Investigate, November 2006 by Investigate Magazine

New Zealand’s most talked-about magazine

INVESTIGATE November 2006:

Unmasking the Brethren

Brethren

Their one & only interview on politics, lies & private eyes

Wild Panthers Nuclear Rogues

WILD PANTHERS IN NZ

Rick Warren

Big black beasts in NZ, mountain lions in Oz, or just mutant moggies?

PHOTOS & WITNESSES INSIDE

NUCLEAR ROGUES Issue 70

North Korea has just detonated a nuclear weapon, and now Iran is in US sights

$7.95 November 2006

A PURPOSE DRIVEN MAN

He’s sold 25 million books, so what makes Rick Warren tick?

SPORT WATCH SERIES

Volume 6, Issue 70, November 2006

FEATURES BEHIND THE BRETHREN

They’re a group that traditionally keep to themselves, but lately members of the Exclusive Brethren Church have been getting more publicity than they bargained on. IAN WISHART persuaded the group of Brethren businessmen behind the anti-Labour campaign to front up for an exclusive interview on why they did it despite refusing to vote, where the money came from and some intriguing other information, such as the Labour Government minister with a strong Brethren background

THE SOUTH ISLAND BLACK PANTHER

26 32

On the strength of the information we’ve uncovered, it appears virtually certain that big cats are breeding and thriving on the outskirts of Christchurch, and eradication will be almost impossible. IAN WISHART has the most comprehensive investigation of the big cat mystery ever published in New Zealand, with photos, and witnesses

CAPTURED IN DARFUR

THE COMING STRIKE ON IRAN

A journalist trying to report on the massacres in Sudan’s Darfur region is caught and accused of spying. PAUL SALOPEK describes his 34 days in Sudan’s ‘Guantanamo’

New Zealand author MAURICE O’BRIEN is soon to publish a new book on the Middle East and, in this report, analyses the likely gameplan in any US/Israeli military strike against Iran

44 56

LEAKY BUILDING LESSONS

It’s not over yet, says forensic engineer ANDREW MCGREGOR in a special analysis of why the leaky home saga may yet come back to bite more homeowners

Cover: iStockphoto

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 6, issue 70, ISSN 1175-1290

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

Colin Gestro/Affinity Ads

Contributing Writers: Ross Ewing, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Lidia Wasowicz, 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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FOCAL POINT VOX-POPULI SIMPLY DEVINE LAURA’S WORLD STRAIGHT TALK EYES RIGHT LINE 1 TOUGH QUESTIONS

Editorial That kiss Breaking the cycle One law for all? Mark Steyn on the UN The good ol’ boys Meet Herman Clarkster Rick Warren

Heidi Wishart Bozidar Jokanovic

Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine PO Box 302188, North Harbour North Shore 0751, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor James Morrow Customer Services Debbie Marcroft, Sandra Flannery Tel: +61 2 9389 7608 Tel: +61 2 9369 1091 Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 Investigate Magazine PO Box 602, Bondi Junction Sydney, NSW 1355, AUSTRALIA SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 New Zealand 09 373 3676 By Post: To the respective PO Boxes Current Special Prices: Save 25% NZ Edition: $72 Australian Edition: A$72 EMAIL editorial@investigatemagazine.com ian@investigatemagazine.com jmorrow@investigatemagazine.com jkaye@investigatemagazine.com sales@investigatemagazine.com debbie@investigatemagazine.com All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted. We take no responsibility for unsolicited material sent to us. Please enclose a stamped, SAE envelope. Inquiries in the first instance should be made via email or fax.

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL

The prime of Miss Helen Clark

funny thing happened on the way to the newsstands last month: after our “Smoking Gun” issue was already printed, Don Brash went and got himself mousetrapped by one of his own caucus members over an alleged affair. Suddenly, what had been a largely routine publication of Investigate assumed Armageddon-like proportions in the minds of political journalists hungry for some juicy scandal on Labour so they could appear to be covering both sides. Within hours of the Brash story breaking, journalists were all over Investigate like a plague demanding to know what was in the upcoming issue, due out the following Monday. We brushed them off. We told them it was “an evolution rather than a resolution” of the story. It is easy to marginalise them, But they were persistent. call them names, accuse them of The Sunday News, and good them for trying, sent me a sinister things. But is it true? Have on barrage of emails requesting these seven men in particular done details, offering assistance anything illegal or immoral? with our investigation, and finally this one: “�� Sorry to be a pain, but I�� just �� wondered if we could touch base over the Davis story. I have been contacted in the last five minutes by a source who has put down a marker regarding any allegations/rumours. Basically, it was making clear that the Prime Minister was ready to sue if anyone stepped out of line and also indicated that they very much expected you to be running a story in the issue of the magazine appearing on Monday. If you could spare five minutes to talk that would be great.” Now that one caught my attention, with its reference to a source close to the Prime Minister apparently stirring the pot. The Sunday Star Times was equally persistent, and went further, suggesting they’d been told Investigate had “wealthy backers” prepared to bankroll a defamation case if necessary…which turned out to be code for Prime Minister Helen Clark’s assertion of exactly the same thing a few days later. The past four weeks have been spent fighting a rearguard battle against spin from the PM’s office suggesting Investigate was a front for the Exclusive Brethren – which would be an absolute hoot given that I’d never met one until we interviewed them a few days before this latest issue went to press. The irony is that the Brethren have worked most closely over the years with Labour, rather than National.

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

We have been asked by readers to investigate the Brethren, and will do so if fresh and significant evidence is presented of wrongdoing. But so much of the email traffic and tips consisted of nebulous things like “you should investigate their tax free status”. In the absence of specific leaked documents showing financial irregularities, there’s nothing to investigate on that point: they’re a church. All churches enjoy the same charitable status, as do organisations like the AIDS Foundation. What a church spends its loot on, whether it is Brethren, Anglican or Catholic, is perhaps of prurient interest to the public and legitimate interest to members of the respective churches, but unless it is immoral or illegal it is irrelevant. We set out to interview the Brethren men to give them a fair chance to tell their story. They’re not media savvy and it is very easy for the media to take advantage of that. It is easy to marginalise them, call them names, accuse them of sinister things. But is it true? Have these seven men in particular done anything illegal or immoral? Are these seven men in particular to be tarred and feathered with all the perceived sins of other Exclusive Brethren throughout history. If they have done something wrong, give us some specific allegations and we'll certainly investigate further. But the politics of hate is an extremely dangerous path, and the Liberal Left, like Labour, are very good at it. The Left likes to frame debates and set agendas. It has been doing that against the Brethren since before the last election through the inflammatory language chosen and the sinister images painted. You will see, in our comparisons between Labour’s attacks on the Brethren (all prior to the Private Investigator incident, I would add) and the language used by Adolf Hitler against the Jews, there are striking similarities in tone and style. Both the NZ socialists and Germany’s National Socialists were trying to paint a minority group as evil, sly, not to be associated with. You could equally, to see the power to offend of Labour’s words, substitute the words “Muslims” or “Gays” for “Brethren”, and then ask yourself whether Labour would be brave enough to say the same things or similar about those two minority groups. Even former Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore can see the dark pedigree of Labour’s current strategy.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006,

VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES A CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Little would be of less interest to the public, including Ian Wishart and his Investigate magazine than the rumoured “gaiety” of Peter Davis, and by implication that of his wife, if she were not the Prime Minister of an ultra Left government which has undemocratically forced a socially corrosive homosexual, feminist, anti-family agenda upon the country. But even if the PM is not that way inclined, (while openly supporting it and appearing to favour it ), she and her unusually high proportion of homosexual colleagues are still guilty of a “conflict of interest”, except that in this case the conflict of interest does not involve the usual business/financial advantage, but an ideological/social engineering advantage – which has been inflicted upon an entire nation. In short, these people wilfully allow their personal and private sexual leanings to illegitimately trespass into the political legislative sphere. This being so, any undeclared homosexuals in government who have not distanced themselves from this type of thing have forfeited their right to privacy – and so far Ian Wishart appears to be the only journalist in the country who understands the issue and is brave enough to address it. Colin Rawle, Dunedin

VOTERS HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW

I have bought my first Investigate magazine. I am pleased to learn that at last journalism is alive and well in New Zealand. If Helen Clark is a lesbian and Peter Davis is gay (as has been the consistent rumours in New Zealand for many years) why do the New Zealand journalists continue to hide this open secret? Is the political veneer of independence so thin that they can only report on the indiscretions of Dr Don Brash? If Clark has the honesty and integrity that she says she is expecting of Don Brash why doesn’t she tell us her full story (if there is one)? Let’s dismiss all these rumours once and for all. Let’s hear about Heather Simpson who seems to be an apparition in her office, yet we are told has a strong influence on her speeches and policies. Let’s hear about how many nights she and Davis spend together in that happy marriage? A person’s private life is just that but when you are in

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

public office making life-changing decisions, the public have a right to know whether that person may exhibit any particular bias in making those decisions. Do they have some odd religious or sexual bent for example, that may impinge upon their decision making? Give the public some credit that most will be able to weigh up these idiosyncrasies when deciding how and for whom they will cast their vote. Peter Jacobson, via email

POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Congratulations on a great magazine. I’ve read it ever since I became aware of it, and will often leave my copy on the table in the work cafeteria for others to read, and it’s surprising just how many people comment on it – and its almost always positive feedback. It’s so nice to read a fair and balanced opinion on so many issues, rather than the liberal left hogwash the rest of the mainstream media feel obliged to churn out! Keep up the good work. Jason Bough, Auckland

TRASH

We think your magazine is trash – nothing conclusive and the accusations re Helen Clark’s husband, gutter journalism. Do an article on the Exclusive Brethren and put forward some of their filth....great Christian people they are. We have read some of your articles and books and there is never any conclusion and you are always ‘left up in the air’. Why all this crap being written now? Tit for tat re Don Brash’s affair. Pretty low when this happens. Lynn & John Bray, via email EDITOR RESPONDS

We are doing an article on the Brethren. If you have evidence of “filth” send it in, otherwise you are flinging mud with even less substantiation than you accuse us of. You obviously haven’t read my books on the Winebox, which accused named individuals of fraud and laid out the evidence, nor have you read Investigate where we laid out chapter and verse the dishonesty of former Attorney-General David Parker, the criminal fraud allegations surrounding Owen Glenn – Labour’s biggest election campaign donor – and, prior to the 2002 election, we published documents showing financial ties between the Business Roundtable and National.

As for your final tilt, the Investigate piece featuring Peter Davis kissing another man was already printed prior to the Don Brash affair hitting the headlines. The timing was coincidental, it wouldn’t have been an issue had Brash not been pinged, and our purpose was to draw out information in regard to some new allegations we’re checking out about Davis and Clark in New Zealand.

MEDIA IN LABOUR’S POCKET

Fantastic work! I’m not at all surprised that the “in Labour’s pocket” media are whining about the Investigate article. Absolutely low journalism to completely misrepresent what you had written, but of course we are used to this now. I’m reaching the conclusion that I wouldn’t even shake hands with half these journo’s without counting my fingers afterwards. And how self righteous of the Prime Minister to now call a truce on all this. Clearly Brash’s approach and fronting up to issues is rebounding on them. Fabulous. Keep up the great work. Edwin Wigmore, via email

A SUPPORTA OV HELIN CLUCK

I thing (sic) your magazine is absolute garbage! It is useful only for wiping my ass (Being a family magazine I presume you mean ‘donkey’? – Ed.) but not much else. It is filled from cover to back with bias (sic) right-wing fundamentalist bulls**t. There is a reason why people like you no longer hold power in this country; the reason is because we no longer live in the dark ages. You are very much a minority, Mr. Wishart. The very fact that your magazine is entirely dedicated to Helen Clark’s downfall is merely a testament to here (sic) success. It may come as a surprise to you that this Labour-led government has won three successive elections but this evidence (sic) we have a rational population. But I’m sure you would prefer to be led by a two faced adulterer because that is so inline with your religion, then (sic) by an intelligent, caring and strong leader such as our PM – Miss Helen Clark. God bless her. From your average MAINSTREAM New Zealander. Marwan Juma, via email EDITOR RESPONDS

Marwan, I presume the typo’s and grammatical errors are either because English is a second language or because you were once an Investigate magazine proofreader, in either case I’ ll cut you some slack. But if indeed you are an average MAINSTREAM New Zealander born and bred here, you should offer thanks to the Labour Party policy wonks controlling our education curriculum for the sterling job they’re doing.

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PETER DAVIS KISSED SOMEONE ELSE

I have just been reading a report on the internet re an article you are reported to be about to publish regarding Peter Davis and a man “hugging him on election night”. Let me assure you I, along with many other TV viewers that night definitely witnessed another man come from the Labour supporter’s audience and KISS Peter Davis. My recollection was of a smaller man, I think with some sort of beard. That particular piece of footage seems to have very conveniently been hi-jacked as I have never

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seen it played since. (Helengrad at work!) There is absolutely no doubt that we saw what we saw – I was gob smacked!(please excuse the pun.) If Helen Clark and Labour want to dish it out, they have to be prepared to take it as well. Good on you for pursuing what you are re Davis – I have no knowledge of the incident but hope that you will be able to reveal more to the public soon. Brian Cooper, via email

SOMEONE ELSE WHO SAW IT

I was surprised to see the photos of a man in a blue coat (Dr Ian Scott) kissing Dr Peter Davis on the election night (17-9-2005) because on the same night, on TV, I saw another man kissing Dr Davis. It was on the way to the victory speech, Dr Davis was walking behind the PM. Suddenly a sprightly, shorter than Dr Davis, brightly-dressed old man appeared and kissed Dr Davis in the same position as Dr Scott did. Joanna Sanders, via email

CONGRATULATIONS

I would like to personally congratulate you on a job well done. I have just come across your magazine with all the hoo haa in the media in the last couple of days. I think you rock!!!!!! Keep up the good work. Ravind Chandra, Dunedin

IT’S ALL PART OF THE TRAINING…

Congratulations on your most excellent publication. Your last issue particularly called to mind the saying ‘”chuck a rock at a pack of dogs – the one that yelps the most is the one you hit” – in this case our dear and glorious leader – Saint Helen is yelping. Dick Hemmings, Matamata

YES, PRIME MINISTER?

Dear Ian, We have no reason to believe there is any truth or substance in the implications in your questions. In any case, the answers to all the questions is no. We cannot regard you as an objective journalist and henceforth we’ll treat your requests for information on the same basis as we do any other partisan figure. David Lewis, Chief Press Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister

NO, PRIME MINISTER!

Dear David, You seem to forget the years I was hated by National for the Winebox coverage, and also in fact our publication on the eve of the 2002 election of documents linking the Business Roundtable to National. But then again, that’s selective memory from the ninth floor. I make no apologies for catching the Prime Minister and her team in continued acts of dishonesty. It’s my job. Knowing what I now do about Helen Clark, it is little wonder she appears terrified of the continued scrutiny from Investigate magazine. There will, at some point soon, be some fresh questions. Regards, Ian

10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

YES, PRIME MINISTER? II

Dear Ian, You sound like David Brent [of The Office]. Regards, David Lewis, Chief Press Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister

NO, PRIME MINISTER! II

Yeah...I thought some of his quotes were quite apropos: “If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.” “If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven’t understood the seriousness of the situation.” “If your boss is getting you down, look at her through the prongs of a fork and imagine her in jail.” “When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger handle this?”” Take your pick.. Cheers, Ian

YES, PRIME MINISTER? III

“Is your work done? Are all pigs fed, watered and ready to fly?...” David Lewis, Chief Press Secretary Office of the Prime Minister

NO, PRIME MINISTER! III

Scheduled for take off around the same time the words “integrity” and “Labour” can be used in the same sentence without causing guffaws of laughter. Regards, Ian

DID HELEN DROP IAN IN IT?

Top effort on the Peter Davis photo spread. There may be another story here. The man identified (Dr Ian Scott) was quoted by PM Helen Clark as being “boisterous & drunk” when the kiss occurred. Dr Ian Scott is the resident medical doctor at Community Alcohol & Drug Services (CADS) www.cads.org.nz and works in the Medical Detoxification Unit at 50 Carrington Rd, Pt Chevalier. The detox unit works with substance dependent clients, attempting to get them clean and sober for transition into substance dependent treatment centres. Name & address supplied, Auckland

IN OTHER NEWS…

I read with intense interest Mark Steyn’s “The Going Down of the Sun” and I couldn’t agree more with him! We in the West appear to be on a very dangerous downwards path to mere oblivion, because we somehow just cannot believe that Muslims can overcome us eventually. I am now 78 and used to be a boy prisoner of the Japanese in Java, 1942 – 45. Right after the war ended, when the Dutch prisoners, including women, children and others were just coming out of the camps and they thought they were finally released from the Japanese terror, they were confronted by Indonesian “freedom” fighters, who slaughtered very many of the Dutch and people who sym-

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BABIES BEATEN SENSELESS; ROCKS ON THE MOTORWAY: HAS CRADLE TO THE GRAVE WELFARE BECOME A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY?

Fresh information emerges on ‘the Peter Davis incident’

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Inside Guantanamo

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The exclusive interview that cost a US commander dearly

Mark Inglis – Laura Wilson’s take on Everest ‘Year of the Cat’ Al Stewart’s 1st NZ interview

Issue 69

Attitude in the classroom – confronting the blackboard jungle

Issue 67

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To Sir With Grudge

Mystery Deepens

Lebanon: Red Cross Hoax

Cyndi Lauper

Al Stewart

Telecom changes will put the world at your fingertips

MURDER IN THE BADLANDS

“If we still had old-fashioned maps, they’d shade out large chunks of South Auckland with the words: ‘Here be Dragons’...”

Captured on candid camera

10 years in jail for a crime he did not commit:

End of the West

Depression

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In The Loop

Peter Davis & a mystery man

NZ Immigrants

Telecom

Peter Davis

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Taxpayers’ airline execs caught in flights-for-sex uproar

August 2006:

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AIR NEW ZEALAND & THE CALL GIRLS

The Smoking Gun issue...

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How the West was lost:

“If Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican vicar in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an ‘Arms are for Hugging’ sticker...”

RED CROSS HOAX – dirty PR tricks in Lebanon AUSTRALIA’S OTHER WILDLIFE HUNTER – Ben Cropp

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pathised with them. In so many places it was a massacre. No one ever writes about it nowadays, they say: “It’s past history”. Yeah, Right! J. van der Lijn, Palmerston North

EDUCATION SYSTEM

The stories coming out of the annual PPTA conference are horrendous: overcrowded classrooms are often war zones where drugs are dealt and assaults on persons and property are commonplace. Teachers blame the parents. Parents blame the teachers. It is the parents’ fault. For generations they’ve allowed the schools and teachers to ignore, challenge and undermine their parental authority. They’ve put up with dumbed-down, politically correct curriculum. In good faith they’ve sent their children into environments saturated with verbal and physical abuse, places where the peer groups breed self-centred, irresponsible and immoral attitudes. Yet the parents thought these things didn’t happen “at our school”. Fact is, parents rarely have any idea what goes on in the classroom or on the schoolgrounds, though they are aware of the flu, diarrhoea, TB and head lice epidemics that sweep through these institutions with incredible speed and regularity. It’s the teachers’ fault. They’ve been trained to consider themselves as the experts and that many parents are incompetent. After dealing with a few rat-bag kids, teachers are convinced it’s true of nearly all parents. Teachers reckon children must be separated from these dolts (the parents) and herded together to socialise one another to the lowest common denominator. They’ve also been trained to hold all cultures, moral codes and lifestyles as equally valid They are not to assume they are “teachers” with a useful body of knowledge to pass on. They are now “facilitators” to help children, as a group, construct their own body of relevant knowledge from pre-selected, politically correct, secular sources. It’s the system’s fault. It was designed to drive a wedge of alienation between parents and children. It was designed to intellectually dumb down the population into malleable units who wouldn’t challenge the political or industrial elite but would be

resigned to “life-long learning” of what these “experts” said they needed to know. It was designed to replace the church with the secular government school as the centre of community life. With both the family and church marginalized to near irrelevancy, the individual became mostly separated from either, a sitting duck for intimidation and control by a growing government bureaucracy with increasingly totalitarian tendencies. As succeeding generations of parents felt increasingly disconnected from both their children and their parenting tasks because the state required them to send their precious children away to be raised by agents of the state for six hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year for ten years, abdication of parental responsibility seemed normal. After all, everyone else did it. And it became normal for schools to take on more and more parenting tasks to where today many schools toilet train and feed as well as provide pastoral care and counselling services. And it became normal for children to be even more ill-behaved and undisciplined than the year before. This year’s PPTA conference horror stories illustrate the point, as did last year’s horror stories. Teachers have gotten it off their chests, parents remain oblivious since it all happens in another world to theirs, so nothing substantial will be done, and society completes another loop in the downward spiral. While there are some exceptional schools around, they are exceptions. If the government could see past its desire for maximum control and encourage home education, where parents teach and train up their own children at home, we would see a growth in de-institutionalised thinking, a growth in parental responsibility, healthier and more connected family life, stronger academics, more practical down-to-earth learning and less of the me-centred brand of socialisation than we’ve seen in ages. Such people are at the cutting edge of our civil and religious liberties. Their efforts in these areas would benefit us all. Craig & Barbara Smith, National Directors Home Education Foundation Palmerston North

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SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE Breaking the cycle

n the Cape York town of Hopevale on Australia’s northern tip, where Noel Pearson grew up, there is every kind of gambling except one – cards. There is a social taboo against card gambling that lingers from the days when the Lutherans ran Hopevale mission, back when Aboriginal children like Pearson’s father and grandfather were taught to read the Bible back to front and to write beautifully. “They never do card gambling at Hopevale,” Pearson says. “They gamble on pokies, drink, fornicate, everything else, but there is a remnant social norm about card gambling.” Pearson, 41, the director of the Cape York Institute, likes the card gambling example because it “just illustrates the strength of social norms”, the often invisible glue that creates social order and civility “If you don’t agree to regular drug and protects the vulnerable. “That’s why advantaged testing for two years and satisfy middle-class people don’t other benchmarks [such as school have to worry about things attendance] you will be on income like school attendance and readiness,” he says. By management and you will not school school “readiness”, Pearson have the freedom of spending your does not mean whether a money as you want” child can recite the alphabet, tie shoelaces and cut along a straight line. He means the basic daily readiness of being fed, washed and well slept before coming to school. Pearson aims to rebuild social norms that have disappeared over the past two generations from Cape communities. It is part of his plan to dramatically reform the way welfare is delivered, and tie it to behavioural benchmarks such as school attendance and responsible parenting. The Federal Government has contributed $3 million for a pilot project and he has just returned from a trip around Cape York to ensure the voluntary participation of the four communities of Aurukun, Hopevale, Coen and Mossman Gorge. Pearson laments the situation in which the sacred bond of love between mother and child has been broken by substance abuse and the collapse of social norms. He openly declares he wants to reintroduce “intolerance” into his communities: intolerance of drugs, intolerance of alcohol, intolerance of sexual abuse, intolerance of domestic violence, intolerance of not sending your children to school every day.

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Pearson’s critics – mostly middle-class, progressive-left and social-justice romantics – say his plans to tie welfare payments to behavioural benchmarks are draconian. But they don’t understand what it is like to live in a community without social norms, he says. He is determined that his welfare reform project will address the horrific abuse of indigenous children which has been reported this year with sickening regularity. If parents are drug users, for instance, he asks why authorities hand back a child into such a known dangerous environment. He wants instead to take control of welfare payments as the tool to force irresponsible parents to clean up their act, to say: “If you don’t agree to regular drug testing for two years and satisfy other benchmarks [such as school attendance] you will be on income management and you will not have the freedom of spending your money as you want.” Instead, welfare payments will be managed for the parent and used to pay for rent, food, school supplies and other necessities. “It is a carrot and stick approach,” Pearson says. The welfare reform project complements the institute’s work on education. Pearson outlined some of those achievements at an advisory group meeting in Cairns for the Every Child is Special project. It includes a successful pilot project at Coen primary school, in which the 15 least proficient readers were given intensive, systematic instruction in phonics for a year by specialist teachers from Macquarie University’s MULTILIT (Making Up Lost Time In Literacy) program. The results, unveiled late last month, were encouraging; the children, whose reading ability was three to four years behind the Australian average, gained an average 21.4 months in reading accuracy. The Higher Expectations program identifies the brightest primary school children and “works aggressively” to send them to elite boarding schools, Pearson says. The first candidate is at Brisbane Grammar this year, “and he’s survived and done well”. Another program supports indigenous students at university. This year there were 10 candidates, and next year another dozen. Pearson is proud that both programs are “completely privately funded”. Ann Creek, a Coen elder and mother of five who has been a driving force in improving literacy at Coen school,

says: “Kids absorb knowledge; they want to be part of it, they want to learn more. If given the chance they’ll grasp it … We all want our kids to achieve so they can go on to further education. They want to make a name for their family, for their clan group and for their community.” Pearson’s “Cape York Agenda” of economic and social development aims to build the “capabilities” of indigenous people, freeing them from the yoke of welfare passivity, empowering them with proper education so they have at least the same knowledge of Western culture and proficiency in English as their peers in the rest of Australia. He says he hopes to transform communities

within a generation. But first he must re-establish social order, and that requires a “hard bottom line”. “Enforcement of the Education Act, [taking control of the] family benefit payment is the draconian bottom line we think is part of the process. We have an escalation in place that means we hopefully never have to get to the bottom line. But without the bottom line there is not much hope of re-establishing social norms.” And as Bernadette Denigan, the director of the Every Child is Special project, reminded the group: “The ultimate draconian bottom line is the removal of children by government and that does happen.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 15

LAURA‘S WORLD

LAURA WILSON One law for all

on Brash speaks about human rights with the naivety of someone whose life experience is somewhat limited, whether from too much time spent inside an office, or in the academic realm gazing at textbooks, or from simply not traveling much outside of the pleasure-tourism square. I simply cannot think of too many world leaders who seriously think that enshrining human rights in a code of laws, makes them magically exist throughout society. As if once such laws are passed, the formerly privileged group can sit back and watch the underprivileged make the most of their new club membership; the glorious level-playing field they have finally been allowed onto. Within a decade or so “Every advertising executive in the underprivileged should thoroughly learnt the New Zealand knows that a blonde, have game rules, and we should cute Pakeha child sells a lot more see them in happy comPumpkin Patch clothes than a Maori petition across the board, sprouting up as players in kid, and more still than a flat-faced, every sector; as politicians, almond-eyed Korean child” business elite, actors, dentists, entrepreneurs. But as anyone with powers of observation can see, this scenario is not the case. Formerly underprivileged groups are not equal on the playing field, even after 100 years of being afforded equal opportunity by law. Don Brash puts this down to the choices made by individuals within these ‘former’ groups. Obviously, many Maori choose smoking cigarettes and sponging off the Benefit, rather than making the most of educational and career opportunities. In the same vein, women making up only 20 % of business and political leaders, and earning on average a third less than men for the same work, must mean many females are simply choosing not to aspire after the top jobs, maybe because they prefer to become mothers. Or maybe because, in accordance with former scientific theory, their brains really are smaller and less capable. Whatever the reasons, Don makes it clear that the failure of these groups to make the most of their lawful entitlement to prosper, is not the government’s fault. Not anyone’s fault but their own. This nice, clean ‘personal responsibility’ maxim is proving very, very popular with many New Zealanders, heartily sick of continuously

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being blamed for the failings of others, and then having to shoulder the taxpayer burden of supporting so many failures through life. Most people who share Don’s attitude are good, friendly, hard-working Kiwis who would go out of their way to help a stranger change a flat tyre. That’s why the term naïve befits them, rather than malicious or even unfair. They simply lack experience of life across the fence. This may be acceptable for a citizen going about their life, but certainly is not for a leader and spokesperson of an entire nation. Not only would Don be an unsuitably naïve spokesman for New Zealand, but he would certainly never get a job at Saatchi and Saatchi, or Nike. They know the reality that’s bigger than laws. They know that what motivates individuals, and more importantly what empowers them, is attitude and self-image. Informing someone they have the full, equal right to do well at school, then choose a great career path and have a hell of a fun life, is not a mere fraction as powerful as filling that person’s daily life full of images of successful, cool, powerful people who look like them, talk like them, and come from similar backgrounds. A Maori kid from Tolaga Bay does not grow up infused with images of people with flattish noses, brown skin and characteristic halting speech flourishing in all aspects of life, including (most influentially for a child) the media arena. He is not likely to see many of his ilk advertising cool products on TV or starring in popular programmes, or reading the news. In spite of laws that disallow employment on a basis of race, gender or appearance, any honest employer will tell you that they hire a person according to these very things. They do it without knowing, which is why most Pakeha employers can honestly and even stridently deny that they discriminate in this manner. But there are those who are excruciatingly aware that they operate their business on a discriminatory basis every single day, even if they don’t want to. Business is business, and unlike politics and the legal system, it operates on realities, not ideals. Every advertising executive in New Zealand knows that a blonde, cute Pakeha child sells a lot more Pumpkin Patch clothes than a Maori kid, and more still than a flat-faced, almondeyed Korean child.

Photography: Peter Skadberg

Every honest agent for a recruitment company will tell you that weekly, if not daily, an employer looking for new staff will specify outright or in thinly veiled language that they seek a pakeha kiwi, or a very pakeha-ised Maori. They do this by emphasizing the applicants are required to be excellent and effective communicators, with a flawless grasp of English. They know well that this rules out nearly one hundred percent of immigrants, and an unfortunately large percentage of Maori. In such ways, the laws banning discrimination are broken countless times a day, in ways impossible to prosecute against. Attitudes are notoriously slow to change, and outweigh laws in effectiveness by ten to one. So when Dr. Brash speaks of one law for all, as being that which underpins an equal society, he ascribes a power to laws which they simply don’t have. It is not enough to make good, fair laws and then expect people to abide by them. We need to promote and even enforce attitudinal change, if we are to see any improvement in the lives of people who have grown up on the margins of the mainstream, and who certainly do not have an equal opportunity of finding acceptance in successful businesses, media organizations and even institutions such as sailing clubs and Playcentres, all of which are – by definition – mainstream. The power of attitude is wholly understood by the people at ARMS (Auckland Regional Migrant Soc.) and by commentators like Lincoln Tan of the Herald. They know firsthand that a migrant can apply for a job knowing they have the perfect level of training and experience, and even get to the interview stage (provided they use a fake Westernised name). But as soon as they walk into the interview room, they see a glimmer of surprise flash through the interviewer’s eyes at discovering applicant ‘Sarah Johnson’ is a Punjabi Indian, and they know the door has already closed.

