’s camps in other countries has been found to include incitement to hate crimes and jihad against Jews, and at least one of the 9/11 hijackers was on its payroll. Osama bin Laden’s nephew remains the organisation’s Treasurer at head office in Saudi Arabia. WAMY organised a big youth camp here in New Zealand only seven months ago. Javed Khan says New Zealand’s Islamic federations had initially cut ties with WAMY when it was blacklisted, “but they wrote to us, saying that this was a totally false allegation and WAMY was not involved in any of those activities. And we have been involved for quite some time with WAMY – they helped us out, well previously they used to but not now, after the United States started to take control of funds going out. But our youth camps were very well organized and we wouldn’t have anyone coming talking to us promoting hostage taking or suicide bombing. To my knowledge no one has ever come and taught anything like that to our youth.”

“I was not aware of any of this, to be quite honest” – Javed Khan

ut the problem, as we pointed out to Khan, was not necessarily what the al Qa’ida linked groups and preachers actually said while they were in New Zealand, so much as the mana that would rub off on them in students’ eyes because of the fact they’d been invited by the New Zealand mosques. In other words, by being welcomed as esteemed leaders, wasn’t FIANZ unwittingly encouraging NZ youth to search out more of their lectures and material online and start buying into the global jihad? “It could happen, yeah, I agree it is possible. “But now I think we have become much wiser. What we have decided to do, before inviting any overseas speakers in the future, is that we will vet what they are saying, their websites, all those things, well in advance of extending any invitation for them to come here. “We were a bit lax and we took people on face value in the past, but after coming to know about all this, and there was some talk internally about one of our speakers, we have decided that we have to be extremely careful before inviting anybody to come here to New Zealand. We have become much wiser as parents and we will really investigate into the backgrounds of any people who want to come here and decline somebody who

has the sayings and doings that you have described.” We asked Khan about Auckland’s Al-Manar Trust, which had worked closely with WAMY on the youth camps and whose library was carrying the “stone the gays to death” Tareq Sweidan cassettes. “That would be a concern to me, yeah,” says Khan, although he adds that the guys who run Al-Manar are “pretty moderate sort of people, although they are from an Arab background, but I have pretty regular discussions with them.” On the issue of comments like building an “Islamic nation”, Khan laughs, putting it down to a poor command of the English language. “I’m sure they mean ‘Islamic community’.” But if the New Zealand mosques are moderate, we ask, why are there so many ties to Wahhabi organizations linked to terror? Khan ponders the question for a moment, and says he hears what we’re saying in regards to some of those organizations. “But you’ve got to remember we’ve had associations with some of these organizations since FIANZ was formed (in 1979), before al Qa’ida even existed. The extreme teachings that are advocated, or that any of these people are advocating, are not taken any heed of as far as we are concerned. “Look,” he says, “we don’t have those firebrand-type teachers

PRESSPIX/Greg Bowker

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 39

“We were a bit lax and we took people on face value in the past, but after coming to know about all this, and there was some talk internally about one of our speakers, we have decided that we have to be extremely careful before inviting anybody to come here to New Zealand”

or speakers [based] here, like demagogues, who go out telling people ‘this is what you need to be doing…committing suicide is becoming a martyr’ – we don’t have anybody like that who does things like that, and if we find anybody doing that we’ll deal to it pretty quickly. And yet…and yet, we ask Khan, the reality is that for seven turbulent years FIANZ has been inviting in men who are the rock stars of international Wahhabism – latterday Pied Pipers – without even realising what songs they’re singing. It hardly inspires confidence in FIANZ’s ability to diagnose the problem. And precisely how do moderates teach young Muslims to view the wider New Zealand culture, given its current climate of extreme liberalism? “Everybody has a TV, youngsters these days are not fools. We advocate that you abide by the law of the country in which you live. If the law of the country legalizes homosexuality then you have to respect that law, although it is against the teachings of Islam. But you have to accept that that’s the law, and whatever is legal you cannot go against in that country. Now that has been coming out very strongly, the imams have been telling their congregations that we are living in a country with its own set of laws and you have to live by the laws of this country.” Whether that message is strong enough to combat the allure of the “rock stars” remains to be seen. Khan says that although there have been strong historical ties to Saudi organizations, that source of money has dried up recently and local Muslims are having to dig into their own pockets to pay mosque expenses. He insists that the community is moderate but, as we remind him, the parents of the kids who blew up the London Underground were moderates: their children were not. Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Massey University, Peter Lineham, is one who believes the New Zealand government is aware of a growing extremism in the young but was hoping no one would notice. “The complexity of Islam is that very often we see the face of the woman from Hamilton, who is a very moderate Muslim, 40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

but certainly there are other voices in Islam. You need to bear in mind that the Government is pretty nervous about the potential for radical Muslims – within the international Western security framework there’s a great deal of nervousness about terrorist links with Islam but they deliberately won’t talk about it. “I think this is why they’re promoting things like religious dialogue, because their attitude is that religious dialogue, and the proposed religious harmony agreement coming out later in the year – I think the hope is that documents like this will convince Muslims to not align themselves with the radical side of Islam. “I suspect that these are things that the Government is very concerned about but doesn’t want to draw attention because it figures that there will be a negative reaction from the Islamic community that perceives itself being attacked. And so they therefore try and work with moderate Islamic leaders. If you look at the people associated with these religious harmony dialogues like the one coming up in Hamilton next month, they’re clearly trying to build and strengthen the moderates. They’re following the British line on this.” The problem, as Lineham himself acknowledges, is that the British are failing to make a dent in the uptake of extremist Islam, despite six years of bowing, scraping, and praise for “tolerance”. In July last year, to mark the first anniversary of the London Tube Bombings, the Times newspaper in Britain published a national opinion poll of British Muslims. There are one million Muslims living in London. Of those polled, 7 percent agreed suicide attacks on civilians in the UK are justifiable. That’s 70,000 Muslims in London who support mass murder in the name of Islam. The figure rose to 16% (160,000) who supported suicide attacks against military targets in Britain – that’s roughly one in every six Muslims! No similar poll has ever been commissioned in New Zealand, but if seven percent of Kiwi Muslims supported suicide bombings here, that’s still a hefty 2,600 people – some of whom might just be prepared to volunteer for martyrdom, especially after listening to some of the hardline preaching in NZ’s mosques that nobody realised was going on.

s Mark Steyn notes in his book America Alone, another poll of British Muslims found 60% want to live under shari’a law in England! Ask the 300 who attend the intensive Islamic courses each year in New Zealand, and you’d probably get a near-100% agreement. With a few more years’ percolation, and immigration growth in double digits every year, imagine the sort of headache New Zealand could end up with. Religious studies professor Peter Lineham remains cynical about the Government’s current reliance on “Interfaith dialogue” to promote greater understanding and tolerance. “The problem with interfaith discussions, as I see it,” says Lineham, “is that the interfaith attracts the people who are interested in interfaith discussions and they’re not necessarily a fair representation of their faith communities. The Christians who’ve been involved have very rarely been representative of the whole of the Christian community. I do think that the Christian community in NZ does have to find some way of living with people from other religions, but for those of us who

are Christians the concern is that we can’t do that in a way that reduces our allegiance to our faith. And unfortunately, the leaders of the interfaith discussions do seem to have a more relativist approach to their faith.”

n the meantime, the big question is whether the seven year security breach – that allowed some of the most extremist Wahhabi clerics on the planet to hold seminars and training camps in New Zealand – has had an impact on the hundreds of young Muslims who attended. As terror analysts like Rohan Gunaratna point out, al Qa’ida works by shoulder-tapping people quietly, and setting up small localized cells that no one, not even their parents, knows about. The people who listen to Islam’s firebrands will not become suicide bombers overnight, if ever, but the more exposure they get to messages of hate over the long term, the less these people will feel they belong to New Zealand society. How can they belong when the Qu’ran, in verse after verse quoted by Bilal Philips and others, repeatedly tells ordinary Muslims not to mix with infidels, not to become part of their society, and to remain a nation apart? And how can a good Muslim sit back and twiddle their thumbs when the same Qu’ran then instructs him that the entire world must submit to Islam in order for the Mahdi to return and usher in the end times? The Qu’ran says that infidels are actually born Muslims who rejected the faith and must be brought back to it. That’s why they call Western converts to Islam, “reverts”. So those twin tensions exist: reject the infidel world, then conquer the infidel world for Allah, and in doing so earn a place in Paradise. That is precisely the message being preached by people who have been welcomed in NZ’s mosques. To an extent, of course, this is a one-dimensional portrait of the problem. There are young kiwi Muslims who do have Western friends while maintaining their own faith and managing to pray five times a day. They enjoy McDonalds and they wear the hijab. They have been born here, they’ve grown up here. New Zealand is indeed home. If young Muslims can maintain that balance and perspective, and if other New Zealanders in turn can tolerate those differences, then a comfortable balance may yet be found. But that will become a harder task if the local mosques don’t start rejecting Wahhabi preachers and literature. It will become a harder task if Muslim children only go to Muslim schools and don’t mix with other cultures. It will become a harder task if Muslim teenagers are told on camps by people like Khalid Yasin, “There is no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend.” Already, on NZ Muslim websites in New Zealand, you can read messages where people say they no longer have a nationality – their nationality is Muslim. Unlike Christians, who were instructed to tolerate Roman control, Muslims are told in the Qu’ran they are not allowed to live by Rome’s rules – they either make Rome submit, or leave themselves. A pretty similar warning has been issued by the Australian government, with both John Howard and his deputy Peter Costello warning hardline Muslims that if they want to live under Shari’a, they’ll have to leave Australia. One final question that arises out of this story: where is the

SIS, where is border control? How did several men with known links to terrorism and al Qa’ida walk repeatedly through immigration gates at New Zealand airports? Are the intelligence agencies taking the view that it’s better to watch from a distance than ban outright, or are the agencies as totally unaware as the Prime Minister seems to be? In the meantime, the photographic image of New Zealand’s first elected female Prime Minister – a woman who has built her entire career on feminism and women’s rights – voluntarily wearing in her own country what millions of women around the world see as one of the ultimate symbols of oppression of women – that image will echo in the minds of many in the months to come as people weigh up whether Labour has allowed a massive breach of New Zealand’s national security. As this issue was going to press, the Government issued a news release welcoming a decision by Saudi Arabia to send more a further 350 of its own students to study in New Zealand, “as part of an expanded scholarships programme for Asia and Oceania”. “This represents a strong endorsement by Saudi Arabia of the quality of our teachers and the excellence of our learning environments,” boasted Tertiary Education Minister Michael Cullen. “There has been steady growth in students from the Gulf States studying in New Zealand institutions since 2001. More than 500 Gulf students are currently enrolled in New Zealand institutions, many from Saudi Arabia and Oman.” It does beg the question however: if Saudi Arabia loathes Western culture so much, why is it really boosting the number of its students in New Zealand to more than 700?

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 41

The Vintner’s Luck How NZ and Australian wines took on the world, and won

It’s not often we get a chance to celebrate international success these days, but as SELWYN PARKER in London discovered, they are seriously devouring the fruit of our vines, there

lthough it was in the depths of winter – January 15-16 to be precise, there was hardly a spare seat at Lord’s cricket ground in London. The event was under cover and it was at the famed Nursery Pavilion End of the ground. The occasion? The annual tasting of the New Zealand vintage when 120 Kiwi vignerons come over to present their creations in the world’s most important export market. Every wine-exporting country judges its success by its performance in the British market, more specifically by percentage share and by average retail price per bottle. The tasting is both a proud showcase and a nerve-wracking examination for the New Zealand industry as buyers, wine pundits and oenophiles in general swirl, smell, see, sniff, spit and sometimes swallow their way through 600 wines. How times have changed. Twenty-six years ago, when the British wine establishment was invited to the inaugural tasting of New Zealand wines, it was held in an upstairs room in New Zealand House. Those journalists and members of the trade who bothered to turn up only did so because they were intrigued to learn we produced something other than lamb, wool, butter, 42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

kiwifruit and All Blacks. New Zealand wine! It was almost a contradiction in terms. In the eighties hardly anybody in Britain who wasn’t a New Zealander drank our beer (and still doesn’t), let alone our wine. “Most people came to laugh”, remembers veteran trade representative Philip Atkinson who organised it all. “I had to work extremely hard to get them there.” The debut of New Zealand wine on the international stage could hardly be described as a glittering occasion. There were less than fifty wines on the table and they were only there by virtue of a mad dash from the airport in a Ford Cortina with a panicking Atkinson at the wheel. They had been freighted over

in an RNZAF Hercules that arrived late. Knees knocking, the few New Zealand wine-growers to brave the pundits and retailers had brought over mainly whites, mostly sauvignon blanc and chardonnay, and some reds, mostly cabernet. Their anxiety was understandable. Apart from a few bottles of Cresta Dore and Bakano, labels of the sixties since mercifully buried, no New Zealand wine had ever been brought to Britain. As it happened, it all worked out surprisingly well. As Margaret Harvey, the former Mt. Roskill girl who has helped pioneer New Zealand wine in Britain, remembers, the message was generally encouraging but blunt. “If you’re going to sell your wine here at

all, it will be your whites”, the producers were told. “Your reds are yeech. Don’t show them here again”. The subsequent reviews for the whites were reasonably encouraging and the wine tastings became an annual, if minor, event on the British industry’s calendar. A stake had been put in the ground. Wine pundits were one thing however, buyers another. Out in the boon docks of the retail trade whose shelves were stacked with European labels, it was hard going. Margaret Harvey had come to Britain as a pharmacist in 1975 but in an act of faith abandoned her profession to establish Fine Wines of New Zealand in 1985 out of her house in Camden Town at a time INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 43

when the advertising authorities might have taken legal action for the first word in the company’s title. It was a one-woman operation and the owner remembers plodding around the wine clubs, pushing the New Zealand vintage night after night, often not getting home until the early hours. Others like salesman Richard Goodman were also labouring in this stony vineyard. Representing Cooks and Montana at various times, he took on the supermarkets after the pundits told the growers: “You can’t expect us to write about your wine if we can’t tell readers where to buy it.” He and Atkinson often worked together, knocking on door after door. “We got thrown out of a few places”, Atkinson remembers. The message was simple: “You’ve got to stock New Zealand wine. We’ll do anything to get it on your shelves”. And shelf by shelf, that’s what they did. The breakthrough was a supply contract with nationwide liquor retailer Threshers, which has been a friend of New Zealand wine ever since. The first supermarket to be breached was Waitrose, a chain with a reputation for fine fare, and other retailers gradually followed suit. Today the Kiwi product is found everywhere. Even Berry Bros & Rudd, purveyors of fine wines – French in particular – for 300 years, started 44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

stocking the higher-quality labels a few years back. Meantime the product was improving all the time. At first more enthusiastic than skilful, winegrowers began to adopt more professional practices under the tutelage of experts such as Australia’s Dr. Richard Smart, a world authority on coldclimate viticulture. They were quick to learn and the result was better trellising, leaf-plucking and spraying among other improvements. In Britain this was noticed as the pundits approved of the more subtle flavours instead of the “aggressive herbaceousness” that characterized the first offerings. As the High Street came to stock more New Zealand wine, the believers in the government trade office found extra dollars to boost sales. One of the results was the first appearance at the London Wine Trade Fair of 1986, a landmark occasion that was followed by a splendid, celebratory dinner at Methuselah’s in Victoria Street. The dinner was a far cry from the budget tasting of 1981. Instead of a mad dash in a Ford Cortina, all the food and drink as well as the chiefs were flown in by Air New Zealand. Everybody who could be there was: Morton Estate, Delegat’s, Montana among others. One of the best investments ever made for the country, let alone its wine, it woke the industry up to how

far the country had come gastronomically and vinously. “It was a tiny participation at the fair but it was a big dinner”, recalls Atkinson who organised that too. “That made the difference. Suddenly we were real.” But sales hadn’t taken off. Even a decade ago the Brits hardly deigned to wet their lips with the New Zealand grape. In 1996 the UK grudgingly took NZ$40.6m worth of New Zealand wine, which is barely a drop in this enormous bucket, and much of that was drunk by a hard core of expats and others who had an acquaintance with New Zealand, had tasted our wines and therefore knew better. However with the groundwork done, the momentum was with New Zealand. From having hardly a foot in the door, sales climbed – rather, rocketed – from that $40.6m to $167m in 2006, an increase of over 400 per cent. Last year overall consumption in the British market fell while the volume of New Zealand wine sold, running against the trend, picked up by four per cent. It’s been an incredible decade envied by all other wine-exporting nations. At the same time success in the UK market spun off into sales in other markets, like a badge of approval. Last year global volumes topped the magic half billion barrier – to be precise, $512m – for the first time. With the help of British distributors, the New Zealand vintage has even cracked the notoriously protectionist European Union. The Dutch drank $10m worth last year ($1.2m ten years ago), Germany $3m (well under a million ten years ago) and Ireland, home of Guinness, over $8m (nowhere near a million). The French, of course, still hardly touch our stuff. The original pundits were right about the whites. They quickly became the building blocks of this expansion, in particular sauvignon. But nobody ever predicted that New Zealand pinot noir, a difficult wine to produce, would excite the British palate, let alone pinot gris, syrah and the trendy viognier. Sales of pinot noir in particular, the vintage du jour, have almost doubled year on year. Most galling for rival exporting nations, New Zealand has somehow bagged the high end of the general retail market as consumers fell in love with our diversity of wine-making styles. It became a voyage of discovery for them to sample wines produced over an enormous distance of 1600kms, spanning the latitudes of 36 – 45 degrees. As the official body New Zealand Winegrowers points out, if that 1600kms were in the northern hemisphere it would run from Bordeaux to southern Spain. This huge range of wines is one reason why New Zealand occupies a premium position in the market, one that Australian producers would very much like. Australia sells a lot more wine into Britain than does New Zealand (over £1bn worth last year). But as one of the bibles of the market, The Drinks Business, pointed out in January, it’s the New Zealand vintage that attracts the higher margins: “Australia’s average bottle price of £4.28 is second in the UK only to New Zealand with a stellar average price of £5.93.” Nobody is exactly sure whether the average price of an Aussie bottle held its own last year, declined or edged up by two pence (as ACNielsen reckons), but it certainly hasn’t done much by comparison with New Zealand wine. In other words, if New Zealand’s wine exporters were cricketers Shane Warne would have been hit all over the park.

