Investigate, November 2007 by Investigate Magazine

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November 2007: Freedom Of Speech • Immunization Scandal • Fat Is Good? • Fatigue

Issue 82

Wow Factor

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Volume 7, Issue 82, November 2007

FEATURES YOU CAN’T SAY THAT!

The Government wants to pass new laws preventing the public from criticising politicians in election year. DAVID FARRAR and the NZ Law Society made submissions on the new Electoral Finance Bill that make chilling reading, in what many are calling the most serious attack on free speech and democracy in New Zealand’s history

SCARING MOTHERS

A KIWI ON THE FRONT LINE

THE FAT GURU

10 WAYS TO BEAT FATIGUE

26 32

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has been caught telling porkies to health professionals over a controversial new childhood immunisation campaign, forced to apologise and forced to acknowledge a financial conflict of interest between the Ministry and the vaccine manufacturer. IAN WISHART has the exclusive story after receiving leaked documents

The story of a young New Zealander drafted into the Israeli Army who found himself on the frontline, facing Hizbollah. TODD SYMONS reports

He’s the author of Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, and on a fleeting visit to Australia and New Zealand Udo Erasmus caught up with MELODY TOWNS to explain why he thinks we need more fat in our diets, not less

Tired, stressed, burnt out? LIZ STEVENS tracks the impact of sleep deprivation on our lives and, more importantly, how to regain control

Cover Photography: Ian Barry / Cover Design: Heidi Wishart

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 7, issue 82, ISSN 1175-1290

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL Time to make a stand

ho could have ignored the brave stand taken by Buddhist monks in repressive Burma? I refuse – unlike my obsequious colleagues in the daily media – to call the country Myanmar. The western media for some reason (and I presume it is liberal guilt) automatically recognize dodgy regimes. We did it with “Kampuchea” – the name given to Cambodia by the murderous dictator Pol Pot in the mid 70s. While millions of “Kampucheans” were slaughtered in the killing fields, our prissy press ran positive stories about what a wonderful goon Pot was and how great it was for the Kampucheans that the horrible Yanks had pulled out. The Burmese themselves “Will you protest meekly like the still call their country Burma, Burmese, or will you hang Labour, proudly and defiantly so, while the git that runs it calls NZ First and the Greens on a it Myanmar. Knowing this, political gallows for trying to take TV3, TVNZ and Newstalk all insisted on referaway your free speech?” ZB ring to “Myanmar” in their news bulletins, as if the army clown had some kind of legitimacy here in the West. Smuggled BBC TV pictures however told the world the growing story of one of the world’s most repressed countries. And as thousands of Buddhist monks protested symbolically in Rangoon (Yangon in the new PC lingo), the western media went into fever pitch to cover the Don Quixote scenes unfolding. The irony, however, was lost on the liberal media. In any normal, functioning country in the past, a hundred thousand people on the streets demanding a new government would result in one thing – a new government and the head of the former king or prime minister gracing a stake, scarecrow style. Increasingly in our world, however, this no longer happens. Disarmament of civilian populations is a major policy issue for the United Nations. Little wonder, when three quarters of the UN members are dodgy, corrupt states often led by dictators. Turkeys don’t vote for an early Christmas, and they certainly don’t vote for the production of carving knives to increase. Burma is a perfect example of gun control gone mad, and the dangers inherent. When a civilian population can do nothing but parade in the streets like impotent

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

slaves, when they have no weapons available to free them from bondage, then all hope is lost. As US presidential candidate Ron Paul put it once, gun control is the first step towards tyranny: “UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on members of the Security Council to address the “easy availability” of small arms and light weapons, by which he means all privately owned firearms,” stated Paul. “In response, the Security Council released a report calling for a comprehensive program of worldwide gun control, a report that admonishes the U.S. and praises the restrictive gun laws of Red China and France! Meanwhile, this past June [2003] the UN held a conference with the silly title “Week of Action against Small Arms.” “They believe in global government, and armed people could stand in the way of their goals. They certainly don’t care about our Constitution or the Second Amendment. But the conflict between the UN position on private ownership of firearms and our Second Amendment cannot be reconciled. “More importantly, however, gun control often serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control." But there’s an aspect of Ron Paul’s address that should send a chilling warning to all New Zealanders, as the Government attempts to ram through – with the support of New Zealand First and the Greens – radical new laws to prevent public criticism of the Government in election years. Here’s what Ron Paul said: “What if the UN decided that free speech was too inflammatory and should be restricted? Would we discard the First Amendment to comply with the UN agenda?” His comment was made four years ago. Who would have thought that New Zealanders would face exactly that threat in late 2007 with the Electoral Finance Bill? Where do you stand, New Zealand? Will you protest meekly like the Burmese, or will you hang Labour, NZ First and the Greens on a political gallows for trying to take away your free speech? The ball is in your court. KillTheBill.org.nz