I personally feel so embarrassed by Don’s assertions that the lives many people are living in New Zealand are due entirely to their own choices and not to the preferences and proscriptions of the mainstream, which is most certainly an exclusive club, it just happens to be the biggest one in the country. He makes every hard working, genuine, humble individual of ethnic or minority (such as handicapped, physically impaired etc) status feel to blame for the repeated rejections they experience on so many levels in our tolerant, friendly society. Unpopular concepts like Maori quotas for places in law school exist because minorities have been unable to break into the culture for decades, and so in exasperation the door is opened forcefully and a few are thrown in, hoping that the way will be paved for others to follow. It takes ignorance for a person such as Brash to question why the way needs to be paved, when good marks and diligence are enough to get any Maori in through the front door. But they don’t walk in the front door because they don’t feel welcome, or they feel culturally estranged. This is a subtle but powerful thing that very few Pakeha take the time to imagine. Pakeha do not see law school as a culture, simply because it is their culture, and appears ‘normal’. For decades women entering faculties such as law, medicine and engineering had to bear a culture that was entirely male, and therefore very foreign and discouraging. Over time these faculties have been somewhat gender neutralized, but they have yet to be culture neutralized. Until they are, minority cultures need encouragement and support, or change will simply be too slow to keep up with the pace of development and we will see groups of people becoming increasingly isolated and disenfranchised. A quick look at countries like Germany, France and England should be enough to terrify Kiwi’s into not going down that path.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 17

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN End of the world, anyone?

he last intervention in public affairs Ted Turner made was a month or two back, when he recounted what an agreeable vacation he had in Kim Jong-il’s North Korea. (I sent him a postcard saying, “Wish you were still there.”) He’s now weighed in on the ayatollahs and his line’s pretty straightforward: Why shouldn’t Iran have nukes? “They’re a sovereign state,” he said. “We have 28,000. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel – they’ve got 100 of them approximately – or India or Pakistan or Russia. And really, nobody should have them. They aren’t usable by any sane person.” Cut to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the United Nations last month. “Alan Dershowitz would be better His speech was mostly a lot off trying to get America expelled of run-of-the-mill kook boilerplate – the U.N. is a stooge from the U.N., and encouraging it to of the Great Satan (if only), join a new group of nations serious America started the IsraelHezbollah war (whatever) – about defending freedom in the but he wound up the usual world: it would be a very small club” shtick with a prayer for the return of the Twelfth Imam, the so-called “Hidden Imam” – or, as the Iranian president put it, “the perfect, righteous human being and the real savior who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood on the planet.” This isn’t just some cockamamie pie-in-the-sky deal. Last year, Mr. Ahmadinejad told the Indian foreign minister that everything would be hunky-dory in two years’ time, which the minister took to mean when Iran’s nukes would be ready to fly. But, as the president went on to explain, that’s apparently the Twelfth Imam’s ETA. The New York Times and most other media outlets didn’t mention Mr. Ahmadinejad’s big Twelfth Imam finale. America would appear to be largely uninterested in the arrival in 2007 of “the perfect, righteous human being.” If he shows up on schedule, the attitude of most Americans seems to be that they’re washing their hair that night. But go back to Ted Turner’s observation on nukes: “They aren’t usable by any sane person.” The annals of human history are filled with millennial cultists of one form or another but ours is the first era in which they

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have the capability to live up to their sandwich boards. President Ahmageddonouttahere is an apocalyptic with a delivery system: “The end is nigh” is an old slogan. Now the means are nigh. What to do? Alan Dershowitz is a big liberal but he’s a sane liberal and, unlike many of his chums, he acknowledges the threat. So what’s his big idea? He thinks Iran should be expelled from the United Nations. Yeah, right. There’s more chance of the Twelfth Imam eloping with Paris Hilton. Iran’s president was a huge hit at the U.N. Short of bringing out some burqa-clad Rockettes and doing a couple of choruses of “This Is The Dawning Of The Age Of A Scary Us,” he couldn’t have been a bigger smash. I said a year or two back, apropos the U.N., that it’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice cream and blend it with a quart of dog poop the result will taste more like the latter than the former. And recent performances at the General Assembly were a fine illustration of that. Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Chavez were the star finalists of “UnAmerican Idol,” and, just when you need Simon Cowell, the only Brit in sight was the oleaginous Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan’s deputy, fawning over every crazy in town. The rest of the bigwigs reacted like Paula Abdul, able to discern good points even in fellows who boast about not having any. That’s the reality the Dershowitzes refuse to confront – that structurally the U.N. enables thugs to punch above their weight. As further evidence of my fecal ice-cream thesis, the Iranian president followed his boffo speech with a trip to the Council on Foreign Relations where he said the Palestinians were the ones being penalized for an event they had nothing to do with: World War II and the Holocaust, “if it, in fact, occurred.” On the matter of whether it did occur, he said, “More unbiased research should be carried out on the subject.” A survivor of Dachau, Morris Greenberg, happened to be in the room and pointed this out. President Ahmouttamatree then queried whether Mr. Greenberg was old enough to have been at Dachau. Hugo Chavez was an even bigger hit, in part because he eschewed the Holocaust denying, doesn’t see himself as the warm-up act for the Twelfth Imam, and stuck closer to the American left’s talking points – it’s all the Bushitler’s fault. He denounced George Bush as an

“imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal” and also “the devil,” he held up a copy of some unreadable Noam Chomsky book, gave it a big plug and subsequently regretted he couldn’t meet with the late Professor Chomsky. Professor Chomsky isn’t late, he’s alive and well. Granted, it’s easy to get the impression he’s been dead for 30 years, since he hasn’t had a new idea since the early 1970s. Speaking of which, Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, agreed Mr. Chavez was a little overheated but was broadly sympathetic to the general Venezuelan line: “Let me put it this way, I can understand the frustration, ah, and the anger of certain people around the world because of George Bush’s policies.” Without Mr. Bush “frustrating” them, Mr. Chavez and Mr. Ahmadinejad would be as rhetorically bland as the prime minister of the Netherlands. It may be news to the CFR types and the Dems but the U.N. demonstrated recently that it is utterly incapable of reform. Indeed, any reforms would be more likely to upgrade and enhance the cliques of thugs and despots than of the few states willing to stand up to them. The most sensible proposal came from Mr. Chavez, who demanded the U.N. relocate to Venezuela. You go, girl. Alan Dershowitz would be better off trying to get America expelled from the U.N., and encouraging it to join a new group of nations serious about defending freedom in the world: it would be a very small club. Recently, Jacques Chirac dropped the threat of sanctions against Iran. A few months ago, he briefly mused about nuking

“It may be news to the CFR types and the Dems but the U.N. demonstrated recently that it is utterly incapable of reform. Indeed, any reforms would be more likely to upgrade and enhance the cliques of thugs and despots than of the few states willing to stand up to them. The most sensible proposal came from Mr. Chavez, who demanded the U.N. relocate to Venezuela”

the Persians, but he’s now folded like... well, not like the Arabs and their tents: They’re busily pitching them all over Europe with no plans to fold at all. Anyone who thinks the U.N. is the body to mediate Iran’s nuclearization or anything else is more deluded than Mr. Ahmadinejad. At this rate, the Twelfth Imam will be the next secretary-general. © Mark Steyn, 2006

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EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER The good ol’ boys

got called a redneck the other day. I don’t do the insult thing, so naturally, I took it as a compliment. The accuser was some wowser who’d taken objection to one of my rare, and moderate, opinions. The incident didn’t trouble me, though it did, as many of life’s encounters are prone to, set me to thinking. What is a redneck? I receive, amongst the volumes of correspondence which fill my email, regular despatches from a contact in the US; a Vietnam veteran, ex-Special Forces, and now a prolific social and political commentator. Much of what he sends is humorous, and a proportion of this is aimed at poking fun at American “I feel most comfortable in the Rednecks. I trolled through inbox files. Surely the company of the peoples who are my New Zealand redneck canmost like me. Am I a redneck not be the same species as because of this?” his American counterpart? In general terms, I’ve more often thought of myself as a classical liberal than a raging fascist. I mean I’m a winemaker – almost by definition, that paints me as being urbane and sophisticated, one would think. So I wondered, what are the attitudes which make a redneck in New Zealand today, and do I, however unwittingly, fit the description? I like to call a spade a spade. And unlike some metropolitan commentators, I actually know what a spade is. I own several, I know how to use them, and I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. Does this make me a redneck? I also like to call an idiot an idiot, and a hypocrite a hypocrite. I don’t like the liberals pinching the term liberal any more than I like queers pinching the term gay. I mean if people want to be weak, stupid, effeminate, erectile dysfunctional, naïve, apologist, namby-pamby, thumb-sucking, lefty pinko fantasy-land morons, let them find their own word for themselves, and leave “liberal” for us genuine freedom-loving, gonad-equipped, libertarian go-getters. I don’t like part-Maori hypocrites demanding compensation for injustices which weren’t done to them, from people who wouldn’t have been responsible for them if they had been. If people want to identify with their 1/16th Maori ancestry, I say good on them. But when they ignore the other 93.75% of their lineage, and want a free

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ride from me because of something which happened to their great-great-grandfather, 100 years before my old man got off the boat, I say they can go fish. Here’s a question; if I stump up for an inflation-adjusted increase on the muskets and blankets which your great-grand-pappy took in exchange for some property which he probably never lived on, let alone owned individually, will you give back the vote, rugby, Christmas, trial by jury, the right of free passage on the Queen’s Highway, metal, the wheel, beer, tobacco, spuds, mutton, the protection of the Crown, and everything else which the evil white man brought with him, along with 15/16ths of your genetics? No? Didn’t think so. Am I a redneck yet? I don’t have a problem with people being queer if that’s their kick. I know some excellent poofters. So long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses, what they get up to in the bedroom is their own business, in my libertarian opinion. But I draw the line at gays getting married or adopting children. Why? Because marriage is the preserve of us regular straight folk, and because kids need to be raised by a mum and a dad. It’s bad enough that so many of our youngest generation live in fractionated families and separate households, without deliberately making things worse. It happens that some people have children, and then swap teams. That’s different. But choosing to be gay from the start, doesn’t come with the right to partake in shaping the next generation. Getting married and raising kids is about the kids, not about us. If you want a pet, go and buy a dog. Those same kids have a right to a balanced real world education, with male teachers as well as female, regular men with kids of their own, ordinary straight blokes who coach sports, and go to scout camps, and cook barbeques on the beach, and drink beer, and who aren’t child molesters or rapists or anything else the Sisterhood would have them branded as. The hysterical shriekers who scream satanic abuse, or mass molestation, or ritualised slaughter of the innocents, or whatever other insanity their twisted minds can create, need to be taken out and given a cold hosing down, along with the slack-jawed cardigan-wearers who permit such parasitic drivel to colonise the thought processes of policy making. Reality check, people! 99.999% of men are not paedophiles! Film at eleven! I don’t go to Church. But you know what? I don’t object to people who do. I celebrate Christmas. I take

Easter off. If I ever had to serve on a Jury, which I won’t because I live in the wops, I’d swear on the Bible, and mean it. I sing God Defend New Zealand, rather well if I say so myself (and while I’m on the subject, I refuse to sing it in anything other than English). I respect the Christian underpinning of our officially secular society, even if I don’t necessarily claim it as my own. If the price for this is to have primary school kids put up with half an hour of Bible instruction on a Wednesday morning, I’m all for it. But do I want the country filled up with Muslims? No. I don’t particularly want the influence of Islam here at all, however many fine examples of individual Muslims it may be possible to find. Why not? Because it’s just not necessary. We can get all the immigrants we need and more from “traditional source countries”, and still leave people in the queue. Diversity is just close enough when it’s on TV, thanks very much. Have I qualified as a redneck yet? I light my rubbish fires with gasoline. But I don’t spray the weeds when the breeze is getting up, because I’m a qualified chemical handler and I care about the environment. Yeah, I drive a 4WD. There are frequently a few dogs in it. But hey, it can snow any month of the year hereabouts, and I have lots of dogs, and they like to go places. And yes, I also frequently carry a rifle – properly secured, of course. One often encounters animal pests on vineyards; rabbits, and possums, and, err, ahem, fallow hinds. You know? Up the road in the Maniototo there aren’t too many vineyards; but the good ol’ boys up there are ever vigilant, and there are scant few road signs which don’t sport a few bullet holes or a peppering of shotgun pellets. The hand-wringers may despair at such antics. Personally I’m inclined to cut them a little slack. These young men, and others like them, all over the country, are the muscle, nerve, and sinew of the Heartland, where the nation’s wealth is actually earned, before it gets theorised about, and squabbled over, and turned into latte, by the armchair commentators, and the welfare wets, and the rest of society’s passengers who are happy to be generous with everybody else’s money in support of their own trembling sycophancy. If the boys get a bit loose on Friday night, or after footy practice, does it really matter, and does having such an attitude paint my neck with rouge? I like the Yanks. I like the Aussies and the Poms and the Canadians too, for that matter. Like the Paddies and the Scandinavians, they’re People Like Us. I like and respect the Indians as well, and the Israelis and the Russians and many of the Europeans. But I feel most comfortable in the company of the peoples who are most like me. Am I a redneck because of this? Yep, I’ll bet some of the lefties are frothing at the mouth by now. I like the Yanks because of their attitude. I like their cars, their courage, their camaraderie. I like the fact that thanks to the Yanks, I don’t have to speak Japanese. I want us to be friends with America again, and to exercise with them, and benefit from their generosity, and have their ships come visit, like things were in the old days, when the sky didn’t fall just because the US Navy was in port. And I don’t have a problem with nuclear propulsion, mostly because the factual record shows there hasn’t ever been a single problem with it – unlike diesel powered shipping, the disastrous litany of which has wrecked more coastlines than most Greenies have ever seen. I don’t like pacifists. I don’t think they’re very bright. I struggle to find an idea more monumentally stupid than the notion which says we live in some special bubble of human history, where all

wars have now ended, and we will never again need the Air Force which we lost because it didn’t fit with some naïve fantasy promulgated by people who have never lived in the real world. Things are not different now. We are simply at a point in time which is in between conflicts. I do think the Chinese are coming, and I do think it blindingly obvious that we need to resurrect and maintain effective combat forces and reliable military alliances – whatever the cost. To repeat a phrase which I coined a few years ago, I think it a mighty coincidence that “Benign Strategic Environment” and “Mad Cow Disease” have the same initials. I don’t like corruption. I don’t like bent cops, or bent politicians, or bent judges, or perverted priests or embezzling executives or lying lawyers or dodgy accountants, or civil servants and military officials who sell out to the system in exchange for promotion or profit or power. I don’t like politicians who delve into the gutter and stoop to personal attacks, or lie and duckshove and avoid the real issues, or cheat and steal and attempt retrospective legislation, or commit fraud and bend the rules and blame other people, instead of getting on with the job, and having the balls to admit when they were wrong, or that they made a mistake, or that they’re only human and they’re sorry and they’ll do better next time. Now I don’t think I have too many attitudes which are too far removed from the great majority of ordinary, mainstream, moderate, right-thinking New Zealanders. But if all the above makes me a redneck, then I’m guilty as charged, and proud of it. I reckon I’m in pretty good company.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 21

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER A horror story

he Munsters has been a cult TV show widely distributed around the world, but now, after years of re-runs, has finally been overtaken by a brand new production. The Clarksters, an on-going serialised docu-drama that within days of its initial release has proven to scare all who have viewed it to the point of cardiac arrest. Based on a relatively simple premise whereby a previously well regarded Prime Minister was found to have been a party to the systematic rifling of the public purse to the tune of around eight hundred thousand dollars, this simple act of political larceny began this most amazing display of character melt-down that has yet to be documented. The play begins with “Public opinion polls quickly the revelation that despite clear warning that burrevealed that Joe Public not only agling a leader’s cake and didn’t give a toss about Dr Brash’s biccies fund to pay for personal life, but furthermore quite Labour’s “Pledge” card was clearly illegal, such clearly felt that the unseemly mere law breaking would behaviour of Messrs Mallard and not in anyway hinder the Government’s desire to Benson-Pope were well distribute Labour’s equivbeyond the pale” alent of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Indeed, so central to the Party’s plan to stymie the attempts of the Opposition to install Don “Juan” Brash as the next Prime Minister, the Pledge Card was deemed to be the final and essential “political kick in the groin” that would ensure Ms Clark a guaranteed further term as NZ’s highly regarded and very reasonable older sister type leader. And thus it was, the election was held and Helen returned to once again lead the sisterhood, replete with male eunuchs in close attendance in their continuing quest to socially re-engineer New Zealand to accept the new definitions of truth and decency essential to the on-going creation of the Big Sister State. The first weeks of cobbling together various shady political deals with the minor parties very quickly underscored how close-run a thing the election had been. Without the production of the Pledge Card, why, the country might now have been led by the romantically inclined Dr Brash, who with customary charm and natural elegance could

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have easily captured enough of the minor parties’ support with the usual handful of baubles so attractive to the easily bought and paid for. Nevertheless, Helen and friends, political arrangements made, quickly picked up where they left off and, by NZ standards, Parliament continued on pretty much as usual. Of course this included the usual complete lacking in accountability for all manner of incompetence and, or, clear indications of some decidedly borderline behaviour on the part of various Government members. However, as the “Highest Court in The Land”, Parliament has long followed the concept that “Ye shall do as we say, not necessarily as we do” and has long ignored community values and indeed the law itself as it applies to the mere peasantry, having in fact the often-applied ability to simply “adjust” the law to suit its purposes or cover its backside. Unfortunately though, not unlike something left ticking in the Parliamentary basement, a Guy Fawkes-like bomb was about to explode right under the Government’s front benches. No, not minor squibs such as beset the hapless David Benson-Pope, he of the Mummy like binding of recalcitrant pupils in an earlier teaching career, nor even of a Member, with it appears, a very loose understanding regarding the need to submit accurate Company Returns! No, this bundle of political dynamite resided directly under the Prime Ministerial Throne itself, one of such power as to guarantee the recipient of a lifetime completely free of haemorrhoidal discomfort or indeed a bottom to sit on. It all began with the unusual sight of a Governmental minion who, apparently un-fazed by the invariable threats and common abuse usually visited on non-compliant servants of the Crown, nevertheless felt constrained to point out, in writing, that the Labour Government, despite a clear warning not to do so, had emptied the Prime Ministerial cookie jar, and had illegally spent the money for the purposes of common electioneering. This news, by the hand of a man simply doing his job not only has revealed an extremely cavalier attitude as to common misuse, some say theft, of public monies, it has now irrevocably opened up a window on the general character of Parliament that to say the least is appalling, mean spirited, vindictive, and below the belt in every sense of the word. To remove the public interest and gaze from the issue at hand, undoubtedly with Helen Clark’s full knowledge, bully boys Trevor Mallard and Benson-Pope

were unleashed on the floor of the House to insinuate that Dr Brash was more than a little free with his affections, that indeed allegations of being more or less a serial chick-chaser was the good Doctor’s pre-occupation rather than being a serious leader of the Opposition. Sadly, however, public opinion polls quickly revealed that Joe Public not only didn’t give a toss about Dr Brash’s personal life, but furthermore quite clearly felt that the unseemly behaviour of Messrs Mallard and Benson-Pope were well beyond the pale. Ms Clark, ever quick to see the run of the ball, with almost indecent speed quickly moved to hang poor old Trevor Mallard out to dry, hoping no doubt to distance herself from a plan that to most people at least had her fingerprints all over it. With un-accustomed gallows-like humour the PM even suggested a need for a Taser to help control her Trevor, which when you consider that worthy’s penchant for obediently chewing up the Opposition at his mistress’ [Note from Editor: Sorry, we’ll have no insinuations about Mallard’s mistress, Mr Carter, or it’ll be all over the front page of a Sunday paper before you can even say “Murrayfield”] regular command, was really, for anyone other than the truly stupid, altogether too much to swallow. How now, to deflect the media’s attention from this theft from the public purse. The New Zealand Herald plainly is in full cry on this one, and worse even suggesting in editorials that Labour should immediately pay the money back. “Keep this up” to paraphrase the usually genial and urbane Michael Cullen, “and I’ll have the IRD do you guys over,” like to these embattled folk there are apparently no depths to which they are not prepared to sink. Similarly the Exclusive Brethren Church – by apparently being allegedly involved in the “outing” of the Prime Minister’s husband wee Peter, that true or otherwise has ended up with yet another Cabinet Minister now also threatening the Exclusives with a good kicking from the IRD as well! Tossing in another of the usually dead-set sure-to-work red herrings like the “possibility” of a National Sports Stadium didn’t grow legs either to deflect even Talk Back’s chattering classes from continuing to discuss the grand larceny tale. Furthermore, new public opinion polls overwhelmingly were now clearly stating that the public of all political persuasions want to see all that money paid back. It was around about at this point that the Prime Minister, undoubtedly suffering from incredible strain as she viewed the political dead end street that she was plainly boxed up in, simply went dog! Gone the reasoned, almost calm and on-top of it master politician that most certainly has been the basis for her ongoing popularity. She has, not unlike a were-wolf at full moon, metamorphosed into an almost completely different person. Wild of eye, grim in countenance and with common political abuse now frequently exiting her newly tightly pursed lips, Helen appears to have completely lost it! The way out of this unholy mess? It’s so simple that a person of Helen Clark’s intelligence must surely see it. Don’t whatever you do try for one moment to retrospectively legislate your party’s clear misuse (many say theft) of taxpayers’ money. This will simply be seen for what it is: an action, if possible, even worse than the original offence, because if this action were to be allowed, it would open up the door to a pure dictatorship, where standing law could simply be changed to make Government wrongdoing legal, at the stroke of a pen. Furthermore, the playground

NZPA

attempt to say everyone’s doing it is no defence at all, like bank robbery and sexual offences are also endemic at the moment, but try using that sort of nonsensical defence in court eh! You guys have been caught fair and square with your fingers in the till, so pay the money back in full, and at the next election, who knows, you may be in with a chance of being forgiven. Keep going the way that you are and about the only place you will find Labour is in a maternity ward. Chris Carter appears in association with www.snitch.co.nz, a must-see site.

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TOUGH QUESTIONS

MICHAEL YOUNG An interview with Rick Warren

n his signature Hawaiian shirts, walking around Saddleback Community Church in the foothills of Orange County, California, Rick Warren seems the classic California dude. Not so. After writing the wildly successful best seller, The Purpose-Driven Life, he has emerged as one of the most famous pastors in the world, a new voice among evangelical Christians, someone with interests far from the religious right’s agenda. Warren has exported his “purpose-driven” methods to churches around the world, garnering some criticism along the way for his marketing savvy and contemporary approach. Not content with what he’s done already, Warren now wants churches to tackle the world’s most prevalent problems, including pan“I’m trying to move the American demic illness, illiteracy and church from self-centered oppression. Q: Your ideas about evanconsumerism, where it’s all about gelical activism go beyond me, to unselfish contribution, where hot-button conservative issues. You’re tackling it’s all about God and serving God things like Third World by serving other people” debt, poverty and the environment. Have others in the evangelical movement gotten sidetracked? A: We’re just trying to widen the agenda. I’m tired of Christians being “against” something. The stereotype says liberals care about the body, and conservatives care about the soul. The fact is, both matter. And you have to deal with both. That’s what Jesus did. And remember, the first commandment God gave us (in Genesis) was to “take care of my planet.” He made us stewards. It’s his, not ours. Q: Over the last several years, you’ve emerged as a leader in this broader kind of evangelism. What led to this shift in your focus? A: My wife, Kay, told me there were 13 million orphans from AIDS in Africa. God put a burden on her to talk about that, and that woke me up to this health crisis. So I went with her to Africa to learn how churches there were dealing with HIV and AIDS, and while we were there, I asked someone to take me out to a village. I met this young pastor. He’s got 75 people in his church – 50 adults and 25 kids orphaned by AIDS. They’re meeting in a tent. That’s all they have. The

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adults are caring for their own kids and the orphaned kids. They’re trying to have a little school. And I thought, “This church is doing more for the poor and the people than my megachurch.” Q: A Purpose-Driven Life is a publishing phenomenon. How has that success changed your life? A: The first thing I wondered was: What am I supposed to do with all the money and the attention? When the first words of the book are, “It’s not about you,” you think, “It isn’t for me.” Then, it’s, “Lord, what do you want me do to with the money?” We decided early on we weren’t going to keep it. It wasn’t even tempting. I drive a 6-year-old Ford. I don’t own a plane. I don’t own a boat. We added up what the church had paid me in salary since the beginning, and I paid that back. When we first got married, we decided to tithe and gave 10 percent to the church. The next year we raised it to 11 percent, then 12 and 13. Now we give away 90 percent and live on 10. It’s been a lot of fun doing that. Q: For the media, you’ve become this go-to guy in the evangelical leadership. I mean, you’re on TV a lot. A: I was in New York for a day a couple of weeks ago, and I did eight TV shows while I was there. I’m a pastor – this isn’t even my gig! But I think if you get the limelight, you’d better leverage it for God. In Psalm 72, Solomon pleads for more influence, and it sounds so self-centered. Then you read the whole Psalm, and you realize he’s asking so he can protect the marginalized in society – “so that the king might support the widows and orphans.” That was like a shot into my heart. I had to repent. I had to say, “Lord, I haven’t done that.” What I was doing wasn’t bad – building a church, ministering to people. It wasn’t like I was a terrorist. And God said, “It wasn’t bad. You just weren’t doing it with the people I cared about.” Q: Now you’re tackling what you call the five great problems facing the world: Spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy. These problems have defied solution so far. What can a church do? A: There are 2.1 billion Christians around the world. You go into some of these little villages, and they don’t have anything, but they have a church. So we have a network. In the last few years, we’ve had more than 7,000 people from Saddleback go out to plant churches, equip leaders,

= THE WARREN CREED The statement of beliefs from Rick Warren’s Saddleback Community Church: God is bigger and better and closer than we can imagine. The Bible is God’s perfect guidebook for living. Jesus is God showing himself to us. Through his Holy Spirit, God lives in and through us now. Nothing in creation “just happened.” God made it all. Grace is the only way to have a relationship with God. Faith is the only way to grow in our relationship with God. God has allowed evil to provide us with a choice, God can bring good even out of evil events and God promises victory over evil to those who choose him. Heaven and hell are real places. Death is a beginning, not the end. The church is to serve people like Jesus served people. Jesus is coming again.

assist the poor, care for the sick, educate the next generation. Just think if all those 2.1 billion Christians were doing that. I’m trying to move the American church from self-centered consumerism, where it’s all about me, to unselfish contribution, where it’s all about God and serving God by serving other people. Q: But not everyone in the evangelical world seems happy about your choices, particularly your involvement in combating AIDS. A: I’m kind of in a no-man’s land, where I take heat from every side. If I go to the International AIDS Conference, there are those there who want to validate their lifestyle, and I’m not going to do that. And there are others who want me to condemn everyone and not show up. So, yes, you get misunderstood sometimes. That’s just par for the course. Q: You’ve been criticized for your plan to preach in North Korea next year. The concern is that the Koreans will use you for their own purposes. How do you respond?

A: I’m not a politician. I’m a pastor. I don’t make decisions based on politics. If I’m not limited (by the North Koreans) in what I can say, I’ll preach the good news of the Gospel. Next year is the 100th anniversary of the Pyongyang revival, and for some reason the leader (Kim Jong Il) decided to allow the first public preaching of the Gospel in 60 years. So when they invited me, I said, “Sure!” When I was in South Korea a few weeks ago, the South Koreans said that since I was going to be there, they’d try to put together a planning meeting with North Korea. It didn’t work out. The North Koreans said, “This isn’t a good time.” Some people saw that and thought we wouldn’t be going next year. Not true. Here are people who have been told for 60 years that there is no God, there is no purpose for your life. Hey, I’m happy to go in there. There’s risk, but I’m willing to take it. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 25

COVER STORY

EXCLUSIVE with the ELUSIVE The Brethren break their silence

They’re accused of trying to manipulate elections across the world, they’re different, they’re aloof, they’re under concerted political attack and they don’t like talking to the media. All the right reasons, then, for Investigate to persuade the businessmen involved to front up on where their money came from, why private eyes were hired, who authorized the move against Labour and whether, given the chance again, they’d do it differently. IAN WISHART has the storym

s Edwardian villas go, this one is a monster, stretching back from the roadside and looking every inch the grand mansion it used to be in its heyday. On a quiet street in leafy Epsom, I get only seconds for this first impression before I’m already on the doorstep reaching for the old Edwardian twist-n-turn door ringer. Naturally, like most of that vintage, it doesn’t work, but one quick tap on the opaque glass door pane and it springs open with a paw extended to mine in a firm greeting. “Mr Wishart, I presume?” Right about now, I think to myself, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sunday Star-Times journalist Tony Wall pounce from behind a bush with a photographer in tow accompanied by a loud “Aha!” followed by a banner headline in tomorrow’s paper about “Despicable Investigate Editor’s Secret Meeting With Right Wing Cult”. Mercifully, it doesn’t happen; but the ‘guilt by association’ road trip the media and Labour politicians are currently embarking on has raised a number of questions about the Exclusive Brethren and the way they’ve become cannon-fodder on an unprecedented scale. Granted, they maintain a degree of separation from wider society, but certainly not to the extent that the Amish do in the United States. Granted, the headscarves, long hair and clothing look alien to a generation brought up on watching a gyrating Madonna pretend to crucify herself on MTV while wearing next to nothing in the name of “art”. Granted, they don’t have TVs and so miss out on those “must-see” episodes of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy that exemplify the apex of Western Civilisation. But how is it that simply meeting an Exclusive Brethren member now requires the wearing of a special armband so that “good and honest” people can now shun you? How is it that the right of any New Zealand citizen to lobby politicians is now dependent on whether the citizen is approved of by

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Exclusive Brethren church, and the church itself. Th e men I’m meeting on this sunny but brisk Auckland Saturday are at pains to point out that they’re no further up or down the pecking order than anyone else in the 7,000 to 8,000 strong Brethren community in New Zealand. They just happen to share – as business owners – many of the concerns other nonBrethren business owners have about Government policies, and they happen to share – as conservative churchgoers – many of the concerns currently aggravating conservatives in the Catholic and Presbyterian churches, as well as many atheists and agnostics worried about the Government’s social engineering excesses.