The overall strategy is not to let the side down by going for the quick quid. Pioneers and long-time observers of New Zealand wine’s acceptance in Britain and other exports put this down at least partly to the team spirit among producers. “They have a collaborative approach. They want to make the whole New Zealand category,” says Atkinson. He’s watched in amazement as the biggest names in our industry extol the virtues of a rival label whose owner is caught up elsewhere. Other regions don’t always behave like this. Wine pundits still shudder over the way Californian grower Charles Shaw did nothing for the reputation of his terroir by releasing Two Buck Chuck at giveaway prices to reduce a surplus. And they’re not too sure about one of the big successes of the last two years, the French Red Bicyclette launched by the US giant E&J Gallo, because a. it isn’t French, and b. California has no special claim to cycling. As an advertisement for Californian wine, it likewise did nothing.

lthough New Zealand’s prices continue to head in the right direction, even the prestige labels are a long way – perhaps half a century – behind the equivalent French ones. For example, one of the top-priced Kiwi wines at the venerable Berry Bros & Rudd is the 2004 Mountford Estate pinot noir from Waipara at £232 [$650] for a 12-bottle case in bond. Although it’s hardly comparing apples with apples with apples – or grapes with grapes – that compares with £9,900 [$27,730] for just eight bottles of the 1967 Chateau d’Yquem sauterne. At the top end, French wines still have snob value. ACROSS the Channel the attitude of old world producers towards our parvenu wine region remained one of rock-solid superiority throughout most of the nineties. This is understandable because they do, after all, have history on their side. “My family has been tending the vines here for 15 generations”, Monsieur Thomann, a vigneron in the tiny Alsatian village of Ammerschwihr in France, told me a few years ago when I was researching a book there. He said it in a matter-of-fact way but I worked out later that his forebears must have tended the grape in that very village from the 1550s. He showed off his cellars with their cobwebbed, oval barrels that had survived the bombs and shells of two world wars that had almost destroyed the village and he plied me with books about wine – its spirituality, mysticism, romance and general place in the history of Alsace and France. Monsieur Thomann was much less interested in the technicalities of viticulture than in the tradition. For him wine-making was almost a branch of the priesthood. The way he went about his business illustrates the enormous gulf between old and new world producers such as New Zealand. M. Thomann had never considered exporting. “Why should I when I sell everything I produce here?” he asked. He ran a degustation vente business – selling straight from the cellar. Connoisseurs simply walked in off the street, some having driven hundreds of miles from Belgium, Germany or Switzerland. They pressed a buzzer and sat down for a taste (degustation) and a chat with the man himself about the grape and the wine world in general (his son was the sommelier to the president of France). Thereupon he made his sale (vente), generally by the case load. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 45

But now it’s all changed. New Zealand in common with other new world producers have become officially a threat, New Zealand more for what it represents than for how much it sells. “In this high-growth sector, where wine tends to become an increasingly industrialized and technological product, the dynamics unquestionably favour New World producers,” an authority wrote in French in a landmark article last year in the magazine L’Expansion. “By that I mean North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand”. While the “old continent” still dominates the market on the basis of claiming three quarters of total production, “its pedestal was breaking up.” The statistics illustrate what the writer, a student of global wine markets, means. By the end of the eighties, Europe could still claim 96 per cent of all exports and was absolutely top of the heap. Now it’s down to 84 per cent and, if exports between EU countries are excluded, the losses are much more spectacular. That puts the old continent’s share of global markets at 66 per cent. In short, although New Zealand winegrowers can claim only some of the credit, a complacent Europe has been comprehensively thrashed in the higher-margin, British market where in 2005 new world wine sales exceeded those of the old continent for the first time. That also happened to be the first year New Zealand sold more wine overseas than at home, an alarming fact duly recorded in France too. Producers there cannot believe that New Zealand not only made all that wine but sold it all as well. “Between 2004 and 2005, exports of New Zealand wine went from 31m litres to 51.4m litres, an increase of 60 per cent!” noted VitiNet, an influential French wine industry website, in mid-2006. It added that the Kiwis vignerons are “focused on quality and the price of their wines is relatively high”. Despite the stratospheric prices fetched by labels such as Chateau d’Yquem, that’s exactly what the French and Europeans have not been doing. As the EU’s agriculture czarina, Mariann Fischer-Boel, points out, the vineyards are churning out vin ordinaire. “We spend far too much money disposing of surpluses instead of building our quality and competitiveness”, she warned in mid-2006. Consumption was down, new world exports were making “huge inroads” and Europe was “producing too much wine for which there is no market”. The result of these massive surpluses is that a lot of wine in France is subsidized and practically given away. At a supermarket it’s quite possible to buy a bottle of excellent local wine in Provence for a few dollars. And the wine that is not sold at all is distilled on payment of still further subsidies into something else. The whole system is blatantly protectionist and unfair to exporting nations like New Zealand, and it’s been going on for a long time. Consider these amazing numbers. Well over 400m euros [$740m] has been spent on the “restructuring programme” for each of the last six years, but without much restructuring being done. In 2005 alone, 790m euros [$1.46bn] was spent on various “market intervention” measures that included subsidies for public and private storage, plus another 31m euros [$57m] for “grubbing-up” useless vineyards. (And still New Zealand beat the Europeans in the British market!) The last figure says a lot. Although there have long been generous incentives to grub up loss-making vines, producers have shown a declining interest in doing so while pocketing all

kinds of subsidies for making unsaleable wine. Back in 1993 for example, the EU spent 400m euros [$739m] on grubbing up, nearly thirteen times more than now. And it’s going to get worse. In normal times Fischer-Boel, who is trying to reform all this, disposes of a budget of nearly 1.3bn euros [$2.2bn] a year purely to shore up European wine producers. France, whose vineyards account for 30 per cent of the EU total, collects the lion’s share of that. But any day now the czarina will announce new proposals offering even more generous encouragement to reform this deeply discriminatory system. The new plan is to reactivate the moribund grubbing-up scheme. This time there will be 2.4bn euros [$4.43bn] to flatten up to 400,000 hectares. Cynics of EU agricultural reforms may note that 400,000 hectares is not a lot of vineyard out of a total 3.4m hectares devoted to the grape. Moreover the grubbing-up is voluntary. “This is a great opportunity to put the EU wine sector back at the top where it belongs,” hopes Mrs. Fischer-Boel. “We must not waste it”. On past performance however, they probably will.

o where does New Zealand wine go from here? The British market can only get tougher, especially for the newer and smaller vineyards. The biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, is reportedly dropping ten per cent of its wine list from its shelves. Even to get onto a major chain’s shelves at all can require up-front payments of £50,000 [$140,000], which clearly favours the corporate vineyards. As Margaret Harvey says, “it’s one thing to make wine, another to sell it.” And Europe is fighting back. French producers are developing their own labels instead just supplying others while relaxing restrictive labeling and other regulations. Italy has mounted a campaign to re-launch in Britain. Other regions are following suit – South Africa has managed to hike its margins in Britain and Australia is belatedly dealing with the surplus that has led to sales of low-cost, bulk wine. There are risks to New Zealand vineyards. For example, at around $5m a year the R&D budget is pathetic by European standards. And now that Kiwi labels have got above the parapet, they could get shot at. New Zealand Winegrowers is concerned that some markets could play rough by introducing protection by another name, for instance by insisting on zero residues. But that could also point the way forward in a market that’s turning greener by the month. British consumers have started to agitate for sustainability – the “carbon-free footprint” – in their food and drink. According to veterans of the market like Margaret Harvey, who is the only New Zealand-born woman to hold the Master of Wine qualification, sustainably produced wine would certainly make it easier to sell in Britain and beyond. “It’s very exciting,” she enthused. “Everybody should be on the sustainability programme if we want to keep commanding those high prices.” That would certainly give Kiwi wine an edge that matches its image, similar to the one Australia had a decade or so ago. Over here New Zealand wine is regarded as new and exciting, the product of young and enthusiastic, even iconoclastic, vignerons who dare to play the game differently. Like the All Blacks, you could say.

46, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

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A Story and a Pill With teenage pregnancy affecting women since the beginning of time, the choice is ultimately one that is hers to make. But with a new offering of hope and the controversial discussion around the new ‘abortion pill’ RU-486, this is a topic where every angle needs to be discussed. MELODY TOWNS reports alking up the corridor, Bernadette moved slowly towards the pink Wendy’s tshirt that clung to the growing physique of her boyfriend Dave. Dressed in an identical shirt, Bernie and Dave were on their lunchbreak from the ice-cream parlour where they both worked, but there was something different about this break and with each step Bernadette took, she knew that both their lives were about to be changed forever. “I saw him differently”, says Bernadette, “He was a 16 year old boy about to be told he was going to be a father”. When Bernadette Black was just 16 years old she, like 25,000 other teenage girls in Australia each year, was faced with a decision that would ultimately affect the rest of her life. Raised in a strict middle class Catholic home, Bernadette had always been the ‘good girl’, the girl she describes as “someone that you thought that this could never happen to”. Little did Bernadette realise the consequences of losing her virginity when she slept with her boyfriend for the first time in his bedroom while his parents were out. She says, “I found myself in an emotional pull towards Dave and, as a result, Dave and I had sex. I didn’t think about the repercussions of having sex, like the possibility of falling pregnant. I just assumed it wouldn’t happen to me. So, we had sex and the condom broke…” 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 49

Bernadette at 16, with her new born baby and friend Tanya

Bernadette’s story is not an unusual one. With teenage pregnancy occurring since the beginning of time, this is a story that many women could relate to, despite whatever decision they make regarding their pregnancy. But Bernadette, now 30, has written a book that may surprise many. A story of a teenage mother who decided to have her child and, despite all odds, aim to make a success of her life. While being objective in saying that she is not placing any judgement on any decision that a teenage mother may make, Bernadette says the aim of her story is to present another outcome, one that is positive and has never been offered. hen I meet Bernadette, I am overwhelmed. She bounces up to me, wraps her arms around me and with a big beaming smile welcomes me into the waterfront pavilion where, today, she is getting all the attention for all the right reasons. It is like we are best friends, but we have only just met, the genuineness in her greeting something that seems surreal in the networking world of small smiles and meet-and-greets. It is her book launch, the day that she has been working towards since she was 16. She is there with her husband, three 50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

children, a few politicians and a huge crowd of support. The media flocks around her as she shares her heart with the world and the day that so many thought would never arrive, is unraveling a new story of hope for all to see. It is just over 12 years since the day that Bernadette made a pact with herself, despite constant criticism, that she would firstly, be a great mum, secondly complete her education and thirdly write a book to offer some hope to other girls who may and who do find themselves in this situation and decide to have their babies. She was sitting in a mothers’ group when Bernadette conceived her dream that would see her persevere against all odds. “At the group there were many girls that had no support, their parents had disowned them and their partners had left them. These girls literally had no hope. We asked in our mum’s group if there were any books available that would be able to show us that we could be great mums regardless of our age. The nurse who ran this group said that there were no books ever written like this.” Acknowledging that she did have the support of her family and the stability of a middle class background, Bernadette says she feels most passionate about the girls who may not be so lucky. “The amount of judgemental attitudes that some people displayed to me in society was huge, and I was with my mum and dad, but for these girls all they see is no hope, so thankfully

Bernadette today, with her husband Steven and kids: Damien (13), Baeleigh (5) and Flynn (2)

this book and hopefully my website with the collaboration of education and health care will be a resource for them that they haven’t had access to before”. espite her success, Bernadette, now a trained nurse, has had to walk the hard road and empathises with other girls in this situation. Endorsing motherhood, but not sugar-coating the reality of it, Bernadette openly shares the way that she had to deal with society’s reactions and their constant disapproval of her. “I was very vulnerable, especially only being 16. I used to keep my head down to avoid people’s prying eyes. I wanted to wear a sign saying that I would be a good mum but it wouldn’t have mattered.” Leaving room for only the truth, Bernadette describes how she felt at this time in her book. She writes, “I remember shopping at Myers for some foundation, and the shop assistant noticed my growing belly. She looked at me in disgrace saying, “Babies having babies”. I felt so inadequate, so unable, so scared. Who was I kidding?” Going to a Catholic school and growing up in a Catholic home also proved to be a paradox for Bernadette. Although she had the support of her family, many of her friends couldn’t

understand her decision, a decision that she says had a lot to do with her own beliefs. Well-meaning friends told her that she was going to ruin her life and kept asking why she wouldn’t have an abortion? “I fleetingly thought about having an abortion certainly”, says Bernadette, “however after I contemplated it a little longer I thought, “No, I can take this on. I have to take responsibility now to care for this child”, and that’s when I decided I would be a great mother”. Dave was a great support despite the lack of encouragement he received from his family. Described by Bernadette as being very respectful, Dave supported her choice despite the critics and is still a big part of his son Damien’s life today. She says, “Early on his family had said to him that it would be better if I did have an abortion, and that was a very difficult thing. His mother had said to me that if I made this decision, then both Dave and I would make nothing of our lives and have absolutely nothing to offer our baby. At the time I felt stripped bare, like I had no defence, but I would not compromise my decision”. Now as a mother, Bernadette says that she understands Dave’s family a little more. As a mother to 13-year-old Damien, Bernadette understands just how frightening it must have been for Dave’s family to have their son come to them and tell them that his girlfriend was going to have a baby. “For them, they’d INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 51

never seen a girl who had succeeded in having a baby when she was 16; they’d seen a lot of girls that we all see today-their situations around them are often negative and when you only see negative things, then obviously your outlook can also be negative”, explains Bernadette. “Everyone has their own personal beliefs and stances. To date in Australia, you can find out about pro-life, abortions, adoptions, the mini pill and the ‘abortion pill’ RU-486. One option that has not been presented to young mothers is a story like mine that shows you can be a young mum, continue with your pregnancy, and also have a fantastic, successful life. With the controversy surrounding RU-486, or the ‘abortion pill’, this is one side of teenage pregnancy that needs to be told. Not political, not religious, just an offering of hope to thousands of girls faced with this life changing decision daily throughout the world. With what seems a relatively “harmless” option to surgical abortion being an issue of continual controversy between Australian politicians, RU-486 is another kind of ‘emergency contraceptive’, that women in the US, Britain, Canada and Sweden have as an option. While the Australian parliament argues over whether or not this pill should be approved, every mother has a right to know every option that they may choose when faced with the decision of having a baby. While Bernadette’s story is one of the first offerings of hope to teenage mothers who decide to keep their child, the introduction of RU-486, whether you agree with it or not, has side effects that also need to be discussed to mothers in more depth. n American website, standupgirl.com, offers a resource for young mothers and teenage pregnancies to discuss all aspects of pregnancy from abortion to pro life. In an article posted by one of its members named only as Mary, the ‘abortion pill’ is discussed as being linked with the death of 10 women since it was approved in the year 2000. What many don’t know is that the ‘abortion pill’, is actually two pills. Not as simple as just popping it in your mouth and waiting for it to go away, the first pill, Mifepristone, is taken to kill the tiny foetus and then a few days later, Misoprostol is taken to induce labour and expel the remains. But, as Mary writes, “with two or three visits to the doctor, an ultrasound, and the possible removal of the dead foetus, it’s not private. It’s not just contraception and it’s definitely not harmless”. A study by Ralph P. Miech MD, PhD, describes the relationship between the drugs and the ten deaths. He states, “The first drug blocks progesterone, the hormone that tells the placenta to provide nutrition and oxygen to the baby. This causes changes to the cervix that allow c. Sordelli to enter the cervical canal. C. Sordelli thrives in the low oxygen environment and derives nutrition from the decaying foetal tissue. Meanwhile, it’s disrupting the immune system, so that even the woman’s body now becomes vulnerable to bacterial attack. Her body cannot fight the bacteria, and c. Sordelli and its toxic wastes spread throughout the body, causing widespread shock and sometimes death”. Accessible to any woman under seven weeks pregnant in the approved countries, Danco, the leading American distributor of the drug claims that the deaths were not specifically caused by taking these pills. Their argument is that it cannot be proven 52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

that the drugs directly cause death, due to the fact that septic shock caused by c. Sordelli is possible in other circumstances including childbirth and menstruation. But the standard of safety still remains a concern, as the cause of death may not be from the pill but from the toxic shock caused by the remaining foetus that is not completely expelled from the uterus. Describing the abortion pill as a waking nightmare, Mary states that “perhaps worse than all the bodily effects of RU486 is the psychological effect”. Linked to a higher suicide rate for depressed women, the ‘abortion pill’ leaves no one to clean up the mess except for the mother herself. A horrifying image is presented by abortiontv.com on their website, stating that a “woman may find herself sitting on her bathroom floor at two in the morning cradling her tiny child in her bloody fingers”. While this may be considered extreme, the fact that unlike a surgical abortion where the foetus may be expelled not intact but rather in shreds, is a haunting reminder that this, like any decision regarding teenage pregnancy, or any pregnancy in fact, is something that cannot be taken lightly. Information regarding all aspects of pregnancy is vital to teenage girls placed in a situation where a decision needs to be made. Without placing judgement on whatever decision they do choose, all information does need to be made aware to them. Whether it is an abortion that they choose to have, an adoption or like Bernadette a decision to have her child, every girl has a right to make an informed choice regarding something that will not only affect her body, but her mind and her life forever. As Australian celebrity Marcia Hines states in the forward of Bernadette’s book Brave Little Bear, “I do not condone teenage pregnancy, please understand this, but in life things do happen…and it happened to me. Luckily Bernadette and I had support and as with anything in life if you have support and self-belief you’re going to make it. But please don’t make life any harder than it already is, and your teenage life is a gift. (And so is motherhood at the right time). If I could I would not change a thing and I’m sure Bernadette wouldn’t either, but precautionary measures is what it’s all about. However if you do fall pregnant, remember that you are no longer a child, you are taking care of a child.” In the heat of discussion about RU-486 and the offering of hope from one teenage mum who aims to help others, lets remember that it’s life we are talking about here, and what every girl needs from society is not a judgement but a soft place to fall and the support and self-belief to get back up again, whatever her choice. Brave Little Bear is being used in the young mothers’ program in Tasmania Australia and is under review by each state’s education department in the school curriculum. With its website, www.bravelittlebear.com.au, a dedicated resource to helping young mothers, Bernadette hopes that the incidence of teenage pregnancy will be reduced, but for now she wants to help the girls who are there walking this journey today. “What I’d like in this country is for these levels, 25,000 teenage pregnancies a year – to decrease. This is like a long term plan, it generations down the future, but what needs to happen to stop that generational cycle is that these girls, as I said before, they might see around them that all there is, is negative feedback, or just their circumstances: if they can grab that light or just that one bit of hope, then their child may not have a child at 16”.