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[Open letter to political leaders] I realise that Investigate magazine is regarded as chicken poop by some in Parliament but if there is any truth in this story (Terror trainee in NZ, Oct 07 edition) as a taxpayer and voter I want to know who let him stay when they found out he has had terrorist training? 1. Please don’t think me alarmist; But a graduate of a terror school allowed to stay in NZ! After entering on false info? 2. Can someone please explain to me who is running this country’s security, who actually is the responsible minister so that I can write to them? 3. Is this why we haven’t named any other terrorist organisations as our neighbours and allies have done on top of the basic set with the UN? 4. Are we allowing people safe haven to use our country to move on to other countries? 5. Is there any cross party platform to make sure this country has the very best security? If this story is without foundation I expect the very hardest sanctions applied to the editor and staff as to bring the security of the nation into such disrepute by false reporting is an act worthy of such. To suggest that people holding ministerial warrant have ignored (or worse have been suborned to ignore) such risk elements to New Zealand is a grave matter indeed. Whilst I realise this is an email communication I do expect a reply for public consumption, I will be sending a hard copy of this email in the morning to you all just in case this email gets lost. Mike Mckee, Seatoun for the record:

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: Why is Mr Rehman still in New Zealand when his cousin, who arrived under similar circumstances, has already been deported, and when Immigration New Zealand has evidence that Mr Rehman supports terrorist organisations and received military training at a terrorist base near the Afghan border? Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The member is correct. The gentleman’s cousin, a Mr Anwar, was removed from New Zealand after refusing to answer questions posed to him by the Immigration Service. I am advised that Mr Rehman, however, did answer the questions posed to him. However, I have asked for a further report on this case.

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

JIHAD IN THE KITCHEN

Thank you for your article ‘Jihad In The Kitchen’ October 2007 issue. Approx two years ago I heard through a friend that the NZ Police knew of at least one immigrant/refugee who was drawing the dole but could afford to fly up and down NZ many times to visit various mosques. The comment was made that this person was a suspect but it was better to know where he was and what he was up to than to blow the whistle and ruin a potentially rich source of information. As this was hearsay I never spoke of it but your article has brought it to mind and I can only hope that the NZ authorities have similarly been treating Mr Anwar and Mr Rehman as potential sources of intelligence otherwise they appear somewhat pathetic in terms of providing security for New Zealanders. To those who think we are being paranoid, I have included some information from Egypt on what they can expect if this infiltration of New Zealand society by radical Islam is allowed to continue. The following is an extract from an email I have just sent to Winston Peters. [Source:Aug 9, Compass Direct News] During August, Egyptian police detained the head of a Christian rights group after he held a high-publicity, online chat session with a controversial Muslim convert to Christianity. The convert, Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, has filed a suit to legally change his identification card from Muslim to Christian. Hegazys’ lawyer withdrew from the case amid death threats and public outrage in Egypt. The head of the Christian rights group who chatted online with the convert, Dr Adel Fawzy Faltas, 61, was arrested from his Cairo home. State Security Investigation (SSI) officials held Dr Faltas in Cairo’s fifth district then transferred him to the SSI headquarters in Lazoghly within 24 Hrs. This is an obvious breach of human rights which is one of many in Egypt. Will the NZ Govt speak up against these abuses or continue to do nothing about Muslims with known terrorist links in NZ but deport converts to Christianity? Jonathan Clark, Huntly

LEAKY HOMES

The leaky home crisis is having a detrimental effect on thousands of innocent people who find themselves caught up in expensive legal battles; the builders on one side, home owners on another and city councils on another side. The latest estimates for leaky homes throughout New