T Neville Simmons

the Government? How is it that newspapers can run headlines reporting that a Brethren person helped nail up an election hoarding, yet ignore the vast sums of money allegedly stolen from trade union members by Labour Party activists to help bankroll Labour at the last election? The face behind the handshake on the doorstep belongs to Greg Mason, reportedly the “leader” of the Brethren in New Zealand, although it’s an honorific he and his colleagues scoff at – given that that church has no hierarchy, no clergy, and that actions taken in the name of the church require authorization by entire congregations. In a country where the wider society, and particularly politics, is dominated by leadership and hierarchy, it is a point of frustration to these mostly-Auckland businessmen and church members that the media feel the need to impose their own hierarchy expectations on them. Ironically, the Green Party – at the opposite end of the political spectrum to these men – has voiced similar frustrations over the difficulties the media had in coming to grips with the consensus decisions of the Greens and the hierarchy of the dual-leader system. The media need to feel that the people they’re quoting on any issue are important, which is why so many news stories are sprinkled with adjectives like “top official” or “leading” or “senior”. Hence, over the past month, stories like “…Brethren leader Greg Mason…”, “…senior members of the sect…” and so on have added to the blurring in the public mind of the line between a group of ordinary businessmen who belong to the 28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

he Exclusive Brethren have, of course, had what Queen Elizabeth might call an annus horribilis – publicity-wise. On top of the most recent coverage of the Private Eye affair, some would argue that the course of an election turned on a dime last year when the media claimed Brethren pennies had been used to pay for some anti-Green pamphlets just weeks out from the election. Despite the seven businessmen involved putting their hands up at a news conference to explain why they’d done it, politicians and the media continued to paint it as an “Exclusive Brethren” conspiracy, supposedly ordained by the church as part of some wider global goal of interfering in elections. It is true that Brethren members in a number of countries have lobbied voters via election pamphlets, but does that translate to a “vast, right wing conspiracy” as Hilary Clinton might call it? Or simply a desire like many others to have their voices heard? After all, while the group of seven businessmen spent their own money on lobbying at the last election, little if any scrutiny has been paid to how much trade unions, gay and lesbian organizations, or even the Ratana Church and others donated in money and time to the re-election of Labour. Bear that in mind as you read this introduction to a story on the Brethren by the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Braithwaite: “There are fears the secretive Christian sect the Exclusive Brethren could use its “bag of dirty tricks” to influence next year’s state election, the NSW Greens say. “The fundamentalist Christian group has been accused of agitating for right-wing causes during recent elections in NSW, South Australia and Tasmania, New Zealand, the US and Canada.” Look at the loaded phrasing: fears… secretive… Christian… sect... dirty tricks... influence… fundamentalist… Christian (again)… agitating… right-wing. And that’s just in two sentences. The NZ Labour Party, which took over a million dollars in anonymous donations prior to sweeping into power in the 1999 election, is now facing possible defeat at the next election and wants to outlaw anonymous donations this time around to prevent National from pulling the same stunt. Labour is using the bogeyman of “Brethren influence” to try and get support from the public. It was the election pamphlets that set the agenda for a sustained Labour attack on the Brethren, fuelled by a news media who assumed the words “Exclusive Brethren” should have appeared on the pamphlets even though the documents were discussing secular issues. In a submission to the Justice and Electoral Reform Committee at Parliament earlier this year, the businessmen hit back: “The leaflets have been funded by our team with no financial

contributions from any political party or from overseas. “All statements in our pamphlets were based on information drawn from reputable publicly available sources. “All names of persons authorizing the pamphlets were bona fide, and all addresses given were residential or business addresses that were either owned or leased by the authorizing person. “Advice was sought from the Chief Electoral Officer – Mr. David Henry – in June 2005 regarding our plans. Acting on his recommendations, we modified our leaflets and independent legal counsel was retained. “The New Zealand Police have fully investigated the allegations made against us and have concluded there was no breach of electoral law. “Accusations that we were secretive because we failed to disclose our religious affiliation were unjust in the extreme. No other commentators, journalists, and/or editors are expected to reveal their religious beliefs alongside their opinions. “In exercising our democratic right by participating in the election debate, we were doing nothing more than others have done previously in New Zealand’s history.” Given the New Zealand Herald’s criticism of the actions of the Brethren, it seems surprising that the newspaper still publishes letters to the editor from Helen Clark’s media advisor Brian Edwards without disclosing Edwards’ relationship to Labour – an example perhaps of the double standards the Brethren complained to Parliament of. The attacks on the church from Government politicians have hurt members of the Brethren, particularly – they say – because historically they’ve worked more closely with Labour than any other party.

ne high-profile Government politician has had family inside the Brethren church for a long time and as a young person attended church services of the Brethren, and maintained contact with them, despite the widely-held-but-erroneous belief that the Brethren have few if any ties with the outside world. This same politician is one of those wheeled out by Labour to criticize the Brethren regardless. On some occasions, members of the Exclusive Brethren church will approach Government to discuss matters that directly affect the church itself, such as its schools. On other occasions, simply as individuals, they’ll lobby parliamentarians on issues that have nothing to do with the Brethren church but more to do with issues that other New Zealanders are equally concerned about – the state of our defence forces being one example, civil unions another – “although we’re nowhere near as obsessed with civil unions as the media paint us,” laughs one of the businessmen. As citizens who pay taxes and employ ordinary, non-Brethren New Zealanders, members of the church are equally affected by Government policies and their social costs as everyone else is. Burglars, for example, don’t discriminate on the basis of religious belief, nor do hospital waiting lists. Despite the pasting they’ve taken from the Government, the Brethren men say they’ve been well received by many Labour ministers in the current administration, and they’re grateful for that. The ties with Labour go back a long way – back in the 1940’s Walter Nash used to greet Brethren sitting in the public gallery (even then) with a cheery wave on first name terms.

Greg Mason

David Lange met the Brethren from time to time and, in the current Clark administration, Margaret Wilson, Trevor Mallard and Phil Goff have all met them to discuss various issues. That’s why, as we sit down on a Saturday morning to rake over some of the unanswered questions, the Brethren businessmen continue to go to great lengths to spell out that they’re not speaking to Investigate on behalf of the Exclusive Brethren church, but as the seven men who organized and paid for the pamphlet drop: Greg Mason, Neville Simmons, Andrew Simmons, Phil Win, Doug Watt, Tim Lough and Andy Smith. It was this action, they say, that brought about the publicity. The cross, they say, is theirs to bear, not their church’s. To say their comments are official Brethren policy, they argue, is like suggesting Investigate is the mouthpiece of the Anglican Church, simply because its editor is an Anglican. Point taken. Other media have repeatedly tackled stories about the grievances of ex-members of the Brethren and those issues have already been well-canvassed elsewhere, although for the sake of completeness we did ask. But our main focus was on the group’s involvement in the political process and whether it was part of a wider push by the Exclusive Brethren church worldwide. Given that members of the group of seven are on record as being unaware of the hiring of private detectives, there’s also the issue of whether investigating the Prime Minister is defensible. But I begin by addressing perhaps the biggest issue of all: INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 29

why they don’t vote, and in turn whether that negates their right as citizens to be involved in the political process: Q: The original catch-cry of democracy was “no taxation without representation”. Yet the current tone of the debate suggests you have no right to an opinion because you don’t vote. To what extent do you think the decision not to cast votes is being misinterpreted by the media and politicians? A: As Brethren we respect government as “of God”. Persons in government are drawn from the world, but government itself ‘per se’ is of God. The basis of our refraining from voting is that, due to our conscience before God, government being of God, we don’t vote for any particular party. But if political parties act contrary to our conscience we reserve the unequivocal right to make representation to government, irrespective of their party position, to represent our views. We believe that it is our respon-

sibility according to the Scriptures to testify to Government in order to uphold right principles and to foster policies that will bring greater prosperity for all New Zealanders. The apostle St. Paul represented his views to government for an extensive period of time starting in Rome (in which time he was prisoner of the Roman Empire) and as a result of this stand St. Paul was martyred. (2Tim 4 v17 …and that all the Gentiles might hear…). Obviously it is difficult for people to understand that our religious beliefs preclude us from voting but as law-abiding citizens who pay taxes we feel we have every right to express our views on Government policies and that is what we did in the last general election. Nearly 20 percent of registered voters chose not to vote in the last election; surely that does not preclude them from holding concerns and from time to time giving voice to those concerns.

IS LABOUR CHANNELLING ‘MEIN KAMPF’?

Labour’s attacks on the Brethren bear a spooky resemblance to Nazi divide and rule propaganda David Benson-Pope (22 Nov 05): “(National) tried to buy the election with its tax cuts and its underhand campaigns, financed by strange sects and shady deals with industry in return for favours that the voters were never supposed to know about.” Hanns Oberlindober, Nazi propagandist, 1937: “For decades, you controlled so-called statesmen like puppets, keeping yourself in the background despite your native Jewish vanity. Between you and the peoples, there hung the mystic curtain of your lodges, your so-called religious mission, and your obvious cowardice.” Hon Dr Michael Cullen (23 Nov 05): “…it was a particularly sick sight to see the way in which the National Party was bought and paid for by a small religious sect.” Adolf Hitler, 1942: “This conspiracy of Jews and capitalists…of that time, we wanted to do away with.”

Hon Trevor Mallard (23 May 06): “We all thought, and we knew, that they had their hands in the Brethren’s pockets for $500,000, but it is clear they actually had their hand in their (pockets) for $1.2 million” Adolf Hitler, 1919: “Today’s leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor.” Georgina Beyer (23 May 06): “The National members rave on about Australia so much…by the way, could he drag the Exclusive Brethren off with him? In fact, why do the Exclusive Brethren not pay for the airfares of all the Opposition?” Adolf Hitler, 1933: “Why does the world shed crocodile’s tears over the richly merited fate of a small Jewish minority? … I ask Roosevelt, I ask the American people: Are you prepared to receive in your midst these well-poisoners of the German people? We would willingly give everyone of them a free steamerticket and a thousand-mark note for travelling expenses, if we could get rid of them.”

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Hon Phil Goff (14 June 06): “…National was richly and secretly funded by a clandestine group, the Exclusive Brethren. It is an extremist religious group…I want to know right now from the National Party what it promised this extremist group in order to get that sort of money.” Adolf Hitler, 1919: “His [The Jew’s] method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money.” Hon Pete Hodgson (20 June 06): “…a very strange group of white men who do not even vote, who put a million dollars on the table to help the National Party…that is a very strange group of people” Adolf Hitler, 1939: “We are resolved to prevent the settlement in our country of a strange people which was capable of snatching for itself all the leading positions in the land, and to oust it.” Jill Pettis (21 June 06): “I suggest that he (Don Brash) is already in cahoots with the Devil, and it is called the Exclusive Brethren.” Julius Streicher, Nazi propagandist, 1941: “The war the German people are fighting today is a holy war. It is a war against the Devil. The German people must win this war if the Devil is to die and humanity is to live.” Hon Dr Michael Cullen (22 June 06): “Members

"He who fights the Jews battles the Devil." Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher

opposite should wear scarves saying “Exclusive Brethren” because they have already been sponsored.”

Max Eisen, Holocaust survivor: “I had a friend

Q: What is the theological reason that Brethren choose not to vote? A: The Brethren believe Government is of God. Daniel 4 v 17 ‘…that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will…’. The apostle Paul exhorts us to be subject to ‘… the powers that be are ordained of God’ – Romans 13 v 1,2,; and that ‘…supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’. 1 Timothy 2 v 1,2 . Q: To what extent do government policies on health, welfare, crime, social issues etc affect Brethren in New Zealand? A: Brethren are contributing members of society and Government policies affect Brethren as much as other citizens.

Brethren society is characterised by strong family units, taking responsibility to care for their own through all age groups. Use of the social welfare system is therefore minimal and Brethren rarely go through the criminal justice system. We have been seeing Members of Parliament about our concerns for many years and concerned members of the Brethren Church have been making representation to Government for over 90 years. Q: In what way is the church’s tax status significantly different from that applying to the Anglican or Catholic churches, or for that matter to charities like the NZ Aids Foundation? A: The tax status of the Exclusive Brethren Church is no different to any other New Zealand charity. Q: What motivated you as a group of businessmen to become involved in politics? A: We wanted to make a positive contribution to the politi-

across the street who always walked with me to school. The first day here we had to march to school wearing the yellow star. I looked around and I couldn’t see him. I realized he didn’t want to be seen with someone wearing the yellow star.”

Hon Steve Maharey: (23 August 06): “The big embarrassment for the National Party is of course the Exclusive Brethren…We are also told by people that he (Don Brash) went as far to make sure those appointments were taken out of his diary so that no one could discover them…why does he not tell us the truth about the Exclusive Brethren?” Tip-offs to the Gestapo, 1935: “Hamm and Opfen (Sieg!): The rolling mill master Gustav Hütt should be ashamed. From pure greed, he took the Jewish rabbi Kurt Schreiner into his house. He even said that he liked the Jew as much as any German.”

Hon Chris Carter (2 August 06): “…a group that does not share core New Zealand values. The Exclusive Brethren do not believe in voting and do not believe in equal rights for women, but are well prepared to give a million dollars to the National Party…Dr Brash raises the question of some New Zealanders not sharing core values, and he therefore says they should not come to this country…If he is talking about the Exclusive Brethren I agree with him.” Adolf Hitler, 1919: “This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of “His Majesty” and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the “majesty of the people,” and recognizes only the majesty of money. ” Hon Dr Michael Cullen (23 August 06): “Did he (Dr Brash) tell the Exclusive Brethren that? Did he tell them that he would work with the devil to get rid of this government?”

Adolf Hitler, 1925:

The hidden influence of Jews

“The goal then was clear and simple: fight against the devilish power which has pushed Germany into this misery”

Hon Pete Hodgson: (23 August 06): “And then, finally, he (Don Brash) confessed he knew the Exclusive Brethren were bankrolling his campaign.” Tip-offs to the Gestapo, 1935: “Berleberg in W.: It is a disgrace that hereditary farmers Georg Heinrich Saßmannshausen and Heinrich Dreisbach, both from Birkenfeld, do business with the notorious Talmud Jew and Nazi-hater Simon from Erndtebrück. That is how these Jewish lackeys thank their Führer Adolf Hitler for freeing them from Jewish serfdom!” Rt Hon Helen Clark (29 August 06): “I know what a cover-up looks like when Dr Brash commissions support from the Exclusive Brethren and then will not tell the truth about it.” Tip-offs to the Gestapo, 1935: “It is disgraceful that a group of officials and businessmen in Jülich still get together with Jews and go bowling. Look into it, Mr. County Inspector!” Hon Trevor Mallard (5 September 06): “…chinless scarf wearers…”

Adolf Hitler, Sept 1919: “Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 31

“The Brethren Church has been part of New Zealand society for more than 150 years. Although Brethren have a life of their own and maintain a line of separation, they interact on a daily basis with citizens. Yes we liaise with Brethren from other countries; No we did not seek permission to become involved in the democratic process; nor would we need to or be required to in the future”

cal debate in New Zealand. We produced a document called “Suggested initiatives for prosperity in New Zealand” to this end. This document contains proposals which, when taken as a whole, we believe will create a force for economic and social good. There was no self-serving motive in producing this document. None of us would derive any special benefit from the initiatives proposed; rather we felt strongly that the policy initiatives we recommended would benefit the nation as a whole. Q: The public perception, created by Labour, is that “the Exclusive Brethren church” is behind all of your activities... A: The Exclusive Brethren Church was not behind our activities and the fact that the Government and the media have portrayed our actions as the actions of the Church has caused members of our Church a great deal of anxiety and hurt. We believe it is unparalleled in the history of New Zealand politics, that the religious faith of individuals or groups who chose to become involved has been the subject of such intense scrutiny and vilification. We acted as a group of businessmen; not as spokespeople for the Church. Members of our Church community are free to choose if they become involved; no different to any other citizens. Q: Some have suggested that all Brethren families in NZ have had to contribute towards the costs of some of the activities of the past couple of years, others say it is being funded by yourselves, how in fact has it been done? A: We can give a categorical assurance that the suggestion of all Brethren families contributing towards the cost of our activities is completely untrue. We funded the activities ourselves from our own resources and accepted help from others who had similar views (a number of these were not members of the Brethren). No collections from congregations were ever held. Q: Leaving aside the political heat and spin generated by Phil Win’s decision to hire private investigators to get to the bottom of some of the allegations swirling around, some conservative blog sites have made the point that the former police officers were only doing what investigative journalists should have been 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

doing. Now that you’ve had a chance to breathe, on reflection what are your thoughts both about the hiring of the PI’s and the way it has been reported? A: The decision by an individual to engage a P.I. was to substantiate or refute allegations of wrong use of office, misappropriation of public funds, and untruths. Engaging a P.I. is a totally legal method by which to establish the truth. Q: For the record, have you ever passed information to Investigate magazine? A: No never, nor have we any association with the magazine. Q: Are you aware of any information gathered by the PIs that has been passed to any daily media? A: No. Q: The Government has introduced a raft of laws over the years that impact on the personal privacy of citizens. They have repeatedly used the line that people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. How does that accord do you think with the Government’s reaction to having its own activities scrutinized by former police detectives acting within the law? A: No one is above the law. Q: Left wing sites are making much of the fact that Exclusive Brethren members in Australia and the US have sought to have input into the political process there as well. Is there a “conspiracy” at play, or is this reflecting a move by the church to allow local leaders to engage more in their local communities than perhaps has been common in the past? A: There is no conspiracy. We did not seek permission from the Church to become involved in the general election campaign. We chose to become involved as a small group of concerned citizens. The Brethren Church has been part of New Zealand society for more than 150 years. Although Brethren have a life of their own and maintain a line of separation, they interact on a daily basis with citizens. Yes we liaise with Brethren from other countries; No we did not seek permission to become involved in the democratic process; nor would we need to or be required to in the future. Q: The Brethren have been criticized on talk radio not so much for their opinions but the fact that no mention was made of your “Brethrenness”. The issue to me seems slightly more complex in that there are many Catholics, Presbyterians and atheists who lobby without disclosing their religious beliefs. Additionally, there is this fascinating quote from AIDS activist Warren Lindberg on the backstairs lobbying gay activists have carried out: “NZAF was certain that a repeat of the public debate over homosexuality carried out in 1985-86 by independent groups of activists with differing political agendas would produce an American-style backlash in New Zealand. Consequently the campaign was not won by street marches and public meetings, but by carefully back-stairs lobbying and media management.” [our emphasis] In what way if any do you think the Exclusive Brethren are being unfairly singled out by the media? A: We believe our Church and the members of our Church have been unfairly targeted by the Government and the media. We do not believe our religious faith needed to be disclosed because we were not acting on behalf of the Brethren Church. We were and are a small group of businessmen who chose to make their views known. All the pamphlets distributed carried bona-fide authorizations, which were cleared by Police enquiry. Q: On reflection, regardless of what others have done in

terms of background lobbying, what if anything about the election campaign pamphlets would you have done differently given a second chance? A: We do not believe we did “background lobbying”. We openly met with Members of Parliament from all political parties over a two year period prior to the last election and that includes Labour Government ministers. We stated who we were, why we were involved and the issues we wanted to discuss. We enjoyed open and lively political debate on a wide range of economic and social issues with Members of Parliament. We were open about our religious faith but at no stage did we purport to be speaking on behalf of the Brethren Church. If we were given a second chance to run the pamphlet campaign again, we would have registered an office for the campaign with an authorizing person and not used residential addresses (we were guided by the Chief Electoral Officer in this regard) because the individuals at some of those addresses were forced to flee their homes. Q: Sources close to Helen Clark are speculating that the money being spent by you in fact originated overseas. To what extent if any is this true, and can you indicate how much in fact has been spent and how many of you are having to shoulder that burden? A: We spent our own money and not one cent came from the Brethren Church or originated overseas. The less than $1M we spent on the campaign is no different to the money spent by business, trade unions or single issue groups in the course of political campaigning. While it is accepted that businesses or trade unions can contribute to political campaigns, it is painted as clandestine when we chose to do the same thing. Q: Have any journalists or politicians who have attacked you declared their own religious beliefs to you or publicly? To what extent do you think the undeclared religious views (and atheism is a religious view) held by members of the media and parliament have played a part in the way you have been treated? A: We cannot comment on others’ religious beliefs or motivation, however, we are members of a Christian faith, and for those politicians who do not believe in Christianity, this makes it easier to attack those who live by their faith in God. Q: Some former members of the Exclusive Brethren have been critical of the church in the media. Are their criticisms valid or sour grapes, or a mixture of both? Are there, again, things that perhaps the church could have done differently? A: Our Church community is made of members who share the same religious beliefs. Those who have left the Church community are free to speak and air their views of the Church. Q: Did National lose the last election because the Exclusive Brethren became involved, or did they lose the election because the media didn’t challenge the Prime Minister’s vilification of the Brethren at the time, thus building this image of shadowy influence (whilst ignoring Rainbow Labour and the unions)? A: You will have to ask the political analysts and commentators to answer that question. We simply campaigned for what we believed were policies in the best interests of New Zealand. If, however, our efforts were so ineffective, why has the reaction been so strident? Q: In what way, if any, do you see historic parallels in the way Members of Parliament have attempted to marginalize a minority group in the eyes of society? A: History is rich with examples of authoritarian states mar-

ginalizing and vilifying religious minorities. The most extreme examples are attempts to get rid of those minority groups altogether. (Closer to home, Georgina Beyer said in Parliament (May 23) we should be “dragged off to Australia”). Attempts are being made to remove our right to speak, restrict our ability to earn a living, question the right of our schools to operate, deny us permission for places of worship, hold up our women as objects of ridicule and denigrate our charitable works. Perhaps we could pose the question: if members of the Muslim faith had been vilified by the Government, in the way that members of our Church have been, what would have been the consequence? History teaches us that one of the fundamental tenets of democracy is the protection of minority rights from the power of the state. That includes the freedom for minority groups to engage in political activity. When there is no respect for those rights, minorities suffer as a consequence. The hallmark of authoritarianism is a complete disregard for the minorities’ rights to freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. Q: If you could explain to the people of New Zealand why you are doing all this, what would you say? A: We are law-abiding citizens who chose to live our lives, according to the Holy Scriptures, within our religious community that has been part of New Zealand society for more than 150 years. That does not mean that we don’t live and work in the wider community. We employ New Zealanders, pay our taxes and make a productive contribution to our country. We strongly believe that we have a contribution to make to the fabric of our country. We want to see New Zealand prosper. We believe, as a nation, we can do a lot better in terms of our economic performance, social policies, international standing and the protection of Christian values. UPDATE: As this issue was going to press, news broke of claims that children had been sexually abused inside the Exclusive Brethren community up until nine years ago, apparently by older children, and the issue had been “covered up”. We put the fresh allegations to the businessmen to see if they had any comment: 1. Are you aware of any incidents of child sexual abuse that have not been reported to the police but were instead handled internally by the Church? 2. Are you aware of historic cases of child sexual abuse by other Church members in the past? 3. [Ex-Brethren witness] Philippa has given the names of seven men to the police. As the only identifiable group of seven men in the Brethren in the public eye, can you please confirm for the record that none of you are involved in any way? 4. You’ve politely declined in the Investigate interview to respond to ex-members of the Church, saying they are free to talk to the media about their issues. Now that they have, do you wish to elaborate on your previous answer? In a brief phone call with one of the men, he appeared genuinely surprised at the allegations and confirmed "there's absolutely no way" the members of the group of seven were involved in any way. As to the rest of our questions, he said he was unaware of any incidents. However, he said he could only speak from his own personal knowledge and that if information was being provided to the police general comment from church members might be inappropriate. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 33

The big cat mystery downunder

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FURRED KIND

INVESTIGATION

34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

Alien cats, and we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean extraterrestrial, appear to be on the loose in New Zealand and Australia with hundreds of witnesses telling similar stories: there are black panthers and mountain lions living on the outskirts of Christchurch, Sydney and Melbourne. IAN WISHART investigates

had started to drift off when a most unusual sensation came over me,” wrote retired Kiwi soldier Frank Burdett in the very first issue of Investigate magazine nearly seven years ago. “The hairs on the back of my neck slowly began to prickle. Not all at once, a few at first, then a gradual increase. There was a heavy concentration of a dusty, musty aroma that permeated the air and my nostrils seemed to be full of it. “I lay there momentarily trying to account for the strange smell. I strained to hear but, apart from the sound of the moving waters of the two rivers, everything appeared deathly still and quiet. Then I felt the nylon parachute panel [being used as a mosquito net] fall from my face and all hell broke loose. “Suddenly, I was conscious of being repeatedly bashed over the head and upper body. The attack was so swift that I have no vivid recollection of either being dragged off the bamboo platform or of hitting the earthen floor. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 35

“The sensation of being roughly dragged backwards initially made me think I was dreaming but I soon realized that this was no weird dream. My confused mind raced rapidly. “Any onlooker would have seen this huge tiger dragging its prey along a trail, but I hadn’t seen the cat. And in that halflight of the mind when you’re between sleep and wakefulness I still had no real clue what was happening to me…” For Frank Burdett, being dragged from his bed in the middle of the night by a Malayan tiger – while the rest of his platoon slept peacefully beside him – was the beginning of a nightmare – one he was lucky enough to survive and later write about. But there is something incredibly primal about our inbuilt fear of the dark, things that go bump in it, and perhaps most of all the “wild animals” that roamed the imaginations of our childhoods. For New Zealanders growing up, the realization that the most deadly “wild” inhabitant was the humble katipo spider was somehow comforting: we’d avoided the snakes of Australia, the wolves of Europe, the bears of North America and the big cats of Africa and Asia. The question investigators are now asking, however, is whether that myth of a safe kiwi countryside is about to be shattered. For more than a decade, reports have grown of a “black panther” on the loose in the South Island. The most recent of these, just a few weeks ago, just happened to coincide with the release of a major official report in Australia that concludes breeding colonies of pumas appear to exist in rural Victoria and New 36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

South Wales. How is it that some of the most feared creatures in human mythology, not native to either New Zealand or Australia, could apparently have been prowling our respective outbacks for years – if not a century in Australia’s case?

ne man with a close encounter of the furred kind is high country hunting guide Allan Kircher, who hit the headlines just weeks ago with photo’s of what appears to be a panther-like big cat in the Winterslow ranges just a couple of valleys down from the Mt Hutt skifield. “I looked down a gully and walking across an old stock trail down the bottom of the creek a cat walked right across in front of me, at about 450 metres. I grabbed my pack and gear and raced off down the hill, got the camera out, and watched it keep on walking across the rest of the game trail.” Kircher was guiding a Canadian hunter at the time, a man with previous experience of mountain lions. The Canadian knew what they were looking at, especially over that distance, was of big cat proportions. “Its tail is quite pronounced,” says Kircher, “and it appears to be quite blunt in the face rather than your lovely looking house moggy.” Kircher estimates the beast he saw was a touch smaller than a large Labrador, but at even a 250m distance he concedes he could be out. He describes the cat as “muscular”, but is leaning toward the theory that it is just a large feral cat.

Another frame from the Kircher panther sequence. Again, note the muscular build and the panther-like head shape

“People have said to me, why is there all this controversy over the black cat? But I said to them, ‘if you saw a bloody big tabby cat would you go running home and say you saw a big tabby cat?’ I mean, you don’t, do you. Which sheep get noticed in a paddock first? The black ones. So because it’s black and because it’s big, it’s the one that’s getting seen.” But if Kircher’s theory is correct – and it seems plausible – that it’s just a big feral cat that’s black, one would expect to see black feral cats turning up in DOC traps. But they’re not. “I did a possum monitor up the Wairau,” admits Kircher. “The three week trapping programme I was talking to them about was on 6,500 hectares. In that three weeks on those traps, which are not baited for cats at all, they caught 90 feral cats. Eighty-nine of them were tabby and one was ginger. No black ones, on 6,500 hectares.” “How big are the feral cats you’re catching, though?” “Only about the same size as my house cat at home. This was at least twice the size of any feral cat I’ve caught.” “Sally [Kircher’s wife] has had several people ring up or email us regarding sightings of this, and they say they haven’t been to the media because they’re scared they’re going to get rubbished. Fortunately I had photographic evidence, but the number of people you speak to who have seen a cat, and the first thing they say is, “it’s big!”. Within an 80 kilometre radius of Winterslow, there have been a string of sightings, some dating back to the 1960s.