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n December 29, 2003, I was the very grateful recipient of a new heart, so generously donated to me by a brave and generous grieving family, after losing a beloved son. I pray each day that they know what a difference their loving decision has made to my life and how precious they are to me. As a child I suffered from rheumatic fever and although I remember the harsh sore throat and aching joints and continual complaints to my mother, I was never taken to the doctor or treated. This was not a sign of my mother’s lack of care, but more of the times we lived in. In the 50’s, trips to the doctor were rare, a sore throat was not considered serious enough and aching joints could always be put down to growing pains. I became gradually more physically limited in my teenage years and at seventeen, in 1965, was diagnosed with Ideopathic, Hypothrophic Sub-Aortic Stenosis and underwent surgery at Greenlane Hospital, where Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes relieved and repaired the condition. In later years IHSS, as the condition became known, was found to be genetic in nature and I had inherited the gene from my mother, who lived to be 80 and never suffered from a heart condition. I cast my mind back to the consent process in those times. My condition was never explained and information about the surgical process to repair my heart was never revealed. I remember my father asking the cardiologist what were the risks involved if I didn’t have the surgery and the cardiologist saying “there are risks for her without it.” At that my father asked me what did I think and I said I wanted the operation. My father let me sign my own consent form – it certainly was not informed consent in 1965. The repair work stood me in good stead, although I never understood fully what took place when the repairs were done. In 1982 my health started to deteriorate again. I had, had seventeen wonderful years, married a loving husband, had three beautiful children, and trained as a teacher. In 1982 I had just returned to my career at thirty four as my youngest child was five. My heart started to go into arterial fibulation frequently and I was becoming more physically limited – it was at this time that the damage from the rheumatic fever became obvious. Twenty one years would pass before all options were used up and at the age of fifty five, I found myself being assessed for a possible transplant. I don’t actually even remember being asked if I wanted to be assessed, I was in serious heart failure at the time, when the cardiologist who had treated me for around twenty years just announced one day that he would get ‘Arthur’ to see me because he thought I might need a transplant. ‘Arthur’ turned out to be Arthur Coverdale, of the Heart Transplant Unit at Greenlane Hospital. The process of assessment went ahead – angiograms, tissue and blood typing, visits from the social worker, dietician and transplant nurses. It was a busy time. I attended a meeting at ‘Hearty Towers” and met some other people who had just had transplants or were waiting. And then I waited to see if I would be a suitable recipient. The meeting for all the different disciplines concerned was held on a Monday, and Helen, the transplant nurse said she would ring me when the decision was made. By this time I was able to go home and wait. I remember praying at this time – not that I would be put on the transplant waiting list for a new heart,

56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

but that I would have the courage to accept whatever the decision was. I felt calm and at peace and when Helen rang with the news that I was an acceptable candidate I was overjoyed. Then the real waiting started; by this time I was really weak and debilitated. My kidneys were failing and I was limited to one litre of fluid a day. I spent almost all day just sitting, although I always tried to cook the evening meal as it was always the one time when the family would come together and chat. The thing I found the most frustrating was that I knew my time was extremely limited and when I approached my family and some members of the medical fraternity to discuss the possibility of my death and the arrangements which would need to be made if I died before transplantation occurred, I was mostly met by comments like – “Let’s not go there,” or “Come on Mum, you’re indestructible”. It seemed that everyone was in a state of denial. The transplant team were supportive and gave you any information you requested along with a well written simple information booklet and access to support meetings. The trouble with this process is that until you’ve had the transplant, the questions you needed to have asked only became apparent after transplantation. The shorter time you wait for a donor, the less time you have to attend meetings and gain knowledge from those who are recipients. I was fortunate to only wait five weeks for a donor and readily consented to the operation. However, I do consider that although I willingly consented, in hindsight it was not a fully informed consent, although at the time I thought it was. How could I possibly know the changes physically, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically one goes though after such a process. It is just not possible. Within the first few weeks I noticed a dramatic change in my physical appearance, caused by steroid-based medication. It was extremely disconcerting to look in the mirror and not recognise oneself. Very few people will ever experience the feeling of turmoil caused by suddenly and unexpectedly appearing the opposite of what one was previously. Instead of the thin skeletal shape of my previous appearance, I now had a moon shaped face and a full figure, and my weight rapidly increased from 48 kilos to 60 kilos. To keep my weight under control is now a constant battle. My emotional state during this period of acceptance was of extreme dislike for my new appearance and although I was extremely grateful to be alive, I could not help but wish that I looked like my old recognisable self. To make matters worse, a few weeks after this shock I returned to my old school to visit colleagues and while walking along the corridors old work mates walked by without recognising me. Initially the thought that under such terrible circumstances some heroic family had decided to nurture my life in such an unselfish way was almost overwhelming. I always feel I can never be sufficiently grateful and at times tears still come to my eyes when I think about and pray for them. The transplant process was an agonising experience from which there was no escape once it had begun, except death, and it was a process which I had no control over, while at the same time I was aware of what was happening to me. This made the world become very small. The universe was no longer inhabited by any other beings with characteristics that defined them. The only energies which remained were my spirit and its rela-

“It is now 3 years since my transplant and though being immuno-suppressed can be a bother at times, life is sweet and I wouldn’t change being able to watch my grand daughter dance like a gypsy, my grandson take off Monty Python and hear my three children tell me I’m indestructible for anything”

tionship with Christ, and the thought that his sufferings on the cross were much worse than what I was going through gave me the strength and courage to survive. Though, this will always be a ‘peak’ experience which will never be repeated. Afterwards, when the universe became inhabited again, I found that I had been almost fully transformed into a symbolic object in the eyes of the community. I can now never exist in society without being identified with the transplant process. Nothing that happened in my life before, such as my teaching career or raising a family, makes any social impression. If I am introduced to a stranger, almost without fail, I am qualified as a person who has had a heart transplant. This appears to happen without people realising it. Nobody could anticipate having these experiences, explain them abstractly to a novice or simulate them as a ‘training run.’ These have all added up to making me into quite a different person to who I was three years ago. It is as if the transplant was a form of reincarnation, in which I died and was reborn into another body. Therefore, I have thought hard about the consent process frequently since my transplant. I feel informed consent, in such a complicated medical procedure is not possible for a lay person such as myself. Don’t get me wrong, I would still willingly go

through the process to gain the benefits of the healthy, happy life I have regained, but I feel that there should be another form of consent, in such cases, that is not called informed. Perhaps it should be called “shared consent,” where you consent on the knowledge that you personally have and that you are prepared to share that consent with someone e.g.: your cardiologist or transplant nurse, who has the more informed medical knowledge to consent with you. I do feel ‘I shared my consent’ and trusted fully those in the medical profession who cared for me at that time, but that was a process I thought about and went through personally, when I realised that I had little knowledge about my journey to recovery. It is now 3 years since my transplant and though being immuno-suppressed can be a bother at times, life is sweet and I wouldn’t change being able to watch my grand daughter dance like a gypsy, my grandson take off Monty Python and hear my three children tell me I’m indestructible for anything. The garden seems more beautiful and watching the birds is better than any TV programme. A loving husband, great friends, the gift of a strong faith from my Irish ancestors and a very supportive transplant team at Hearty Towers have all contributed to my mended life. And finally a grateful thanks to the family who gave me this life-giving hope. God bless you, who ever you are. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 57

What is informed consent? Spurred on by the issues his mother Marcella faced, JOSHUA RUSSELL examines the problem of informed consent in an information vacuum

wo of the central concepts debated by Medical Ethicists are how to best advance the values of harm avoidance and respect for autonomy with respect to subjects of medical operations in which the subjects may not have full knowledge of the exact procedure and its consequences. Issues and paradoxes can be illustrated using hypothetical scenarios in many ethics topics which raise questions about how the most appropriate balance can be reached. The topic which will be discussed in this essay is the measured surrender of ‘freedom’ the consent to a medical procedure without full knowledge involves. How is the optimum balance between the avoidance of harm and the right of a patient to make an informed choice to be reached and the best overall consequences brought about? As medical technology has advanced and will continue to advance the human life span has increased with it. However, in some cases this may require a greater number of life or death decisions to be made which are of greater and greater complexity. The focus example of this essay is organ transplantation, but many other examples can be found where the consequences of medical processes can be shown as unpredictable and resistant to analysis by objective logic. Medical team members require freedom to carry out their required actions to ensure that the transplant candidate has the best chance of survival possible and the best quality of life post-transplant. However, balancing this is the autonomy of the patient. The nature of the situation faced by the transplant candidate is very stark and disturbing; they are faced with an intensive surgical procedure with uncertain consequences after a wait of unknown duration in a progressively deteriorating medical condition or death. Objectively speaking, the situation is hopeless. Situations arise in the cases of all transplant patients in which complicated decisions will need to made and planned on their

58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

behalf by medical team members because their health is so finely balanced, so creating a constant state of urgency. However, the principle of harm avoidance requires that patients have full knowledge of and consent to decisions and plans made on their behalf. The power of the medical profession to manage the patient must be balanced by the appropriate checks and safeguards so that patient still has status as an individual. To make an informed consent, the patient must be competent to make an autonomous decision, have the required amount of appropriate information, and give their authorisation to a coherent plan of action. This essay focuses on the question of the strength or weakness of the Information Elements available to transplant candidates. This is because of the terminal nature of the illnesses which require transplant procedures to save the life of the patient. Both the patient and the transplant team are placed in seriously restricted ‘time’ windows. Obviously, the optimum outcome should be to preserve life. However, the factors above may have real effects on the future quality of life of those preserved. This is because the maintenance of the life of patients post transplant involves complex medical problems, possible psychological issues and moral dilemmas. There appears to be as many different combinations of side effects as there are individual patients. They are all individuals, so each is actually their own separate ‘case.’ The information available to the patient regarding these, which affects their quality of life post transplant, is affected by the time available to them because of the terminal nature of their illness. Thus, patients who spent the least time on the ‘waiting list’ could be expected to have the ‘best quality of life’ post-transplant because their health deteriorated less pre-transplant. However, they may tend to have less information regarding the post-transplant treatment regimen and its side-effects. Conversely, patients who waited longer may have more information, but are less likely to survive.

All of this seems to be a paradox, i.e.: that some apparently contradictory characteristics are exhibited. Both results have strongly negative consequences as well as positive ones. However, this does not imply that this means that they cancel each other out on some balance of ‘utility.’ But that each patient is a separate entity that cannot be simply categorised because there are as many different combinations of side effects as there are patients. The argument needs to be made that this further impacts on the traditional liberal model of ‘detached fairness’ in making decisions affecting patients, and makes clearer the implication that a greater role needs to be made for models based upon relationships between people. This is because if one loses sight of the full sweep of morality, then one loses sight of the fact that guidelines governing relationships of impersonal justice and institutional structures may not be appropriate for some life or death situations. A detached and centralised ‘Platonic’ decision maker managing the patient when they are most vulnerable is less appropriate than a model emphasising the attachments between people as a community. Furthermore, this model belies the image which the medical profession has sought for centuries to project. That they are in a relationship of care whith the patient, rather than in a position of management. As more and more life and death decisions of greater and greater complexity will need to be made to extend the human life span, this discrepancy will slowly undermine the profession’s moral foundation because words and actions will sometimes conflict. The solution to this is to put systems in place in which subjects of medical procedures can indicate that they do not fully understand the procedure and/or its consequences. However, they place their trust in the medical profession to act in their best interests. It may not be reasonable to expect persons who are not medically trained and who are experiencing a terrifying ordeal to make an objectively reasoned cost/benefit analysis of their best interests. This does not mean that ethical standards should be cynically revised downwards. However, it should be recognised that ‘informed consent’ is an ideal, which may or may not be achieved depending on factors on factors other than simply the amount of information which is made available to the patient. It is hoped that other writers will contribute their thoughts to

Marcella, six months before transplant

“Patients who spent the least time on the ‘waiting list’ could be expected to have the ‘best quality of life’ post-transplant because their health deteriorated less pre-transplant” discussing the viability of this possible solution to the inconsistencies which make ‘informed consent’ such a clear concept in theory, but such a problematic one in fact. This debate will need to take place because the implications of future technological advances require the revising of current biomedical ethical theories, and the way they inform current medical processes. It is possible to be optimistic about the future, but not if theory belies reality.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 59

WORLDBRIEF

HI-TECH

TEEN TORMENT

Maria Elena Baca reports on the growing problem of cyberbullying

ullying is no longer the domain of the biggest or strongest. In a world of text messaging, picture phones and social networking Web sites, the keypad can be mightier than the fist. Name-calling. Vicious rumor-mongering. Threats of violence. The harassment can spread and persevere online and be printed and passed around. “People are too wussie to stand up to the person in real life, so they decide to go on the computer and send mean, nasty messages,” says Colleen Harris, 16, who says she has been the target of an online assault. “They’re trying to be mean and vicious, but they’re ignorant. ... When they were calling me names, it didn’t faze me at all, but I could see how other kids could be hurt by it.” School officials say the problem is growing, and that it’s difficult to prevent or police because they can’t restrict student speech and laws and legal precedents are murky. Minnesota’s Attorney General Lori Swanson recently announced a plan that would add cyber teeth to a 2005 law requiring school districts to adopt written antibullying policies, would redefine harassment to include one-time online attacks and redefine identity theft to include cases that don’t involve financial transactions. 60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

Swanson noted that parents had approached her on the campaign trail with stories about their children being bullied online. “Technology has really exacerbated traditional bullying,” she says. “People just need to be more sensitive that cyberbullying is occurring, and occurring every day in a very real fashion. And when it occurs, it creates havoc in people’s lives.” University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire researcher Justin Patchin has gathered chilling examples of such attacks. A girl, 13, badgered via text message for details about her body. A teen outed as bisexual by Internet bullies and told he was going to hell. A boy, 15, taunted about his ethnic background and threatened that he would be assaulted. In a national survey done last spring by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, 9 percent of 1,500 kids ages 10-17 reported being targets of online harassment; 28 percent reported making “rude or nasty comments to someone on the Internet.” The study also found that kids who are targets of cyberbullies are three times more likely than non-victims to target others. Michele Ybarra, president of Internet Solutions for Kids, a California-based advocacy group, collaborated on the study and wrote about the findings in the October issue of the journal Pediatrics. “It’s important to acknowledge and understand and learn

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 61

about how kids may be interacting on the Internet, both in similar ways and different ways from the traditional world,” she says. “We don’t know yet if Internet harassment is more or less upsetting to kids; for some adults, it’s more scary because they don’t understand the Internet.” Cathy Stahl and Deborah Istre, senior health promotion specialists, coordinate an antibullying program that’s been adopted by more than a dozen suburban middle schools. Cyberbullying is one aspect of the program, created at the University of Bergen in Norway. The program requires schools to take a preventive stand against bullying, then, as incidents occur, to work with the perpetrator and victim to prevent the behavior from recurring. The county has taken on the project in part as a crime prevention tool. “In the past, as adults, we would view bullying as normal kid behavior, something that kids grow out of, (that) targets just need to toughen up and deal with, and the behavior will pass,” says Stahl. As a prevention specialist and peer mediation adviser, Celeste Gorman often works with kids who have become embroiled in online disputes. “With any perpetrator of bullying, there’s a need for power that doesn’t necessarily mean physical power,” she says. “Information becomes money to them. The kid who knows all the gossip has the power. Nobody messes with that person.”

ost students eventually are able to move on. Some aren’t so lucky. David Knight of Burlington, Ontario, left school to finish his senior year at home after bullies dedicated a Web site to trashing him, including spreading rumors that he used a date rape drug to molest young boys. The December issue of Seventeen magazine contained a profile of a 15-year-old Florida boy who committed suicide in 2005 after a cyberbully spread rumors that he was gay. A Vermont teen also committed suicide in 2003 after months of incessant harassment, including instant message exchanges with another teen who encouraged him to take his own life. Reaction sometimes depends on the teen’s self-esteem and resilience. The New Hampshire study found that 39 percent of kids who are harassed reported feeling distressed by it. Younger teens tended to be much more traumatized. Certain triggers increased the stress, including aggressive offline contact: phone calls, visits to the victim’s home and unwanted gifts. “We’re talking about a really small subset of kids who report this stuff,” Ybarra says. “It’s not surprising that it is associated with a greater likelihood of being distressed, and it’s more creepy if you don’t know the person, or if you only know them online and somebody shows up at your doorstep.” Many teens say that online bullying isn’t on their parents’ radar. Carolynne Hahn, 16, a sophomore at Avalon School in St. Paul, recently completed a multimedia project on cyberbullying and “mean girls” who gossip, exclude and destroy other girls’ reputations. She has seen a few of her friends land at the center of a cyber battle. “Parents don’t know their kids have a MySpace (page), and if they do, they don’t monitor it,” she says. The New Hampshire study found that 67 percent of kids 62, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

who were harassed told someone: a friend or sibling (45 percent) or a parent (31 percent). Of those who didn’t tell, they found, 63 percent says the incident wasn’t serious enough, and 14 percent thought they’d get in trouble. Patchin, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, has collected about 6,000 teens’ anecdotes about bullying on the Web. Of those, 40 percent told nobody; only 14 percent reported telling an adult. “Kids don’t want to talk to their parents because they don’t want their computer privileges revoked,” he says. Revoking computer access is a mistake, he says, because kids need to be computer-literate to succeed. Instead, parents should offer guidance and scrutiny to help prevent kids from becoming bullies or victims. “Just like you want to know where your kids are and who they’re with after school, you should ask them where they go online, who they hang out with online,” Ybarra says. Asked whether more parental supervision could prevent Internet bullying, Colleen Harris was skeptical. “No amount of parent intervention will make rumors stop.” TIPS FOR PARENTS AND TEENS PARENTS:

>Know where your kids go and what they do online. Think of it as you would any new neighborhood that they might visit. >Teach your child how to use your e-mail software to block unfriendly messages. >Don’t cut off computer privileges; that won’t make the bullies go away. >Ask your child to introduce you to the Internet, take you to the places he or she goes online. Be familiar with your child’s tech toys. TEENS:

>Don’t respond to mean e-mails or chat messages. >When possible, print them out in case you need to show them as evidence. >Don’t reveal personal or potentially damaging information online. Remember, if it’s online, it’s everywhere. >Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person, and take a break if you’re angry. >Share your password with your parents, and no one else. ONLINE CYBERBULLYING RESOURCES www.cyberbullying.us: The Web site kept by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s Justin Patchin and his research partner, Sameer Hinduja , of Florida Atlantic University. Anecdotes, tips, numbers and media coverage. www.cyberbully.org: Sponsored by the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, with lots of resources and links on staying safe online. www.isolutions4kids.org: Web site for Web-related health researcher Michele Ybarra. Facts, figures and tips for parents and kids.