“During the mid 1960s I was fishing at Lake Alexandrina in the McKenzie country where I was born and raised, and I caught a trout which I buried in shingle beside the lake to keep it cool,” wrote a self-described “old man” three years ago. “I moved away and continued to fish, by myself, on a sunny quiet morning. The next minute I heard a fierce growl and hissing, and looked back to see a large black cat standing on its hind legs, menacing towards me. It stood around the mid height of a ranchslider and it was black with, I thought, pointed ears. “It lowered itself on all fours and was about half as large again as a black Labrador dog. It had no fear of me, dug up the shingle with about two swipes of its paw and stole the trout, running with it in its mouth over the surrounding tussock. I’m a man’s man but the hairs stood up on my neck and the goose pimples appeared.” Closer to the big cat epicentre, just a few kilometers or so from Winterslow, farmers Blair and Sara Gallagher were stunned to find their farm on the news in October 2003 after stock truck driver Chad Stewart found himself eyeballing what he regarded as a black panther near the stockyards. Stewart told reporters the animal was sitting by the stockyards only 60 metres away, but soon slunk away. He watched it pad up a nearby hill, where it paused to look back at him before vanishing over a ridge. The official MAF report released to Investigate describes what happened. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 37

“Sighting of a large black cat was reported in the foothills near Mount Somers approximately 18 kilometres from Old Man Peak, the high country property investigated due to a big cat sighting in July 2000. “The sighting was made by a stock driver used to handling and seeing NZ livestock. His sighting was five days previously and during that time the area had experienced rain and snow. His description was consistent with a Jaguar or Leopard or similar big cat. The physical conditions of the sighting were good and the sighting was long – reported as 4 to 5 minutes. “He delivered some lambs to the shearing shed on the property. Approximately 60 metres from him he reports seeing a large black cat, approximately 6 feet (1.8m) long with a long tail. The cat was approximately 1 to 1.5 metres long, about as high as a german shepherd dog, with a tail approximately 1 metre. “He sat in his cab with the window open and he sighted the animal for 4-5 minutes as it moved up an open hill and disappeared over the top. “The cat stopped briefly after moving about 20m as Stewart stopped the truck, and turned to look at him. He describes its head as very round. When the animal ran it stretched its body out.”

hen MAF investigators visited the farm with Chad Stewart and took measurements, they found the truck driver had underestimated his distance from the cat – in fact 80 metres, not 60 – meaning it was even bigger than he thought. They estimated the animal stood 80cm tall at the shoulder – about groin height on the average male, was about 1.3 metres in body length and a tail about a metre long, possibly slightly more.” The farm owners, the Gallaghers, who’d been away that day, didn’t find out about the sighting till late the night it happened, and it gave Blair Gallagher the chills for two reasons. First, his young son Hamish had played that afternoon by the stockyards in virtually the same spot where the truck driver had seen the cat, and secondly he himself had noticed his sheep flock suddenly scatter up on the hill that afternoon, and presumed a dog was loose. On discovering his dogs and the neighbour’s dogs were all secure, he was left to ponder the mystery until a phone call came through about the panther sighting. Sara Gallagher says there have been numerous sightings of the beast in the area since, but most of them now go unreported. “There’s quite a few of them around, quite a few people have seen them but they don’t report them. It was spotted down our way on duck shooting morning, but that went unreported. I think it’s about the size of a jaguar or a leopard. The tails are really long,” says Gallagher. Four months after the cat was sighted on her farm, Sara Gallagher says she decided to take a summer stroll up the hillside to the spot where the beast had been seen disappearing over the ridge by the truck driver. “I was having a walk on my own, and I thought I’d walk along that fenceline – I’d never done it before – and just see where I would go if I was a big black cat! I stopped in the exact spot where I judged the truck driver had last seen it, and I looked straight down on the fence, and there on the top barbs was this black hair. It’s still there, you can still see the tufts of it. I actually pulled some off, sent half of it to MAF and kept half, and MAF have never been able to identify it, although they did 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

tell me they’d managed to eliminate cattle or any other animals that you’d expect to be there. “But they have a huge range, one of the Orana Wildlife Park guys who came out told me they cover areas of about 250 square kilometers, and they can cover huge distances.” In fact, male leopards have a home territory of up to 500 square kilometers and females about 200. According to data held by MAF, a female leopard will usually stay within 13 km of home. In terms of body weight, leopards come in a variety of mature sizes, from as little as 30kg for a small female to 70 or 80kg for a big male. They can range from as little as 1.3m from nose to tail tip, to as much as 1.8m long. To put all this in perspective, a big german shepherd might weigh 40 to 50kg, and a Rottweiler as much as 60kg, although neither of those dogs is close to a match for even a small leopard. When Auckland Zoo suffered a leopard escape in the 1920s, police dogs were sent into the bush around Western Springs to find it – police heard bloodcurdling yelps and their dogs failed to return, according to Herald reports. That cat was found dead three months later having apparently slipped into the sea near Point Chevalier and drowned. As previously noted, there had been a panther sighting three years previously at Old Man Peak, close to David Wightman’s Winterslow station. Farm-hand Marcus Ewart and a British hunter, David Tattum, were checking a gorge for chamois when they spotted movement through their binoculars, and quickly realized they were staring at a very large black cat. They sat transfixed as the animal moved about a hundred metres across ground before disappearing into scrub. According to Wightman, three men in nearby Bushside had also seen what appeared to be a large black cat inside a deer-fenced area at twilight around the same time. None of the farm workers initially went public with what they’d seen for fear of ridicule, and only came forward as publicity about other sightings built. The MAF report released to Investigate under the Official Information Act discloses the cat was at least 1.2 metres in body length – twice the size of 30kg huntaway farm dogs. This claim was tested by taking dogs up there the next day for a run in the same position where the panther was seen while one of the witnesses watched from where they’d been standing the day before. The MAF report notes: “…could confirm that the panther was twice the size of the sheep dogs.” The report also noted that the farmer “loses 600 Merino’s each winter in the high country. The quality of the sighting is high. By this I mean they were hunting, so they were moving quietly, they were using a high-powered scope.” The MAF report also suggests that based on the known habits of leopards and jaguars, “it is clear that a midday sighting is extremely unlikely”. However, that’s not entirely correct. According to international environmental reports, leopards and jaguars are less likely to be seen in daytime where there is extensive human or other predator (lion) movement, but in the absence of threats both cats have been known to hunt happily during the daylight hours. In other words, the Wightman farm sighting can’t be ruled out as a leopard on the sole basis of it being daylight. The MAF files disclose people have ventured a number of possible explanations. They include escapees from circuses,

Leopards are infamous for their ability to go undetected. They sometimes live practically among humans and are usually still tough to spot. They are graceful and stealthy. They are mainly nocturnal but can be seen at any time of day and will even hunt during daytime on overcast days. In regions where they are hunted, nocturnal behavior is more common. When making a threat, leopards stretch their backs, depress their ribcages between their shoulder blades so they stick out, and lower their heads (similar to domestic cats) – Wikipedia

zoos and wildlife parks, or the apparent release (sourced to the Acclimatisation Society) of bobcats and lynx to control rabbits in the South Island high country nearly 80 years ago.

he problem with the first theory is that there are too many sightings for the animal to simply be one escaped big cat, and the likelihood of a circus losing a breeding pair without telling anyone is slim. The problem with the second theory is that bobcats and lynx don’t have tails, whereas the black cats being seen have tails for Africa – or possibly from Africa. Some correspondents have suggested “Coon cats”, but the world’s largest ordinary cat according to the Guinness Book of Records happens to be a Maine Coon weighing in at 16kg and measuring 1.2 metres from nose to tail – not really big enough to scare grown men. Then there’s a school of thought suggesting big cats may have been brought here in the 19th century by goldminers (puma or jaguar cubs) or explorers, or in more recent times by round the world yachties or fishing boat crews who picked up an exotic “pet” in Asia and decided to release it before calling in to Customs and MAF when first docking at a New Zealand port. All of these things are possible, but there’s no way of knowing

how likely they are. Asian leopards – which are smaller than the African variety – are still relatively common in Asia and black is a common colour. There is another problem, however: a sticking point on the black leopard theory is the pointed ears. Virtually all the reports in New Zealand involving large black cats where the ears have been seen, refer to “pointed ears”. The big cats – lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars – all have rounded ears. Additionally, a distinguishing feature of the true big cats is their ability to roar. House cats can’t, and neither can mountain lions – even though they can grow bigger than leopards. Investigate has been unable to locate any reports on file in New Zealand which disclose anyone hearing roaring. So what is it? Are there black leopards or jaguars roaming the high country and even venturing close to Christchurch? Certainly, the evidence that something big is out there is overwhelming, even the MAF files acknowledge as much. And with pastures filled with millions of sheep and forests full of deer and pigs, not to mention the rabbit population, there is more food for major predators per square kilometer than there is on any African savannah or within any Asian jungle. New Zealand is a literal, quarter-acre panther paradise. Nor are we alone with big cat mysteries. Across the Tasman, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 39

a just-released government report concludes it is “more likely than not” that a breeding population of pumas – American mountain lions – is now well established in New South Wales and Victoria. The man at the centre of Australia’s big cat hunt is Michael Williams: “We’re seeing large kills indicative of large cats. The animal will be killed very quickly, it’ll be flipped over, looks like it’s been razor-bladed open and vacuum-cleaned. It looks nothing like a dog attack. Calves, sheep, goats, dogs.” Dogs?, we ask, and get the confirmation. Whatever is eating large animals, says Williams, has also eaten dogs. The largest attack documented was a horse which had its throat ripped out. “Bucketloads of ‘roos. They look nothing like a dog attack. Dogs are really sloppy. These things, it looks like aliens from Mars have landed with a razor and a vacuum cleaner. “One of the best ones I’ve got is a calf that was seen by the owner alive at 10am, and by 3pm it’s just a skeleton with a head on top of the actual hide. He saw a large brown cat walk off from it. He only saw one cat, so we’re just guestimating it’s one.” Williams believes many of the bigger kills are being made by mountain lions. “If I was a gambling man I’d go for puma, but purely because the Beacon study finished by Professor John Henry just recently, concluded after about 15 years of going through the area interviewing people was that there’s a breeding population of pumas in the Grampians. Now where they came from is anyone’s guess. “There’s a great mythology associated with the US troops having them as mascots in WW2, but do reckon I could find one photo? I do have one photo taken in 1927 of a puma lying on the ground in Victoria next to a bunch of people standing there in old hats.” But unlike New Zealand, where the earliest reports we could find dated from the 1960s, Williams has tracked big cat sightings in Australia as far back as 1884. “It gets really murky, because the earliest record we’ve got of a large cat was up in Darwin, which is in one of the CSIRO journals…and it is in 1884 in the Northern Territory of a leopardsized cat running past the explorers. Now don’t tell me there was an escapee from a circus truck in the Northern Territory at that date!” While New Zealand has had perhaps a dozen “official” sightings, Williams, who’s compiling data for an upcoming book on the big cat phenomenon, has obtained more than 300 sightings from Australians in just the past five years alone, and most are telling a similar tale. “Jaguars and leopards roar, but the vocalizations farmers are reporting is a cough/scream, which is the vocalization of the puma. The sounds that have been played back to me match exactly Melbourne Zoo’s puma vocalization. And a puma isn’t classified as a ‘big cat’ only because it can’t vocalize like the big cats. “I know of a female puma that was 35 kilos, and there was a male one recently that died at 80kg. I’ve got a German Shepherd that weighs 50kg, and pumas can go double that, but not only that they’re triple the strength of a dog per pound. “We believe that if there’s any exotic cats running around it’s more than likely they’re pumas. What the hell the black cats are, we don’t know.” Ah, yes. The black cats. Officially, pumas don’t come in black; 40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

leopards and jaguars do. And while the Australian authorities are finally coming to terms with the reality that they’ve joined the big cat club with their own mountain lions, there’s still a raging controversy over the black cat sightings. “There were two brothers fishing, and they could see the eyeshine of a cat – one guy’s waving a torch at the eyeshine going, ‘there’s a cat’, and his brother’s going ‘yeah, yeah..’, and the first guy says ‘he’s getting clo – he’s a pretty big cat’. The brother’s still going ‘yeah, yeah’ and the first one says, ‘Look at the size of that cat!’ – we’re talking an Alsation-sized, jet black cat. And the first brother’s going ‘That’s not just a feral cat’ and the second brother goes, ‘oh, you’re a big girl!’. “But the first guy hops back in his 4WD, and the second brother turns his torch back on an animal now the size of a leopard and immediately hops back in the car really quickly.” Sound familiar? Really big, black cats.

p until recently, investigators were convinced the animals had to be leopards or jaguars, while the Australian equivalent of DOC was equally convinced they were simply large feral cats – house cats gone wild. But then a farmer shot one. When the carcass was measured, it stretched 1.85 metres from nose to tail. The bullet blew most of the head off the cat at close range, so the farmer disposed of the carcass although kept 600mm of tail. His decision to do that was a godsend for Mike Williams. “House cats gone wild cannot grow to the size of some of the dimensions of the animals recorded. But the inverse of that is an animal shot recently which was 1.6 metres from tip of nose to tip of tail, which we’ve got photos of – and another which is bigger – with the first one we got DNA and it came back Felis catus [standard domestic cat], so people get confused and go, ‘Oh, they’re just feral cats’. But the trouble is, the animal that was shot, and the other one we’ve got photos of, they’re bigger than Panthera pardus, which is a leopard.” Just let that sink in for a moment. Just like the New Zealand reports, Australians are seeing giant black cats. Now two have been shot, measuring 1.85m and 1.6m, making them as big or bigger than black panthers. But the DNA appears clear “they’re house cats”. Williams is planning to release photos of the monster house cats in his new book, although Investigate has located reports of a 1.6m cat being shot and videoed several years ago in the South Island. Michael Williams believes it could be a mutation. “I was talking to a guy called Stephen Wroe, one of Australia’s leading biologists in this field, and he agrees – according to him there is no known mechanism in theory that constrain a cat – basically what his argument is is that if there’s a mutation, or that somehow they’ve crossed or if there is a gigantism component of a gene that’s suddenly expressed – that may explain it. “But what I find baffling,” Williams adds, “is that no sooner do I have a possible explanation here in Australia than hey presto, shazam, you have giant black cats in New Zealand too? It just doesn’t make sense.” Indeed, the chances of feral house cats mutating on both sides of the Tasman separately appears highly unlikely. But on the other hand, it does explain the pointy ears and cat-like appearance of one of the large beasts photographed in New Zealand. “Even if these animals just turn out to be large monster Felis

“Bucketloads of ‘roos. They look nothing like a dog attack. Dogs are really sloppy. These things, it looks like aliens from Mars have landed with a razor and a vacuum cleaner”

This roo was missing its head and its hindquarters, and was left in a tree

cats the size of leopards, that’s still a worry!” says Williams. “It’s a 45 kilo cat, that’s black, Felis catus, against a 45 kilo cat that’s a leopard. Perhaps physiologically the leopard might be a little stronger, but the Felis catus might not have the same structure. Those cats people are looking at and say they’re leopards, you look at them and they’re slender, quite graceful body shape, while some of the leopards are very muscular and jaguars are just out of control.”

he mutant house-cat theory might, on the other hand, explain the large number of daylight sightings in New Zealand. Although both leopards and jaguars are comfortable hunting in daylight if they don’t feel threatened, house cats have no hesitation at all in prowling during daylight hours. Have you, we suggest to Williams, tried leaving out a saucer of milk? He guffaws down the phone: “They’ve tried shooting them, trapping them, poisoning them, but it’s all failed so far. Some people have shot them over the years, but for some kind of bizarre reason Australian farmers are paranoid about getting into trouble or paranoid about publicity – they either throw them out or take photos sometimes, but they dispose of them. It drives me insane. Farmers tell me about sheep carcasses up trees, I ask them ‘what’d ya do?’ and they tried to feed it to the dogs after they got the sheep down – I say to them, ‘What? Are you all bloody well on crack or something?’ It’s a large cat that can get a sheep carcass up a tree.” And overwhelmingly, the cats are black.

“They’re reporting black, all the video footage is black, the photos are black. But I’ve got a scary feeling that if you shot it and got the DNA it’ll come back with pointy ears and a short tail compared to a leopard or jaguar, and it’ll be simply Felis catus! People will say ‘it’s just a feral cat’, and I’ll go, ‘No, you moron, feral cats are not supposed to get this big’.” One of Williams’ big complaints is the reluctance of federal and state authorities in Australia to admit that the continent appears over-run with leopard sized cats. “We’ve had rangers who’ve seen the cats, and they’re not allowed to go on our database or any database at all. We’ve had Department of Primary Industry staff – they’ve got no advantage to their careers to report them. The main problem is, they’re worried about litigation and legal costs because they might be forced to try and eradicate them, but they can’t eradicate pigs, goats, dogs and normal size cats so they’ve got no chance with the world’s smartest predator in the bush.” And, he adds, if they did fess up, “the public would demand they do something about it.” As if to back up that claim, Australian media recently disclosed that the Government has been keeping a secret file on big cat sightings, separate from the ones released to the public. And the secret file reveals officials were so concerned about the potential threat to humans that they commissioned an expert report from big cat expert Dr Johannes Bauer to evaluate what had previously been deemed unthinkable. “Difficult as it seems to accept,” concluded Bauer, “the most likely explanation of the evidence . . . is the presence of a large feline predator.” Just a month ago, on September 17, the Herald Sun newspaper in Australia published a special investigation based on yet another previously secret Government report: “A secret government file confirms big cats are breeding in eastern Victoria. Department of Primary Industries documents reveal at least 34 sightings of puma or panther-like cats, along with dozens of mystery stock kills in Gippsland, in the past INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 41

three years. And department officer Terry Higgins has seen the cats, but is banned from talking about them to the Sunday Herald Sun.” According to the report, sightings included a giant fawn cat, larger than a German shepherd, and “a huge black puma with three kittens the size of kelpie dogs”, as well as significant stock kills in the same area. “Binginwarri farmer Ron Jones said he had seen big cats on his farm about 30 times and lost 260 cattle in the past eight years to predators,” reported the Herald Sun. “Mr Jones, 62, said the cats were about the size of a golden retriever dog. He said his mother, 82, had had a close encounter with one of them just a few days ago. And he had even shot one with a .22-calibre Magnum rifle – but it was not enough to fell the beast.”

nother sighting, documented by Michael Williams, is the case of a pet house cat in Victoria killed by something that then leapt 3 metres onto the roof of a house, leaving big cat footprints on the roof. Further north, in Queensland, farmer Gordon Wright, from the settlement of Alligator, set traps to catch dingoes that had been attacking his dogs. “Two of our dogs were attacked by dingoes, so I made a dog trap up which was placed next to Mount Elliot National Park,” he told reporters. ”I placed a roadkill wallaby inside the trap, and every night I would wait with a spotlight and hope for the dingoes to return. “I was sitting down there at about 10.30pm one night, and I heard a bit of a rustle in the grass so I thought ‘great, the dogs are back’ and I turned the spotlight on and I couldn’t believe my eyes – it was a monstrous black cat. “My dog is a bull mastiff cross and the other dog is a pit bull and I thought ‘&*$%#, the cat is bigger than my dog!’. His legs were as thick as my arms. It turned and looked at me, and I was in shock. All I had with me was a .22. “His tail was as thick as my arm. His head was as big as my head, it was about 30-40 metres away.” Samples of cat scat (faeces) and other circumstantial evidence has been sent to the authorities for years in Australia, and kept coming back as “canine”. So to test a hunch, Michael Williams sent in some scat obtained from a leopard in a private zoo. “The contractors identified the scats as being from a dog and the hairs as those of a domestic cat – it’s clear to us that the government is ill-equipped to deal with the big cat problem.” The scat, he says, tends to be bigger than a large Rottweiler’s. “They stink of urine and have fur and bone pieces in them.” Interestingly, some scat obtained from Sally and Blair Gallagher’s South Island sheep station in October 2003 contained fur, bone pieces and even the claw of something that had been eaten. Scientific tests in New Zealand suggested the scat might be canine, but researchers added that the DNA test of the faeces might be picking up what was eaten, rather than what was doing the eating. In New Zealand, MAF is satisfied with the credibility of most of the big cat witnesses. Michael Williams agrees that most across the Tasman are also on the level. “It’s a statistical thing. If you’ve got a hundred witnesses you’re bound to have a few nutbags and liars, but I could give you over 300 just in the last five years so there’s got to be a few 42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

who are telling the truth. Predominantly the witnesses we’re dealing with are farmers, professional hunters or government staff. They’re seeing predominantly large black or large brown cats. And if it’s a brown cat they’ll call it a puma, and if it’s black they’ll say it’s a leopard or a jaguar. “There’s no advantage for people living in country locations in Australia, I don’t know what it’s like in NZ, to start making waves and seeing animals that aren’t supposed to be there – they’re treated like halfwits. They don’t think ‘Hey, Farmer Brown’s a great guy because he’s seeing cats on his property!’ They think, ‘nah’.” It’s a similar story in New Zealand. Witnesses spoken to by Investigate admit being “ribbed” about the sightings, but as more people come forward others feel more confident to talk about the problem. Part of it, undoubtedly, is that New Zealanders and Australians have been conditioned since birth to believe that big cats do not exist in the wild in either country. Indeed, in New Zealand particularly it is part of the appeal for the great outdoors – camping under the stars in the McKenzie country beside a warm fire with a can of Speights. But as one Australian remarked after seeing a big black cat leap seven metres past his car, “I am never sleeping in a tent again!” So far, apart from one uncorroborated report in Australia (the man was injured but no one else saw what attacked him), there have been no documented attacks on humans on either side of the Tasman. But as New Zealand MAF official Ron Thornton remarked after we briefed him on the Australian findings and asked whether big cats might account for some of the missing persons in our bush: “Now you’re getting me really worried.” It is, says Thornton, an issue that MAF is taking seriously. “We never have regarded them as hoax calls, but it reinforces the fact that we absolutely mustn’t, because maybe there is some kind of story here. I’ve learnt never to write anything off.” Thornton’s view is that with the abundant food supply out there, the cats may not pose an immediate threat to humans. “Most animals do try and avoid us. You don’t hear about any people being attacked by leopards and stuff, most try and avoid you. Tigers, when they get older, sometimes start to prey on humans, but it’s not what they usually do.” Even so, the thought of domestic cats growing to the size of leopards in Australia, and possibly here, also has MAF rattled. “If anyone saw a cat that big – it’s hugely significant, a phenomenal finding. A scary finding too! People have tended to write some of these lamb deaths off as wild pigs…it’s a scary thought, a large cat.” But even in New Zealand, there’s still a twist. You’ll recall the government reports suggesting pumas are now well established in Australia? Well, they might be here, too. Investigate tracked down a Canadian tourist, Professor Terry Chattington, who holidayed here with his wife Stella in 1999. At the time, they made headlines in a local South Island paper: “A Canadian tourist who believes a North American mountain lion is stalking the Otago coast is having difficulty being taken seriously. “Professor Terry Chattington spotted what he thought was a mountain lion standing on boulders above Moeraki, south of Oamaru, on Friday afternoon. However, it was only when he reached Te Anau yesterday that he found someone who,

“So far, apart from one uncorroborated report in Australia there have been no documented attacks on humans on either side of the Tasman”

Males tend to weigh around 75kg and are about 2.1m long while females may be as light as 40kg. Pumas have long tails and disproportionately small heads. Pumas have remarkable strength in their hind legs which can propel them 8 metres from a standstill and more than 4 metres vertically. Pumas do not roar like lions but their calls sound more like a human scream. – Davidson University, USA

while they may not have taken him seriously, did at least listen. “Professor Chattington said he and his wife, Stella, were photographing birds when he spotted a large golden coloured cat, about 3m long, which was the spitting image of a North American mountain lion. “ ‘I know what these things look like – I’ve seen them before,’ Professor Chattington said. He asked his wife to take a photograph of the animal, but, by the time she got her camera organised, it had moved away. “ ‘It stood up on a rock and looked at us, surveying the territory. Then it walked down these huge boulders and disappeared. We told people in a restaurant and they just laughed. We couldn’t find a police station to report it at.’ “Mr Chattington notified the Department of Conservation on his arrival at Te Anau yesterday afternoon and from there Invercargill police were called. “ ‘This is a safety hazard all right. These things can move 30km in day no trouble. They would take sheep, cattle or even children,’ Professor Chattington said.” Speaking to Investigate via email from Ontario, Chattington confirmed that he’d definitely seen what he considers a cougar. Nor has his story changed after seven years.

“Somewhere between Timaru and Oamaru we stopped near an eating place to take some pictures of some birds. When I looked behind us I saw this cat climbing down the face of a large boulder. I shouted to my wife who had her camera in her hand to take its picture, but she said it was too far away, and headed for the ocean. In North America these cats are notoriously shy of people, and wander many miles in search of game. Of course in N.Z. it would not have to wander far. When I mentioned this sighting to the tourist centre at Te Anau, a staff member mentioned that another tourist had reported a sighting. On the Milford Sound cruise “the cat” became the topic of conversation, and a member of the crew told us that someone had reported a sighting.” And not just tourists. Also on NZ government files is the case of a hunter who watched a mountain lion for 25 minutes in 1998 in the Dunstan Ranges, near Cromwell. “I was leaning against the DOC sign for the Young Australian mine at around 1400m in the Dunstan Range. I was scanning the hills on the opposite side of the gorge through the binoculars and sighted a large cat moving easily about its territory. It certainly appeared larger than our Labrador dog, dark orangemustard in colour. I had it in my sights for 25 minutes. “The day was still, clear and cold. I watched the animal move up and down the steep slopes and lie out on exposed rocks. Its movements, its style, were pure cat. “The animal was clearly comfortable with its habitat and its coat looked to be in good condition. Sheep grazing below did not appear to be aware of its presence. “Soon after 4pm the temperature dropped significantly and I decided it was time to leave. As I dropped down I kept the glasses on my mountain lion until the track led away from its territory. I made a formal report to DOC in Alexandra the next day with map references and since then have put up with the good-natured disbelief of friends.” The size of the puma reported by Chattington would be correct – a two metre long body and a metre of tail. How they got here is anyone’s guess, but until someone shoots one and drops the carcass in to MAF, their existence will remain, officially, only a rumour. If you have information on NZ’s big cats, email bigcat@investigatemagazine.tv. For more photos and links, please go to thebriefingroom.com

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FRONTLINE

JAILED in

DARFUR When actor George Clooney hit the headlines at the United Nations last month calling for action on the Darfur tragedy in the Sudan, one journalist had reason to applaud more than most: PAUL SALOPEK had just been released from a month in captivity for trying to report from the frontlines of the crisis

ne cloudless Sunday morning in early August, while traveling on a desert road in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan, a teenager sporting dreadlocks and an AK-47 rifle stopped my vehicle. My translator, Suleiman Abakar Moussa, stepped out and offered the youth a cigarette â&#x20AC;&#x201C; standard etiquette in African war zones. But Moussa immediately returned to the car, frowning. In this incidental way, I learned that we had just lost our freedom. The young gunman belonged to a pro-government militia. And his patrol, after beating us and stealing our car and equipment, handed us over to Sudanese military intelligence. Moussa, my driver, Idriss Abdulrahman Anu, and I spent the 44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 45

next 34 days behind bars in Darfur, ending up hostage to a regime accused of mass murder. The government in Khartoum charged us with espionage, spreading “false news” and entering Africa’s latest killing field without a visa. It was hard not to feel, however, that our real crime was unspoken: reporting on a humanitarian catastrophe that is largely invisible to the outside world, and that is poised to grow worse in the weeks ahead. Thousands of villagers will likely die soon in Darfur, the arid homeland of millions of farmers and herders who have been targeted in a ruthless civil war that some call genocide. Their torched huts, seen from the air, look like cigarette burns on a torture victim’s skin.

urrently, a peace deal between the government and a major insurgent group is coming unglued. With the advent of the dry season, the Sudanese army and the fractious Darfur rebels are primed for a new military showdown. And, paradoxically, negotiators on the ground worry that a well-intentioned human-rights campaign, launched by Western activists on behalf of Darfur’s civilians, may actually be locking in the violence. With Khartoum tarred as the bully, there is scant hope for any last-minute dialogue before the offensives begin. Ironically, I wasn’t focused exclusively on the Darfur tragedy when I crossed the desolate border separating Sudan and Chad on Aug. 6. My Chadian colleagues and I were working on a much broader freelance assignment for National Geographic on the Sahel, the immense and turbulent band of savanna that runs across northern Africa, home to some 90 million struggling people. Darfur was a side trip. Other journalists and aid workers had described how some Darfur refugees in Chad were drifting back to their ruined villages to rebuild their homes. It seemed a rare chance to profile civilians clinging to life in an intractable war zone. With our arrest, we unwittingly became part of that survival story. For years, foreign correspondents have covered the Darfur crisis by slipping into rebel-held territory from Chad. Sudanese officials in Khartoum are stingy with journalist visas. Thus, much of what the world knows about a conflict that has killed at least 200,000 people comes from quick reportorial forays into the beautiful, lawless, corrugated plains and rocky escarpments controlled by Darfur’s half-starved rebels. Unfortunately for us, those insurgents can no longer be relied upon to guarantee our safety. A cease-fire accord signed in May, brokered partly by the United States, has shattered the rebel movement into dozens of small, competing bands. Loyalties are fluid. Confusion and treachery is common. Case in point: We were captured by a unit answering to Minni Minnawi, a pro-peace former rebel who only two weeks earlier had shaken President Bush’s hand in the White House. Minnawi’s field commander along the northern border, a skinny, rakish guerrilla named Ibrahim Garsil, initially threatened to kill us. Luckily, his demoralized, war-weary men disregarded those orders. Instead they deserted by twos and threes every night, leaving their rifles propped against the nearest

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thorn tree. Others got drunk on date wine gulped from old automotive antifreeze jugs. Still others went on impromptu safaris with my stolen vehicle, taking potshots out the windows at wild cranes and storks. (They missed.) After holding us in lice-infested huts for three days, Garsil traded us to the Sudanese army for a large box of new uniforms. Our Sudanese military helicopter ride to the garrison town of El Fasher offered a rare glimpse into Darfur’s secretive air war, in which government pilots are accused by groups such as Human Rights Watch of strafing and bombing civilian villages. Only this time, the tables were turned. Our chopper took ground fire over the contested town of Kutum. Bullets pinged through the passenger compartment. With my hands tied behind my back, I felt doubly helpless. A

spent round knocked a Sudanese officer out of the seat opposite me. He clawed at his back, feeling for blood, and guffawed with relief when he discovered he was only bruised. After wobbling to a hard landing on the airfield at El Fasher, our dusty little party was driven off in an SUV with tinted windows and a Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Ministry logo emblazoned on the doors. Our destination was a “ghost house,” one of Sudan’s notorious clandestine jails. For the next 10 days we were held incommunicado and interrogated. I spent my time in solitary confinement, in a barren room with a cot and a permanently buzzing fluorescent light. During my five-minute morning walks around the perimeter of a sandy courtyard, I managed to fling several distress notes scribbled on cigarette paper over the high wall. These ridiculous calls for help may

have bounced off the heads of government soldiers; I learned later that our prison was in the middle of a large army base. Obviously, Moussa, Anu and I saw little of Darfur: a succession of pestilential huts, mud-brick prison cells and interrogation rooms. Still, we kept our ears and eyes open while inside the belly of the very security agencies that were helping prosecute the government’s war in Darfur. And our keyhole view of the conflict offered some bleak insights into the future: Vastly oversimplified as a good-versus-evil contest between African farmers and rampaging Arab herdsmen armed by Khartoum, the complicated struggle in Darfur is about to get a lot murkier – and more unstoppable. Once loosely united by the neglect and cruelty of the central government, the region’s INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 47

squabbling rebels now maul each other. They are a messy obstacle to peace. Many have devolved into ethnic militias, or worse, simple bandits. Insurgents I interviewed on the Chad border had little vision for the future of their people. Some resembled warlords from such dismal places as eastern Congo: sleek businessmen of war using children as cannon fodder. Flouting the peace deal, the Sudanese government has unleashed an offensive that is supposed to crush the remaining rebels. Whispered conversations with our jailers confirmed that, so far, it has failed miserably. Khartoum reportedly lost dozens of vehicles and hundreds of soldiers. That said, troop planes roared nightly over our prison in El Fasher. Military activity is set to escalate when the battlefields dry after the rains. Even our pudgy guards were being mobilized.

n African Union peacekeeping force can’t stanch the bloodshed in Darfur, despite a promised addition of 4,000 troops. Sources as varied as Sudanese military officers, rebels, refugees and even frustrated AU officials themselves said the ill-equipped force remains outgunned and overwhelmed. Moreover, their credibility as an honest broker is in tatters. A typically depressing incident overheard in prison: In August, pro-government raiders called janjaweed attacked women and children gathering wood within sight of an AU firebase in southern Darfur. Several women were shot down. I was told that the AU contingent of Nigerian soldiers didn’t lift a finger. Only when infuriated villagers surrounded the peacekeepers’ base, chanting and waving sticks, did the AU at last react – dispersing the civilians with armored personnel carriers. “Abuja? What is Abuja?” a slender woman named Fatim Yousif Zaite, 40, asked in a destroyed village where I was briefly held by the ragged militia, early in my ordeal. Abuja is the popular name for the Darfur peace accord, signed in the Nigerian capital of the same name. Zaite had never heard of it. She wore a yellow wrap and a luminous smile, and she was planting a small plot of sorghum in fields that, by her estimate, had been cratered nine times by government bombers since the outbreak of the war in 2003. Five of her relatives had been killed in the war. Standing in the field, she kept gently pulling her 3-year-old daughter’s hand away from a small bucket of seed grain. The girl was hungry. She was eating the seeds. I knew hunger briefly in prison in Darfur. For seven days I refused food in the ghost house in El Fasher. I was protesting my separation from Moussa and Anu, and our secret incarceration. This was the only weapon I could muster. But the bored duty officers simply shrugged, mentioning Guantanamo, the U.S. military base in Cuba, where several Sudanese are being held as terror suspects. Disheartened, I resumed eating on the eighth day. I believe that our arrest in Sudan was a billboard-size warning to foreign journalists: Khartoum is fed up with the drumbeat of negative news emanating from Darfur. Yet moderates within the regime must have ultimately prevailed in our case. For on Aug. 19, we three scruffy “spies” were transferred to a civilian jail. We still faced a penalty of 20 years in prison. But now we enjoyed access to Sudanese attorneys. Better yet, Moussa, Anu and I were reunited, albeit sometimes 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

with 16 other men – pickpockets, con men, gun runners – in a 15-by-15-foot cell. We were delirious with relief. I traded my wristwatch for a cell phone call to my wife. Our police guards acted like human beings. Six days later, the U.S. vice consul in Sudan and several American military advisers to the AU negotiated even better conditions for us at a courthouse jail. There, the affable judge who was to try us as enemies of the state bought us sickly sweet mint tea. By the end, I even was playing chess with the jailer who administered 40 lashes to town drunks under Shariah, the religious laws enforced under conservative Islam. The whipman’s name was Salah. To him the beatings were a job. At night he studied microbiology. On Sept. 9 we were pardoned by President Omar al-Bashir, thanks to the humanitarian intercession of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and the Herculean efforts of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. Worldwide pressure from the journalistic community, in particular our tireless colleagues at the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, gave us heart. So did letters of support from public figures as diverse as Bono and former President Jimmy Carter. Yet for the hapless people of Darfur, there appears to be no such happy ending. Reacting to public outcry, the Bush administration has classified Darfur’s almost incomprehensible suffering as genocide. The White House is pushing hard for a UN force of 20,000 police and soldiers to replace the weak African Union peacekeepers. And Sudan is resisting bitterly. Early in October, Khartoum sent threatening letters to nations promising troops to a UN force. In truth, there are no guarantees that even a powerful UN force will do much better than the AU in Darfur. The violent badlands of western Sudan are larger than Texas. And the proliferating gangs of rebels and pro-government militias, whether steered by Khartoum or renegade commanders, recall the nightmare of Bosnia. There, blue-helmeted UN troops hunkered down and performed abysmally. Meanwhile, the ancient roots of Darfur’s feuding will remain: racism between ethnic Arabs and Africans, and competition for threadbare natural resources – water and pastureland. “A political settlement has been completely overlooked or downplayed by the U.S.,” insists Alex de Waal, co-author of the book “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War.” “The whole debate has gone off on a red herring – UN troops. From experience, we know that, ultimately, there is no real military solution to these kinds of complicated ethnic wars.” Yet relations between the West and Sudan are now so polarized that negotiating a new peace accord before the killing flares anew seems like a pipe dream. During my last night in the ghost house in El Fasher, I endured my longest interrogation at the hands of an army colonel named Abdallah. He grilled me for nearly six hours, bludgeoning me robotically with accusations of espionage, absurd charges that I knew even he didn’t believe. At 1 a.m. he finally played the good cop, and asked if I had any questions of my own. I did. I wanted to know the fate of Darfur. “More war,” he said without hesitation. He stared hard down at his desk. After days of lies and mind games, these were the first honest words that escaped his lips.

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The Coming U.S. h Attack on Iran

New Zealand writer Maurice Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien analyses the likely gameplan in a US strike against Iran

50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

ESSAY

hat is the evidence that the United States intends to bomb Iran’s nuclear plants? There’s nothing conclusive yet, since all such questions are carefully avoided, but the circumstantial evidence is mounting. All of that evidence originates from the halls of power in Washington D.C., and it’s necessary to evaluate the strategies being planned there, because they bear an unusual resemblance to the contrivances hatched during the build-up to the war in Iraq. Iran has nuclear facilities in Tehran, Bushehr, Natanz, and Arak, and many more places, probably some that U.S. intelli-

gence agencies don’t know about. U.S. Air Force war planners believe that about three-quarters of the potential targets can be destroyed from the air, while the other quarter are too close to population centers, or buried too deep, to be targeted. 1 There is some discrepancy about how many targets the U.S. military is focused on. Some observers say it’s approximately 30-40, while others estimate that the number is closer to 1,000. And the targets won’t just be associated with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As a senior Pentagon adviser told American journalist Seymour Hersh, “If you’re going to do any bombing to stop the nukes, you might as well... hit some training camps, and clear up a lot of other problems.”2 These other sites consist of chemical production plants, ballistic missile launch areas, airfields with military aircraft, and any Iranian submarines. Anything that could threaten oil tankers in the Persian Gulf would also be hit. Regarding the actual details of war plans, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, who helped plan the air war against Iraq in 1991, has developed a plan of attack against Iran, and it was reported by Newsmax in April 2006. The air strike plan, which he calls “Big George” (no, this is not a joke), would entail an attack on 1,000 targets in Iran. It goes like this: 15 stealth bombers and another 45 F117s and F-22 warplanes would carry out the initial waves of the attack, crippling Iran’s long-range radar and strategic air defenses. Then massive additional waves of air strikes would be launched from U.S. bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Bahrain. These strikes would destroy Iran’s known nuclear and missile sites. “Big George” would also target command and control facilities, such as Revolutionary Guard command centers. 3 This attack scenario would be carried out over a period of two days, and includes the participation of Israel. Interestingly, the plan adds that “key clerics” would be targeted – i.e., the assassination of individuals that the Bush clique deems troublemakers. This measure is designed to trigger a revolt against the regime by opposition groups inside Iran. 4 And what would the Iranian reaction be? It would certainly involve missile strikes on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and hits against U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The likely details of Iran’s response recently turned up in the hands of an Iranian defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri. The document he had, drafted in 2005, originates from the Strategic Studies Center of the Iranian Navy, and outlines the preparations being made for a retaliatory assault on U.S. naval forces and international shipping in the Persian Gulf with the use of bottom-tethered mines potentially capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers. 5 The aim of these strikes is simple – to stop the shipment of the 15 million barrels of oil that pass through the Gulf every day. From the smuggled Iranian document, it’s clear that any U.S. attack on Iran would set off a war that would soon engulf the whole Middle East. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are planning to attack more than 100 targets in the Gulf, including Saudi oil production and oil export centers. A wave of suicide attacks would be carried out by “suicide submarines” and semi-submersible boats, then Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and Chinese-built Huodong missile boats would be deployed to attack U.S. warships. This attack would utilize radar-guided C-802 missiles, the same ones that hit an Israeli warship during the Hezbullah war. Iran’s response would also involve INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 51

attacks from ground-launched tactical missiles, coastal artillery, and strategic missiles. These would be aimed at U.S. forces of course, but also at Saudi Arabia. 6 Even more scary – Iran intends to attack Israel. Its Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles, in addition to the X-55 cruise missiles, would be immediately fired at the Israelis in the hope of arousing the entire Muslim world in the fight against the two perceived “enemies of Islam.” It wouldn’t take long for such an event to develop into a perilous crisis. When the U.S. Navy counter-attacks, Iran will launch its own counter-attack, and it’s hard to know where it will end.

he backlash from the rest of the Islamic world will be tremendous, since it would be seen as an attack on all Muslims. Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician, has remarked that “this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy world.” 7 In fact, any attack against Iran would quadruple the risk of attack on the United States. Iranian missiles would fly to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Israel, suicide boats would be driven into oil tankers and U.S. warships, short-range missiles would be fired at them, the price of oil would exceed $100 a barrel, and terrorist attacks against Jews and Americans would break out around the world. Muslim clerics all over the globe will issue fatwas against the West, home-grown terror cells in Britain will embark on a new round of bombings, and the A.Q. Khan nuclear-parts network might find itself inundated with orders. It’s no exaggeration to say that an attack on Iran could lead to a world war. And how about this Iranian defector who handed over the secret documents detailing Iran’s retaliation plans? Can such information be trusted? It sure seems so: The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, warned the CIA in July 2001 that Iran was preparing a massive attack on America using Arab terrorists flying airplanes, which he said was planned for September 11, 2001. But the CIA dismissed his claims and assumed he was making up a story. 8 Is Iran close to developing nuclear weapons? No one knows except the Iranians, but speculation has turned into a parlor game. In 2004, some experts believed that the Iranian government could have nukes as early as 2007.9 Now most experts think it won’t have them for another 5-10 years.10 But Israel’s intelligence assessment is still that Iran would gain the technology necessary to build a Bomb by 2007.11 On the other hand, others say that the Iranians could actually be bluffing because they are technically poor at enriching uranium, and the regime could easily be engaged in a deception campaign to exaggerate progress on its nuclear program, just as Saddam Hussein did concerning his WMD programs. 12 This lack of information is a huge handicap in making an informed decision. And again, just like in the case of Iraq in 2002, the question of manipulated intelligence has appeared. In late August 2006, a key Congressional committee issued a critique of U.S. intelligence on Iran, claiming that “American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” and pointing to “many significant information gaps.”13 Some officials involved in the intelligence battles that preceded the Iraq invasion see the present debate as familiar, complete with an effort to create hard links based on murky intelligence. 14 52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

But in the same week as this report, another one was released which said the opposite—that America’s spy agencies are too cautious in their assessments of Iran and “shy away from provocative conclusions.” 15 It was accompanied by some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threat from Iran. 16 Is history repeating itself? Some commentators think so. According to Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post, the rightwing is playing the same game it played in 2002: “Once again, powerful neoconservative politicians who just know in their hearts that there is a terrible threat posed by a Middle Eastern country they have identified as part of the axis of evil are frustrated by the lack of conclusive evidence that would support a bellicose approach. So they are pressuring the nation’s intelligence community to find facts that will support their argument.” 17 It is, in fact, looking remarkably similar. In 2005, Bush said: “This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous,” 18 but then in February 2006, Bush stated that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “will not be tolerated.” 19 In March 2006, both Cheney and John Bolton, ambassador to the U.N., made threats to Iran. 20 To critics, there are many parallels between 2002 and now. As Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars, has written, “just as Bush’s 2002 denials of an intent to invade Iraq were accompanied by intense preparations for just such an outcome, so, today, one can detect similar preparations for an attack on Iran.” 21 Yet it doesn’t seem to matter what the intelligence says because according to John Bolton, the Bush clique will not be impeded by a lack of knowledge about Iran. According to Britain’s Guardian, Bolton told visiting British parliamentarians in March 2006 that an attack would just have to focus on certain locations: “We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down,” he said.22 But if the intelligence is unclear, how can he know that? Some tantalizing pieces of information seep out of the haze. According to Britain’s Telegraph, Bush “will not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran’s ayatollahs to go atomic.” 23 And in Israel, according to The Jerusalem Post, a high-level Israeli official said that if a U.S. attack was to take place, it would probably not occur until the spring or summer of 2008, a few months before Bush leaves the international stage. 24 Or it could be scheduled for the end of 2008, so as not to affect the Republican Party’s chances of re-election. There are two likely outcomes: (1) that Bush will win the war on terrorism, or (2) that Bush will inflame the Muslim world to such a degree as it makes the war on terrorism impossible to win. The second outcome is by far the more likely. There is no direct evidence that an attack on Iran is coming, but the signs all point to it. A Pentagon adviser interviewed by Seymour Hersh said that “allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It’s just too dangerous.” He added, “The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.” 25 What are the chances of a negotiated settlement? Almost

DEFENSELINK

zero. According to an official involved in the present diplomacy, “there’s nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome... Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It’s a dead end.” 26 Would an attack achieve the objective of ending Iran’s quest for nukes? Almost certainly not. For one thing, Iran could rebuild its facilities. According to James Fallows writing in The Atlantic Monthly, “A strike might delay by three years Iran’s attainment of its goal—but at the cost of further embittering the regime and its people. Iran’s intentions when it did get the bomb would be all the more hostile.” 27 Yet a successful air raid might be impossible. Sam Gardiner, a retired air force colonel, speaks for many analysts who have concluded that an air strike against Iran is not feasible or prudent: “Pre-emption is only a tactic that puts off nuclear development. It cannot make it go away. Since our intelligence is so limited, we won’t even know what we achieved after an attack. If we set it back a year, what do we do a year later?” 28 So for the United States, here’s the dilemma: All hell will break loose if Iran’s nuclear facilities are attacked, but all hell might break loose if they are not. In fairness to American conservatives, it could be mightily risky to stand idly by as Iran develops a Bomb. Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke

publicly in December 2001 about attacking Israel with nuclear weapons.29 It’s not the only such statement from Rafsanjani: In 2006, he explained that “the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.”30 Current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in 2005 that Iran is willing to pass its nuclear technology to other Islamic nations.31 He also stated that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” and repeated again in 2006 that the only solution to the Middle East conflict is to destroy Israel. 32

o Washington’s right-wingers, there can’t be a negotiated settlement if Iran has already decided on nukes, and terrorism can’t be defeated without taking on Iran, since fighting the regimes that sponsor terrorists is necessary to vanquish the terrorist scourge. The conservatives have some reasonable points, and it’s not as if everyone disagrees. In fact, the percentages of people in the developed world who view Iran as a threat have roughly tripled in the past three years. In a June 2006 survey, more than 90 percent of Germans, Japanese and French oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.33 But here’s the irony: When the Bush clique finally steps up the pressure and announces it has intelligence that Iran’s program is about to produce a nuclear weapon, most of the INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 53

world will be inclined to disbelieve this “intelligence” after no WMDs were found in Iraq even though trumped-up intelligence had said otherwise. But what if the intelligence this time is actually correct? On the other hand, what if it’s not? There are two separate, but linked, problems here: One is the bin Laden network and the pulling power of its extremist ideology. The other is Iran and its active direction of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbullah. These two aspects of the Islamist threat overlap, but one is Shi’ite and the other is Sunni. The direct links between the two are weak. Iran, Hezbullah and Hamas are out to destroy Israel more than the United States. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, however, see the U.S. as their real enemy. Right now, these two sets of groups have not joined forces to work together. But if the U.S. attacks Iran, could they put aside their differences and turn themselves into one super-terrorist organization? As if that prospect is not scary enough, add to it some others: (1) the coming oil decline and the resulting scramble for more oil, (2) the spread of nuclear technology and designs by the underground nuke network, (3) and the machinations of the Bush clique and its “create new realities” ambition. It looks like the world is in for

Notes:

1 Seymour Hersh, “The Coming Wars,” The New Yorker, issue of 24 & 31 January, 2005. 2 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker, issue of April 17, 2006. 3 This “Big George” plan is detailed in: Kenneth R. Timmerman, “‘Big George’: The Coming Attack on Iran,” Newsmax.com, April 15, 2006. 4 Ibid. 5 Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Iran Readies Plan to Close Strait of Hormuz,” Newsmax.com, March 1, 2006. 6 Ibid. 7 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker, issue of April 17, 2006. 8 Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Iran Readies Plan to Close Strait of Hormuz,” Newsmax.com, March 1, 2006. 9 Fareed Zakaria, “The Stealth Nuclear Threat,” Newsweek, August 16, 2004. Also reported by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, “Iran: Countdown to showdown,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2004. 10 William M. Arkin, “War by September? Not Likely,” washingtonpost.com, May 1, 2006. 11 Gareth Porter, “Clearing the path for US war on Iran,” Asia Times, August 10, 2006. Reprinted from Inter Press Service. 12 Dafna Linzer, “U.S. Spy Agencies Criticized On Iran,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2006. 13 Dave Eberhart, “Hill Report Warns of Iran Intelligence Gap,” Newsmax.com, August 25, 2006. 14 Mark Mazetti, “Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down,” The New York Times, August 24, 2006. 15 “Wanted: Scarier Intelligence,” The New York Times, August 25, 2006. This report was released by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra. 16 Mark Mazetti, “Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down,” The New York Times, August 24, 2006.

54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

some very interesting times over the next few years. Prediction: An American attack on Iran will come at the end of 2008. It will suddenly burst into the news with no warning, but the period before it will be full of ominous-sounding warnings and a propaganda campaign similar to the one that preceded the Iraq War. A lack of reliable information won’t stop the Bush-Cheney clique. The attack will cause the price of oil to exceed $100 a barrel, Iran will retaliate against ships in the Persian Gulf, will probably succeed in striking some U.S. warships, then fire missiles at Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. miltary in Iraq. The Saudis may consider this to be a good time to ask Pakistan for some nukes, as the secret deal they have made sets out. Meanwhile, Iran will activate its terrorist cells around the world to retaliate against anything Jewish or American, while Muslims around the world regard the whole spectacle as proof that the West and Jews are out to destroy Islam. In basements and mosques around the Muslim world, extremists will plot to get revenge in any way they can. As the tension mounts, most of the world will wonder how on earth such a disaster was allowed to occur in the first place. And then it will brace itself for a wave of terrorism never seen before...

17 Dan Froomkin, “History, Repeating Itself,” washingtonpost.com, August 24, 2006. 18 Michael T. Klare, “The Iran War Buildup,” The Nation (web only), July 21, 2005. 19 Philip Sherwell, “US prepares military blitz against Iran’s nuclear sites,” The Telegraph, February 12, 2006. 20 William M. Arkin, “Attacking Iran Even Without Good Targets,” washingtonpost.com, March 8, 2006. 21 Michael T. Klare, “The Iran War Buildup,” The Nation (web only), July 21, 2005. 22 The Guardian is quoted here by William M. Arkin, “Attacking Iran Even Without Good Targets,” washingtonpost.com, March 8, 2006. 23 Philip Sherwell, “US prepares military blitz against Iran’s nuclear sites,” The Telegraph, February 12, 2006. 24 Herb Keinon, “Israel may ‘go it alone’ against Iran,” The Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2006. 25 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker, issue of April 17, 2006. 26 Ibid. 27 James Fallows, “Will Iran be Next?” The Atlantic Monthly, December 2004. 28 Ibid. 29 “Rafsanjani Says Muslims Should Use Nuclear Weapon Against Israel,” Iran Press Service, December 14, 2001. 30 Charles Krauthammer, “Never Again?” The Washington Post, May 5, 2006. 31 “Iran willing to give nuclear technology to other Islamic nations,” The Japan Times, September 18, 2005. 32 David Limbaugh, “An unappeasable global jihad,” Townhall.com, August 4, 2006. Also: Eli Lake, “Iran Is Racing To Resupply Hezbollah,” The New York Sun, August 4, 2006. 33 Brian Knowlton, “Global Image of the U.S. Is Worsening, Survey Finds,” The New York Times, June 14, 2006.

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ANALYSIS

FULL OF HOLES Why the leaky building problem won’t go away

A forensic engineer has drawn parallels between the failures leading to the Erebus disaster and those leading to the Leaky Building crisis. Now, in this paper delivered to the Institute of Professional Engineers, ANDREW MCGREGOR argues that Leaky Building Syndrome could be haunting the property market for years to come

hen the Erebus tragedy happened in November 1979, investigators ultimately found a number of reasons, acting in unison, that culminated in the crash. Their conclusions, as previously referred to in Investigate last year, have had worldwide significance. If the lessons from Erebus may have prevented Chernobyl and Bhopal, thenthey could have also prevented today’s Leaky Building Syndrome. However, although we may not have fully grasped all the lessons from Erebus, accident causation thinkers such as Gordon Vette and James Reason did. About ten years after Erebus, Professor James Reason documented his theories on error by referring to organisational deficiencies, latent and active errors (Reason, 1990). Latent failures are often caused by people such as decision makers, managers and regulators well before an accident but with consequences that may lie dormant for some time until active failures or other events trigger them. Active failures are errors and violations with immediate adverse effects that often have close links with individuals or the last stages of the accident timeline and which often attract the interest of legal and insurance processes. In 1997 Reason published his book titled “Managing the Risks of Organisational Accidents” and included both Captain Vette and another causation thinker, Captain Meurino in 56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

his short list of dedications at the front of his book. (Captain Meurino worked for ICAO and was responsible for writing the Human Factors digest No 10.) The book includes what is now referred to as the “Swiss Cheese” accident model. This model portrays the accident timeline as an arrow that penetrates successive defences until an accident occurs. These defence deficiencies are compared to the holes in several layers of Swiss Cheese which all must line up coincidentally for an accident to occur. This model represents all ‘holes’ or causes of equal importance and unlike legal and insurance processes, the front holes at the ‘blunt’ end (latent failures) are as significant as the holes closest to the accident or at the ‘sharp’ end (active failures). Under this model there is no single primary cause. The latent failures are as important as the active failures. Recently Dekker (2002) proposed an alternative model of organisational accidents that is based on failure drift. Although he acknowledges with thanks the work of Reason, he criticises the Swiss Cheese model because it does not explain what the holes consist of or why they line up to let a failure become an accident (Dekker, 2002). He maintains that without the benefit of hindsight, error is hard to define and seeing the holes is difficult and therefore the Swiss Cheese model is not necessarily helpful in accident prevention (remember the Flight TE 901 pilots could not see that they could not see Mt Erebus). Therefore to try and understand why an accident occurs, it is

necessary to reconstruct the unfolding mindset of the organisation and individuals concerned without the benefit of hindsight. This is the perspective from which Dekker has developed his ‘Drift into Failure’ model and his new view of human error. Dekker’s ‘Drift into Failure’ model consists of three points: 1. People involved in accidents are not criminals or immoral deviants: “Failure drift and accidents that follow them are associated with normal people doing normal work in normal organizations” (Dekker, 2005, p. 24) 2. Often work involves deciding between conflicting goals: Organisations that involve critical safety work are essentially trying to reconcile irreconcilable goals (staying safe and staying in business) (Dekker, 2005) 3. Drifting into failure is incremental. “Accidents don’t happen suddenly, nor are they preceded by monumentally bad decisions or bizarrely huge steps away from the ruling norm” (Dekker, 2005, p. 24). Under this model “the potential of having an accident grows as a normal by-product of resource scarcity and competition“ (Dekker, 2005, p. 24). With the benefit of Reason’s and Dekker’s models [see the full version of this paper online at www.thebriefingroom.com], it is helpful to review the investigative work of Mahon and Vette. Mahon’s ten factors fits Reason’s Swiss Cheese model well and the poor communication that existed within Air New Zealand between management and pilots was a significant latent fail-

ure at the blunt end of the accident timeline. Although Vette and Mahon painstakingly reconstructed the unfolding mindset of the pilots and determined clearly how the pilot’s decisions made sense to them at the time, it was not possible to conduct a similar assessment with Air New Zealand management, who in a blameful context could have been defending their livelihood and the company’s right to an insurance payout. Had Mahon been able to achieve this he might have uncovered industry related problems, such as the poor communication that often exists between many captains and their co-pilots and the fact that civilian trainee pilots do not need to demonstrate comprehensively their skills in bad weather flying. Moreover, he may have discovered that previous whiteout air accidents had occurred before Erebus and that the reports of these accidents were not easy to obtain, as is the case for many air accident reports, even now. In the context of Dekker’s new view of human error, the answers to questions such as these may have provided credible reasons for the actions of Air New Zealand management and shown them in a more reputable light than even the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council were able to. At least the Erebus accident organisational accident was investigated comprehensively. Many, such as the Leaky Building Syndrome, are not. The Leaky Building Syndrome (LBS) arose in the late 90s after the requirement to treat framing timber with Boron biocide was relaxed. LBS is caused by moisture making inroads INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 57

through a building’s external membrane and into its timber framing to the extent that favours fungal activity. This, in turn, leads to decay of the timber andhealth risks for the building users. The final cost to the industry is difficult to estimate but has been estimated by one industry authority to be in the order of 10 billion dollars.

ontrary to common knowledge, this is not the first time that the country has experienced ‘leaky building’ problems. There is a concern that this problem has not been properly investigated and the controls that have been put in place may not be necessarily appropriate or effective and another ‘Leaky Building’ type of problem could recur in the future. LBS is not just caused by the relaxation of timber treatment alone. It is contributed to by the absence of eaves, cracking of plaster clad houses at the joints and walls that incorporated no free drainage cavity between the cladding and the supporting framework. In order to understand how and why New Zealand became exposed to LBS after 1996, it is helpful to examine a brief history of LBS in New Zealand over the last century. Around the turn of the 19th century, villas were built relatively high off the ground. During the 1920s, they were lowered to suit the Californian bungalow appearance but unfortunately to the extent that under floor ventilation was compromised. This increased the moisture content in the sub floor space which in turn led to borer decay and wood rot. The problem was solved by improving under floor ventilation and ensuring that sub floor timbers were durable. However a large number of homes had already deteriorated extensively and the government took ownership of these homes during the depression. During the 1920s-1930s, the supply of native timbers began to deplete, forcing the building industry to consider the use of inferior timbers such as Radiata Pine. In 1939, various parties with an interest in building including the State Advances Corporation, commissioned the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) to investigate various options for the treatment of Radiata Pine against both wood rot and insect attack. Radiata timber framing began to be treated with Boron during the 1950s. After the war and during the 1950s, stucco plaster claddings became relatively popular in the context of material shortages, limited choice and the Art Deco style which came into vogue after the 1931 Napier earthquake. However many houses with these claddings leaked at cladding joints and those without eaves leaked themost. Because of the poor weather-tight performance of plaster claddings, architecture trends changed to brick and tile buildings, which were comparatively more weather-tight due to the relatively wide eaves and the clear drainage space between the brick and the structural frame. In 1957, a QUANGO called the Timber Preservation Authority (TPA) was formed to regulate and control the treatment of timber. During the mid 1980s, the TPA approved an alternative form of timber preservative for decking that was based on ammonia. This failed and resulted in hundreds of rotting decks which attracted compensation claims that the government paid out. In the context of increasing deregulation the TPA

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was disbanded in 1987 limiting any future government liability. However Industry recognized the need for some form of body such as the TPA and replaced it with a voluntary body called the Timber Preservation Council (TPC) which was an advisory body only that lacked the teeth of the TPA. During the oil crisis of the 70s, building insulation was inserted into the walls of buildings to conserve energy. However this reduced the drainage and ventilation effectiveness of the wall cavity. The need for wall ventilation was removed from NZS 3602 in 1990 but the requirement for sub floor ventilation remained. During the mid 80s in a political context of increasing deregulation, funding to the NZ Standards Association was significantly reduced. To this day company representatives and consultants contribute to the formulation of new standards on a voluntary basis, without even their disbursements being reimbursed. At a similar time, several New Zealand commercial buildings suffered weathertightness problems around aluminium curtain wall joinery. In response to this, the window framing industry and the Australian equivalent of the DSIR, CSIRO developed the Sirowet test (Australian Standard AS 4284). Also during the mid to late 1980s, polystyrene based claddings were introduced followed by the re-introduction of stucco and the development of fibre cement options. In 1990, the Building Industry Commission (BIC), reporting to the Department of Internal Affairs published a report titled “Reform of Building Controls” which “recommended the introduction of a performance-oriented scheme to replace the existing regulatory scheme which the Commission saw as overly prescriptive and stifling of innovation” (Sacramento, 2005, para. 7). The report believed that “a combination of light-handed regulation and the mechanisms of the market would produce better outcomes than the existing scheme” (Sacramento, 2005, para. 7) A new Building Act was commissioned in 1991 and this was largely an implementation of the 1990 BIC report. The Building Industry Authority (BIA) was set up to monitor the building control system established by the 1991 Act, with involvement in promulgating the building code, accrediting building products and processes and approving building certifiers. During the early 90’s, higher quality internal finishes were sought which required the kiln drying of timber framing to reduce timber moisture from a maximum of 24% down to 16%. Unfortunately kiln drying results in the evaporation of Boron chemical thus increasing the cost of boron treatment. This was the main reason why Boron treatment was reduced in 1993 and at the end of 1995 effectively eliminated. Moreover, with such a low moisture content made possible with kiln drying, the risk due to borer attack and wood rot was considered negligible. In August 1995, NZS 3602 (1995) was revised and one of its changes permitted the deletion of timber treatment provided the moisture content could be maintained to 18% or lower. Interestingly, around this time the New Zealand Standards Association introduced a new standard titled AS/ NZS 4360:(1995) Risk Management, which referred to several risk monitoring provisions. For unknown reasons, the New Zealand Standards Association did not appear to incorporate the provisions of

AS/NZS 4360 when deleting the requirement to treat timber framing with Boron. Had the process laid out in AS/NZS 4360 been implemented after Boron treatment was deleted, much of the widespread damage resulting from the ‘Leaky Building Syndrome’ could have been prevented.

ne example of a large apartment complex that has suffered from LBS is the Sacramento Apartment complex in the suburb of Botany, Auckland. At the time of writing the Sacramento Body Corporate was seeking damages from a large number of defendants including the BIA. In December 2005, the Court of Appeal (CA) struck out the ability for the body corporate of the Sacramento apartment complex to sue the BIA for damages caused by the LBS. Even though the CA conceded several shortcomings of the BIA, it held that the BIA did not have a duty of care to the body corporate holders because of the BIA’s lack of legal proximity to the body corporate members. Moreover, its resources allowed under the 1991 Act would not have been sufficient to undertake the extensive monitoring needed to prevent LBS. Also, because the BIA is a quasi-judicial body, it is protected by judicial immunity. Regrettably, an effective risk managing strategy which the Standards Association itself promulgated in the form of AS/ NZS 4360:1995 does not appear to have been implemented. The relaxation of Boron treatment was allowed without a compensating increase in monitoring and inspection requirements and without the institutional memory of the Leaky Building lessons learnt during the last century. Without comprehensively analysing the latent causes of the Leaky Building Syndrome, a collection of new legal controls have been implemented supposedly to prevent a recurrence. The implementation of these new laws perhaps shields the establishment from blame because it suggests that the cause was due to the negligence of industry practitioners, not defective design standards and controls which the industry looks to for guid-

ance and which the BIA could have supplied, had the government provided it resources to do so. However this new web of laws may unnecessarily complicate future building processes and increase the cost of new buildings, which both the IPENZ book on Risk (IPENZ, 1983) and the 1991 Building Act tried to minimise. The new web of laws may also make it more difficult to attribute the cause of industry problems to defective standards or industry engineering controls in the future if warranted, and therefore the risk of problems such as the ‘Leaky Building Syndrome’ could recur. Although it has not been possible in this paper to analyse the Leaky Building Syndrome comprehensively, this discussion at least summarises the areas of interest that a full investigation might address. Of particular concern is that NZS 3602 relaxed the requirement to treat framing timber without the monitoring provisions of the Risk Management Standard, AS/NZS 4360. Conclusion The Erebus crash has shown the difficulties faced in investigating large organisational accidents and reflected the paradigm shift in thinking from an individual causation model to a more holistic and organisational view, a shift which the world is still learning about. It provided an example of how multiple causes can conspire to generate an accident with contributing factors totally invisible to the participants at the time. It fits both Reason’s Swiss Cheese and Dekker’s Failure Drift models. Although the discussion on the Leaky Building Syndrome is not a comprehensive analysis on the leaky building problem, it nonetheless raises questions about the formulation and ongoing maintenance of standards in general. This study has shown the limited effectiveness of legal processes to determine the latent causes of organisational accidents, and the risk of future recurrences if their causal factors are not comprehensively determined and understood. Andrew McGregor is a forensic engineer with Prosolve (prosolve.co.nz), and the full text of this abridged version can be found in thebriefingroom.com

thinkLIFE money

Kiwi Saver is coming

Peter Hensley analyses how the new super scheme will affect you

he past three decades have seen a marked shift in the savings habits of New Zealanders. The “live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself” attitude has permeated our society so much that debt is seen as a means to an end and an ally that allows us to have it all now. The NZ Reserve Bank records that our debt-to-income ratio has gone up three times from 50% in 1980 to 150% in 2005. As a nation we spend more than we earn. In the short term this is not a problem, but we are creating a debt bubble that is unsustainable. The Government is fully aware of the issues facing the average New Zealander. They know that the average Kiwi goes into retirement with a debt free home and approximately $30,000 in savings. When these figures are combined with a marked extension in life expectancy it is obvious – to even the novice planner – that unless something is done to increase personal savings the reliance on the Government by elderly citizens will only increase. By international standards our nation has been incredibly slow to address the issue of personal responsibility for long term savings. The topic has long been considered too hard by subsequent gov-

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ernments and each in turn has chosen to ignore the matter as if it would either go away or magically fix itself. It has done neither, but the current government has finally laid the groundwork that will go some ways to help the average taxpayer help themselves. Late last month the Kiwi Saver Bill was passed into law. It was supported by all parties, excepting National. It means that Kiwi Saver is coming to a workplace near you. It is a government-initiated but personally-funded superannuation scheme for all New Zealanders. The idea is that every worker aged 18 through to retirement will open a long term personal savings account. �� Each tax payer will have their own individual savings account and it will be linked to their IRD number. It starts on 1st July 2007. It is not compulsory, however all newly employed workers will be automatically enrolled, yet they will have the chance to opt out. It has been a long time coming and the administrators appear to have thought through the process carefully and logically. Contributions will be deducted by employers at the same time as personal taxation, child support and student loan repayments. The money will be sent off

to the IRD who will then pass it onto a professional funds management company (identified and selected by the contributor) to manage it until the contributor reaches superannuation qualification age. Once the money has been sent to the Fund Manager it stays there until retirement. This is not the day the tax payer elects to retire, it is the day the taxpayer qualifies for NZ Superannuation which is currently age 65, however many expect this date to be extended as it has already in the United States, on a sliding scale to age 67. It is still 65 in Australia. Speaking of Australia, it is interesting to note that The Superannuation Act is the most amended piece of legislation they have ever had. By the time we implement the Kiwi Saver Act (July 2007), our Pacific neighbours would have had compulsory super savings for over a decade. We are starting with 4%, they are up to 9% of their salary. The NZ authorities have addressed most circumstances in the act. Funds are locked in until maturity which means that they cannot be accessed except for the usual array of circumstances such as death, permanent emigration, and abject poverty. Detailed proof of each of the above cir-

cumstances will be required before any monies are released. All new entrants into the scheme will be given a one off $1,000 non taxable gift from the NZ Government. Apart from the reasons listed above there are two others ways to gain access to some of the accumulated funds. A tax payer is allowed to withdraw a set portion of the funds in order to buy their first home. They can only withdraw their own contributions and cannot access either the Government’s or the employer’s contribution (if any) for this purpose. The only other reason is for mortgage diversion which has its own set of regulations. It must be for the taxpayer’s own home, it is capped at no more than 50% of their own contribution, the savings scheme supplier must agree to supply the service and it can be utilised for both existing and new mortgages. This was a major change, included after the public consultation period had closed but before the Bill went before the Parliament. Debt is generally a controlling factor which goes a long way in defining a person’s financial circumstances. History and experience

suggests that financially astute individuals/couples tend to eliminate debt early in their working life. It has been said that those who understand interest collect it and those that do not pay it. Compulsory superannuation appears to have worked for a certain sector of our Australian baby booming cousins, according to a recent AMP study, the average taxpayer aged 50 – 59 appears to have accumulated $83,000. Aussies are allowed to either withdraw their super as a lump sum or to opt for an allocated pension where their money is drip fed back to them at a set percentage per year. Studies indicate that the vast majority are withdrawing the full lump sum to retire debt and then relying on the aged pension to buy their daily bread and life’s necessities. The Australian aged pension is roughly equivalent to NZ Superannuation. The research suggests that those who have been forced into saving longer will be better off than those whose retirement date arrived prior to their debt free status date. Readers should note that Kiwi Saver is not compulsory. Under the current rules taxpayers are encouraged to join, but if

you are forced to sign up, you are able to opt out. It is highly likely that the planned optional introduction of Kiwi Saver is just a forerunner of compulsory superannuation. International experience suggests that it will only be a matter of time before Kiwi Saver becomes compulsory for all. The proposed scheme already has some built in tax advantages over existing schemes. The fact that a taxpayer can only have one KiwiSaver account which is portable and stays with them irrespective of whom they work for suggests that existing super schemes will either comply or be closed. The authorities delegated with designing KiwiSaver appear to have been diligent in doing their homework. The Act addresses all of the known issues and treats them fairly. There will obviously be some adjustments required by existing schemes because up until now the old rules have been stretched and bent to suit. The Kiwi Saver Act lays out a new set of rules, which in time will become the new standard and ultimately provide for compulsory long term saving for all. The best feature of KiwiSaver is its simplicity.