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thinkLIFE money

Seven secrets to success Peter Hensley finds some age-old wisdom

Jâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;

im and Moira were in a reflective mood. It had been a long day and they were relaxing on their porch enjoying the warm evening twilight with their lifelong close friends George and Mildred. George had brought up the issue of retirement and whether they could have prepared themselves better. Jim then thought the four of them could make up a list so that he could pass it onto his financial adviser as an aid for the next generation. Moira was first to contribute and suggested that potential retirees should formulate an activity plan for the first six to twelve months. She knew from first hand experience what it was like when Jim decided to finish work. He was aimless and not really sure what he should be

64, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

doing. Mildred supported Moira saying that when George retired he was always getting under her feet and trying to take over the running of the household. That really annoyed her, as it had been her domain for over forty years. He was enthusiastic in helping out with the washing and kept putting on half loads which was wasting both laundry detergent and electricity. Mildred was very proud of the power account and it had noticeably increased shortly after George stopped going to work. Instead of becoming upset with Mildred, George chimed in with the idea of budgeting. He had read an Australian report published in January where preretirees were asked to estimate how much

income they would require in retirement. The figure came in at $53,000 per year. The researchers were a trifle confused because the Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that the average Australian has only $63,000 saved in their superannuation account. In fact the ABS figures show that over 40% of Australian households have less that $35,000 saved. Jim chipped in with a light hearted joke about how Australians always had difficulty with their arithmetic and this just proved it. Moira supported Mildred and said how important it was to know where their money went each week. She and Jim had always ensured they would prepare themselves financially for any circumstance that might beset them. They had both worked and abided by the principle that those who understood interest collected it and those that did not paid it. They were quick to focus on paying off their mortgage and were never tempted with hire purchase. If they did not have the cash, they did not buy it. Jim commented that he could not understand the youth of today, who seemed to think that a mortgage was akin to a status symbol, the bigger it was, the better. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like that in their day. Jim went on to suggest that potential retirees should be encouraged to increase their emergency cash reserve. Because their regular income was going to be dramatically reduced and retirement would take some adjustment, it would be wise to increase their cash buffer. Moira picked up the thread and said that the fourth item on their list should be for potential retirees to consider altering their investment strategy. She recalled how their adviser had stepped them through the transition from investing in growth styled investment to ones that threw off investment income. This should occur at least five years prior to retirement. The change in strategy went hand in hand with the winding back of their level of investment risk. They had to recognize that they could no longer accept the risk they were prepared to adopt whilst they were in paid employment. Mildred suggested they include some areas that were not directly connected with money. The fifth issue that should go on the list was to review their wills and how they owned their assets, particularly their home. She had a friend who needed to go into a rest home complex. She had

told Mildred that before her husband had died (which was a long time ago) their solicitor had suggested that when they updated their will, they also change the ownership structure of their home. She said that they did not understand it at the time, but they changed from Joint Tenancy, where they owned the home together to Tenants in Common where they owned the home half each. When her husband died unexpectedly, she found out that two things happened. His half of the house was willed to the children, however she was able to live in it until she died or went into a rest home. That way if she had to stay in the rest home for a long time, the house would not be eaten up in fees. George chimed in and said that the Government had changed the law since then and the lady would be able to retain the first $150,000 worth of assets. Even so, they all agreed that potential retirees should look into updating their wills and maybe even consider setting up a family trust which could protect all their assets for the next generation. Jim and Moira had always disagreed on this topic, they had a family trust, but Moira never really brought into the idea. Although she liked the idea that the kids would be better looked after, she did not like paying the fees and associated costs for the continued administration of the trust. Jim was more than aware of the long term benefits that a trust provided and was quietly pleased that their assets and their wider family were well cared for and he had budgeted for the extra cost. While Mildred was on a roll she thought that number six on the list should be enduring powers of attorney. Her friend, who was going into a rest home had recently started to show signs of forgetfulness and it soon became very apparent that she was not able to look after her affairs. Mildred was aware that an enduring power of attorney was a separate document from your will and allows someone (normally close family) to sign on a person’s behalf. It must be in writing and duly witnessed. Jim and Moira nodded knowingly to each other as something similar happened to Jim’s father and they had ensured they both had an enduring power of attorney in place, just in case. Jim who had been uncharacteristically quiet during this discussion thought that number seven should be either sorting out their life insurances or maybe downsizing the home and relocating. He was aware that many people of their age and stage in life had not prepared as well as they had and thought they might wish to access some of the value tied up in their home. George, Mildred and Moira all said that was an old fashioned stupid idea that should not be on the list. Home Equity Release mortgages took care of that and meant that people did not have to move out of the familiar neighbourhood that they had settled in. At this point, Jim was getting tired and cranky that his contribution was not being accepted and thought it would be a good time to break up the party. It was getting dark and George and Mildred understood that Jim was well set in his ways and did not like to be challenged. They carried their empty cups into the kitchen, bade their friends good night and let themselves quietly out the front door. Jim resolved to drop the list off at his adviser’s office the next day. It would give him something to do in the morning.

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thinkLIFE education

Legacy of the Left

The attack on education poses a question, writes Amy Brooke: Policies of stupidity – or spite?

senior Labour minister announced last year that he regarded the universities as a means of achieving social equity. There we have it – back to bedrock socialism – a sound-good, think-very-badindeed maxim that owes a great deal to stupidity. And stupidity of course is often underpinned by spite. The latter in fact is undoubtedly a form of stupidity, intending to be damaging. It achieves some satisfaction for the individual wallowing in it. However, the law of consequences sees that its outcome often stretches far beyond an original act of malice – or envy. So, too, with what has happened to what should have been a reasonable education system in this country – and was, a generation or two ago. However, once it became permeated with Marxist philosophy, it was

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severely damaged by that great levelling bludgeon of envy which ostensibly aimed to remove any perceived advantages held by the more fortunate, to promote equality for all. Only, of course, history shows us that the new fortunate, strangely enough, became the Marxist ruling class, contriving for themselves the same special advantages, privileged positions and amassing of wealth they decried in those against whom they fulminated. These new “servants of the people” terrorised, tortured and murdered those questioning the new tyranny. So much for equality. It’s odd how the so-called intellectual sector of this country has had so great an affection for far-left ideology, handed down through the universities, colleges of education, and schools of media studies,

when we look at the appalling human misery inflicted by those Marxist ideologues, oppressing their peoples in the name of this same pernicious nonsense of forced egalitarianism – and the-state-knows-best. So what has this to do with education? Just that Marxism achieved a great deal of mileage for its stated aim to achieve equality of outcomes – that favourite catch-cry of our own education system in recent years, sharing in the same malaise of other English-speaking countries infiltrated by the politics of the Left – still essentially of spite and envy. Our own government of the Left owes to these its parentage and basic loyalty. And although governments finally have their power tenure ended by fed-up electorates, the damage they can do by inserting their

“

Our Left uses the universities, too, to peddle politically correct theories of equality of outcome, leftist dogma and racial preference. Our Right wants to turn them into institutions to serve business interests and to fund only “relevant” degrees. Neither are appropriate aims for institutions whose first aim should be the promotion and achieving of excellence

”

people into government bureaucracies is considerable. In recent years Ministers of Education have come from both sides of the political spectrum. However, they have basically been individuals from various walks of life with no real history of knowledge of the area given to them to oversee. Essentially they have been controlled, outwitted and deceived – i.e. led by the nose by entrenched power groups of the Left within a Ministry of Education and NZQA strongly resisting any attempt at real reform. Why would the Left want reform? Left wing governments rely largely on an under-educated, state-indoctrinated, welfare-dependent and hands-out population. Britain and New Zealand, modelling itself on Prime Minister Blair’s anti-elitism, are certainly in the forefront of achieving a dumbed-down population where the state school system – far from providing standards of excellence – focuses on teaching our children politically correct attitudes to the issues of the day. Our Left uses the universities, too, to peddle politically correct theories of equality of outcome, leftist dogma and racial preference. Our Right wants to turn them into institutions to serve business interests and to fund only “relevant” degrees. Neither are appropriate aims for institutions whose first aim should be the promotion and achieving of excellence. The only lasting relevance, of course, is excellence itself, not pressure group or ethnic interests. A disinterested pursuit of excellence in every area of scholarship ultimately benefits all sorts of other institutions and social groups. But the universities should be doing what they now aren’t, as successive governments tighten their grip: they should be protesting and arguing for academic independence, not kowtowing to politicised criteria.

I listened incredulously a couple of years ago to a tedious address at Canterbury’s graduation ceremony by a Ngai Tahu leader who publicly ridiculed then National Party leader Don Brash. No-one from among the gathering of compliant academics got up and walked out in protest at a politicised capture of what should be a celebration of excellence – one marred, too, by the centre-staging of Maori graduates wearing various pieces of non-academic regalia, misusing this academic ceremony as a marae approximation – and by the two-fingered, ear-splitting whistling and cat-calling as individuals gave boorish approval to friends being capped. The usual suspects still claim that standards haven’t dropped, that thousands of poorly-spoken, ill-prepared university students, without even basic literacy skills, are there only as a result of entry criteria being relaxed. The result has been the proliferation of dumbed-down, trivialised and over-commercialised courses. But a Professor of Law at Otago verified what others echo – that the very best of his students have absymal literacy skills. The former Professor of Zoology at Canterbury University specifically stated that what upset him as an examiner in scholarship Biology was having to fail students who weren’t able to use their first language well enough to show what they knew. Then there was the senior English lecturer at Canterbury University, noting that even her very left-wing colleagues were sobered by the ignorance of their English students. What was most worrying, she said, was that the very worst were going back into the schools as teachers... It shows. Too many of our incompetent teachers simply shouldn’t be drawing their salaries – as with often slovenly-spoken English teachers who have no idea at all of the basic structures of the English lan-

guage, our tool of thinking and analysis. Understanding the past helps us to avoid repeating it. For example, why the dominating and farcical NCEA was established – dumbed-down, burdensome and damaging to students forced into its banal rigidities, instead of being extended intellectually. Denounced by parents and employers alike, laden with confusing language, lacking clarity, it was not designed as a system of academic accreditation, but as a vocational skills assessment tool. This fitted in with the philosophy of those intent on downgrading academic criteria to achieve a false parity between the two – instead of an appreciation of each as necessary and valuable, in their own fields. We should ask why it’s so long been tolerated that the writing skills of many university and secondary students are no better than those in primary schools; why we tolerate a situation where even reading, writing and arithmetic haven’t been taught competently in schools! We can note the Ministry of Education still weaselling away to replace still more external exams with the smokescreens of internal assessment. And we can examine the surveys showing how well New Zealand children were performing in recent years. These have been fudged, too. The Ministry of Education, a nonaccountable monopoly, deserves a failed report card. Its record proves it can’t be trusted to put standards of excellence and best practice ahead of the politicised beliefs of those who dominate it. It’s been a massive failure in providing quality education. But the first step towards real reform of education can’t possibly come – if the same people who’ve short-changed our children are left to monopolise the system. Education has to be removed from the government bureaucracy’s control. www.amybrooke.co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 67

thinkLIFE science

A race against time

The prospect of nuclear terrorism looms large, despite the efforts of a small team of international scientists, reports Sam Roe

fter the Sept. 11 attacks, nuclear terrorism suddenly seemed plausible – the new worst-case scenario. Americans wondered whether Osama bin Laden could get his hands on the bomb and whether the U.S. was doing enough to stop him. Suitcase bombs, yellowcake and WMD entered the nation’s lexicon. Quietly, though, the U.S. government was trying to defuse a ticking threat of its own making. At Argonne National Laboratory, scientists worked feverishly to eliminate terrorists’ easiest route to a nuclear device: the highly enriched uranium used in dozens of research reactors that the U.S. and Soviet Union had scattered around the world during the Cold War. A small team of scientists, working out of aging labs near Lemont, hoped to invent a new fuel that could be used in reactors but be useless for bombs. If they succeeded, the U.S. might finally be able to secure tons of weapons-grade material. If they failed, it would set back by many years the heart of U.S. efforts to deny terrorists access to such material – keeping the nation, and the world, vulnerable to nuclear nightmare. After 25 years, tens of millions of dollars and dozens of classified missions, America’s quest to retrieve the world’s most potent nuclear fuel had come down to this: a secret meeting in the heart of Moscow. At one end of a conference room sat Russia’s top nuclear scientists and bureaucrats. At the other were the Americans, led by Argonne National Laboratory’s Armando Travelli, who had traveled to the Russian capital in the winter of 2003 to hear the results of a scientific test with grave implications for U.S. national security. The unlikely research partnership of former Cold War rivals hoped to create a nuclear fuel that would persuade nations with highly enriched uranium to trade it in for something better and safer. If the test was a success, Travelli might finally retrieve tons of the bomb-grade material that America and Russia had pro-

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vided over decades. If the test failed, it would set back U.S. non-proliferation efforts for years. The Russians told Travelli’s team that there were some minor problems but nothing to worry about. They would do additional work and get back to the Americans. “May I see the pictures of the test?” Travelli asked. “I’m sorry,” the head of the Russian team replied. “There are no pictures available.” The Russian, Travelli recalled, then abruptly stood up and walked out, followed by his colleagues. Travelli approached the last Russian packing his belongings, a low-level scientist who had been quiet at the meeting. “I’d like to see the pictures,” Travelli said. “When might there be pictures?” The man leaned down and pulled three 8-by-10, black-and-white photographs from his briefcase, then put them on the table. Travelli picked them up. One by one, he studied them, knowing that America’s future – and his own – was at stake. Nuclear research reactors are like sports cars: They run faster with a high-octane fuel – in this case, highly enriched uranium. A powerfully fueled reactor can conduct an experiment in a week; a poorly fueled one could take a month. For private reactor operators producing and selling radioisotopes for medical uses, such as cancer radiation, that gap can mean the difference between profit and loss. The challenge facing Travelli and his team of Argonne scientists was to invent a fuel strong enough to satisfy reactor operators, but weak enough to be useless to terrorists trying to build a nuclear weapon. By the early 1990s, Travelli’s team had solved this riddle for many reactors around the globe. He carefully noted each success story by replacing a green triangular magnet with a red one on a large metallic world map in his office. But dozens of other reactors still would not operate on anything but bomb-grade fuel. And because none of these reactors were precisely the same, the Argonne scientists faced the overwhelming task of invent-

ing a special fuel for each one. Plus, dozens of reactors worldwide used bomb-grade fuel supplied by Russia, and no one was addressing those. So in 1993 Travelli traveled to Moscow and eventually helped cut a groundbreaking deal: U.S. and Russian scientists would team together to craft a single, all-purpose fuel that would work in all the reactors, regardless of make, model or country of origin. To do that, they had to make a fuel with a low percentage of uranium-235, the potent isotope behind the atomic chain reaction that causes nuclear explosions. U-235 is unsteady, so the trick was to find some way to stabilize it while packing it densely enough to give the fuel the necessary power. Travelli’s team knew that adding certain elements could calm the uranium; his team tested more than 20 before deciding to stake their work on molybdenum, a hard, gray metal used to strengthen steel. Officially, this exotic, experimental mixture was called “uranium-molybdenum dispersion fuel.” For the cause of disarming the threat of nuclear terrorism, Travelli’s team hoped it would be the magic fuel. Unlike race cars, reactors run on solid fuels; that meant Argonne scientists were using metals, powders and plates. They knew the tiniest mistake in making a nuclear fuel invited failure. “It’s not a blacksmith’s job, that’s for sure,” said Jim Snelgrove, a fuel specialist at Argonne. One night, after reviewing the Russians’ progress at a Moscow lab, Travelli was walking down the hallway of his hotel when Gerard Hofman, a fuel development specialist at Argonne, called him into his room. “I think you’d better see this,” he said. Travelli’s eyes locked on the TV as the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground. In the tense weeks that followed Sept. 11, many wondered whether terrorists could obtain an atomic weapon, whether a bomb could fit into a suitcase, whether the U.S. was doing enough to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. But the American government didn’t

intensify efforts to retrieve uranium. U.S. officials didn’t call emergency meetings. Congress didn’t hold hearings on the issue. President Bush and Capitol Hill didn’t even provide more money for the effort. The program’s budget stayed flat at $5.6 million. The lack of action exasperated those who knew that the highly enriched uranium scattered around the globe was the quickest way for al-Qaida or other terrorists to build a crude nuclear device. Eleven months after the terrorist attacks, the U.S. did manage to remove two nuclear bomb’s worth of uranium from Serbia and ship it back to Russia. But to pay for the mission, the State Department asked the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit group founded by Ted Turner and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, to donate $5 million; that was more money than the government contributed to the mission. Even after Sept. 11, America was relying on funding from a non-profit for critical national security work. “It was embarrassing,” recalled Allan Krass, a State Department official involved

in the operation. But officials, he said, had no choice: “We needed the money.” Cut forward to Moscow, 2003, and that make or break meeting: After the Russians assured Travelli that there were only minor problems with the test fuel, they walked out of the meeting. But the last one to leave pulled out detailed pictures of the tests from his briefcase and gave them to Travelli. He studied each of the three photographs carefully. The evidence now was overwhelming: The magic fuel was a bust. After his dream fuel failed, everything changed for Travelli. In the summer of 2004, Energy Department officials began taking firmer control of America’s effort to retrieve bomb fuel. They wanted it run out of Washington, not Chicago. They wanted the fuel work managed out of a federal lab in Idaho, not Argonne. They wanted new scientists involved, not the same group that had been leading it the last 26 years. And three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, they finally asked to double the budget. Travelli heard about these changes piece-

meal. Then one day, an Argonne administrator, Phillip Finck, called him into his office. Finck told the longtime scientist that energy officials wanted him out. He could stay on as a scientific adviser, but an Argonne colleague would replace him. Many experts were surprised that such an eminent scientist would be removed during America’s war on terror. In the last year, energy officials say they have made great progress. Six more reactors have given up using weapons-grade fuel – a far faster success rate, the officials said, than Travelli had accomplished. And in December, the U.S. helped relocate nearly 600 pounds of uranium from a former East German lab to a specially secured Russian facility. The U.S. also has spent tens of millions to bolster security at some overseas reactors, providing fences, cameras, heavy-duty doors and vaults. But there are other signs that efforts actually have gone backward. For instance, in the most difficult cases of securing bomb fuel – particularly in Russia, where officials are reluctant to cooperate – the U.S. has simply quit trying.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 69

thinkLIFE technology

Take it away, Mr Sulu

Ian Wishart finds the latest Palm Treo, the 700wx, hits warp speed on broadband

or those of us relatively late to the Palm experience, the release of Vodafone’s Treo 650 a couple of years back was an absolute boon. It was at the height of the Blackberry vs Palm stoush, and the Treo 650 was a heavyweight contender for the title in terms of converged PDA/ Smartphone devices. For those who don’t understand the terms, these are mobile phones that pack the extra punch of a mini-laptop computer, albeit with much smaller screens, that are nonetheless capable of running word processing, spreadsheet and other office-type programmes for people on the run. With the addition of email and internet web browsers, these phones become complete mobile offices. The Treo 650 has now just been superseded by a trio of new Treos, only one of which is a direct descendant from the 650. You see, the 650 ran on Palm’s own operating system, an elegantly simple to use O/S that enabled software geeks the world over to build their own addin programmes for extra functionality and choice. But according to the international tech buzz, Palm was having difficulties making its O/S compatible with the mobile broadband systems offered by companies like Vodafone and Telecom. To avoid losing market share, Palm has done a deal with Microsoft and engineered Windows Mobile 5.0 O/S into two of the new flagship Treos – the 700wx for the Telecom network and the 750v for Vodafone. The third new Palm, the 680, is the only remaining variant on the native Palm O/S, and it doesn’t have broadband. So what are the advantages? The unit we’ve obtained, the 700wx, was initially something you went around kicking the tyres of tentatively, and wondering

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whether it was all it was cracked up to be – or that was the initial reaction. Having used it for two months now I’m happy I upgraded, but for those people migrating across from the 650 there are niggly little things to get used to. The change from Palm to Windows means buttons don’t necessarily do the same things they used to. What was intuitive and second nature with Palm becomes slightly more menu-driven with Windows, and you have to unlearn much of what you’ve become used to. For those who’ve never used the Palm O/S however, and have either had a Pocket PC running Windows Mobile, or they’re migrating straight across from an ordinary PC, the 700wx is an absolute dream to use. Additionally, the onboard memory has rocketed from a piddly 32mb in the 650 to 128mb in the 700wx, making the new Treo much faster and more versatile. Palm didn’t just import Windows Mobile off the shelf, they improved it and re-engineered it specifically for the Treo. There is instant functionality, allowing you to punch in the first few letters of a contact’s name from the home screen, and within milliseconds the contact’s full name has been found and it is one key press to dial. This is a big improvement on the 650. Likewise the ability with Windows to launch straight from Home

to the Messaging suite with one key press or touch of the touchscreen. These things all save time and, once as a Palm user you get used to them, are magic. While I’m labouring the point, Palm suggest that you can download third party software that allows you to run Palm O/ S programmes from your 650 on the new 700wx. Tried it, don’t recommend it. The software worked well when it worked, but I found it tended to send Windows into a hang mode, necessitating far too many soft, and even one hard, resets for my liking. I bailed on the conversion software at the end of the free trial period and haven’t had a major problem since. One other programme – a Windowsbased third party one incidentally – caused a similar problem. Worldmate, which provides up to date weather forecasts, foreign currency prices, timezone and weights/ measurements conversions, has a facility in its Windows version that allows for automatic weather updates hourly if you so wish. But I found if I turned the automatic updates on, and it tried and failed to get a viable data signal in the middle of the night for whatever reason, it too sent Windows into a hang meaning the phone’s alarm clock functions didn’t work the next morning as scheduled. At the small price of having to manually get Worldmate to update the weather, at least I now get my morning wake up call. One of the other beauties of the 700wx is its built-in media functions, like Windows Media Player 10. The phone becomes an iPod, only far more sophisticated. Mine has a 1GB SD memory card, but you can go to 2GB if desired, more than enough to store hundreds of songs. But the broadband EV-DO service from Telecom makes the phone ideal for downloading podcasts without the need for a computer interface. No matter what time I wake up, within 60 seconds I’ve grabbed the 6am or 7am news from the Newstalk ZB website to play via the phone’s loudspeaker or through headphones, and the day is underway. Telecom boasts a data download speed of 400-600kbps which, coupled with a 400mb data plan is more than enough to cope with demand. The Treo phone range all feature Bluetooth and infrared coverage as well as cellular, so unlike other units in the Palm handheld range, (the Palm TX, for example) they don’t feature built in Wi-Fi wire-

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Synchronising with your desktop or notebook is much easier now than it was with the Palm O/S, largely because of the native Windows to Windows integration that means your Outlook email, tasks and calendar appointments are seamlessly updated

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less network coverage. Some geeks in the US did find that a Wi-Fi capability was latent in the 650 and could be switched on with some fairly serious overhauling of the phone. Ultimately, it wasn’t worth the effort however. Instead, Palm themselves are now offering an accessory Wi-Fi card which plugs into the SD slot at the top of the Treo. It doesn’t work while the phone’s cellular functions are powered up (probably one of the reasons Palm never activated it as a built-in feature of the original phones) but it is certainly a useful addition if you’re languishing outside in the summer sun by the pool. With a tested range of at least 60m (line of sight to wireless access point), the wireless card is generally useable throughout the house even allowing for internal walls and electrical interference. The wireless cards, incidentally, are backwards compatible with the 650s as well. The wireless card will also save you a bundle if you’re traveling internationally, as access rates for Wi-Fi at hotels and airports are generally far cheaper than the $8 or $10 per megabyte you’ll be stung if you try using your mobile broadband functions offshore. The speakerphone on the 700wx is excellent, and the phone retains its 650 ability to put callers on hold or join them into a three way conference call. Call quality through the Bluetooth earpiece is generally very good – Palm have just released a new Bluetooth earpiece as an optional extra for the phone – although in our office the signals were prone to some kind of interference occasionally. In the car or elsewhere, however, the clarity and volume were first rate. Voice-activated functions were an optional software extra with the Treo 650, but with the latest Windows models they’re built in. Not only will it dial calls on voice command, but also read out your list of appoint-

ments or open programmes like Word. Battery life, on the other hand, is distinctly shorter than it was on the 650. Put both phones side by side, with cellular functions on but doing nothing else, and the 700wx will generally pike after two days on standby. The GSM 650, on the other hand, will stretch out to four or five days. This took some getting used to in the upgrade process. As a general rule, if you throw the 700wx on charge each evening you’ll get enough power for a heavy day’s use out of it. There are larger capacity batteries on offer if you need a longer life. Palm have upgraded the camera on the 700wx from the 0.3mp used by the 650 to the new industry average 1.3mp. Certainly the quality is better, but it is still a backup camera rather than a replacement for your current pocket digital. It also takes video footage. Naturally the phone’s built in keyboard makes texting and emailing on your mobile fast and efficient – although Palm have an optional full wireless keyboard that works with the 650 it cannot be used yet with the 700 series Windows devices. Synchronising with your desktop or notebook is much easier now than it was with the Palm O/S, largely because of the native Windows to Windows integration that means your Outlook email, tasks and calendar appointments are seamlessly updated. For people whose offices run Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, the Treo now offers “push” email like Blackberry, where messages are automatically forwarded to the phone instead of waiting for you to manually download them. Overall, the 700wx is a grunty, stylish smartphone that makes the most of Telecom’s network abilities and makes life for those on the go much easier. For extra details about the various Palm Treo options (and there are many), see www.palm.com/nz

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 71

feelLIFE

sport

Mission: IMPOSSIBLE?

Sports editor Chris Forster casts a line over at the New Zealand’s shot at redemption in Valencia, contesting the most expensive and intense yachting regatta ever staged

ebruary the 28th 2003. It ranks as one of the bleakest days in New Zealand sport. An eight year grip on the Auld Mug floundered and nearly sunk in choppy waters in the Hauraki Gulf. NZL 82’s revolutionary design folded, and the mast snapped like a twig under intense pressure by the Euro-fuelled challengers Alinghi. Not long afterwards former Kiwi hero Russell Coutts steered the pretenders to a 5nil whitewash and took the America’s Cup all the way back to landlocked Switzerland. Lumpy seas and 25 knot gusts had exposed a flawed campaign. And there’s nothing like an abject failure to crank the Kiwi knocking machine into overdrive. Remarkably, four years on there’s a sniff of optimism in the steady sea breezes off Valencia. Grant Dalton’s appointment as managing director of Emirates Team New Zealand was a masterstroke. Two high

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performance yachts are ready to embark on a Spanish adventure to bury the ghost of 28/02/03. DEAN BARKER is a man on a mission. He’s charged with steering New Zealand’s elite yacht to victory in the Louis Vuitton Cup – the challengers’ series to determine who takes on Alinghi for the big prize. Team boss Dalton’s kept his faith in the sailing abilities and hunger of 33 year old Barker – who’s these days leaner, meaner and more desperate to knock the precision out of the Swiss machine. The omens were pretty good in his last competitive sail before the preliminaries get underway in Valencia. Barker successfully defended his Auckland Match Racing Cup title in late January – by out-witting the world number two, Ian Williams. Luna Rossa’s young Australian skipper James Spithill was the only other

America’s Cup hotshot who bothered to make the trip to the City of Sails, and he dipped out during the round robin. “It’s not our primary focus, but to race well here is very satisfying”, noted Barker. But the Cup is never far from Barker’s mind. “It’s very hard to forget it. But the strength of our team is, it can carry on even when we’re not there. We can sharpen our sailing skills while our boat’s hopefully getting faster and faster”. Fast, and smart, are the elementary skills Barker needs to have in Spain. He’s got two very strong challengers to get past before he can contemplate revenge against Alinghi’s billionaire owner Ernesto Bertarelli and his Kiwi skipper Brad Butterworth. BMW ORACLE RACING has the megabucks and the skilled sailors to give Team New Zealand a very rocky ride during the Louis Vuitton Cup. They performed at

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Team boss Dalton’s kept his faith in the sailing abilities and hunger of 33 year old Barker – who’s these days leaner, meaner and more desperate to knock the precision out of the Swiss machine. The omens were pretty good in his last competitive sail before the preliminaries get underway in Valencia

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nearly the same level as the Kiwis during the series of fleet and match races in 2006. Luna Rossa aside, there’s daylight back to the other 9 syndicates who’ve fronted with the readies to compete in the richest of rich man’s sports. Oracle is the baby of billionaire software giant Larry Ellison, who’s estimated to have invested $200 million US in a second attempt to win the greatest yachting prize on the planet. Chris Dickson, yet another New Zealander competing against his countrymen, will be at the helm again. He’s a feisty 45 year old with the tactical nous to go two steps better than beaten finalist in the LV Cup in 2003. LUNA ROSSA are the big improvers – adding an Italian menace to the three horse challengers race. They’ve got a new rock star in their after-guard in Aussie James Spithill – only 27 years old and about to partner the charismatic Francesco de Angelis in the voyage of a lifetime. Spithill gave Dean Barker a run for his money in the recent match racing event in Auckland, although didn’t make it past the semi-finals. But there’s no knocking his confidence for the real deal. “I think between us, Oracle and the Kiwis – it’s going to be extremely close. The Louis Vuitton racing will be intense, especially at the business end of the competition. “We’ve had plenty of great races against

Dean and the guys over the years – and I can’t wait for the challenge in Valencia” Spithill’s decision to race in Auckland – away from the Italian syndicate’s base in Valencia apparently didn’t go down well with de Angelis. Whether there’s any friction on the horizon is debateable – but Luna Rossa has already established an America’s Cup pedigree dating back to the unsuccessful challenge against holders New Zealand back in 2000. BOB FISHER is a venerable author, broadcaster and sailing expert – affectionately known as the dean of the America’s Cup press corp. This wily old sea dog’s warning the New Zealanders against complacency and about the threat of holders ALINGHI, if they travel all the way down that sea path. Fisher rates Team New Zealand as the team to beat in the challengers’ series. “They give themselves the underdog tag. It’s one they’re comfortable with. Oracle are the technology leaders and the Italians are the improvers. But with the drive and vision of “Dalts” (Grant Dalton) they should have the edge. He’s been magnificent”. But there’s a huge advantage for Alinghi as holders in the steady but unspectacular Mediterranean sea breezes off Valencia “You’re going to have to be extremely good to beat Alinghi. They’ve got the added bonus of having a play with the challengers, with their old boat. And they’ll get another chance in Act 13 before the regatta”. That fleet race running from the 13th April is the last chance for all the syndicates to check their progress against the yachts standing in their way of America’s Cup glory. Fisher makes no secret of his dislike of a Valencia as a venue. “It’s a totally bogus harbour within a harbour – manufactured for the event. It doesn’t have the love. It’s a commercial enterprise, nothing more”. The amount of time and money spent on this event is staggering. Design teams, building crews, highly paid sailors, immense travel costs, bases in Valencia the bill is astronomical. Grant Dalton’s manufactured a formidable challenge by securing a major sponsor in Emirates – the airline which spends-up large on just about every imaginable global sporting event. There’s also the $33.75 million of NZ taxpayers cash “invested” by the Labour government

as strategic marketing. A return to the heady, money spinning days of the 2000 and 2003 events based in Auckland’s upmarket viaduct, is clearly a vote-spinner. Those contributions pale by comparison to the bottomless pits used to fund Oracle, Luna Rossa and Alinghi. Fisher sums up the scale of the spending. “The America’s Cup business keeps getting bigger and bigger. Budgets are huge, wallets are open, salaries are huge for the top sailors. Some of those blokes even have investment brokers these days.” Dean Barker’s one of 27 sailors – part of an afterguard of 8 highly skilled leaders charged with making the right decisions at the right time. There’s a design team of 21 highly qualified engineers, sail-makers, rig-programmers and data analysts – a shore support team and a business and operations unit that includes a five-strong weather team. The met boys’ job is crucial. They must predict from which direction and what velocity the Valencia sea breezes will blow on race days. The challenge for Dalton and Barker is to channel all those resources and excel on a sporting theatre made for and by billionaires.

Key Dates for the 2007 America’s Cup in Valencia April 3: Keel unveiling day. The syndicates reveal their submarine weapons. April 3-7: Fleet racing regatta. Alinghi and the 12 challengers stretch their legs. April 19: Louis Vuitton challengers series begins – round-robin May 14 to 25th: Louis Vuitton Cup semi-finals (best of 9 races) June 2: Louis Vuitton Cup final (best of 9 races) June 23: America’s Cup – Alingi V the Louis Vuitton Cup champion Best of nine races.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 73

feelLIFE

health

Scared of needles Claire Morrow on the cervical cancer vaccine

et me say straight out that I am usually first in line for vaccination. It’s terribly un-PC to say so, and I respect my dear Editors’ objections – no, really I do – but this latest one has me a bit...uneasy, somehow. It makes me want to black out some of the more regrettable incidents of my early adulthood, and start trying to force the children to join True Love Waits or some other similar organisation. Two of them are still in nappies, so true love will have a while to wait, in their case. I imagine it is the wisdom of age – the hope that now that you can see How Things Ought To Be Done, that this will somehow be intergenerationaly transmitted. It is a trope, of course, that all the fun things give you cancer. Even the blackened steak on the barbie – no matter how lean it is, or what mountain of salad you serve beside it – is replete with risk, since heterocyclic amines are formed in foods which are cooked at high temperatures and charred and heterocyclic amines cause cancer in animals. Smoking causes cancer, drinking causes cancer and although there is no clear link between rock and roll and cancer, sex does (sorry) cause cancer.

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The new vaccine prevents cervical cancer in women and looks set to be available in Australia and New Zealand on the free vaccination program. The current plan is to vaccinate girls at around 13 years of age – when the German measles vaccination is given. The rubella (German measles) vaccine is given to young women because rubella causes a mild illness in adults, but can cause severe birth defects in tiny babies if the mother contracts rubella during a critical period in the first trimester of pregnancy. Jab in the arm at 13, much less chance of rubella exposure for the foetus. The new vaccine prevents cervical cancer. That’s good right? Cancer is frightening, for good reason, and everyone wants to avoid it. If you can avoid it by a mere vaccine – as compared to something hard like quitting smoking – why not? And actually, there are no reported side effects from the studies conducted so far aside from redness or itching at the site. The drug probably does no harm. But...how to tell? At this stage (the drug is approved for use in the US, Australia and New Zealand amongst others), it is not actually known if the vaccine lasts a lifetime.

It is also not known if there are any long term side effects. Many people don’t realise that cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease. It was only in 1994 that some researches made note of the fact that sex workers get cervical cancer many times more frequently than nuns . This led to the quest to find a sexually transmitted basis for cervical cancer and it was found amongst the human papilloma viruses (HPVs). There are more than a hundred HPVs. Some of them are responsible for the common wart, the plantar wart and some other unsightly but largely harmless warts. These are caused by coming into casual contact with the virus, and although there are a mountain of old wives tales about how to get rid of them, there is one easy solution. Go to the doctor and have them frozen off. Problem solved. Genital warts, however; is that a pickle on your.... Well, not good. Most people who acquire such a thing want them gone. There are a number of ways to achieve this – through a topical medication or if that fails through the use of the antiviral interferon, through surgery or through freez-

ing them off and so forth. Unfortunately, Interferon is expensive and all of the other methods merely make the warts go away – not the virus. If you are healthy, the immune system will clear the virus itself in (on average) eight to thirteen months. The only way to prevent transmission of the virus until that happens is abstinence. Lucky you. The limited research on the subject shows that most patients are less than compliant with this advice. And of course, if you can’t see the virus you can still get it, and pass it on. This is merely an aside. The HPV viruses that causes genital warts are different to the ones that causes cervical cancer. You can’t see the HPV viruses that cause cervical cancer either. There is no rash, no pain, no itch, no nothing. There is no reason to assume that sexual history is an especially good predictor. You only have to sleep with one person after all. Almost all cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV, as are a majority proportion of anal cancers, and a proportion of vaginal, penile and mouth cancers. But there are overwhelmingly more cervical cancers. Cervical cancer is highly treatable if caught, but it isn’t nothing, either. You can die from it. That’s something to want to avoid. Pap smears look for changes in the cervix. If there are any, further monitoring or action is indicated. It’s a slow process, cervical cancer, changes tend to show up before they are disastrous. But the treatment can be grueling too. Wouldn’t you want to avoid that? Well, joining a nunnery early would reduce your chances of getting cervical cancer to almost nothing. Having one sexual partner for life (if they do likewise) should have the same effect. That really would be the ideal. Condoms provide limited protection. Not the “accidents happen” limited protection condoms provide against HIV or syphyllis or pregnancy, but more like very little protection at all. Next to useless, in fact. We assess risk all wrong – so much so that some have theorised that there is something in human nature that precludes the ability to reason about risk. We are much more scared of something that might kill us now than something that will more likely kill us in the future. If condoms provided almost no protection against developing a cervical cancer tomorrow we would behave differently. And of course, the HPV causes changes to the cervix over time. Typically the exposure occurs during the adolescent or young adult years, and cervical cancer develops in the 30s. It won’t make much difference being monogamous now that you are happily married and can see the point of it. That’s what makes the vaccine a good idea. If you are going to sleep with anyone who has slept with anyone, even with a condom, there’s a risk. In the perfect world the vaccine would have no long term effects and would last a lifetime. Were that so, I would come down unequivocally in favour. Unfortunately it is not known – either if it has any long term effects or if it lasts. Those are some pretty critical pieces of information, don’t you think? Please excuse me, I’m signing the children up for True Love Waits.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 75

feelLIFE

alt.health

The age of autism

There are ‘problems’ in CDC data on vaccines, discovers Dan Olmsted

or three years, the Centres for Disease Control in the US has used a study conducted on its own Vaccine Safety Datalink to reassure parents that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism. Now a panel of government-appointed experts says there are serious problems with exactly the approach the CDC took. “I think what we’re saying is that (study) wasn’t the last word and that things need to be looked at again and perhaps with different methodology,” chairwoman Irva Hertz-Picciotto told Age of Autism, which obtained a copy of the panel’s report. Critics say that renders reassurances about the mercury preservative, called thimerosal, unconvincing. “How can health authorities, with a straight face, claim they have any evidence proving no connection after this report?” asked J.B. Handley, co-founder of Generation Rescue, an advocacy group that believes autism is essentially mercury poisoning by another name. “This is analogous to our government not finding WMD in Iraq after reassuring the world they would. It’s a loss of credibility, and we are back at square one.” The study – often called the Verstraeten study for its principal author, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten – used the Vaccine Safety Datalink maintained by the CDC to extract information from records kept by three health maintenance organizations. On its Web site, the CDC says: “(T)he results from this study suggest there is not a ‘cause and effect’ relationship between thimerosal and autism or ADD (attention deficit disorders).” But the database has weaknesses – including different ways of diagnosing autism at different HMOs – that make it hard to draw broad conclusions, the experts said. The panel identified several serious problems that were judged to reduce the usefulness of an ecologic study design using the