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thinkLIFE education

Gurus in the classroom

scheme to bring transcendental meditation (TM) into New Zealand’s schools is being roundly criticized by experts and veteran educators. Although TM proponents deny it, former practitioners say that the practice is a “Trojan Horse” for Hinduism, and that its schools scheme is actually a covert means of introducing the religion to children. Even worse, there are compelling reports of TM leading to severe mental illness and even what Hindus themselves regard as demon possession. Former high level TM teacher Margaret Winnington remembers frightening incidents during her advanced training sessions. “I had some very disturbing experiences of demonic possession when I was in teacher training. They were explained away by instructors as part of ‘unstressing’ and seen as positive,” she recalls. Children being taught meditation must go through a religious ceremony involving prayers to Hindu deities, Winnington said. In early July, the Maharishi Foundation of New Zealand presented educators’ conferences in Auckland and Christchurch promoting TM in schools as a way to improve student behaviour and performance. They are currently in the process of contacting interested schools about their Stress Free Schools Program, said Martin Jelley of the foundation. According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, Principals’ Federation president Pat Newman said the idea was ridiculous. “Get real, I say,” he told the Herald. “We have enough on our plates. Let them do it at home. It might be handy for parents.” Ministry of Education media spokesperson Christine Field said that as far as the ministry is concerned, individual schools are free to bring in TM if they choose and believe it is a benefit to their students. Many researchers are not sanguine about the prospect. “Few religions are as deceptive or defective as TM,” said author and former TM practitioner John Weldon, writing in the Christian Research Journal, which is published by the respected religion watchdog group Christian Research Institute (CRI), of Charlotte, North Carolina. Transcendental Meditation gained global attention in the 1960s when the Beatles and a few other high profile celeb-

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While the Government has tried to threaten Bible in Schools, the New Age movement is pushing to introduce Transcendental Meditation in schools under the guise of “behaviour modification”, writes Dave Swaney

rities dabbled in it. In reality, say experts, it’s a Hindu meditation technique that was packaged for western consumption by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the “giggling guru,” who earned his nickname for his nervous tittering during TV appearances. In western nations TM is positioned as “scientific,” and its religious aspects are downplayed and even denied in many cases, even though the founding guru is usually prominently featured in promotional material. TM New Zealand’s web site home page makes no mention of TM’s connection to Hinduism. It presents it as a “Scientifically Validated Programme” and “the single most effective technique available for gaining deep relaxation, eliminating stress, promoting health, increasing

creativity and intelligence, and attaining inner happiness and fulfilment.” Although it claims to have “over 500 scientific studies at more than 200 independent research institutions in 30 countries” to support TM’s claims, serious medical authorities do not give these reports much currency. One researcher notes, “the studies… have been performed primarily by the TM Organization or by people they sponsor at Maharishi University of Management and at other universities. Several independent investigators, in fact, confirm numerous problems with the studies TM cites, having examined the studies, used stricter controls, and found different results. Such study problems include ‘allegations of suppression of negative evidence, of fraud and of “gross scientific incompetence,” lack of

double-blind controls, refusal to submit raw data, failure to control for set effects, failure to control for expectancy of relief, failure to control for placebo/suggestibleprone subjects, and others.’” Chemist and Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin of the University of California at Berkeley concluded, “Maharishi’s principal business is collecting money from new acolytes. He doesn’t know anything about science; but does know that cloaking his dogma in scientific jargon is the only way to gain legitimacy.” Winnington left the organisation when she became a Christian and has been an ardent opponent of TM for more than 20 years. Like most TM teachers, she found the profession very profitable. “I was very well paid and could afford to go overseas for extra training,” she said about her takings from teaching TM. Attempts to introduce TM into public schools are not new. In America, schools for years have resisted efforts to have it adopted into their curriculum, according to The Skeptic’s Dictionary (www.skepdic.com). The on line reference service reports, for example, that the San Jose (California) School District rejected TM’s proposal to “increase test scores, reduce teenage pregnancies, rid campuses of violence and drugs and diminish teacher burnout” with its programme in 1995. “It may be true that people such as (the TM advocate) really believe that TM can do all these things, but they have no proof that TM in the schools will accomplish any of these noble goals,” the report concluded. At the TM educators’ conferences in Auckland and Christchurch, Dr. Ashley Deans said that the school he heads in America added TM to its curriculum more than 20 years ago. But his school is the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, which is located at the organisation’s American headquarters in Fairfield, Iowa. Teaching TM to school-age children is “opening their minds up to something that is definitely not neutral,” said Winnington. “It is a deception and a demonic reality that has the potential of drawing them, as time goes on, into further areas of deception,” Author Weldon also practiced TM in the early 1970s. He noted that TM is still using famous personalities to expand its influence. “One of the most popular authors of all time, Deepak Chopra, is an ardent pro-

moter of TM and its antirealist Ayurvedic medicine,” he wrote. “In late 2003, film director David Lynch launched a $1 billion fundraising campaign to build 100 TM “peace palaces” across North America to forever end war, violence, and crime. Ironically, Lynch is perhaps best known for films that graphically portray violence, sex, and the grotesque, such as in Blue Velvet.” According to Weldon, “Transcendental meditation is a simplified yoga technique designed to alter one’s consciousness in order to achieve the realization of one’s personal divinity. “After receiving a mantra, the new devotee is to meditate twice daily, for 15 to 20 minutes each time, solely on the mantra. The idea here involves an easy-going effortless “awareness” of the mantra, not an intense concentration on it. As one effortlessly repeats the mantra, distracting thoughts are naturally dissipated. This process supposedly takes the mind through increasingly subtle levels of conscious thought down to the most subtle. “It is at this point an alleged transcendence occurs, a going beyond, to “the field of pure creative intelligence” or “absolute bliss consciousness.” These phrases are simply other names for Brahman, the ultimate Hindu deity. “The purpose or goal of TM is that the one practicing it might realize that he or she is one essence with Brahman in his or her true nature; that is, he or she is God.” But can schools really expect the behaviour and marks of children to improve? “Because TM is deeply spiritual, and the gods that children are calling upon are pleased, yes, there can be benefits such as improved behaviour and grades in school,” explained Winnington, who has home-schooled her eight children. “But these deities are very moody creatures and they can be vindictive one minute and very congenial the next.” According to Winnington, school children would be “initiated” into the practice of meditating the same way adults are brought in. “A child would be required to bring an offering, usually a handkerchief, flowers and fruit, for Guru Dev (Maharishi’s guru). They are used in a religious ceremony, or puja invoking this master, with the initiator and the child bowing down to a picture of Guru Dev and a lighted bit of camphor, some water and some rice,

along with the offerings, and a prayer to Hindu deities. “This is followed by a ‘psychic charging’ of the mantra into the child’s mind. The mantra is not just a sound but the name of a Hindu deity. Every time the mantra is invoked, you are calling the deity, or demon, to come to you. “The only difference would be that up to a certain age children would be given a ‘walking mantra,’ so that they can stand up or run around and still repeat the mantra.” Weldon cites several authoritative reports of TM leading to serious maladies such as mental illness, suicide, seizures, and demon possession. According to the author, even Maharishi gently counseled, “In the absence of a proper interpretation of this expression of non-attachment, one might become bewildered, and this great blessing of life might become a liability.” Winnington had many experiences with demonic activity and psychological problems among others practicing TM. “When I was involved in the TM Siddhi program, there were bizarre things going on,” said Winnington. “Some teachers saw actual demons, called ‘black-skinned rakshasas,’ black creatures that could be seen by some running around in the room. “When one group was being taught special techniques there were sounds of wolves and roaring animals coming from the room. This went on for about a week. It was really quite disturbing for everyone having to listen to it. “We would do our program in a foam rubber-filled room, where people would be experimenting with flying or other forms of manifestation, People would sometimes have incredible anger fits and they would start ripping up the foam. “I came across numerous instances of meditation-induced mental illness, including schizophrenia.” Winnington pointed out that Maharishi said, “Meditating leads one to contact the gods, thereby gaining their help, and one sins if he does not contact these gods.” She summed up her opinion of the practice, “TM is not primarily a stress relief technique, but a spiritual practice and the results are coming from that source. “Most people can calm down by sitting down with their eyes closed for 20 minutes. You don’t need a mantra to do that.” Dave Swaney is the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Nelson and program director of 106.7, Nelson’s Salt and Light FM radio station.

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thinkLIFE science

Global warming: Man or nature? Two views on an increasingly hot debate PERSPECTIVE ONE: IT’S NATURE

ASHINGTON – A new study published in the influential journal Nature reveals the Arctic had a tropical climate 55 million years ago, further adding to doubts that climate fluctuations are due to human activities. The recent revelation that the Sahara was humid and hospitable to human communities from 6,000 to 10,500-years ago and the new theory that climate change may have precipitated the fall of the ancient Cambodian city of Angkor sometime after 1200 also will contribute to public doubts. While the new evidence suggests that scientists still have much to learn about the climate, it also indicates that the message that “the science on climate change is settled” likely is nothing more than a foolish and dishonest effort to shut off debate. In fact, the scientific debate on the causes of global warming may be just beginning. Scientists understand only very little about how our extremely complex climate mechanisms operate. Their understandings are so limited that they’re still trying to devise methods to measure the Earth’s current temperature accurately and to evaluate properly what data exists from the past. Many scientists agree the earth experienced a “Medieval Warm Period” from the 10th to 14th centuries, and a cooler “Little Ice Age” from roughly 1650 to 1850. As these events pre-date the widespread burning of fossil fuels, it is assumed they were natural climate variations, but science can’t say definitively why. Without accurate temperature measurements, it is impossible to know recent climate trends, let alone what caused them or what will happen later. And without understanding how natural forces affect climate, scientists can’t eliminate the possibility of natural causes for any climate fluctuations, making it difficult to know which, if any, climate changes are definitively influenced by human activities.

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Scientists probably won’t fully understand climate during the lifetime of anyone alive today. The global warming debate seems ripe for a big injection of honesty. Scientists should make clear when they are speaking as scientists and when they are merely sharing political opinions like any other citizen. Scientists who make claims of a “fact” that can’t be proved – through the scientific method rather than via “consensus” should be called on the carpet – especially when they’re acting with government grant money or employed by a government agency. Scientists, after all, are tasked with discovering the truth, not inventing it. Few environmental activists who embrace the global warming theory are supporting alternatives to oil, such as increased drilling for natural gas and expanded use of nuclear and hydroelectric power. Even Al Gore, the leading doomsayer on global warming, is no prince of conservation. While Gore preaches that common citizens should deprive themselves to serve the anti-global warming cause, he skips much of his own advice. Gore uses private planes – to promote his anti-global warming movie, no less – apparently deeming the first-class commercial travel most Americans would consider luxurious too much a sacrifice for him to make for the planet. And Gore’s three homes don’t use “green energy,” although for just “a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour,” a simple call to a utility company would be all it would take to supply at least some of Gore’s homes with wind-generated energy. Gore and the true believers who flock to his banner apparently are only willing to pay lip service to what they call “the single greatest danger facing the Earth.” Avid environmentalists open themselves

to charges of hypocrisy when they call global warming “an inconvenient truth,” yet rarely are spotted doing anything even remotely inconvenient to fight it. Honesty should be one global warming policy we all can agree upon. David Ridenour is vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research (www.nationalcenter.org), a conservative, free-market think tank. For more information about NCPPR and its funding, go to http://www. sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National-Center-forPublic-Policy-Research.

“

Gore and the true believers who flock to his banner apparently are only willing to pay lip service to what they call “the single greatest danger facing the Earth

PERSPECTIVE TWO: IT’S HUMAN

ASHINGTON – The global warming skeptics, ostrich-like in their approach to the greatest challenge to ever face humankind, may be entitled to their flimsy opinions, but they are not entitled to their own math. Sudden climate changes in the past were primarily caused by the impact of meteors onto the Earth’s surface.

One massive meteor that struck Antarctica 250 million years ago wiped out 90 percent of our planet’s species from the resulting sudden and deadly climate change. Another meteor that struck the Earth 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs from acidic rain, severe storms, and a sudden drop in temperature. The fact that 15 million years later, the Arctic was tropical has nothing to do with the current fact that over the last 30 years, manmade carbon-dioxide emissions and forest destruction are warming our atmosphere and ocean surface temperatures to the point that our ice caps and glaciers are melting at a dangerously rapid rate. While every legitimate and independent scientist recognizes that global warming is a fact, the skeptics and their friends in government and the media continue to offer “junk science” explanations for global warming. Now they cite ice core samples taken from the North Pole that show that the polar regions were tropical 55 million years ago as evidence that current global warming is merely natural and cyclical. Some 30 years of carbon-dioxide emissions, rain forest destruction, and other man-made actions have nothing to do with millions of years of planetary change. That math just doesn’t add up. Such statements are irresponsible and akin to failing to warn the public about an impending hurricane or tornado. There is no question that man-made greenhouse gases being pumped into our atmosphere are having disastrous consequences for all of Earthkind. The United States is the world’s worst polluter, yet the Bush administration continues to ignore

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all the facts compiled by years of painstaking research by scientists in locations from Antarctica and the Himalayas to the Amazon and the Arctic tundra. If quick action is not taken to reverse global warming and polar and glacial ice melt, hundreds of millions of people and countless species of animals and plants will be placed in jeopardy. A projected 7 metre rise in sea levels from global warming will cause many low lying atolls and such nations as Bangladesh and the Netherlands to disappear under the sea. Severe storms will destroy coastal regions. Rising sea levels will submerge coastal urban centers such as New Orleans; San Jose, Calif.; Venice, Italy; Baltimore; and parts of Manhattan. Fresh water aquifers will be penetrated by salty and brackish seawater, making them unfit for use. Coral bleaching and the loss of wetlands will cause the extinction of important food sources, resulting in famine in many parts of the world. Methane released from melting permafrost and warming sea bottoms will add to already dangerous carbon-dioxide levels in our atmosphere and further increase rising temperatures. Methane is 25 percent more dangerous to the eco-system than carbon dioxide. The sea-dwelling trilobites that perished in the meteor-caused Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago and the Cretaceous dinosaurs that perished in a similar meteor-caused global extinction 65 million years ago were certainly not intellectually advanced to the point where they could save themselves. Yet today’s humans – acting together – can save themselves and their planet. Sadly, some Americans are putting their own selfish interests ahead of Mother Earth’s. We need to ignore their cynicism and get to work on what promises to be a gargantuan, but noble task. Wayne Madsen is a contributing writer for the liberal Online Journal (http://www.onlinejournal.com).

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 65

thinkLIFE technology

Cutting ties

Laptops are the computers of choice as wireless technology cuts clutter, writes Stanley A. Miller

ireless technology is reshaping the home office, uncluttering desks and unchaining workers from just one room in the house. And it’s not just the wireless Internet liberating the work environment, although experts say that is still one of the hottest technologies. “By far the most popular installation we do is a wireless access point or some other wireless device so they can get their computers onto the Internet,” says Isaac Monteagudo, technical services manager for a technology-consulting firm. “It’s all about the mobility, that is what it comes down to,” he says. “Sometimes people are working upstairs, downstairs or the kids are running around. Wireless is just a tool to be able to move from room to room and still be productive instead of being tied down to a desk.” The lure of being able to roam around the house translates into increased sales for laptops as the home office computer of choice, Monteagudo says. “Laptops are gaining ground in the home office. The majority of people I am working with are using laptops – they’ve

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come a long way, and they can pretty much do whatever a desktop can do.” Almost anything can be connected to a computer wirelessly, thereby reducing cord clutter, including keyboards and mice from companies such as Microsoft and Logitech, printers from HewlettPackard, speakers from Logitech and Web cameras from D-Link and X10. “There are people setting up home offices and want them to look high-tech,” says computer service specialist Shawn Grady. “If you are worried about aesthetics, cordless is the way to go.” For example, instead of plugging in a corded keyboard or mouse directly into the back of a computer, wireless versions usually use a radio frequency receiver that plugs into a computer’s USB port. This device can sit behind the monitor or even underneath a desk and pick up the signals sent by a wireless keyboard or mouse as you type or click. Wireless keyboards and mice let people put more distance between their computers and peripherals, but they also cost more than their corded cousins. Because wireless

accessories can’t pull power directly from a computer through cords, they need batteries, which also are an extra expense. “The only main drawback is the battery life of those devices,” says Joseph Sivoli, owner of DCI Dolphin Consulting. “Batteries are getting better, but as the battery gets low, it can cause weird problems, and people think something is wrong with their computer.” Indeed, Sivoli says wireless devices can add an extra level of complexity when trying to figure out what’s wrong when computers begin misbehaving. If a keyboard with a cord begins flaking out, it’s easy to look in the back of the computer and make sure it’s connected correctly. With wireless, issues could be due to battery power, interference or some other problem. “The drawbacks are very few, but there are drawbacks,” Sivoli says. Wireless printers – and adapters that can cut the cords on regular printers – have been available for years but aren’t as popular as other wireless options.

Sivoli notes that “most home users are not thinking of that level of technology.” “Perhaps an affluent client who wants all the bells and whistles might,” he says. “Again, from a functionality standpoint, if that printer stops working, it’s another level of complexity to figure out what’s wrong.” However, Grady says wireless printing makes sense in certain situations. “It lets you put a printer anywhere,” he says. “If you want to share a printer among several computers, wireless is a good, effective way to centrally locate it and not worry about fishing a cable to it.” Belkin, a computer and electronics accessory company in Los Angeles, announced a new device early this year that will untether anything connecting to computer through a USB port. USB is short for Universal Serial Bus, and it’s a common way to connect devices to a computer. The company’s CableFree USB Hub, which will cost $199 and will be available soon, lets users put up to four USB

devices anywhere in a room without running cables to a PC. So, for example, a home office worker could have a computer set up on one side of the room and the CableFree hub – linked to a printer, scanner, external hard drive and digital music player – on the other side. “USB is a very traditional way of connecting devices,” Monteagudo says. “It’s been around for many years, and what this is doing is giving people more options using a very common technology.” WIRELESS NETWORKING A wireless router or “access point” plugs into a high-speed Internet connection, usually either a cable modem or DSL. The wireless router creates an invisible field using radio waves. Any computer with a wireless card within range of the field can tap into it and access the Internet. A wireless network lets you share an Internet

connection among several computers. A wireless network is often called a WiFi network. WHAT CAN BE WIRELESS? iLaptop iKeyboard iMouse iPrinter iSpeakers iWeb cam THE WONDERS OF WIRELESS iUnclutters a messy desk iReduces the number of cords in a workspace iIncreases comfort and convenience iLets you work throughout the house THE WEAKNESSES OF WIRELESS iSubject to interference iDevices need batteries iUsually more expensive iCan be more complicated to fix

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 67

feelLIFE

sport

The Kiwis hatch a plan

Sports Editor Chris Forster analyses the Kiwis’ prospects in the forthcoming Tri Nations

he Kiwis are burdened with a great deal more than just defending rugby league’s Tri Nations crown. This time last year a humble and unheralded New Zealand coach by the name of Brian McLennan, masterminded his side to a 24-nil thrashing of odds-on favourites Australia to lift the game’s greatest international prize. In fact they grilled the Kangaroos twice – first in pool play in Sydney, then in a famous blackwash on a grimy winter’s evening in the north of England. Twelve months and a couple of good old-fashioned hidings later and the league landscape has a more familiar look about it. There’s also the considerable challenge of seizing a window of opportunity from the relentless diet of rugby the rival code serves up.

to exert any pressure on the awesome Aussies or dangerous Brits. Bluey still speaks volumes about the 30 year old’s commitment to the cause – “the sacrifices he had to make last year were phenomenal”.

STACEY JONES was the trump card in Bluey McLennan’s stunning raid on the Tri Nations glory box. The pair conjured up more comebacks in one series than Frank Sinatra managed in a lifetime. The Little General is back from a frustrating, injury-hampered start to his new life with Les Catalans in the south of France. He’s the main man at a new club struggling for a foothold in England’s SuperLeague. But this time Jones is committed to the Kiwis cause from word go. There’s no round the world trips for the birth of babies this time. His experience and incisive kicking game are crucial if the New Zealanders are going

McLENNAN arguably has a deeper pool of talent for the title defence. The presence of four Bulldogs after their demise from the NRL semi-finals is a timely boost. The quartet is headlined by the freakishly talented Sonny Bill Williams and Roy Asotasi – widely regarded as the most damaging prop in the game. Veteran second-rower David Kidwell’s fresh off a fantastic farewell voyage with the Melbourne Storm that took them all the way to the NRL big show – a Grand Final at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium against the Brisbane Broncos. The Kiwis also have a flock of 9 Warriors buoyed by their best season

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in three years. Fresh talent like Jerome Ropati and Simon Mannering helped the Aucklanders recover from their loss of four competition points for rorting the salary cap to a finish just outside the top eight. It also includes nippy North Queenslander Nathan Fein who’s thrown his weight considerable talents behind the Kiwis cause following in the sleek footsteps of pin-up boy and fullback Brent Webb. The bedrocks of last year’s triumph are there too – Frank Pritchard, Nigel Vagana and kava-swilling skipper Ruben Wiki, whose tears of pride and joy after the Kangaroos slaughter are the stuff New Zealand sporting legends are made of. SONNY BILL WILLIAMS is a prodigious talent. Still only 21 years old, he’s overcome a string of injuries to rediscover the eye-catching form that made him an

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You do sense an extra burden on the coaches, players and their employers (New Zealand Rugby League) to reproduce last year’s heroics and make the most of the home advantage. This time it’s on our patch – evening kick-offs for a discerning sporting audience

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NZPA/Wayne Drought

instant hit at the Canterbury Bulldogs. Coach McLennan rates his recent display for the Dogs in their semi-final defeat to the Broncos as “the best on the park”. His athletic frame and silky ball skills make him adept at filling a centre’s role or running rampant among the forwards. Sonny Bill’s legendary defensive hits – all sinewy shoulders and bristling aggression – are sure to put the roar factor into the New Zealand crowds. He’s got the sort of star power League needs to make an impact on the international stage, and take advantage of the rival code’s over-indulgence. RUGBY UNION at the top level seems to have reached staturation point this year. An extra layer of Tri Nations matches involving the All Blacks, Wallabies and Springboks was like a drink too many at the end of a family reunion. Figures from the AGB

media research group show the average TV audience for test matches, dipped to 312 thousand from 441 thousand in 2005. Those figures cover both SKY Network Television’s pay-for-view live coverage and the delayed free-to-air stuff on Prime. League’s version of the three-way international contest is between the only nations that matter in the code, but they can never seriously expect to knock the All Blacks off their lofty perch. You do sense an extra burden on the coaches, players and their employers (New Zealand Rugby League) to reproduce last year’s heroics and make the most of the home advantage. This time it’s on our patch – evening kick-offs for a discerning sporting audience. There’s a feelgood factor when the Kiwis go well. New Zealanders relish the role of underdogs and the rest of the world warms to a small nation punching above its weight.

Make no mistake the Australians are hell-bent on proving last year’s humbling by the Kiwis was an aberration. New coach Ricky Stuart’s started his tenure with a 50-to-12 pasting of New Zealand at Suncorp Stadium back in April. “Sticky Ricky” went on to have a shocker with his Roosters in the NRL. He got the boot then was snapped-up by the Cronulla Sharks. He can make an emphatic point at the top level with a seemingly endless well of sublime talent. Brisbane’s electric fullback Justin Hodges is a game-breaker who can run the most disciplined defensive line ragged. The TAB is sure to have them as the odds-on favourites. Don’t count out Great Britain. Remember they thrashed the New Zealanders 38-12 two weeks out from the final last year. Coach Brian Noble’s assembled an impressive squad fresh off their franchise competition and heading down-under with plenty of time to steel themselves for a raid on enemy territory. You could even rate the Kiwis as longshots. But they’re used to the tag. In fact they thrive on it. After six tests the Tri Nations trophy will again be up for grabs on November 25 in Sydney. Bluey’s defending champs should be there. If they’re not it’s like passing the ball straight back to the All Blacks and the rugby juggernaut.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 69

feelLIFE

health

Live and let liver

Claire Morrow checks out a liver-cleansing regimen

et a drink. I hate to break it to you, but the largest organ in the human body is the skin. But I guess it depends on what you mean by “in”. The largest organ within the human body, the largest internal organ, is the liver. Some have taken this to mean much – the Ancient Egyptians, and Dr Sandra Cabot, and everyone else who has made their fortune telling you how to cleanse your liver, and – God help us – love your liver. And live longer. Both grand ideas but not – ahem – particularly connected. A survey of the house has revealed a cheerful appreciation for the liver. It is the thing that deals with alcohol so that you can go out drinking from time to time but are not doomed to be perennially drunk. (A Promethean torture if ever there was one). It metabolises alcohol. It takes the alcohol you have moderately, or perhaps foolishly, sent into your blood stream via the gut and it cleans it up and excretes it, so that you can go to work the next day. Mighty fine job. In fact, the majority of medicines are dealt with thusly by the liver. But wait – there’s more. A foetus, for example, manufactures red blood cells in its liver. This process is taken on later by the bone marrow, but very young developing babies don’t have much in the way of bones or it’s marrow, so they have an alternative. I find this lit-

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tle factoid makes me want to rethink my earlier comments on Intelligent Design, myself. It is truly...well, one doesn’t like to say miraculous, but it’s a hell of a system. Of course, you don’t benefit much from this, yourself. Foetuses don’t read (although they hear) so you mustn’t be one. You’re grown. The liver is part of the digestive system, and it finds an important role in breaking down food. Your liver makes bile, and bile breaks down fats in the gut (just as an aside, you have to be pretty crook before you literally vomit bile. Unless they are on their way to an emergency room, most people who feel they are vomiting bile, are in fact vomiting stomach acid. Unpleasant, true, bilious, even, but not bile, per se.). Before I lose you, the liver makes glucose and related products, breaks down insulin, and stores iron, vitamin B12 and copper, amongst others. The liver also produces a number of clotting factors. These are important to make sure you don’t bleed to death from a paper cut. So the liver is important. You need it. If it needs cleansing, mix one part of pure Lux soap flakes.....No. Sorry, my little joke. Your liver does a fine job. A great job. It does not need cleansing. I have always wondered how the highly educated – sometimes – renegades who come up with these things know what the liver

likes, anyway. Why would – as one liver cleansing diet suggests – your liver have a particular affinity for garlic? The Liver Cleansing Diet (of which there are now a number) was one of the first of the current de-tox diet fads. On the surface, it seems a strange thing to have a bugbear about. These diets tend to promote a diet high in fruit and vegetables and low in fats. It’s hard to argue. Generally, you have no sugar, no coffee, no booze (obviously no drugs or cigarettes), and sometimes no meat or bread for a bit, and heaps of water and after feeling awful miserable you start to feel OK. Q.E.D; liver cleansed. Of course, there is the small risk that you will overdo it trying to drink all that water and become ill. The current word on water is to relax. You do not need two litres of pure water a day. For one thing, water is found in food and drink anyway, and for another thing, too much will make you sick. Marathon runners can’t just drink fluid, it dilutes the careful balance of salt and electrolytes the body needs to live and causes electrolyte imbalances. If you are losing heaps of fluid, you need electrolytes in your fluid. You, however, can drink whatever you like. If you get thirsty, you’re not getting enough. If your grandmother – and we all know one – drinks nothing but tea, leave her to it. If

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It is true that the liver will regenerate, but only up to a point. It tries, and it tries, but if you keep throwing alcohol at it, sooner or later the damage will be done

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she was going to become dangerously dehydrated, it would have happened already. The other risk, of course, if that you become bored with fruit, and don’t eat enough and get low blood sugar and fall down. Otherwise, the main problem with these diets is that they promote ideas with no scientific merit, guilt people into thinking that any illness is their fault (if only I’d eaten more garlic!), and distract people from really good gold standard, clinically evaluated nutrition and health care if they happen to need it. It is true that if you have liver disease, you may have to be careful with your diet. It is true that if you drink too much you can damage your liver. It is true that the liver will regenerate, but only up to a point. It tries, and it tries, but if you keep throwing alcohol at it, sooner or later (if you are genetically susceptible), the damage will be done. Incidentally, although a significant number of drinkers get liver damage, most people with liver damage are not heavy drinkers. Sometimes – sorry Sandra – bad things happen to good people, and some people are just genetically susceptible. Serious obesity causes liver damage. Hepatitis viruses cause liver damage, which is why children are vaccinated for hepatitis B – an unpleasant, but bearable disease, which sometimes causes the liver to put its feet up altogether. Which is why you don’t want it. But – as ever – you have to be engaging in some pretty harmful behavior before it damages you. You do not need to live on rabbit food and nettle tea to live a long and healthy life. If worse comes to worst – you can’t get on the donor list if you’re an alcoholic, so don’t use this as ‘insurance’ – liver transplants are plenty successful, and hopefully economical. In theory, only part of the liver needs to be transplanted, so one should get more than one transplant out of one donor liver. Live donor transplants are a terrific idea in theory – the idea is that the liver grows and so both the donor and the recipient end up with a normal liver. In practice, they both usually end up with more than 50% of liver function, but less than perfect. However, no other organ can do that. Raise your glasses! Praise the liver!