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VSD to address the potential association between thimerosal and the risk of autism, according to the report. An ecologic study – analyzing groups rather than individuals – was the approach the CDC used. CDC spokesman Glen Nowak Nowak says that the agency “is working to eliminate all remaining thimerosal-containing shots as soon as possible, so it wouldn’t change where we want to go there, either.” He added that limitations of the study were acknowledged by Verstraeten – who subsequently said its findings were neutral and required follow-up. Nowak says several studies support the safety of thimerosal, and he notes the expert panel suggested other ways to look for a possible connection using the database, including comparisons of siblings of those diagnosed with autism. The panel was convened last May at Congress’s request by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. Congress wanted an independent opinion about whether the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink could be used to compare autism rates and vaccine mercury before and after thimerosal was phased out beginning in 1999. That wouldn’t work, the panel said, partly because of changes over time, but also because of problems with the data. “I think there’s more work to be done,” says Hertz-Picciotto, a professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine. She adds it’s unlikely that autism rates will decline significantly anytime soon. “It’s an ‘open question’ whether anything about vaccines – timing, dose, preservative – is related to the rise in diagnoses,” she says. The study was one of five key epidemiological studies cited by the prestigious Institute of Medicine when it concluded

in 2004 that the evidence is against a link between thimerosal and autism. But Hertz-Picciotto says several of those studies had more problems than the one conducted with CDC data. “Some studies are stronger than others. The Verstraeten study was an improvement on other studies including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs that limit what we can learn from them,” she says. David Kirby, author of the book Evidence of Harm on the controversy over thimerosal and autism, says the Institute of Medicine report – intended to bring the mercury-autism debate to a close – is on shaky ground as well. “This is a strong blow at the very foundation of the 2004 IOM report, which builds its conclusion against causation largely on this (CDC vaccine safety) database. “I would also point out that all the weaknesses cited by the NIH (expert panel) were highlighted long ago by members of SafeMinds, a group that opposes mercury in medicine.” Kirby said that in 1999, while the CDC’s research was under way, SafeMinds’ Lyn Redwood met with Verstraeten and raised the same issues: under-ascertainment of cases, misreporting of data, ignoring prenatal exposure and a 25 percent exclusion rate of children listed in the databases. Kirby predicted the Institute of Medicine will now face increased pressure to take a fresh look at thimerosal and autism. The expert panel’s Hertz-Picciotto says research into autism has barely begun. “We know there’s a major genetic component to autism, but genes cannot explain a rise over a short time period of a few decades,” she says. “We also know that environment plays a significant part, and the scientific community is just beginning to search for what those factors and exposures are.”

ECO0076\TBWA

bout two years ago, University of California, Irvine, professor FanGang Zeng started noticing something alarming among his students: unexplained hearing loss. In each of his biomedical engineering classes, Zeng says, he’s found several students with the type of damaged hearing you normally wouldn’t see until 50 or 60 years of age. It’s been two years since the phenomenon began. And that’s about how long it’s been since the MP3 player became a campus staple for college students nationwide and in fact throughout the western world. Coincidence? He doesn’t think so. “We can’t say for sure it’s from MP3 players, but I don’t know what else has changed,” says Zeng, a researcher specializing in hearing loss. “The climate and the food are the same.” Another UCI hearing expert, Dr. Hamid Djalilian, is also concerned about the effects of MP3 players, saying parents are bringing in more and more teenagers complaining of ringing in their ears. Young children can suffer even more damage from loud music or toys, because their ear canals are shorter and not fully developed. “A lot of times it’s not recognized, because kids don’t complain,” Djalilian says. Experts say the problems are probably caused by the use of “ear buds” that sit inside the ear, coupled with the increased length of listening time available, compared to previous portable music players. Most MP3 players come with stock ear buds, which unlike headphones that sit outside the ear, fit snugly in the ear canal and do not allow any sound to escape. Because the sound is digital, listeners can crank it up louder without the distortion faced by previous technologies. One of Apple’s initial slogans for the iPod was “Play It Loud.” And, because MP3 players can store hours and hours of music, users can listen all day without stopping – producing an unending barrage of sound. At least with older audio devices such as portable compact disc players, the listener had to stop and change the CD or restart it. Over the past year, MP3 manufacturers have begun to respond to complaints about the problem. A class action suit was filed against Apple Computer in February in U.S. District Court in San Jose, alleging that the company had not done enough to protect its

Because Moving Planets Is Such A Hassle.

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tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

The back of beyond

Ecotourism adventures abound in northern Australia’s Queensland, writes Tim Johnson

APE TRIBULATION, Australia – It might have been the primeval forest noises. Or perhaps it was the treeclimbing kangaroos. It also could have been the cassowary, a flightless bird as tall as a grown man. As we hiked out of one of the world’s oldest rainforests, our older daughter put into words what we’d been sensing for several days. “I feel like I’m visiting Jurassic Park,” she said. The northeast region of Australia – far northern Queensland – comprises an extraordinary variety of habitats. Over a few days, you can snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, hike through rainforest and visit the nearby tablelands rimming the dry Outback. My family is currently based in Beijing, where the weather is chilly in winter, so the idea of a year-end holiday to sunny Australia seemed comforting: no struggles with a foreign language, a chance to visit some Australian friends, and plenty of familiar stores and food. What we didn’t fully expect was the stunning diversity of environments we’d see in northern Queensland, and the never-seenbefore wildlife. The vacation began on the right foot with a few days in Sydney, where we soaked up the city’s hilly charm, cruising in the harbor and walking the coastal trail south of Bondi Beach. Then it was on to encounters with redlegged pademelons, bandicoots, Papuan frogmouths, assassin bugs and even a Wompoo fruit-dove, with its hallucinogenic colors. The domestic flight landed in Cairns (pronounced “cans” in the local inflection), where you can rent a car, take a deep

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breath and drive north. A bright yellow dashboard sticker reminded us that the Australians drive, like the British, on the left side of the road. Driving was a breeze. Using the turn signals was another matter. I repeatedly activated the windshield wipers when I meant to turn, drawing howls from the girls, aged 15 and 9. An hour’s drive north of Cairns is Port Douglas, a resort town that was our temporary base for explorations. To the west, cloud-shrouded mountains loomed; to the east, we gazed on the Coral Sea and the longest barrier reef in the world. The vacation was loosely planned, and we made quick alterations. Australia was a little pricier than we expected on a $350-aday budget for our family of four, so instead of eating out constantly we made use of the kitchenette in our rental unit. To our delight, we found that many hotels offered “self-contained units” with kitchens. Nearly all offered communal areas with facilities to barbecue, a national pastime. Australia’s northern beaches are awash in “stingers” – jellyfish – during the summer months, so the next day we headed north to Mossman River Gorge, a rainforest park. The girls delighted in the swinging bridge over a creek that cascaded over boulders, and the tangle of vines and giant ferns amid lush trees. Walking around the Port Douglas marina in the evening, we made reservations to board the Aristocat, a double-decker catamaran, for a snorkeling visit to the outer reef, a highlight of any trip to Australia. Among the 60 or 70 visitors the next day was a large contingent of young Japanese divers, and a smattering of Europeans and North Americans. We all donned stinger

suits – lighter than wetsuits – to neutralize any encounters with jellyfish, and slid into the water. Below were giant clams, sea cucumbers, white-tipped reef sharks, barracuda, butterfly fish and a rainbow array of other tropical fish and coral polyps. As often happens, our girls enjoyed the wondrous sea life but they were equally amused by the sideshows on the boat: the handful of retching, seasick passengers and the group cheers that the Japanese divers gave before entering the water.

Without knowing much about the interior high plateau, known locally as the tablelands, we piled into the car the next day and climbed a thousand feet through the rainforest and into dry rolling plains and farmland. Huge termite mounds poked out of the earth. Pioneering towns with names such as Mareeba and Yungaburra dotted the map. At a fruit stand, we bought mangoes after considering the litchi nuts, passion fruit and other tropical delights. Late that afternoon, after we’d found

a simple rental cabin, my wife exclaimed as we drove along a country road: “Stop! There’s a cassowary!” Sure enough, one of the huge birds emerged from woods at the shoulder of the road. A cousin of the ostrich, the cassowary has a bulbous helmet on its head and a long blue neck, and sometimes stands more than 6 feet tall. It can be aggressive. Signs in national parks warn that the birds’ sharp, powerful talons can do terrible damage to a man with a single kick to the abdomen.

Days later we learned that Australia’s endangered cassowary population is only around 1,500. Wild dogs, the loss of its habitat and speeding cars have taken a toll. A day later at the Granite Gorge, a private nature park with rock outcroppings amid scattered gum trees, we spotted our first rock wallabies, which are smaller than kangaroos but look similar. Our 9year-old jumped with excitement when given a bag of feed and told she could lure wild wallabies from their shady lairs and hand-feed them. Hours later, sweat-

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 79

ing profusely in the midday sun, she could barely be pulled away. A special treat awaited us that night back in the rainforest: a tour with Dr. David Rentz, an entomologist, who led us on a night walk around our cabin grounds in Kuranda. Illuminating his way by headlamp, Rentz pointed out huge nests of orange-footed scrub fowl, glowin-the-dark fungus and assassin bugs (“They pierce other bugs with that mouth part and suck their juices out”). He also deployed an ultrasonic device that allowed us to listen to insect and bat sounds that usually are beyond the range of human hearing. “See that?” he asked. Two eyes stared from the brush. “That’s a bandicoot.” A marsupial about the size of a possum, the bandicoot scampered off. Moments later,

a group of wallabies, known as red-legged pademelons, emerged from the bush. We meandered a day later to the crocodile-infested Daintree National Park and splurged to stay at the Red Mill House, a bird lovers’ bed-and-breakfast with binoculars and bird books scattered on the verandahs. Owners Andrew and Trish Forsyth handed us a bird checklist, and we quickly ticked off rainbow lorikeets, kookaburras, figbirds and gerygones, all hitherto unknown to us. Some 500 species of birds inhabit or migrate through the northwest Queensland region. At dawn during a boat excursion, we spotted an owl lookalike known as the Papuan Frogmouth, as well as snakes, butterflies and a tiny crocodile. Like most visitors, we were fixated on the crocodiles, staring at TV newscasts and reading aloud

newspaper reports of multiple crocodile attacks on humans that occurred during our holiday. Crocodile meat was on the menu at the Papaya Cafe in the Daintree Village, with this description: “ground crocodile meat and water chestnuts in crisp wonton wrappers, served with chili plum sauce.” The waitress told us more about croc meat. “It’s got the texture of pork, the color of fish and the taste of chicken,” she said. We gave it a pass. The next day, we came across a mountain lookout with a cluster of tourists pointing into a canopy of trees where two tree kangaroos nibbled on leaves. Only later, as other guides came by, did we learn that such a sighting is rare. We’d come to expect rare things in Australia.

AIR TRAVEL IN AUSTRALIA: We made domestic travel arrangements through www.flightcentre.com. au, which has cut-rate airfares. WHERE TO STAY: Australia offers a huge variety of lodging, from ubiquitous and cheap backpacker hostels to hotels, motels and full resorts. We made some arrangements through www.hotel.com. au, which includes reviews of hotels from users. In Port Douglas, we liked the Mango Tree Holiday Apartments (www.mango-treeport-douglas.com), where we paid about $175 a night for a two-room apartment. In Daintree Village, the Red Mill House (www. redmillhouse.com.au) is a delightful small B&B surrounded by towering trees. We had two adjoining rooms for which we paid $225 per night, including a hearty breakfast. In the tablelands, we found furnished cabins for $90 to $115 a night. They were generally at parks for recreational-vehicle users. RENTAL CARS: The Cairns airport has a number of rental car companies, including all major global brands. We rented a Toyota Corolla from Hertz with unlimited mileage, negotiating a weekly rate of $299 without a reservation. TRIPS TO GREAT BARRIER REEF: Port

Douglas has a number of companies that offer high-speed catamarans for snorkeling and scuba trips to the outer reefs. We took a trip by Aristocat (www.aristocat.com.au) that cost $500 for two adults and two children, including all snorkeling gear and lunch. Calypso (www.calypsocharters.com.au) and Poseidon (www.poseidon-cruises.com.au) have trips at similar prices. GUIDED NATURE EXCURSIONS: The highlights of our trip were outings with naturalists. In the Kuranda area, northwest of Port

Douglas, Dr. David C. Rentz, an insect expert with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, led three of us on a twohour night hike. Cost: $60. He can be reached at orthop1(at)tpg. com.au. In Daintree Village, we hooked up with Mangrove Adventures, led by Dan Irby, an Oklahoman with long years of experience in Queensland. Irby’s Web site is www.mangroveadventures.com.au. He offered us a two-hour boating trip for four people for $199. All figures given are in Aust. dollars.

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tasteLIFE

FOOD

Fish tales

Eli Jameson can’t believe he ate the whole thing!

here’s an old New Yorker cartoon that shows a posh woman sitting in a restaurant holding a menu. Looking wistful, she says to the garçon standing at her shoulder, “I’ll have the fish, while the poor things are still around”. As an example of the ecological fatalism of the cashed-up cultural left, it’s hard to beat. The answer may be right, but the reasoning is all wrong. For the fact is, it’s great to eat fish. And especially, as I’ve taken to lately, fish in its whole form, rather than in disembodied filets and steaks and such. As far as the line concerning fish not being “around” any more, well, it’s a halftruth at best. Sure, a few months ago a scientist came up with a study using that great technique used by publicity-seeking, granthungry scientists everywhere – namely, drawing a straight line at a downward angle on a graph – to suggest that it is only a matter of time before the world runs out of fish. As they used to say in Evelyn Waugh’s bril-

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liant send-up of the press, Scoop, “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. Yes, the Japanese and the Spanish routinely rape the waters of our southern oceans. And it would be nice to see a more muscular foreign policy adopted to deal with this threat, though whether it’s worth launching a new battle of Midway over a bunch of tuna is another question. But as with all such fretting it ignores the clever responses of technology. Aquaculture, especially in our part of the world, is rapidly reducing the need for mankind to hunt and gather their fish like a bunch of Neanderthals in jaunty fisherman’s caps, or whatever it is they wear on fishing trawlers. In New Zealand, the fishing industry is worth $1.2 billion and growing, with 20 per cent of that revenue coming from “farmed fish”. It’s not just oysters and other shellfish, which have been cultivated since ancient times, but fishes like salmon and tuna as well, which do well in the cold local waters.

Meanwhile, across the ditch in the Australian town of Port Lincoln, 2,000 of the town’s 14,000 residents are in some way employed by tuna farmed in underwater cages and destined for the finest sushi-yas of Tokyo. The great trawlers that have caused so much damage will be forced back into port by competition from aquaculture and market forces long before any international convention manages to do the job. Last year entrepreneur Hagen Stehr moved nine bluefin tuna – each with an estimated value of $3 million a head – by helicopter to a special onshore hatchery. By relieving demand for the wild stuff this operation will help Australia reach its goal of returning to 1980 levels of tuna spawning stocks by 2020. But enough about politics and market forces. The interesting thing about cooking and eating a whole fish is that it is one of the few times that we get to look our dinner in the eye, so to speak. The great American patriot Ben Franklin had been

a vegetarian since he was 16, thinking it “unprovoked murder” to eat any fish or other animal (as proof that there is nothing new under the sun, this a story for parents to keep in mind when their teens develop an overweening sense of animal rights and start leaving enough Peter Singer tracts around the house for even the dog to get nervous), until he made his first crossing of the Atlantic as a young man when he found his ship “becalmed” and all his fellow passengers fishing to pass the time, yanking cod after cod out of the icy depths. As he writes in his Autobiography: “But I had been formerly a great lover of fish, and when it came out of the fryingpan it smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till, recollecting that when the fish were opened I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs, then, thought I, ‘If you eat one another, I don’t see why we may not eat you’, so I dined upon cod very heartily, and have since continued to eat as other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” Indeed. I have taken to stuffing fish with all manner of stuff – citrus fruits, different herb combinations, and so on – and just chucking them on a hot grill. At Christmas we had a small family affair, and I grilled some stuffed rainbow trout, one for every two people, about four minutes a side. Another family I know which has a bigger brood does a couple of giant snappers on the grill every December 25. Nor should one’s fish fancy be limited to the grill: smaller fish can be whole- or deep-fried. And there really is no better way to make a fish moist and juicy than to pack the thing with rock salt and bake it in an oven until it develops a hard crust that can be dramatically cracked open at the table for your family and friends. Of course, there are some people – like Mrs Jameson – who are uncomfortable with having a stunned, gutted and grilled mullet staring up at them from their dinner plate. Which is a particularly Western conceit, as other cultures value fish heads for more than just the stock pot. One of my favourite books, which I have alas lost in one of my many moves, is called Scotch and Holy Water

and details the more-or-less true adventures of a boozy American contractor named John D. Tumpane working in post-World War II Turkey. Out to dinner at a fish restaurant, our anti-hero’s Turkish date looks at him sweetly and says, “May I have your eyes?” Tumpane thinks something has been lost in translation and assumes this to be some sort of endearment...until she reaches across the table with her fork and deftly scoops the eyes out of his fish and pops them into her mouth.

“

I have taken to stuffing fish with all manner of stuff – citrus fruits, different herb combinations, and so on – and just chucking them on a hot grill

”

Whole stuffed fish You’ll need: 1 or more snappers, sea bass, trout, or whatever looks good at the market Lots of fresh herbs, dill, rosemary, etc 1 or more thin-sliced lemons 1. Pre-heat your grill to a good medium-high heat. If using (preferably) a charcoal grill make sure all the flames have died down, leaving you with a warm bed of red coals. 2. Prepare your fish. Make sure they are scaled and gutted by your fish monger, with the gills removed. Score the outside of the fish diagonally without cutting all the way through the flesh. Stuff the cavity with herbs and lemons, and put more herbs into the score marks. 3. Brush with olive oil and depending on the size of the fish grill for four-eight minutes a side. Serve at once. Next month: Masterclass – Eli Jameson shows you how to make your own sushi!