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 71

feelLIFE

alt.health

Organic bread

Ian Wishart finds Phil Grainger’s soil health arguments compelling

ou are what you eat, or so the saying goes, and in the wake of our recent series on child mental health and a wider Government focus on obesity in children the issue has taken on a new urgency. Is it possible that many of our health problems and mental health problems have their root causes in bad nutrition because of cheap ingredients in processed foods? That’s the drum that independent baker Phil Grainger of Venerdi’s is beating, and it’s one that he believes not enough people are hearing. Forget the commercial issues and traditional rivalries between manufacturers – there are, he claims, some bottom line fundamentals that the public and industry need to consider. Grainger’s conversion to a back-to-basics approach to nutrition isn’t new. He got the passion from his father, he says, pointing to a well-weathered hardback book. “My dad’s book, it saved his farming career. Written by Andre Voisin, Soil, Grass and Cancer, I think it was published originally in 1959 and it’s been republished lately in ‘99. I’ve even heard Morgan Williams, the Environment Commissioner, quote the guy in this book.” It is, he says, an oldie but a goodie. The general thesis is simple – farmers were concentrating too much on growing plenty of grass for stock, instead of ensuring that the grass was full of the nutrients the stock (and humans eating the stock) needed.

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Grainger’s father, a World War II veteran, found his cows dying of eczema and continually suffering bad health. Vet bills were going through the roof, milk production was down, and of 80 pedigree cows only 8 were classed as top grade in terms of health. But when he and a mate in the same position read Voisin’s book, they figured they had nothing left to lose from giving it a try – boosting trace elements in the soil for animal health instead of bushier grass. “It’s not quantity you need, it’s quality. And you don’t necessarily get quality out of quantity,” says Phil Grainger. “After five years of fertilizing for animal health, rather than dry matter production, his vet bills dropped to virtually nothing, his milk production went up considerably, but his animals – he ended up with 54 of his 80 cows with top classification. So instead of having ten percent of his pedigree herd with top classification, he ended up with 65% just by changing the nutrients in the soil.” And in the droughts, the Grainger farm stayed green in a sea of brown surrounding farms, because the soil was healthy. The same logic applies to human food, he says. Get the trace elements right, and you’ll stay healthy. But Grainger blames the industrial revolution as driving lower standards in terms of food ingredients – the battle between two grains, spelt and wheat, for dominance in the bread-making business for example.

“Wheat has quite a strong gluten molecule, and the stronger the gluten the easier it is to make a loaf of bread, more reliable and so on. Spelt has very delicate gluten, much more fickle. You had to be quite clever to make good spelt bread. Wheat is free threshing so when they got headers in the wheat fields and actually harvested it was simple to process, whereas spelt had a big heavy husk and had to be taken back and milled, so spelt was basically kicked out of the bread equation during the industrial revolution. “The more gluten you have, the stronger the bread, and the more water the bread can hold so you need less ingredients, so it is totally commercially orientated. But this reliance on processed wheat over the last 150 years has totally got out of kilter with our systems. And of course it’s hard to escape. There’s a lot of people who would never have a mealtime where they didn’t sit down to something with wheat or gluten in. So it’s just too much, and too much of the wrong thing. “There are studies from places like Holland where every time they put in new water treatment systems the incidence of cancer in that village increased dramatically, and they just tracked it all around Holland – when they put in new water treatment the incidence of cancer rose. And they found the treatment stations were cleaning out the soil minerals, particularly the magnesium. And you need high levels of magnesium in your diet to offset, to help your defences with cancer.” Voisin had a downer on wheat as well, says Grainger, because its high potassium content counteracted the beneficial effects of magnesium in other foods. “Potassium is antagonistic to magnesium so it locks it up and makes it unavailable. So if you are eating, predominantly your main diet is wheat in the western world, and you have this huge imbalance of potassium against magnesium, then even if you put small amounts of extra magnesium in it’s going to get sapped by the potassium imbalance in your system anyway. “We’re one of the dirtiest wheat growers in the western world, we’re way worse than America in terms of contaminants and some of those are carcinogenic. So you can see, in this environment if you actually throw in carcinogens and then sap out your defences no wonder we have one in three people with cancer. It’s not actually rocket science.”

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tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

The road less travelled

The kindness of strangers helps seize the moments in Italy’s Puglia, writes Alan Solomon

RANI, Italy – The easiest part of describing this under-known region of Italy is explaining where it is. If Italy is shaped like a boot – and it is – Puglia is the heel. But there is no Florence here. No Milan. No St. Peter’s. No volcano. There is nothing here on the list of things everyone must see before he travels to The Land Beyond. The pleasures are many in Puglia, but they’re the pleasures of quiet discovery and small, sweet moments. For us, there was the waiter in the little osteria in Grottaglie – City of Ceramics – who brought out plate after plate of antipasti, each more marvelous than the last and none we’ve seen anywhere else. That came after the tour of the family ceramics operation by Vincenzo Del Monaco.

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“I represent the eighth generation,” said the craftsman. “It’s a very old tradition.” There were the trulli – not the touristthick concentration of the cone-roofed houses that has landed the village of Alberobello on the UNESCO World Heritage list but the smaller clusters, the ones in the countryside, among the vineyards. There was the whitewashed town of Ostuni, on its hill, gleaming in the afternoon sunshine; and magical Martina Franca, its polished streets gleaming in the evening floodlights. There were the kindnesses. The father in Trani, with his child on the back of his bicycle, who – seeing us wandering in the old town with a map and a puzzled look – stopped and asked: “Looking for the synagogues?”

We were. Thanks to the man, we found them, buildings with only hints of what they were before the Inquisition did what it did, but still ... There was Vito, the grocer in the warren of streets that is old Monopoli, who greeted us outside his little shop in imperfect but energetic English. A former merchant seaman with a knowledge of the world, he knew tourists when he saw them and he wanted to chat. We just wanted a coffee. “Go left, down and then right,” he said. “Good coffee. And the harbour! Fifteen minutes, they come in with their fish ...” In a chilly, late-afternoon gloom warmed by lamps in the windows of the old palazzi lining a harbor guarded by a 15th century castle, the boats came in. As each boat docked, a gathering – mainly men – greeted it and the crew and watched as open styrofoam containers of glistening fish and other sea critters from the Adriatic were unloaded into panel trucks. Occasionally, one of the gathered would walk away with a plastic bag filled with dinner. Another boat. The gathering shifted. More fish, more critters and more conversation. “Pulpe?” I asked, pointing. A nod from a man with a great face. “And this?” “Merluzzini.” And I nodded. A triumph of primitive communication, even though it would be later that I would discover merluzzini – which I thought were sardines – were small cod. But now we had become part of the gathering that floated from boat to boat, nodding and gesturing in appreciation and approval, understanding almost nothing and loving every second of it. We would find our coffee at a bakery in the square of the town, and cookies to go with it. And later, we would find Vito again, who would call his son out from the back to lead us to a restaurant run by his friend, another Vito, whose wife would cook us a meal for the ages ... And from not far away would come the sound of boys squealing as they played street-soccer in a centuries-old church piazza where so many generations – eight? 20? – had played before. Galatina, with the church whose interior walls were covered with frescoes. Gallipoli, on the Gulf of Taranto. Beautiful, beautiful Gallipoli ... Puglia is, for Italy, an easy place to explore by car: relatively light traffic, not

much in the way of serious hills, pretty countryside (lots of olives, lots of grapes, some sheep, some goats, plus coastal drives) and short distances. Cyclists, organized and not, love it. They should. There are some specific things to see here. Italy is a country where Romans, along with Greeks, Germans, Normans and other non-countrymen, plus some

locals, have lent their influence and left reminders they were here. One of those reminders: Castel del Monte, built in the 13th century by Emperor Frederick II (Prussian) to celebrate Frederick II, a Merchandise Mart of a castle that lords monumentally over a valley of vineyards and olive trees. There are caves, the Grottoes of

Castellana, at once massive and delicate, with their limestone pillars and icicles and draperies lighted just enough to let us know nature has created something remarkable here. If this were in America, it would be a national park. And there are those trullis. The purpose of the design remains a subject of debate, but they are unmistakably cute â&#x20AC;&#x201C; where

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 75

are the elves? – and demand to be photographed from every angle. The one other truly essential stop, aside from the essential trulli stop, is Lecce. Lecce is a lovely baroque city. Actually, it’s beyond lovely. Its old district is a city of narrow, winding streets with tiny shops and cafes, and with iron balconies and hanging laundry and bookstores and bars and restaurants, the whole scene enlivened by kids from Lecce University. It’s also the one place where we had to park our car and search for our hotel on foot, because, well ... we just couldn’t find the thing. We eventually located the Patria Palace Hotel; then we couldn’t figure out how

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to get our car from where it was parked through the maze of streets to the entrance. So a kind, patient bellman named Silvano walked six blocks with us back to the car, took the keys and drove us, sometimes very fast in reverse, to the hotel. Another kindness. More about Lecce: It’s loaded with history. Its main square incorporates a Roman amphitheater, once featuring lions and now mainly home to stray cats. A couple of blocks away: your average neighborhood Roman theater. There it is, discovered in 1929 during a routine dig (someone was remodeling something) and right in what’s now a kind of a communal backyard.

It is a city of churches, which doesn’t make it particularly unusual in this part of the world, except that so many of them are knockouts. The facade of Santa Croce has enough going on – dragons, cupids, peasants, nudes, warriors – to fill more than this paragraph. There follows a succession of churches, including a 15th Century cathedral in an exceptionally handsome square. And just when even the most devout collector of churches would be churched out, there comes the Church of San Giovanni Battista (a k a del Rosario). Its elegantly peaceful interior makes it the perfect place to just sit for a while, to relax a bit, to contemplate life and art – and to plan a search for the local pastry, the pasticciotto, which is too yummy to adequately describe. Speaking of food: orecchiette con cime di rapa. Just do it. But the true joys of Puglia aren’t things that can be reduced to maps and menus and monuments. There was the evening when, at a square in Trani, an Italian woman and I had a discussion over – I don’t know, maybe it was a driver who didn’t respect the crosswalk and startled us both. Whatever it was, it began with a quiet exchange and got more and more animated, with all manner of gestures flying, she shouting in Italian, me English, neither of us understanding the other but the two of us clearly in total agreement. It all ended with both of us laughing, gesturing warm good-byes and going on our respective ways – ways that undoubtedly would lead to something delicious. And there was the discovery of Trani itself. It wasn’t on the itinerary. We just had an extra, unplanned night at the end of the trip, needed a place to sleep and someone suggested Trani. So we went to Trani and found – a harbour right out of a Travel + Leisure spread with a mix of yachts and working fishing boats, a glorious hotel at a fair price, plus palm trees, restaurants with a view, that wonderful woman on the square, fishermen, a cat mooching fish from the fishermen, artists trying to capture the cathedral on canvas... and a father with his child on the back of his bicycle who was nice enough to stop. That’s Trani. We had the one night. We could have stayed for a week. And that’s Puglia. Now, you know.

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IF YOU GO:

GETTING AROUND: With gently rolling countryside and most towns relatively easy (with patience) to navigate, Puglia is the perfect place to rent a car and explore leisurely. The topography (“Hillier than we thought it would be, but it’s better than Tuscany,” said one cyclist) makes it popular with international bicycle enthusiasts, and leading tour companies have Puglia-only programs. (For ideas, see Butterfield & Robinson, www.butterfield. com; and Backroads, www.backroads.com.) Trains connect some towns, but you’ll miss an awful lot of the good stuff. STAYING THERE: Hotels – the great majority of them small – exist in most towns, with the highest concentration in and around Bari and Lecce. Some of the highest-rated (and priced) are in the countryside. Don’t expect U.S. chains (though Bari has a Sheraton), and use the Internet: New hotels and B&Bs are challenging guidebooks to stay current. Increasingly popular here: agriturisimi (farm holidays). We liked all our choices, some more than others. Monopoli’s in-town lodgings are limited, but we were OK with the corporate-feel Vecchio Mulino (US$156/double, subject to change; www.vecchiomulino.it), a five-minute drive from the historic center. The five-star Patria Palace (US$258; www.patriapalacelecce. com), once we found it (our fault, not theirs) in the heart of Lecce, proved to be one of the finest hotels we’ve enjoyed in Italy. In Gallipoli, the claimed “sea view” was a stretch, but otherwise the seven-room, boutiquey Palazzo del Corso (US$192; www.esperia.it/pregiohotel/

English/palazzodelcorsoing.htm) was a gem. The Park Hotel S. Michele was well-priced (US$127; www.parkhotelsm.it) and just a few blocks from Martina Franca’s pretty core. Our favorite stop in Puglia was certainly the yearold Hotel San Paolo al Convento (US$179; www.sanpaoloalconvento.traniweb.it), a converted convent with postcard views of Trani harbor. Needing a hotel near Bari airport for our getaway, La Baia Palace (US$135; www. bestwestern.it/BW/EN/98188 – hotel – Bari – Localita – Palese), a Best Western in Palese five minutes by taxi from the terminal, was clean, quiet, unfancy and, unexpectedly, a short walk from fun seaside dining. DINING THERE: Gleamingly fresh whole fish is the specialty here, along with orecchiette (a small pasta, typically served in a light sauce with greens, always with garlic, sometimes with surprises), olives, pasticciotto (a filled pastry, perfect with the 10 a.m. cappuccino), fava beans (in multiple forms) and other good things. For lovers of mussels, clams, cuttlefish, sardines, octopus, calamari, anchovies and other creatures plucked from saltwater, Puglia is heaven; the rest of you will find pizza. Some favorites, among many: Whole sea bass roasted over coals was a dream at La Vecchia Taverna in Monopoli; you’ll love the cavatelluci (it’s a local pasta) with beans and mussels at the Ristorante Terminal, set romantically alongside a bus parking lot in Alberobello; Nonna Tetti, in Lecce, is as good a place as any to try the orecchiette, this version with sprinkles of sausage; also in Lecce, the ciceri e tria, a local soup featuring boiled

and fried pasta, plus chickpeas, was far better than it sounds at Ristorante alle Due Corti (as opposed to its turcinieddhi, small sausages made of the heart, lungs and liver of a baby goat, which was exactly as good as it sounds); finally in Lecce, the pulpe e fagioli (octopus and beans) at Picton will convert tentaclephobes. More: The sauce with cozze marinara at Marechair, on the water in Gallipoli, isn’t the tomato glop that covers red mussels here, and that’s good; if you’re within two hours of Grottaglie, get there, start with the antipasti at Osteria Il Piatto Reale and trust the waiter for the rest; in Trani, you’ll drop in bread to soak up the magic of the cavatelli al fruitti di mare (pasta with everything sea) at Ristorante Rosa Del Venti; and if you’re in Palese on a Sunday, get to Ristorante L’Ancora around 1 p.m. and join the families celebrating christenings, birthdays, retirements, anniversaries and/or just life over waves of great eating. A MONEY ADVISORY: Do not bank on traveler’s checks in Puglia. Most hotels won’t accept or exchange them (even if, as ours were, they’re in euros), nor will most restaurants and shops; not every bank will exchange them for currency, and those that do may charge a whopping commission. Rely on ATMs (they are plentiful, even in smallish towns, and if one doesn’t work, another will) and credit cards. INFORMATION: Italian Government Tourist Office, www.italiantourism.com. A very good commercial site: www.initaly.com/regions/ apulia /apulia.htm

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tasteLIFE

Moral panic

The twin worries over obesity and anorexia remind us of a gentler, curvier age, writes Eli Jameson

ondon Fashion Week may at first seem to have nothing to do with eating – a collection of rail-thin models who collectively consume a head of celery per week is hardly the sort of place one would go to find gourmands, at least of the food variety. But it is represents one side of a multifaceted problem with how we view food, and perhaps more importantly how we teach our children to view food, in New Zealand and across the Western world today. For at London Fashion Week the cry went up, as it always seems to at such events: no more stick-thin girls! (Madrid’s own fashion week organisers actually heeded the call and developed a formula based on Body Mass Index to weed out the weedy.) “The fashion industry’s promotion of beauty as meaning stick-thin is damaging to young girls’ self-image and to their health,” Britain’s marvelouslynamed Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell told the BBC. Multiple theories abound as to why fashion designers like their models stick thin. A charitable explanation holds that designers feel that their clothes “fall” better on models whose bodies don’t get in the way. A less kind (dare one say “bitchy”?) suggestion, often heard sotto voce, is that the large proportion of homosexual men in the fashion industry either prefer models with “boy-like” figures. A variation on this suggestion was recently made by the Sydney Morning-Herald’s Jack Marx, who wrote, “I also wonder if there isn’t a touch of cynical sexual creepiness about a lot of what we see on the catwalks – a bunch of old queens behaving like gentrified sadists as they do their darnedest to make these silly young women look as utterly ludicrous as they possibly can. Like those freaks who dress cats in queer costumes, the designers

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FOOD

often seem to me to be surrendering to a latent desire to punish these girls for being so arrogantly, femininely attractive.” Amusingly, all this concern over stickthin models creating unrealistic body images for young girls (without mentioning the smoothed, muscled metrosexual men whose arrival on the scene must have more than a few teenage boys lamenting instead of celebrating the arrival of the first crop of chest hair) comes at a time when we are also told we are in the midst of an “obesity crisis”. Kids are fattyfatty boombatties, we are told, thanks to a steady diet of McDonald’s, trans-fats, TV and video games. Lurking underneath the “crisis”, which has largely been created by fiddling with already-suspect and imprecise Body Mass Index figures, is a left-wing Puritanical fear of consumption and capitalism. To paraphrase Tom Wolfe’s brilliant line about fascism always descending on America but landing on Europe, the right always seems to be threatening to repress personal choice and liberty, but it is the left that makes good on the promise. As always in the midst of any moral panic, it is wise to turn to the history books for a bit of perspective. Anyone who has spent any time looking at European art or reading history knows that the railthin look so valued today has traditionally been seen as a sign of ill health. In his 1825 classic The Physiology of Taste, translated by MFK Fisher, proto-gourmand Brillat-Savarin (whose words should be well familiar to regular readers of this column) offers advice to “thin women [who want] to grow plump”, developing a basic dietary plan that concludes, “We fatten sheep, calves, oxen, poultry, carp, crayfish and oysters; and from this fact I have deduced the following general maxim: Everything that eats can grow fat, as long as its food is sensibly and suitably chosen”. While this may seem like heresy in this day and age when fat is the enemy of upstanding right-thinkers everywhere, what you are about to read will seem as inflammatory to fighters of the war on fat as the writings Sayyed Qutb, the Egyptian who defined modern, violent Islamic fundamentalism, will seem to enemies of jihadi fascism (as we should all be). For this is an ode to processed fat and all the health benefits it has for kids and the wider community. A century ago Crisco – a disgusting, gloppy white slime also known as

“

Crisco is Kosher. Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco

”

vegetable shortening – was all the rage. It was advertised as a way to infuse children with the fat they needed to grow. Writing a 1912 history of the stuff, Marion Harris Neil even noted that “Crisco is Kosher. Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco”. What is the point of all this? Essentially, that our worries about food today are somewhat misplaced. Sure, no one should be obese – or unhealthily skinny. But at the same time, how much of the current crisis can be attributed not to the marketing wiles of McDonalds or the excesses of the global fashionista set, whose members would much rather snort cocaine through a tube of penne than eat it, but to a culture that fears food, sees it solely as fuel to be taken solitarily rather than in company. The depressing statistics on the numbers of meals families eat together, and the even more depressing correlation sociologists have found between these numbers and juvenile delinquency and crime are part of this. Perhaps we need to become more traditionally European in our attitudes towards food and fat. On a recent evening my wife and I attended a “new parents orientation” evening for our oldest son, who starts classes there in January. On the subject of lunches, we were told that not just peanut products but all seafoods were out, and given pages of handouts on what was and was not acceptable. For a school that prides itself on its religious traditions, it seemed like an awfully unfortunate attitude to take towards God’s bounty. A few days later, our son received a postcard from a friend spending the year in France. It read, “Paris is fun. I’m allowed to each chocolate biscuits at school and the teacher is nice”. I’d be very surprised if his friend comes back from Paris a bucket of lard as a result.

Roquefort Dressing (or dip!) Fat? You say you want fat? Here you go...this is a delicious salad dressing, or if you leave it overnight to set, dip for crudités. You’ll need: 1.5 cups mayonnaise 1/3 cup buttermilk 1/4 cup sour cream 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco, or to taste 200 grams Roquefort or other strong blue cheese, crumbled coarse Whisk everything together in a bowl save for the cheese until smooth. Add the cheese, salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy!

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seeLIFE PAGES

Hard habits

Michael Morrissey gets down and dirty with spring reading HABITUS DISGUSTICA By Ian Whitelaw Allen & Unwin, $ 23.99

hich of us has not burped, belched, picked our nose or over-eaten? Of course these and other more private expressions of the human body are fine in private but not so attractive when done in the plain view of others. If you do, then intrepid researcher Whitelaw, who has given these and other yucky actions a good deal of analytic if not creative thought, has a Yuck Factor with which to rate your unattractive vice. For instance, talking too loudly on a cell phone rates an impressive 3 out of 5 – and who except a cell phone user would disagree? Picking scabs gets 4 out of 5 (surely no disagreement with that), while hair fiddling gets a lowish 2 out of 5. Sleep talking (a trifle unfairly) rates 1 out of 5. Snoring scored an overly modest 2 – or am I thinking of my own private Annoyance Scale? I learnt a great deal from this beautifully designed little book. (And the beauty of the design is perhaps inversely proportional to the disgusting habits therein discussed). For instance, that there is such a

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thing as halitophobia which is fear of having bad breath. And how about a name for a fear of encountering the phenomenon? Compulsive nose picking is entitled rhinotellexomania and traditionally you often see it occurring in car drivers at traffic lights. Hair fiddling – three to six million so afflicted in the United States alone – is more properly called trichotillomania. By now, I’m sure you must be wondering how you blundered through life whether offensively yawning or squeezing spots without knowing the appropriate terminology for a nasty habit that in all statistical probability you have at some time indulged in. For those interested in the grosser aspects, there is a Bristol Stool Form Scale, and never fear, I’m not going to go into details. Having perused this book, I have made a strong resolve to improve myself in several areas in which I may have been remiss. I shall be doing my best to cut back on Spitting and Spraying, quit Dribbling and completely axe Smelly Feet. Like all humour – and one of my English friends unsurprisingly considers this book sidesplittingly funny – it is best delivered dead pan, a fact that many local comedians such as Raybon Kan seem blissfully

unaware of. My guess is that the author is English (though I could be wrong), and that the English, renown for their fondness of toilet humour will get the maximum amount of merriment out of this book. Though of Irish stock, I got more than one guffaw out of it, and I promise not to Grind My Teeth or Sleep Talk in Public ever again.

LEONARDO AND THE MONA LISA STORY By Donald Sassoon Allen & Unwin, $49.99.

ndy Warhol famously said that in the future everyone in the world would be famous for fifteen minutes. But what about a painting being famous for hundreds of years? The Mona Lisa, ranked the world’s most famous painting by 86 per cent in a world poll, fills the bill exactly. Apart from the splendour of being itself, it has become the subject of hundreds of disrespectful parodies. The first thus, Eugene Bataille’s ‘Mona Lisa with a Pipe’, was produced in 1887. This was topped in fame, if not in skill, by Marcel DuChamp’s mustached ver-

sion, which is now a famous icon in its own right. In other words, the Mona Lisa must be unique in being instantly recognizable as either itself or a DuChamprendered parody. An estimated one new image appears per week. It begins to sound as though the entire world is looking through a hall of mirrors, on which is emblazoned Mona Lisa’s face hauntingly repeated down through time. There is much to marvel at in the painting – there is the supposedly enigmatic smile floridly championed by Theophile Gautier and Walter Pater in their best purple prose: the fact that no-one can detect brush marks on the painting not even at a microscopic level.; the special quality of the hands – a part of the body not usually painted exposed at the time; the elaborate layer by layer sfumato technique at which Da Vinci was a master. The history of the Mona Lisa hasn’t all been eventless adoration. In 1911, it was stolen in a bold but simple way. This theft became branded as a ‘crime of the century’ kind of event inspiring songs by Cole Porter, Nat King Cole and Bob Dylan. Fate was kind – for after two years, it was returned intact. In this event, real life was stranger than fiction, which I can only envisage as portraying the smiling young woman’s psychotic destruction. If you think that such a world icon is too valuable and precious to ever travel, you would be wrong. It went to America (1962) – with full Transatlantic liner escort; and to Japan (1966). One shudders at the expense – we must be talking budgets for whole small European countries here. Possibly one of the reasons why the painting has become so popular is its amiability, its unthreatening nature. A portrait of any attractive young woman always draws the male gaze (so-called) but in the Mona Lisa’s case, the subject gazed upon has assumed a quiet authority that makes its claim on our imagination more subtle than if it had been a more violent or surreal painting. Though this book is textually about the issues I have referred to, it mainly consists of illustration – portraits of Mona Lisa crowd its pages plus all the other cultural paraphernalia – from the Louvre itself to the famous people, themselves iconic, who are more than willing to be photographed with the Mona Lisa – the world’s most famous painting. This book would make a splendid and handsome gift.

1ZB: The Voice of an Iconic Radio Station By Bill Francis HarperCollins, $ 36.99

part from (say) Sir Edmund Hillary, Helen Clark, and Peter Jackson, Paul Holmes might well be our most famous New Zealander. In his case, world famous in New Zealand – thanks to 1ZB. (Mind you Paul cheats by having a second slice of the fame cake by being a star TV presenter as well). 1ZB is no stranger to manufacturing famous personalities. First there was Uncle Scrim, Mr Friendly Road Scrimgeour, a household name in the 30s but somewhat faded now. Scrim was the originator of the local-accented intimate-host style so familiar today. And it was he who launched 1ZB, the first commercial radio station in New Zealand back in 1936. 1ZB remains to this day a place for jokes, jests, japes and satire. Probably none had greater impact than Phil Shone’s notorious April 1 hoax of 1949 which featured a one mile-wide swarm of wasps headed for Auckland. People were exhorted to tuck their trousers into socks and put out jam as a peace offering. It sounds a bit schooboyish now but it caused something like an equivalent to the 1938 Orson Welles Mars Invasions radio play scare. Shone was rebuked but in essence given a smack over the knuckles with a wet bus ticket. In a sense, Holmes was given the same largesse over his equally if not now more notorious “Cheeky Darkie” remarks about Kofi Annan in 2003. Holmes’s comments in print read somewhat like the racism that he hopefully was trying to satirise. So, if ever there was case of failed satire backfiring satire, this was it. Understandably, a large contingent of academics signed a letter claiming Holmes’s dismissal. Again, one surmises, in recognition of Holmes’ overall ability and commercial contribution to the air waves, he was let off with a letter of apology, a $10,000 donation to Save The Children Fund and a meeting with the New Zealand Ghanaian Association. One wonders what he said to them. Like so many before him, Holmes rode out the storm. Though there is a strong New Zealand feeling that we are all liable to the same treatment if we fall from grace, I have a sneaking feeling of support for the strategy that allows a gaffe from a well-known

media personality and doesn’t seek or allow a complete lynching. Though Holmes makes me wince at times, he was a major factor in lifting the content of 1ZB from its politically vacuous state under Mervyn Smith – also a great radio personality but hardly one to interview the Prime Minister with that mixture of political acuteness, media aggression and personal dogged manner that is the characteristic of the Holmes style. On balance, Holmes is worth keeping. The world of the radio can be callously cruel – witness the dumping of Alice Worsley only to see her star rise on another station. And so the names roll by from from past to present – 200 wordsa-minute Aunt Daisie; Marina, Queen of the Afternoon; colorful bug man Ruud Kleinpaste; Peter Montgomery, who can turn a dull yacht race into the adrenalin of a heavyweight boxing competition; Murray Deaker, king of the sports commentators; and Leighton Smith who can stir the waves as vigorously as his rival Paul Holmes. Though I enjoyed this memorable waltz down nostalgia row – which, of course, concludes many of today’s stars – Francis is arguably a mite too partisan for the task as he is station manager of Newstalk ZB and is therefore speaking very much from the same studio whose history he charts. An outsider’s history would undoubtedly have read differently – and this no doubt may well one day be written. The contrast could prove interesting. Meanwhile, enjoy Francis’s celebration of our most celebrated radio station.

DOUBLE FAULT By Lionel Shriver Serpent’s Tail, $32

ionel Shriver seems like a writer who feels compelled to make us feel uncomfortable. Her earlier We Need To Talk About Kevin examined the dark soul of a psychopath; Double Fault (punning title!) looks at a young woman who doesn’t take losing at tennis all that well. Initially, female professional tennis player Willy Novinsky, ranked 437 in the world, bumps into amateur yet gifted Eric Oberdorf on the court. They play – he loses, she wins. At first. As the novel unfolds, he catches her up with devastating effect. Though initially ranked at a more lowly 972, Eric seems to have the

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 83

knack of looking at life more easily than Willy whose rank might as well be written in heaven – though, in the case of her temperament, in hell. This fundamental difference in temperament and ultimately philosophy of tennis, marriage and life is the dynamic that makes Double Fault a compelling if at times shrilly toned read. Though it may not sound that exciting, the difference in their status on the tennis ladder becomes a haunting statistic that the more desperately competitive Willy uses as a stick to beat herself up with. Initially, her status rises but Eric begins slowly to catch up and then surpass her. Eventually he plays for the United States Open – a level which she never reached even at her peak – while she, injured on the court, sinks lower and lower on the ladder. One feels sorry for her even as her own negativity drags down her morale. Her bitterness at their reversal lead her to snap at Eric, “You’re not my husband – you’re my replacement!” Beyond the cruel psychological condemnation that masochistic Willy inflicts on herself and her husband (who could hardly be more supportive), there is an intriguing extra-textual comment by the author. In an Author’s Note, she informs readers that they might want to look at the complexity of the tennis rankings then adds, “Double Fault is not so much about tennis as marriage, a slightly different sport.” Maybe so, but Shriver’s novel is also about American competitiveness and how strictly it is calibrated within the tennis world. So even if her novel is not about tennis, as she declares, I am still inclined to read “tennis” as a metaphor for American competitiveness as well as, in line with what Shriver tells us, the bitter marriage itself. There is also at the conclusion of the book quite an elaborate list of suggestions for Reading Group Questions. To quote one: “By convention, spouses are meant to regard themselves as a team, on the same side. How could Willy love her husband and yet begin to hope he loses on the court?” The questions – no less than 17 – all give us (Readers? Students? Writers?) some angle to consider. The questions, though very much at high school level, are indeed interesting but I am a little puzzled as to whether this is intended to kick start a new trend whereby the writer not only writes the book but sets up discussion topics for anticipated readers or just a one off? An intriguing set of exercises or a presump-

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tuous strategy? A bit of both perhaps. Double Fault is a shrill, deeply American book which at first glance looks like a battle of the sexes novel but is more about a neurotic loser style of personality (Willy) versus one with a more open-ended and more relaxed philosophy (Eric). Eric succeeds because he doesn’t care about success. Willy fails because she cares too much. In other words, Double Fault is a reversal of the customary American attitude about how best to win. As a novel, it is compulsively readable and psychologically acute. Recommended but be prepared to feel kicked on the shins.