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 83

seeLIFE PAGES

My favourite book

And other stories, by Michael Morrissey TIGERS IN RED WEATHER By Ruth Padel, Abacus,$29.99

began this column seven years ago and in that time I have reviewed 370 books. In the main, they have been books I either enjoyed or admired though occasionally some were read out of cultural duty. From memory, the only two I have done “hatchet” jobs on are The Beach by Alex Garland and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown Alas my negative reviews probably did nothing to deter sales and to date I have not received any aggrieved letters from the authors, presumably (especially in Brown’s case) guffawing all the way to the bank. It is my happy task to report that this month’s lead book Tigers in Red Weather is one of the most outstanding books yet consumed during this on-going delicious seven year literary feast. As an example of naturalist writing, it often attains the heights of fine poetry and indeed the title is a quote from that brilliant poet Wallace Stevens, who along with Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot,

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must be considered one of the greatest American poets of the last century. A sample of Padel’s sumptuous yet precise prose: “Brown water drops fall like cappuccino from his belly on split-end grass. A racket-tailed drongo calls, the mimic of the Indian jungle, a black glossy bird with tail-feathers like two black lollipops. A sentinel langur monkey barks from a sal tree over the pool. Both have seen the movement of a tiger, a predator, jumping. The tigress’s whiskers twitch in irritation. Alarm calls cross the species barrier: they are the jungle’s lingui franca. Everyone wants to know when a predator is near. Grey langurs, the silky silvery monkeys of the India forest, large as Labradors, are the eyes of the jungle, packing the trees with black judgmental faces.” Padel, a great-great grandaughter of Darwin, takes us on a world tiger tour. Among the 14 countries or islands that still have wild tigers, she has visited three of the most dangerous and remote – Eastern Siberia, Bhutan and Sumatra – though she has been to nearly all of them. The

Siberian, Bhutan and Sumatra chapters are especially fascinating both because of the remoteness of location, extraordinary fauna and flora and in the particular case of Sumatra, the fabulously rich mythology about the tiger, absolutely central to that large island’s culture. The preservation of the tiger in the wild is not merely a matter of liking a large and beautiful animal – it is a symbol of the entire conservation mode of thought. Because the tiger is the top predator, a healthy tiger means a healthy jungle. The Mahabharata, that epic Hindu poem, made exactly the same point in 400 BC: “The tiger perishes without the forest and the forest perishes without its tigers.” Tiger preservation is not “merely” a matter of conservation ideology, it is a small war. In India, which remains the country with the largest number of wild tigers (current estimate 3000), fifty guards are killed every year by poachers, another 100 mutilated. Because of poor funds, the guards often have old-style .303 style rifles whereas the poachers have modern weapons. It’s an uneven contest danger-

ously loaded against the felines and two of India’s prominent tiger defenders have opposing views of the tiger’s future. The somewhat black-tigery Valmik Thapar, author of 14 books on tigers, is a pessimist (though he will fight for its right to live in the jungle while there is breath in his body), while biologist Ullas Karanth is optimistic. Only the future will show which view is the more accurate. Unfortunately, the villain in the world scene is China. Most of the world’s illegally poached tigers wind up in the markets of the world’s most populous nation. I used to cherish the idea that the proven to work Viagra would defeat the mistaken traditional Chinese medicine notion that the tiger penis was useful as an aphrodisiac but alas the tiger is also valued for its bones not to mention its magnificent skin. The current situation has become desperate and tiger skins are openly sold for approximately $13,000 dollars. Padel admits that the tiger itself will not become extinct because there are many thousands in zoos or in private ownership (4000 in Texas alone!) who will presumably continue to breed and be placed in other zoos and reserves though not of course back into the wild. The tiger has twice before been saved from extinction – in the 1930s in Siberia and in India in 1973. It is therefore possible to do so again though the odds currently look horribly bad. Governments have to treat it as a top priority and at the local level the welfare of peoples who lived in, around and, indeed, with tigers must always be fully taken into account. If this happens – and it is still possible – the tiger’s roar will still be frightening those langur monkeys and every living thing within a five kilometre radius in the years to come. Needless to say there are no wild tigers in New Zealand though a friend told me a specimen was once released in the South Island for hunting purposes and later died of the cold (factoid?). Meanwhile two fine Sumatran specimens can be see at the Auckland Zoo – Oz (male) and Molek (female). Mating and breeding is intended but it takes time for the two giant felines to get acquainted. Once you have seen these animals, even through the filter of protective glass, I defy you not to wish for their survival at large. Let us all hope that Tigers in Red Weather brings about a benign change in the climate for tigrine survival.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE HOBBIT By Mike Morwood and Penny Van Oosterzer Random House Australia, $40

ate 2004 saw the announcement of a scientific and paleoanthropological bombshell – real-life hobbits! The “hobbits” were the remains of very small hominids – about a metre tall – found in the Liang Bua cave on Flores Island in Indonesia, by a joint AustralianIndonesian team led by New Zealander Mike Morwood and Indonesian Raden Pandji Soejono. As outlined by Morwood, the tiny humans hunted giant rats, pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons until 13,000 years ago. In other words, human beings far smaller than previously imagined – no larger than leprechauns – coexisted with normal-sized humans on this remote island. Needless to say, the world has been agog ever since. If your first reaction is to think this is either a forgotten chapter from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World or the most brilliant scientific hoax in human history, I’m not surprised. (More about scepticism presently.) Science has had to admit the existence of meteorites (once not believed in) and more recently giant rogue waves, so why not tiny humans? Once upon a time gorillas and Komodo dragons weren’t believed in either. The climactic discovery of the first hobbit occurs about a third way into the book – prior to that point, the authors give a sober outline of various background aspects – methods of excavation and dating, plate tectonics, the Wallace line, the twin theories of human origin and so forth. This effectively sets the scene for the (literally) earth-shattering discovery of the first hominid bones. The announcement provoked a media explosion of nuclear proportions – 200 enquiries a day for the first week, 98,000 websites and articles in 7000 newspapers plus a lead feature in National Geographic, world circulation ten million copies. So far so good. Now the plot thickens. While Morwood was in Australia, his Indonesian colleague handed over the hominid remains to Professor Leuku Jacob, “the undisputed king of paleoanthropology in Indonesia.” The bones were eventually returned but according to Morwood, moulds had been taken in

a way that caused serious damage to the remains. Further, Jacob spearheaded a counterclaim that the hominids, rather than being a new species of homo sapiens, were in fact pygmies suffering from microcephalis – a pathological explanation of the unusually small skulls. Morwood and his colleagues staunchly maintain that the teeth and the pelvis shape and other healthy characteristics plus long term existence on Flores suggest that the hominids were not microcephalic but another kind of human. The unusually small cranial capacity – only 380 cc – is also way below what was thought to be the size for human intelligence to be feasible. Morwood says the skull formation indicates “enlarged frontal and temporal lobes” – precisely those areas concerned with cognition and planning”. Plus the presence of stone artefacts – how could retarded folk have made them? Unlike the notorious Piltdown man hoax of 1912, and the controversial Tasaday tribe “discovered” in 1971, no one is accusing Morwood of fakery – simply mistaken interpretation of fossil evidence. What would appear to weigh against the sceptic case of Jacob and his supporters is that at least 13 sets of bones have been found all indicating a uniformly small stature plus evidence of hunting skills. In general, the world has accepted Morwood’s claims. If future excavations yield still more tiny hominids, Morwood’s case will only be strengthened. In the meantime, I would love to speculate that evidence of a race of giants might come to light – though this seems rather less likely. Watch this space.

THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE By John Lloyd and John Mitchinson Faber and Faber, $35

hat Edison invention do English speakers use every day? This is one of hundreds of comparable ‘trick’ questions contained in this snappy little tome. Some of the obvious answers might be the electric light or the phonograph. According to the irritatingly wellinformed authors, the correct answer is “Hullo” which they assert was originally used to express surprise but Edison decided a nice loud Hullo! was the best way to kick start an immediately audible phone conversation.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 85

In other words, this book works hard and, in the main, succeeds in revealing unexpected answers, unusual facts, while simultaneously puncturing widespread but erroneous beliefs. My guess is that in some cases the correct answer (that is, if it is correct) will not always be accepted. I found it hard to swallow that the largest thing the largest living animal on the planet (ie a blue whale) can swallow is a grapefruit. It was sad to read that St Bernard’s dogs did not carry brandy barrels around their necks though I do remember brandy being kept in the home as a means of reviving the weak and the swoony. (Perhaps it was the bite of the taste in which case whiskey would have done just as well. Note: James Bond’s favourite drink was not the vodka martini but whiskey – mentioned 101 times!) Apparently, the brandy barrel was added “for interest” by an artist in an 1831 painting. So there! Some items that either surprised, flabbergasted or I found hard to believe – alcohol does not kill brain cells though it does make new cells grow less quickly; Hitler was not a vegetarian though his doctors recommended it as a cure for flatulence (in fact, he ate Bavarian sausage, game pie and stuffed pigeon); feminists did not burn their bras but did throw them in the trash can (the burning detail was added by a journalist); practitioners of Voodoo do not stick pins in dolls. Among such a litany of myth-busting, it was a relief to read that plaster of Paris really does come from Paris, that cats can fall great heights without injury and that the monicker “poms” is an abbreviation for pomegranates. Too bad about those people who believe you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon – you can barely make out continents. However, from space – 100 kilometres up – you can make out all sort of objects – motorways, railways, cities, buildings etc. The only fact I would dispute is the assertion that “from the fourth century BC almost no one anywhere, has believed the earth was flat.” A goodly number of Christian thinkers stated that the earth was flat – these include Lactantius, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chryostom, Severian, Diodorus of Tarsus and the improbably named Cosmas Indicopleustes. However, it is true that Columbus and his men did NOT think the earth was flat as is

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often stated – this notion sprung from Washington Irving’s popular semi-fictional book about Columbus, published in 1828. According to one website I visited, Zhang Heng (inventor of the seismograph) was the first to introduce the notion of a round earth into Chinese thought but not until the 2nd century AD – 600 hundred years after the author’s date for the widespread acceptance of the roundness of the earth. As late as the early 17the century, the popular belief in China was that the earth was flat. I have saved two knockout drop-jaw facts till last – the biggest man-made thing on earth is not the Great Wall of China but the Fresh Kills rubbish dump on Staten Island New York and a chicken survived without its head for two years – the axe missed the jugular and it was fed with an eye-dropper. Please don’t try this at home.

AVA GARDNER By Lee Server Bloomsbury, $59.99

eing hailed as the world’s most beautiful woman is enough to swell anyone’s head but according to this exhaustive biography it left Ava’s down to earth personality more or less intact. In the words of one of MGM’s early stars John Gilbert, “Very matter-of-fact about everything, nothing drippy or saccharine about her at all, a real no-nonsense kind of girl”. When the young Carolina star-to-be arrived at MGM’s headquarters, it was the largest dream factory on earth – 117 acres of offices, cottages, laboratories, barnlike soundstages big enough to house zeppelins, plus an artificial lake, a stretch of railroad track, a street of New York tenements, a castle and a patch of African jungle. It had 4000 employees, though just 100 of those were contracted actors, among them the diminutive though perfectly formed Mickey Rooney who, like so many, was instantly smitten with the young Ava. Rooney wound up proposing marriage to Ava 25 times before she said yes. Rooney and Gardner showed spirited determination in defying film mogul Louis B Mayer’s decree that they should not get hitched. The marriage went well for a while until Ava, possibly with justification (though Rooney swore otherwise), felt he was being unfaithful. Ava Gardner had a warm but stormy personality as Howard Hughes, oil tycoon and

aviator, discovered. The eccentric billionaire had tried to bribe his way into her affections with expensive gifts but she resisted. An intrusive control-freak, Hughes had her followed and even bugged her room. When he discovered she had a lover (not him) he became inflamed with jealousy and attacked her. Giving as good and more than she received, Ava hit Hughes with a large bronze bell. She was given a steak for her black eye, while the world’s richest man was driven off in an ambulance. Ava’s tempestuous life was of course just beginning. A volatile person, alcohol proved a bad mix that helped accelerate natural storms to hurricane or even tornado status. Ava herself could be candid about her faults: “Yes, I am very beautiful but morally I stink”. Such an admission of course never frightened off any new suitors of which there was always a ready supply. After Rooney, she married intellectual musician Artie Shaw and her third marriage to crooner Frank Sinatra assisted in boosting both careers to iconic status. In an acutely perceptive passage, Server describes the two personalities as very much alike in temperament, tastes, sympathies, neuroses”. Both had taciturn fathers and outgoing mothers, and both hated racial prejudice. According to Server – no reason to doubt his analysis – “both were independent-minded, hotheaded, selfish, possessive, suspicious – traits intensified by the alcohol of which they were equally fond; they were both generous, open, affectionate, sensitive, funny.” And, of course, both very voraciously promiscuous – a trait that does not lend itself to happiness. Though their marriage predictably ended after bitter quarreling, their bond lasted until Gardner’s death at the relatively early age of 67. Beside Hughes, Sinatra and Rooney, many other rich and/or famous individuals passed through Ava’s meteoric career, among them Clark Gable, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart, Fidel Castro, Robert Graves, Adlai Stevenson, George C. Scott, Man Ray, John Houston, New Zealand plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe and champion bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin (and yes, Ava did try her hand at bullfighting). Server’s sardonic-cynical-American style is not always to my taste but he gives an exhaustive treatment of Gardner’s roller-coaster life plus a very full analysis of some of her important films such as

the memorable The Killers which launched Burt Lancaster’s glittering career. The question sometimes asked of such glamorous stars is – but can they really act? In Gardner ‘s case, having watched several of her classic films, I can say the answer has to be a resounding yes. Despite her many faults, Gardner seems to have been one of those uniquely charming individuals who wind up being forgiven by everyone – even those she hurt the most.

THE FAINTER By Damien Wilkins Victoria University Press, $30

have enjoyed and been impressed by Damien Wilkins’s earlier novels The Miserables and Little Masters but regrettably The Fainter, his fifth novel, is a lesser work. Billed as a comedy of manners, it has the drawing room concentration of the genre but little of its dance. By tradition, the comedy of manners is associated with a style of English theatre from the 17th century (eg William Wycherley, William Congreve), which was given a new lease of life by Oscar Wilde. In more recent

times, the notion has been linked to Joe Orton, Noel Coward, Marcel Proust and many others. It has been said to find its comic effect in the contrast between codes of expected mannerly behaviour and the ironically concealed motives of self interest shown by the characters. The comic effects of The Fainter are marginal and its sense of theatre weak. The novel’s character is Luke, a youthful diplomat evidently on the rise – he is a junior legal adviser on Environmental law to the New Zealand wing of the Permanent Mission at the United Nations. One night he witnesses a murder in the streets of New York but it’s never altogether clear what he sees and that makes his onlooker role curiously passive. Seemingly, this event is central to the book but its dramatic follow through is oddly muted. Like Luke himself, it seems to have fallen asleep on the job i.e. fainted Generally, Luke is more passive than a central character can afford to be. As the novel’s focus shifts to Luke’s stay with his sister’s farming family in South Canterbury a more straightforward conflict ensues – that between the bookish fellow with soft hands surrounded by more

mannish types who farm, pilot glider craft and so forth. The dialogue tends more to the banal and lifelike rather than the witty but there is one glorious burst when it is suggested that Kerry O’Keefe, Luke’s retired boss turned amateur military historian, has gone over to the “dark side.” “Bestiality?” ‘The National Party.” Ouch! Generally there is more interest in the mild frisson of his on-going bruising at the hand of Alec, who ironically is rescued by Luke from choking, than Luke’s lack-lustre interest in Sheila, Alec’s wife. There are intriguing bits of political consciousness and know-how scattered slyly through the text and some focus on the way the late David Lange’s oratory and political style impacted on an impressionable Luke. Alas, Luke is no Lange in the making neither in political clout or wit. Here and there are traces of the old Wilkins’ magic but on the whole it is a curiously dull and unfocused performance. The atmosphere of the text is disconcertingly cosy and complacent. Perhaps the author needs to be parachuted into a more dangerous zone for a few weeks.

This Valentines Day say it with candles from Wax Works

Dozens of designs handcrafted in New Zealand to choose from, with a variety of scents and colours to suit your mood Stockists nationwide, see www.waxworks.co.nz for details INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 87

seeLIFE MUSIC

Music to write home about

Chris Philpott gives Norah an almost perfect score Norah Jones Not Too Late

The Shins Wincing the Night Away

Switchfoot Oh! Gravity

nown for her smooth as silk jazz tunes, incredibly fast and high sales and her relationship to legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar (his daughter), Norah Jones returns this month with third album Not Too Late. In the tradition of her previous solo work, in particular 2004’s Feels Like Home, Jones has created an album which embraces her jazz upbringing, a style at which she is almost unmatched in the current musical climate, At the same time, Not Too Late works in some of the more recent country and folk influences Jones has picked up in her time with band The Little Willies (named after Willie Nelson). Perhaps most impressively, the transition from one style to the next is so smooth that Jones may well have been born in Nashville, rather than New York City. She may want to check that out. Tracks like opener “Wish I Could” and “Until The End” are pure Norah Jones, circa 2002, sure to satisfy any long time fan. Meanwhile, tracks like “Broken” and “The Sun Doesn’t Like You” are totally different than any work Jones has done before. All things considered, this is undoubtedly the work of an artist at the peak of her musical powers. Highly recommended.

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ot known too well in New Zealand (yet), The Shins are perhaps more famous for their cameo in hit movie Garden State. However, new album Wincing the Night Away finds the group more than ready to take over the world. Ironically enough, describing the style of The Shins is actually a harder task than taking over the world! Obviously influenced by the likes of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, and taking in elements of the indie movement, bands like Radiohead and Talking Heads, and some influence from the country and folk scenes, The Shins really offer something for everyone – an aspect of their sound that means the album has something to offer for any listener. This is easy listening rock at its best, and with tracks like “Turn On Me”, “Sleeping Lessons”, “Phantom Limb” and “Sea Legs” leading the way, there is a catchy, almost infectious, vibe about each track that will appeal to casual listeners and music enthusiasts alike. If you are looking for something to listen to through summer, but like something a little more substantial than the likes of Jack Johnson, then this is probably a good place to start.

elatively new kids on the block, even though their first release hit stores in 1997, Switchfoot return with their third major label album Oh! Gravity and a new audience. The question is whether this new material will satisfy new fans picked up through previous album Nothing is Sound. The problem is there are a couple of things which suggest it may not. Firstly, the record was obviously written while the band was touring – for a start, its hits shelves a mere 18 months after their previous effort, but also the sound is that of a band who have been influenced by the audience, and have written an album packed with jumpy stadium rock tunes which can sometimes not translate into a great sound for playing around the house. Secondly, and perhaps most disconcertingly, the moral message on this album is not subtle; such straight to the point preachiness might turn off listeners who are used to the quiet undertones employed on Switchfoot’s previous work. To be honest, this is all rather annoying since Oh! Gravity is still a great album. It dismays me to think that the band themselves might underachieve with this record because it doesn’t quite meet mainstream standards.

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seeLIFE MOVIES

The ultimate spy flick

The Good Shepherd is a must see movie, argues our critic The Good Shepherd Rated: M Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon Directed by: Robert DeNiro 145 minutes

hat The Godfather is to the gangster movie, The Good Shepherd wants to be for the spy flick. Robert De Niro’s second directing effort comes scarily close to pulling it off. Epic in length, brooding in atmosphere and sumptuously mounted, this Shepherd is less James Bond than John LeCarre. It isn’t so much concerned with the thrilling details of spying as with the mindset that embraces espionage, and with the moral implications that spring from that embrace. The film begins in 1961 with CIA supervisor Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) frustrated over the intelligence breakdown that led to the recent Bay of Pigs disaster. Castro’s Cuban troops seemed to know in advance where the U.S.-backed liberators would land, crushing the invasion before it could get a foothold. Wilson concludes that there’s a mole in the CIA. Eric Roth’s screenplay is split between Wilson’s search for the leak in 1961 and his life leading up to this point. It begins with his childhood as the son of a blue-blooded, suicidal father (Timothy

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Hutton), follows him to Yale where he is inducted into the secretive Skull and Bone society (nude initiation, rousing renditions of the “Whiffenpoof Song”) and his recruitment by a federal agent (Alec Baldwin). The government wants young Edward to spy on one of his teachers, a literature professor (Michael Gambon) whose politics are questionable. “Get out while you still can,” an old hand tells Wilson. “While you still believe. While you’ve still got a soul.” Wilson impregnates and marries a classmate’s sister (Angelina Jolie). Then World War II breaks out and over the next six years Wilson will be stationed in Europe, never seeing his wife and young son. He helps defeat the Nazis, then works to recruit Hitler’s rocket scientists for the U.S. He does find time for an affair, but passion really isn’t Wilson’s strong suit. In fact, Wilson is an almost unknowable individual, so self-contained, emotionally buttoned-down, well-organized and unimaginative that he has identical pairs of black, perfectly polished shoes sitting in his closet. These qualities make him an indifferent human being, but a brilliant spymaster. What’s astonishing about Damon’s performance is how much he is able to reveal about a man who seems utterly passive. Hiding behind a bland wardrobe and horn-rimmed glasses, the actor gives us a movie “hero” whose personality seems always in retreat. Yet through some actor’s

alchemy Damon fully inhabits the character, suggesting with almost imperceptible eye movements and body language the turmoil Wilson refuses to acknowledge. In Edward Wilson’s world, emotions are a source of danger and weakness, and the main drawback of The Good Shepherd is that like its protagonist, the film is careful, measured and deliberate. There aren’t a lot of emotional fireworks (the flashiest are provided by Jolie, whose ignored wife slides dangerously into alcohol and mental instability), nor is there a lot of shooting, running and other standard spy-film antics. Instead, the film is about a man trying to keep his humanity while making life and death decisions. It’s no coincidence that the person with whom Wilson most identifies is his KGB counterpoint, a fellow called Ulysses (Oleg Stefan) who becomes a kindred spirit despite their conflicting ideologies. The Good Shepherd has a solid supporting cast (William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci, John Turturro and DeNiro as an aging US intelligence chief), but in many ways it’s a two-man show – a slow dance of intrigue and ambivalence between a terrific actor and a director who makes no concessions to an audience’s sensibilities. If you’re looking for action, The Good Shepherd will be a letdown. But as a deep meditation on the nature of espionage, it’s a minor classic. Reviewed by Robert W. Butler

Notes on a Scandal Rated: M Starring: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy Directed by: Richard Eyre 98 minutes

er co-workers don’t think much about her, and so no one realizes that the aptly named Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), the chainsmoking teacher who controls her class with quiet, ominous authority, observes her insular world with the ruthless eyes of a predator. Because she is that harmless-seeming woman past middle age they don’t worry. She is embittered, yes. Lonely, probably. But surely not dangerous. Those of us rapt at even the first intriguing moments of Richard Eyre’s searing dark comedy realize quickly, however, that there is something not quite right about Barbara, that her calculating narration not only lacks compassion but also

contains a torrent of narcissism and malice, that when her gaze settles on new, beautiful and impossibly ineffective art teacher Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) some sort of agenda will be set. Zoe Heller’s scathingly funny “What Was She Thinking?” is a brilliant satire on modern mores and the wildly different ways we humans cope with weakness, and its finely honed rhythms blossom under the ministrations of Eyre (Iris, Stage Beauty) and writer Patrick Marber, who adapted his play Closer for the screen and brought Patrick McCabe’s unsettling Asylum to life. Notes on a Scandal is an even more magnificent adaptation, with Eyre and Marber perfecting Heller’s knowing observations about sex, love and power. Dench and Blanchett will likely pick up Oscar nominations; no one could improve on either performance, Sheba’s downfall comes at the hands – and other body parts – of workingclass student Steven Connolly (Andrew

Simpson), with whom Barbara catches her in an abandoned classroom. Sheba is married to an older man (the magnificent Bill Nighy, whose jokey bonhomie crumbles painfully into shattered disbelief), but Barbara isn’t particularly fond of him either, frowning coolly at the thought of his “pruney mouth” on Sheba’s breast. At first furious, she shifts gears and offers Sheba a shoulder on which to weep at any time. Preferably, all the time. Notes on a Scandal’s resolution is a bit less challenging than the finale of Heller’s novel, but for the most part it’s equally scathing, a nasty little peek into the worst of human behavior. Even underage Steven is not above reproach; neither Heller nor the filmmakers see him as an innocent victim. For all his freckles and “Misses” and general cheeky good looks, he is every bit the predator Barbara is. One can only imagine the havoc they could wreak together. Reviewed by Connie Ogle

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 91

seeLIFE DVDs

Apocalypse soon

Imagine a world where the human race is an endangered species Children of Men R (for strong violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity), 109 minutes

he time is soon, the place familiar, the vision devastating. London, 2027, is a crowded, decaying metropolis under martial law. “The world has collapsed; only Britain soldiers on,” TV announcers declare. Video walls report endless overseas wars and advertise pharmaceutical suicide kits. An infertility pandemic swept the globe in 2009. Humanity as a species is at its last gasp, while humanity as a spiritual quality is gone already. From these bleak materials, Children of Men fashions a riveting, urgently topical, dark but guardedly hopeful thriller. It’s a relentless action adventure, yet profound – Samuel Beckett on Red Bull. Its future

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is the road we are currently on, extended until it drops off a cliff. I don’t know how to convince you that this challenging and somber parable is something you should take a date to see, except to give my word that it is jumpout-of-your-chair brilliant. The story’s focus is Theo (Clive Owen), a rumpled, booze-soaked bureaucrat with the Ministry of Energy (the movie is not without moments of sharp irony). Years ago he went along for the ride when his onetime partner Julian (Julianne Moore) pulled him into dissident politics. Suddenly she’s back, seeking Theo’s help to transport a secretive young refugee named Kee (Claire Hope-Ashitey) across England. Theo is suspicious; the activists pursue noble-sounding ends with violent, treacherous means. Most of the film’s bloodshed is committed in the name of freedom. Still, Theo agrees, maybe for the paltry

bribe Julian offers, maybe because seeing her reanimates him, or maybe because it’s the decent thing to get sullen young Kee out of London’s urban hell. But the forest has its terrors, too. Theo and Kee face outbursts of brilliantly orchestrated carnage that could be handheld war footage, and their baptism of fire changes them. Theo goes from clinging to existence to embracing life, courageously protecting the girl, while she entrusts him with a secret that could alter mankind’s future. Director Alfonso Cuaron (who made Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban genuinely fantastic) films Children of Men with a grimy realism that grips your nerves and never lets go. There are tour-de-force chase sequences here that would make Spielberg weep hot tears of envy, and the crystalline cinematography is a gallery of astonishments. Yet Cuaron also pulls us deep into the engrossing universe he has created. There is a stark absence of gadget porn in this futuristic adventure; the most advanced device we see is a video game, innovation at its most trivial. In most sci-fi epics, special effects substitute for story. Here they seamlessly advance it; the double-decker buses feature dazzling video billboards, while the interiors are shabby and worn. It’s such densely textured atmosphere that makes the strongest impression; almost every location carries the haunting sense that terrible things happened on this spot. But it’s the characters that are all-important. Michael Caine sparkles as Theo’s friend Jasper, an elderly hippie who keeps optimism afloat with Beatles music, nostalgia and strawberry cannabis. Caine’s warmth and presence are mesmerizing, even in the long-distance compositions Cuaron favors. Owen is superb as a man eroded by despair, whose decency and hope for the future are reawakened in brutal, lifethreatening circumstances. Even at his bravest, Theo is no chest-puffing Action Man. His flashes of daring are pure instinct, split-second reactions to immediate threats. He is riveting in scenes many actors of his rank would refuse. In one shot he tries to brace himself with booze after losing a companion but crumbles to his knees in tears instead. He provides the tragic dimension that makes Children of Men a moving, unforgettable experience. Reviewed by Colin Covert

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Pirates (a third has already been filmed) has been beautifully shot, impeccably edited and is a veritable master class in technical craftsmanship. It also makes no sense, is leadenly paced, has only a handful of so-so laughs and chronically mistakes big for better. Painfully self-indulgent, it runs for two-and-a-half-hours and feels like an endless version of the theme park ride that inspired it. Worse, it’s open ended. To see how it’s resolved, you have to go to the next installment scheduled for release later in 2007. Reviewed by Robert W. Butler

HOODWINKED G, 80 minutes

whodunit for kids and adults alike, this DVD snuck out just before Christmas and is a welcome addition to the holiday arsenal. The premise is simple enough: did the Wolf get framed in the Red Riding Hood story? Throw in a kind of CSI: New York subplot and the same kind of humour as Shrek, and this movie becomes a fairytale with a very comedic twist. Featuring the voices of Anne Hathaway as Red, Glenn Close as Granny and David Ogden-Stiers as the Detective. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

GEOFF THOMAS’ NEW The world’s first waterproof and SNAPPER SECRETS shockproof digital compact camera G, 120 minutes

–nother the Olympus Mju Tough 720SW seasonal release. It’s been 16

699

years since Thomas first produced the VHS version of Snapper Secrets, now The with new Olympus Tough world’s first – fully he’s back a fresh take on 720SW DVD. isAta120 waterproof a depth of 3m, shockproof minutes it is full to feature length and runs the from a height 1.5m, yet slim, baiting, sleek andtackling highly stylish. gamutof of targeting, and landing biginnovative ones using latestsuits baits, Thethe highly Toughthe 720SW a wide range of lures and technology. The mother all snap-wanting to take everyday uses: whether you’re aofsportsman per featured thesnowboarding DVD front or cover should pictureson while mountain-biking; a fashionista be a giveaway forthe any lingering doubters. who wants latest sleek and stylish camera that copes with spilt champagne or party crashes; or a hectic mum who Reviewed by Ian Wishart wants peace-of-mind that her camera will stand up to being played withFOR by the THE kids or falling out of her bag. HUNGER WILD

G, 160 minutes

Fashioned for everyday punishment.

ellington restaurateurs Steve Logan www.olympus.com.au/tough and Al Brown, of Logan Brown’s, take a hike around New Zealand in search of wild game and recipes in this Endorsed by the seven episode DVD of their TVNZ series. From crayfish at the West Coast’s rugged Punakaiki rocks or whitebaiting in the nearby to encounters For Mokihinui more informationRiver, contact: H.E.Perry Ltd. Phone (03) 339 0028 / (09) 303 1479 Available from all leading photography and specialty outlets.

RRP

The Olympus Mju Tough 720SW is available in two stylish colours: Silver and Aqua Blue. Features:

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3m waterproof

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1.5m shockproof

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7.1-megapixel

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3x optical zoom

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2.5 inch LCD screen

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Movie Mode with sound

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Bright Capture Technology

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Built-in help guide

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New easy-to-use menus

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Slim lithium ion battery with power for approximately 200 shots

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19.1MB internal memory plus takes xD-Picture card memory

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Up to 3.7 frames per second high-speed continuous shooting

touchLIFE

TOYBOX

iPOD SHUFFLE

The world’s most wearable digital music player is now available in five brilliant colours: blue, pink, green, orange and the original silver. A hit with customers since its initial shipment three months ago, iPod shuffle is just eight cubic centimetres in volume, weighs just 14 grams and features a stunning aluminium design with a built-in clip, making it the most wearable iPod ever. Based on Apple’s pioneering shuffle feature which lets music fans enjoy a continuous mix of their favourite songs anywhere they go, iPod shuffle contains one gigabyte of flash memory, holds up to 240 songs and is available in all five colors for just $149 inc GST.

Sound & vision

Extra-sensory perception for the masses

DENON’s A/V RECEIVERS

Denon announce two new entry-level A/V receivers that offer outstanding performance for money, the AVR-1707 ($899) and the AVR-1507 ($699). These new models offer 7 x 75 watts per channel, Auto Set-up feature (AVR-1707 only), and 32-bit floating point DSP with full 96kHz processing. Both models also support all current Home Theatre surround sound formats including: Dolby Digital EX, DTS-ES, Dolby ProLogic IIx, DTS-NEO:6 and DTS 96/24. These latest additions to Denon’s A/V line offer features normally found in receivers considerably more expensive. The AVR-1707 features advanced Video Up/Down conversion technology that supports Composite to S-Video and Component conversion. Three sets of Component video inputs together with 3 sets of S-Video switching make the AVR-1707 an ideal and versatile control centre. Improved video bandwidth of the Component inputs, 100MHz for the AVR-1707 and 30MHz for the AVR-1507, translate into greater picture resolution with sharper, more defined images.For further details contact John Murt on 07 5471 1062 or email johnmurt@highprofile.com.au.

94, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

Gigashot R and Gigabeat V

Toshiba (Australia) Pty Limited Information Systems Division (ISD) today launched its first-ever hard disk drive digital camcorder – the gigashot – to the Australian and New Zealand market. The gigashot R series combines a high quality video camera with a digital still camera all in one compact, easy-to-use device. Toshiba also announced the newest version of its gigabeat portable media player – the gigabeat V – with enhanced features including a 3.5” diagonal screen and an external speaker for audio. The gigabeat R and gigabeat V represent the newest additions to Toshiba’s gigastyle family of products that are designed to make the entertainment experience easier and more mobile, allowing users the flexibility to enjoy their favourite music, videos and images across a wide variety of devices, at home or on the go. Gigashot R30 (30GB): RRP NZ$1249 including GST. Gigashot R60 (60GB): RRP NZ$1599 including GST (bundled with dock). Gigabeat V (30GB) available in black: RRP NZ$649 including GST. Available via Toshiba Authorised Retailers, Resellers and Distributors, for full list please visit: www.isd.toshiba.com.au. For more information http://www.gigashot.com.au or http://www.gigabeat.com.au

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007, 95

realLIFE

LAST WORD

1977

2007

Peter Frampton’s Big Day Out Len Righi catches up with a survivor

eter Frampton, the British guitarist-singer-songwriter who became an arena-rock idol in the mid1970s, had no qualms about covering the Soundgarden grunge anthem “Black Hole Sun” on his late 2006 all-instrumental “Fingerprints” CD. “Since I first heard it on the radio, I had to have it. Certain songs you hear give you chills, and that’s one of them,” says Frampton, a U.S. citizen since 2004, from his home in the Indian Hill suburb east of Cincinnati. Frampton’s version raised enough goosebumps at The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences that both “Black Hole Sun” and “Fingerprints” were nominated this year for Grammy Awards, for best rock song and best pop vocal album, respectively. Though nominated twice before, in 1977 and 2001, if Frampton wins a Grammy on Feb. 11 it would be the first of his nearly 40-year career. Frampton’s fat and tastefully flamboyant rendition – arguably “Fingerprints’” highlight – features not only guest spots by Soundgarden/Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready but also the trademark talkbox/vocoder effect Frampton used on his mid-’70s concert recordings of “Show Me

96, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, March 2007

the Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do.” Though hardly boastful in conversation, Frampton, 56, speaks elatedly about the track. “It is a powerful rendition,” he says. “I knew it was going to be something special right away.” Frampton also expresses admiration for the song’s writer, Chris Cornell. “I love what he’s doing with Audioslave, as well as the Soundgarden stuff,” says Frampton. “And his solo record is brilliant.” But when he is asked if he would ever do “Black Hole Sun” with vocals, Frampton answers quickly, and somewhat surprisingly: “I would never sing it. I knew I could get away with doing the instrumental, but if I tried to sing it, well, it would be like Peter Frampton versus Steve Marriott,” referring to the diminutive Small Faces vocalist with the leviathan voice, whom Frampton worked with in Humble Pie starting in the late 1960s. Frampton says “there was no template” in putting together “Fingerprints.” “I wanted it to be a journey through my influences. I managed to have the very first person that made me want to play the guitar (The Shadows’ Hank Marvin) on the record. That started the ideas rolling.” Frampton says from inception to completion, the disc took about a year and a half – “between six and nine months of

actual work.” He tags the strummed spacey track “Float” and the funky, muscular, Stonesy opener, “Boot It Up,” as “very Frampton.” Saxophonist Courtney Pine wails away on the latter, playing Bobby Keys to Frampton’s Mick Taylor. Pine was suggested by long-time Frampton friend David Bowie. “After he had his heart problem (in 2004), I was calling up to check up on him, and asked if I was going to have sax on (the song),” Frampton recalls. “Courtney was a great recommendation.” Another notable track, the playfully titled “Blooze,” is not only, as Frampton puts it, “Allman Brothers-esque,” it features licks by Allman Brothers/Gov’t Mule guitarist Warren Haynes. “I had thought of Warren way before I even thought about doing the blues track,” says Frampton. “I wrote a blues track just in case he was available. It was meant for him.” Asked the disc’s biggest challenge, Frampton promptly fingers “Souvenirs de Nos Peres (Memories of Our Fathers),” by Nashville guitar virtuoso and American gypsy jazz pioneer John Jorgenson. “I have been saying for so long how much of a fan I was – am – of Django Reinhardt, and then I went to the best exponent of Django in this country,” says Frampton. “He said, `We could write something in a few days, or I’ve written this tune. Hope you like it.’ It was phenomenal.” The disc’s shortest track, at 1:09, is “Oh When ...,” but it is the most personal to Frampton. “I was just back from England from (his father Owen’s) funeral (in late 2005), and was due back in the studio,” says Frampton. “But I just said to the engineer, `You know what? The only thing I want to do today is this thing.’ My brother and I sang `Not Forgotten’ at the funeral, and this little piece was like a prelude. We recorded three or four takes, all different. ... It was my wife’s idea for the title.” Asked what he remembers most about his father, an art teacher who lived to be 86 and numbered Bowie among his pupils, Frampton replies, “He was very much a supporter and I learned from him how, when you’re passionate about something, you have to work at it. He was a passionate artist and a passionate teacher. I saw his personal work ethic and how he would do something every day. He honed his craft.”