THE LAST EXPLORER By Simon Nasht Hodder, $29.99

sk someone in the English speaking world to name some prominent polar explorers and chances are most will start with Scott, the leader of the ill-fated 1912 expedition. Then they might mention that sneaky Norwegian Amundsen who cleverly planned his expedition with more thoroughness than Scott and had the good sense to use dogs not ponies. They might add Peary or Byrd. And then freeze dry. My guess is that few people would name Hubert Wilkins, the rugged Australian explorer who is the subject of this biography. Having read this magnificent biography of a great man, I am left wondering why he is isn’t better known. History isn’t always fair and though Wilkins was very prominent in his time, the relative amnesia that appears to have been his contemporary collective lot, is challenged by this excellent book. Wilkins’s list of exploits – mainly successful with the odd failure – is so exhaustive as to be bewildering. He took part in 33 polar expeditions. He flew many record breaking flights. He was kidnapped, white slaved, he escaped. He was once lined up before a firing squad as a suspect spy but even at the risk of certain death would not yield into the path of confession. He became interested in telepathy and joined the Urantia movement. He foresaw the effects of global warming. He was the first explorer to conclusively show that the ocean under the Arctic ice was deep and contained no land. To top it all off, he married a beautiful actress and despite long absences, they had a happy

successful marriage! In short, the life of Sir Hubert Wilkins was and is a hard act to follow. In his photographs he looks like a cross between Lenin and Sir Richard Burton. And like those two gentlemen, Wilkins was a combination of great leader and dare-devil explorer. The jacket of the book lists him as war hero, photographer, reporter, prolific writer, spy, scientist, naturalist, ornithologist and gifted aviator. What is more amazing – intolerable you might say – is that he was modest and did not – unlike his rival Richard Byrd – seek publicity. His physical strength and endurance were phenomenal – he could pull sleds faster than anyone else and even in his sixties he could out-ski younger men. He was the Ranulph Fiennes of his day though his range of activities far exceeded the latter’s epic exploits. Two of his numerous adventures are described with especial nail-biting detail. The first was one in which, unusually, he was a participant and not the protagonist. At this late date, it is hard to recollect how wonderful the zeppelins were – totally luxurious, comfortable in all aspects, and on initial takeoff, their motion was imperceptible. Of course their flammable hydrogen and vulnerability to wind made them as dangerous as hell. Expert pilot Eckener wrestled the electric cable-threatened Graf Zeppelin to safety and Wilkins dutifully took notes on the true danger of which the passengers were blissfully oblivious. The second seat-gripper was the voyage of the Nautilus – not the sleek nuclearpowered submarine of the 1950s but a scarcely seaworthy tub that was Wilkins’s unhappy fate to skipper. It was his bold intention to be the first to captain the vessel under the arctic ice. The sequence in which it tried and eventually failed in its mission are rendered with nail-biting skill by Nasht. Wilkins was not forgiven by the world’s press for this one failure which was not his fault – some of the crew, worried for their safety, had secretly sabotaged the boat. Apart from this one failure, Wilkins’s exploratory career glittered with success. Considered by his fellow polar explorers to be without peer, respected by explorers and honoured by governments – a knighthood plus the highest award from the Soviets – Wilkins is summed up by Nasht thus: “He had sledged and flown, sailed and walked across more unknown land than any man in history”.

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O^g^k]b ikh]n\ml Zk^ ZoZbeZ[e^ bg hk`Zgb\ lmhk^l Zg] fhlm lni^kfZkd^ml makhn`ahnm G^p S^ZeZg]' ?bg] hnm fhk^ Zm hnk p^[lbm^3 ppp'o^g^k]b'\h'gs

^gchr Z leb\^ h_ ma^ `hh] eb_^ pbma _k^^ mhZlm _hk mph <Zee )2 1*, .-1* hk ^fZbe bg_h9o^g^k]b'\h'gs _hk Z _k^^ bg_h iZ\d% \hfie^m^ pbma mph leb\^l h_ mZlmr O^g^k]b [k^Z] _hk rhn mh mhZlm _hk [k^Zd_Zlm' Rhn \Zg \ahhl^ _khf hnk Âlhnk l^^]rÃ li^em ehZ_% cZf&iZ\d^] pbma Zg hk`Zgb\ [e^g] h_ / l^^]l% hk mkr hnk Â\hngmkrÃ pahe^f^Ze `enm^g _k^^ ehZ_% Zelh \k^Zm^] _khf Z [e^g] h_ . l^^]l Zg] hk`Zgb\ Ìhnk `bobg` rhn ma^ [^lm h_ [hma phke]l & `hh] a^Zema Zg] `hh] mZlm^' INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 85

seeLIFE MUSIC

Soothing, heartfelt and cute Chris Philpott finds mojo in the music KATY RAY Dreaming For Something More

JOHN MAYER Continuum

RODRIGO Y GABRIELA Rodrigo Y Gabriela

f I were summing up Katy Ray, I would use the words ‘soulful, easy to listen, soothing, heartfelt and cute.’ Looking back, those are probably the same reasons I haven’t got a major label debut myself yet. Simply put, Dreaming for Something More, the debut release from Ray, is a flash of excellence from left-field and completely unexpected. The promo photo of Katy Ray, the biography that accompanied the disc – even the cover art – seemed to scream ‘pop music’, so imagine my surprise when one of the sweetest and most soulful voices I’ve come across came out of the speakers at me. Dreaming for Something More is formulaic in terms of sound, with the acoustic guitar taking centre on most tracks. This approach isn’t without its downfalls, and this album does fall into some moments of generic Jewel- or Tunstall-inspired acoustic pop music. However, Ray’s message is far more uplifting and encouraging, driven by her own beliefs and ideas, making this much more interesting to listen to (as well as leaving me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside). Dreaming for Something More is a great listen, and Katy Ray is well along the right track.

86, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

t’s been 3 years since John Mayer’s previous album – the somewhat commercially disappointing Heavier Things, and it is no surprise that his latest release Continuum snuck up so quietly. While Continuum was lacking in prerelease hype, it certainly is not lacking in quality. Mayer has outdone himself on this release, lifting the bar from his previous works with songs like the infectious opening track “Waiting for the World to Change” and the fantastic “Vultures”. Continuum is blues-rock through and through, and Mayer is undoubtedly one of the finest writers around. At the same time, he is sure to get some flak. Continuum does rely heavily on some staples of the genre, like electric organs and slide guitar; the result being that some tracks can sound a little repetitive and “been there, heard that”. Despite this, Continuum is a great listen and the high points (Mayer’s vocals, and some of the slower tracks like “Gravity” and “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”) more than make up for the lower points. This is an excellent album, appealing to an extremely wide age range, and definitely one that you’ll want to have around, playing in the background, on those long summer evenings.

t’s funny the things that come to mind when you see something. For me, when I noticed that this album included a cover of the Zeppelin standard “Stairway to Heaven”, I thought of the scene from the movie Wayne’s World when Mike Myers starts playing it in the music store and the clerk comes over and points to a sign that says “NO Stairway to Heaven!” However, had Rodrigo Y Gabriela been in the music store, I am certain the clerk would have stood back and let them go for it. “Stairway to Heaven” has never been played more gracefully! Rodrigo Y Gabriela’s self titled debut clocks in at a shade under 45 minutes and not a single second is wasted. Packed to the brim with absolutely gorgeous Spanish guitar, this is an album to play loudly while marvelling at the sheer brilliance of these wonderful musicians. And the liner notes! I loved that the CD booklet featured hand written notes from the artists on what each song is about and where it come from. It is that attention to detail – both the booklet, and the music itself – that makes Rodrigo Y Gabriela such a novelty, and a remarkable find.

seeLIFE MOVIES

Photography: Barry Wetcher

The devil wears Prada, not rescue gear

Meryl Streep is as brilliant as ever, and Kevin Costner is back in the water The Devil Wears Prada Rated: PG Starring: Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Adrian Grenier Directed by: David Frankel 109 minutes

arlon Brando once dismissed acting as “playing dress-up,” and if The Devil Wears Prada doesn’t make the point quite the way he meant, it comes close. For many of those in the audience, director David Frankel’s adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s fashion industry roman a clef will serve as apparel-andaccessory porn, even as they’re supposed to be scorning the materialistic, narcissistic culture the film lampoons. For others, it will serve as an opportunity to watch Meryl Streep slide all too convincingly into another rich character with the ease with which most of us slip into off-the-rack Calvin Klein. Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the imperial editor of the most revered fashion mag in the world, Runway. The character is based on Weisberger’s onetime boss, Vogue’s Anna Wintour. Miranda is the boss from hell who judges her minions not only on their abilities but also their taste. A task uncompleted, a cold cup of coffee, sensible shoes

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– they’re all cause for scorn, withering reprimands and dismissal. The Devil Wears Prada asks us to believe that recent journalism school grad Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a girl so unassuming everyone calls her Andy, has never heard of Miranda when she shows up to be interviewed for a job as a personal assistant – New York City slang for slave. After getting a once-over from Miranda’s No. 1 assistant Emily (Emily Blunt), herself chicly attired in what looks to be one of David Bowie’s 1980 floor show outfits, it seems certain that Andy, in her pullover sweater and “grandmother’s old skirt,” is not suited for the job. Yet Miranda hires her, presumably on the basis of her intelligence and pluck, or perhaps because she looks as if she would be the sort of person it would be amusing to humiliate. Andy’s scruffily down-to-earth boyfriend, aspiring chef Nate (Entourage head Adrian Grenier), can’t imagine why Andy would put up with Miranda’s unrelenting demands, especially because Andy has professed no interest in fashion. But Andy has something to prove. With help from Miranda’s right-hand man, photo editor Nigel (Stanley Tucci) – with a wardrobe almost as eye-popping as Miranda’s – she gets what she needs to be taken seriously at the office: a fashion makeover. Soon Miranda is eyeing Andy almost

approvingly, and when she passes a few impossible tests – like procuring a manuscript of the next unpublished Harry Potter novel for Miranda’s twins – Andy becomes favoured over Emily. The reward is that Andy gets to be at Miranda’s constant beck and call, though she does get the occasional perks like $2,000 Fendi handbags and Manolo Blahnik shoes, which her friend Lilly (Tracie Thoms) is all too happy to have as hand-me-downs. It is all too obvious all too quickly that The Devil Wears Prada is about the struggle for Andy’s soul. She becomes increasingly blinded to what we know are “the things that really matter” – you know, integrity, self-esteem, quiet walks on the beach instead of midnight runs for caviar. But the movie never really mounts much of a battle, and Andy’s seduction, for the most part, is benign. Most people will leave Devil wondering not what becomes of Andy but whether the actors were allowed to keep the clothes. Frankel, who directed episodes of Sex and the City, and McKenna have eliminated much of the in-house venom and backstabbing of the book, while Streep has toned down the sadistic, heartless caricature in the novel to give Miranda recognizably human qualities. Yet Streep also all but single-handedly gives this film the gravity it would not otherwise have,

making sweeping entrances that would impress Joan Crawford without once edging close to camp. Though Hathaway’s Andy is the character the story is about – which is why any talk of an Oscar for Streep’s performance should be in the supporting category – Streep wears the shoes in Devil. She wears them, and the other clothing in this film, the way only a few women can – as if she was born in them, comfortable in elegance and finery. Reviewed by Terry Lawson

The Guardian Rated: M Starring: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Sela Ward, Melissa Sagemiller, Clancy Brown Directed by: Andrew Davis 139 minutes

decade after the commercial and critical flop of Waterworld nearly drowned his career, Kevin Costner is back to sea in The Guardian, and this time his dignity remains afloat. He stars as Ben Randall, a legendary Coast Guard rescue specialist who drops from helicopters and swims through raging ocean waves to save endangered mar-

iners. His hazardous and unpredictable duties have taken a toll on his home life and his wife begins a separation. When a mission to save a sinking trawler goes disastrously wrong, Randall’s last link with his former life is severed. Sensing that the overstressed hero needs to regain his bearings in a new assignment, his commander transfers him from active duty to instructing new recruits. He dives headfirst into his new responsibilities, teaching at Coast Guard rescue school, where his maverick star pupil Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher) is grappling with buried issues of his own. The film is essentially a recruiting poster for the Coast Guard, which is good and not so good. If The Guardian encourages anyone to join the service and save people in peril, hooray for everyone involved. On the level of drama, though, the film could use some more interpersonal conflict, the kind springing from characters with mixed motives and dark agendas. In return for military cooperation in making the film, it portrays no one in uniform with serious human failings, unless you count caring too much and trying too hard. It’s an exciting man-against-nature saga, but without an antagonist besides Davy Jones, the story lacks a compelling human dimension. Director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive,

A Perfect Murder) has enough material for two films here, and at a generous 139 minutes, there are moments when The Guardian feels like a double feature. Still, Davis does a more than capable job of balancing the story’s spectacular thrill-ride sequences against its leisurely passages of student-teacher conflict, serviceman-civilian woman romance, swimming drills and chain-of-command hassles. Just as you’re about to begin drumming your fingertips impatiently against the popcorn tub, Davis shifts the movie out of park and sends it zooming down the road. Costner’s performance is everything the role calls for. After two decades in front of the camera he slips into strong, silent roles like this one as easily as zipping up a wet suit. Kutcher is a serviceable light comedy performer and the script plays to his strengths, handing him some laughs in a bar brawl scene and several romantic interludes with Melissa Sagemiller as a lusty local schoolteacher. He doesn’t have the authority to stand up to Costner in their confrontations, though, and when they become partners on rescue dives it’s hard to believe that Costner would pass his responsibilities to the younger man so suddenly. Most viewers will leave the theater wishing he had hung around longer. Reviewed by Colin Covert

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 89

seeLIFE DVDs

Monsters beat dreamers Two biting new releases PREHISTORIC PARK PG, 2-disc set

K, I expected it from my eight year old son. He is, after all, both fascinated by dinosaurs and still naïve about the ways of the world and the intricacies of computer generated animation. But when my mother in law, who should have known better, said in a loud voice “For a moment there I thought it was real!”, I realized Western Civilisation had just met its Waterloo. But that’s a sign of just how bone-achingly good Prehistoric Park actually is. It’s production values are so slick, its dinosaur renderings so realistic (albeit given that no one alive has ever seen a dinosaur and we’re all guessing what they look like) that even adults (well, one adult) are being sucked in by it. The premise is simple: Jurassic Park meets David Bellamy. Take one in your face British naturalist-type Nigel Marven (played by David Jason) who’s task it is to travel back in time to rescue key species of prehistoric creatures for a living zoological park. The fact that we were three episodes into the series before MiL uttered her now immortal line is, I think, possibly the best review one can give. The other, of course, is the sight of three small children, laughing with nervous anticipation at the sight of a woolly rhinoceros charging, or clutching one another in a nervous huddle as some kind of raptor looks like it might sink its teeth into Marven. Prehistoric Park is ideal for those who can still experience wonder, or for those who’re after a nature documentary with a difference. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

American Dreamz M, 103 minutes

iven that 65 million votes were cast in the American Idol 3 finale, more than half the 122 million tallied in the 2004 presidential race, it was only a

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matter of time before a satirist took aim at American politics by using the TV show as ammunition. Weitz’s subject is the trashing of American politics and values in the Dumpster of pop culture. He starts promisingly, by sorting citizens into three basic types, the starmaker, the would-be star, and the sucker. The harshly lit film equates snarky starmaker Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant), the Simon Cowellesque host and judge of the top-rated TV show American Dreamz, with snarky Vice President Sutter (Willem Dafoe), who possesses the sepulchral voice and chrome dome of Dick Cheney. Weitz frames these men as puppeteers pulling the strings of pop stars and presidents, and, by proxy, controlling America. Tweed and Sutter are dastardly, the people they control are dupes, and everyone else dopes. Weitz lampoons the starmakers for condescending to Americans, but he himself is guilty of the same attitude. Like Tweed and Sutter, whose faces are frozen into permanent sneers, Weitz’s stance toward most of the characters is one of smirking superiority. For a writer-director so compassionate toward often unsympathetic subjects in American Pie, About a Boy and In Good Company (the first two cowritten with his brother Chris), it seems out of character that Weitz would have such a jaundiced eye for those who make up his American mosaic. For a filmmaker who previously exhibited such perfect pitch, it’s almost incomprehensible that this Weitz film is so tone-deaf. The only likable characters are ebullient Omer (Sam Golzari), a show-tune-loving reluctant Iraqi suicide bomber who comes to the O.C., and earnest William (Chris Klein), an American GI wounded in Iraq, who are mirror images. Weitz doesn’t even get within shouting distance of the Saturday Night Live parodies of American Idol and President Bush. Nor, cast as versions of Laura and George W. Bush, do Marcia Gay Harden and Dennis Quaid do anything more than pretty good impersonations of the first

lady and president. Similarly, as aspiring TV-show contestant Sally Kendoo, Mandy Moore turns in a creditable impersonation of Carrie Underwood. But their impersonations lack the sting of satire, something that Hugh Grant brings to his Cowell caricature of Martin Tweed. Grant plays it like a thirsty alley cat lapping up a tureen of curdled cream. Except for Cowell, Weitz does not draw blood from his major targets. This said, his shapeless film does have some nice touches, including its tweak of the American Idol formula that inevitably pits Southern songbird against sexually ambiguous crooner against preening rocker against gospel diva. Reviewed by Carrie Rickey

Welcome to the 21st century, now showing at Bedpost.

Pivotech slat system

Remote controlled TV conceal and reveal

Nexus Star features a range of suite options

Introducing the Nexus Star by East West Designs, cutting edge bedroom furniture that’s as beautiful as it is contemporary. The Nexus Star features truly unique technology and innovative features that place it firmly in a class of its own. Blending craftsmanship & technology Beautifully crafted from New Zealand Rimu, the Nexus Star incorporates features that demonstrate intelligent design with unmatched aesthetics.

Side tables stow inside the bedhead

The foot of the bed incorporates an LCD TV which is concealed until needed and is revealed by a touch of a button on the supplied remote. The bed foot end opens and the TV is electronically raised or lowered as required. Innovative design and construction Another example of East West’s innovation is in the side tables, which can be smoothly stowed away inside the bed-head with just a gentle touch. And the innovation continues with a recess across the width of the headboard designed to accommodate books and DVDs, with built in ports for cabling. Each side of the TV there’s space to store additional items for an uncluttered look that no other bed can promise. And the Nexus Star can be matched to a range of suite options. Proven comfort from Pivotech support Using the latest Pivotech flexible slat system, the bed can be divided into individual sleep zones to virtually eliminate roll-together. The future of beds and bedroom furniture has arrived.

Exclusive to

See the EastWest Designs Nexus Star at Bedpost. Call 0800 BEDPOST for the location of your nearest store or visit www.bedpost.co.nz INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 91

touchLIFE

TOYBOX

See me, print me The latest accessories

DENON’S DVD-2930 1080p UNIVERSAL PLAYER

Denon announce its latest generation, High Definition 1080p Universal player, the DVD-2930. Featuring 10-bit video processing together with 216MHz, 12-bit D to A conversion, the DVD-2930 produces the highest quality High Definition 1080p images. As a Universal player it supports all current surround sound and music digital formats including DVD Audio and Video, SACD, MP3, WMA, DIVX, and of course, will play regular CDs and their variants. A clear reminder that not all DVD players are created equal, the DVD-2930 employs the much anticipated, cutting-edge Reon-VX chip from Silicon Optix that is designed to deliver optimum picture quality for content shown by major TV networks and ‘Hollywood’ DVDs. Key features of the new chip include no-compromise HQV True 1080i-1080p de-interlacing, which uses the full four-field processing window for HD video de-interlacing and cadence detection, thus preserving the rich details in HD imagery. RRP $1,699. For further information visit www.audioproducts.com.au or contact John Murt on 07 5471 1062 or email johnmurt@highprofile.com.au.

Epson Stylus CX3900/CX5900

The Epson Stylus CX3900 and Stylus CX5900 feature Epson’s revolutionary DURABrite(TM) Ultra resin coated pigment ink which increases the durability of prints, making them smudge and water resistant with vibrant colours and sharp text with up to 120 years lightfastness on selected Epson papers. DURABrite(TM) Ultra ink delivers excellent image quality and durability for both plain paper document and photo quality printing. Using four individual colour Intellidge(TM) ink cartridges, the Stylus CX3900 and CX5900 provide an economical and affordable printing solution that maximises ink usage. Epson’s PhotoEnhance on the Stylus CX3900 and Stylus CX5900 produces the optimum print every time by automatically adjusting the colour balance to allow for the different requirements of portraits, landscapes or groups. PhotoEnhance ensures common problems like shadowed faces, ‘red eye’, backlit images and dull colouring are corrected, enabling every photographer to print images to admire and share with family and friends. With five card slots (Smart Media, Compact Flash and Micro Drive, Memory Stick, SD card and MultiMedia Card), the Stylus CX5900 offers convenient PC free printing, copying and scanning. In addition, the Stylus CX3900 and CX5900 support PictBridge, a camera industry standard that facilitates fast and easy to use PC-free digital printing of high quality photographs directly from digital cameras. The Epson Stylus CX3900’s RRP is $129 and the Stylus CX5900’s RRP is $249. www.epson.co.nz.

92, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

BeoCenter 6-23 LCD TV

With DAB integration and the latest in LCD technology, BeoCentre 6-23 is, despite its modest size, a perfect solution as a second room TV or a compact TV for those who prioritise simple living. It is the first flat-screen with a DAB radio option, and from the on-screen rolling display, you get relevant information from the broadcaster. With its PC input connection, you have everything you need in the office – PC, radio and TV – all elegantly put together in a wide selection of colours and placement options. Bang & Olufsen has carefully selected the very best LCD screen currently available and added to this a number of picture-optimising features, which are part of the VisionClear concept that is implemented in all TV solutions from Bang & Olufsen. Further more, by adding the clear front glass screen, BeoCenter 623 achieves a much brighter picture, which is particularly advantageous for use in the daytime. The new screen offers a wider viewing angle than most and this is a great advantage if BeoCenter is placed in the kitchen or in a hallway – a typical setup for second room TV’s.

Motorola's new MOTOKRZR and MOTORIZR

Motorola, Inc. introduced the new MOTOKRZR and MOTORIZR handsets, along with their complementary Bluetooth® headsets, the H601 and H800. Embodying Motorola’s design philosophy, the products are impressively narrow, contain a sliding form factor and integrate new advances in colour, material and finish. Both the MOTOKRZR and MOTORIZR will be available in New Zealand in mid-October. The RRP for the MOTOKRZR will be $995 and the RRP for the MOTORIZR will be $599. Available in both GSM, the MOTOKRZR will be available globally during the second half of 2006, regardless of their network preference. The GSM MOTOKRZR features a high resolution 2.0 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth audio, an updated phone directory, new messaging applications, integrated music player and expandable memory up to 1GB. Merging an innovative slider design with an impressive feature set which is accessible either opened or closed, the MOTORIZR offers intuitive functionality. This slider optimises on-the-go imaging with its expansive landscape display, 2.0 megapixel camera and programmed point-andshoot keys. The built-in music player supports a variety of formats and its video capabilities complete this dynamic package. Visit www.motorola.com/motoinfo

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 93

realLIFE

15 MINUTES

1945

A life condemned

Trevor Jensen on the death at 90 of the falsely accused ‘Tokyo Rose’

HICAGO – Few who stopped in J. Toguri Mercantile in Chicago knew the story of the unassuming woman who moved quietly among the cluttered piles of Asian books and toiletries, dishes, vases, cutlery and candy. Iva Toguri certainly didn’t look like a war criminal, although the U.S. government convicted her as one following World War II. In the late 1940s, she was branded as “Tokyo Rose,” Japan’s infamous radio siren to embattled U.S. troops, and served six years in a West Virginia prison.

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Toguri lived with that stigma until 1977, when she received a presidential pardon following a flurry of media attention, including a series in the Chicago Tribune in which two of her chief accusers said their testimony had been coerced. A Chicago resident since 1956, Toguri, 90, died in the last week of September at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, according to Barbara Trembley, who served as Toguri’s adviser and hopes to make a film of her life. Toguri ran J. Toguri Mercantile in

Chicago with her father until his death, and then with a nephew and a niece. Clerks at the store are referring all questions to Trembley. Toguri seldom spoke of her past and remained intensely private throughout her 50 years in Chicago. Customers at the store who knew who she was quickly learned that questions would go unanswered. “She had a hard outer shell, and you could understand why,” says Ald. Thomas Tunney, owner of the Ann Sather Restaurant, where Toguri would occasionally dine. “She didn’t talk much about it,” says Ross Harano, former president of the Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. “She was not a bitter person at all, she just put it aside.” In 1949, Toguri was convicted for treason following a 12-week trial in San Francisco. The single count of which she was found guilty – seven others were thrown out – accused her of referring to U.S. sailors as “Orphans of the Pacific” and asking, “How will you get home now that your ships are sunk?” With false reports of battle outcomes designed to demoralize the troops amid pop music to keep them listing, such broadcasts were notorious instruments in Japan’s propaganda war. A California native and a U.S. citizen, Toguri was visiting a sick aunt in Japan when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Stuck in the country, she was tossed out by her family because of her U.S. citizenship and harassed by the Japanese government. In 1943, she took a secretarial job at Radio Tokyo. The Japanese wanted a woman with an American accent for a show called “Zero Hour.” Toguri was enlisted. Toguri was, in fact, one of about a dozen female broadcasters American GIs referred to by the blanket nickname “Tokyo Rose.” Toguri actually broadcast under the moniker “Orphan Ann” (Ann for “announcer”). While the Japanese were trying to use the broadcasts as propaganda, an Australian prisoner of war who wrote the shows Toguri did said they were intended as “straight-out entertainment.” Nonetheless, she was held for a year by U.S. occupying forces after the war, then released. But a public outcry fanned by influential radio broadcaster Walter Winchell led the United States to rearrest her and ship her to San Francisco for trial, says Wayne Collins, whose father defended Toguri at her 1949 trial.

2AROTONGA !ITUTAKI

!WARDED @,EADING #OOK )SLANDS (OTEL AT THE 7ORLD 4RAVEL !WARDS

!WARDED PRESTIGIOUS @,UXURY 4RAVEL AWARD AND NAMED h/NE OF THE 7ORLDS 5LTIMATE (OTELSv BY ,UXURY 4RAVEL -AGAZINE INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006, 95

1945

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Toguri was, in fact, one of about a dozen female broadcasters American GIs referred to by the blanket nickname “Tokyo Rose.” Toguri actually broadcast under the moniker “Orphan Ann”

Her innocence finally was proven in the 1970s due to efforts by the media and her attorney. In 1976, two of her primary accusers told Chicago Tribune Far East Correspondent Ronald Yates that FBI officials had forced them to give false testimony. Kenkichi Oki and George Mitsushio were California-born Japanese-Americans who had returned to Japan in the 1930s and wound up as Toguri’s superiors on the “Zero Hour” radio program, says Yates, now dean of the College of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a series of interviews, they admitted to Yates that Toguri had done nothing wrong, and that their testimony had been coerced. His stories followed a February 1976 Tribune series by Linda Witt that brought Toguri’s prosecution into question. TV’s “60 Minutes” also did a segment on Toguri, says Collins, who had taken over his father’s case and filed for a presidential pardon.

96, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2006

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In January 1977, on his last day in office, President Gerald Ford pardoned Ms. Toguri. At the time, she said that she hoped to “go back to my simple life and work. The difference now is, however, that I have regained my American citizenship, a right and privilege I have always cherished.” Toguri was born on July 4, 1916, and grew up in California, where she earned a degree in zoology from UCLA with designs on becoming a doctor. Those plans were waylaid forever by her illfated trip to Japan. While in Japan her mother died in a U.S. interment camp for Japanese Americans. She was married to a man named Felipe D’Aquino, who she never saw again after being shipped out of Japan. He has since died, Yates says. Her father moved to Chicago after the war and started his import and retail business, which was initially on Clark Street. Toguri joined him after being released

from prison and went to work, rarely talking about her ordeal. As the business prospered, she became a source of support for young Japanese students and businessmen. When a young restaurateur named Yoshi Katsamura wanted to open his own place in 1982, she provided the initial funding, he says. “She’s a big personality, she helps any person she can,” Katsamura says. “She’s a mentor.” Toguri had dinner at least monthly at Yoshi’s Cafe, and for the past 25 years, Toguri has celebrated her Independence Day birthday with a special meal at the restaurant, Katsamura says. The Toguri family owned the building that housed Ann Sather when Tunney took over the business in the early 1980s. “She was intimidating at first, a hardnosed businessperson,” Tunney says. After asking him several questions to assure herself he knew enough about business to make money and pay his rent, she offered him a five-year lease on the space. “She took a chance on me. She was never bitter. Considering her life, she was very optimistic.” Toguri lived on the first floor of a cream-colored three-flat on a quiet street, where she rarely talked to neighbors. In her store, a cavernous room announced by an purple outdoor awning that “J. Toguri Mercantile, Oriental Gift Shop,” she spent most of her time doing business in back. But sometimes she’d come out to help customers find their way among piles of Japanese and Asian goods, Tunney says. In January, Toguri was presented the Edward J. Herlihy citizen award from the World War II Veterans committee, which is named after the announcer of World War II newsreels. The committee had earlier printed Toguri’s story in its newsletter, drawing an outpouring of support from veterans, says its president, James Roberts. “Not one said they were demoralized in any way by the broadcasts,” Roberts says. “She remained loyal to the U.S., when many others may have turned on it, or given up.” She accepted her medal during a quiet luncheon ceremony at Yoshi’s, having declined an invitation to a larger gala three months earlier in Washington D.C. “She was tearful and overcome with emotion,” Roberts says. “As I understood it, it was part of a long process of vindication.” Toguri requested that there be no memorial or funeral, Trembley says.