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Zealand is 15,000 and growing and with a repair bill estimated by the government at one billion dollars.(NZ Herald 27 August 2007. NZ Herald columnist Anne Gibson’s story, Wednesday 28 March, 2007, has an estimation of 40,000 to 60,000 houses and at a cost of $5 billion to $11 billion.) So where did these 15,000 plus buildings suddenly appear from? Common sense should tell you that there may be a few ‘cowboy builders’ out there, but that many? No way. But blame is automatically attributed to the builders, designers, developers and the rest of the construction industry including council building inspectors, all of them having followed the same set of building rules and regulations. The building industry has always endeavoured to carry out their developments to be compliant with all the relevant building rules and regulations at the time of construction, in order to be issued with a compliance certificate. So why so many leaky homes? The root of the problem stems from the building standards and rules that were in place and adhered to at the time of construction and that have now been shown to be inadequate. The passing of time has also shown that some of the approved building products have proven to be unsatisfactory, despite being used in the approved manner at the time of construction.(refer Roger Hay, Architect & Policy Adviser, Building Codes & Standards (Johnsonville, Wellington, letter to the Listener August 4, 2007) Just as in a building, if the foundations are not laid correctly the whole building becomes faulty. The foundations of the building industry have been at fault giving rise to the leaky home syndrome. So who is responsible for setting the building codes giving approval for the way materials were allowed to be used? Building Minister, the Hon. Clayton Cosgrove said, NZ Herald August 26, 2007, “The role of government is not to provide compensation for a problem it did not cause”. But it was a former government body, the BIA, (now replaced by the Department of Building and Housing), Standards NZ and BRANZ, Building Research Association (industry organisation which appraised products and how they were used) who were at the core of the industry and set the rules and standards when leaky homes were built. A substantial portion of responsibility, in the construction of leaky homes, must also be attributed to a number of building supply companies. Those companies that supplied products where the method of application has since had to be improved to meet new standards, (eg. wall claddings that now require a cavity,) and other products that are now banned from use, (eg. untreated framing timber in external walls) The New Zealand Building Code is a performance-base code. Rather than telling people exactly how to build, it sets out objectives to be achieved. This is a pretty hard ask when new untested products are released. All those involved in the actual building process would have worked to the BIA rules, Standards, BRANZ Appraisals and manufacturers’ recommendations to achieve the required objectives of the day, in order to have their building certified and a compliance certificate issued. It was only after a period of time, when detrimental effects had developed, that a new method of using these products was devised. In the meantime many builders had already innocently used defective methods and products which had been given the approval of the BIA, Standards NZ and BRANZ. The government on behalf of the BIA and Standards

10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

NZ should accept a major role it had and the responsibilities for its part in the leaky home syndrome. So why is the BIA and Standards NZ not accountable? The Court of Appeal struck out the Sacramento claim on points of law without hearing any expert evidence. Such evidence may well have changed the legal views. No doubt others will try to pin the government.(NZ Herald, December 2, 2005. 153 owners of apartments and the corporate body in the Sacramento complex in Botany Downs, Manukau, lost their $20 million claim against the AttorneyGeneral.) This Court of Appeal decision has been cited in the million dollar patch-up job of a Takapuna home, (NZ Herald, September 3, 2007.) In the meantime the liability for repairs falls on the individual councils and associated construction groups that followed the building rules and standards at the time of construction, unaware that these were inadequate. The ‘ goal posts’ have now been shifted leaving 15,000 plus homes in the leaky home category and the government saying it did not cause the problem. The government should be ashamed (and admit its culpability) over its handling of the leaky homes crisis. As a result of its continuous denial of responsibilities a new underhand economy has emerged where by the innocent parties are fleeced by the legal fraternity as blame is bandied around while little is achieved to remedy the 15,000 plus leaky homes. This growing crisis is not going to go away. How many more affected homes and families is it going to take before the political parties realise that the cost in terms of health, social, moral and ethical issues are more important than the cost of repairs? What would happen if a community of 15,000 plus homes were damaged by a flood, or an earthquake, or a Tsunami? The government would have a moral obligation to those people whose homes were affected through no fault of their own. In the same way as 15,000 plus leaky home owners and the building industry have become affected through no fault of their own. The government must take moral responsibility and give financial compensation to the innocent parties on all sides of the leaky home syndrome. Brian Gailer, Auckland

ASPARTAME

Re your explosive article on artificial sweeteners. I am assuming that this article, and similar material published regularly in Investigate, are intended not only to inform and entertain, but hopefully to initiate action to correct the situation. If I am correct on this last point then I suggest that the information must be put before a much wider audience than your circulation permits. If only a small percentage of the claims made in the article are correct there must be thousands of angry people out there who have been affected by this and would dearly like to do something about the situation. If the information is all or mostly correct then there is surely the potential to generate a tsunami of political angst, and Investigate is ideally placed to ride the crest of this wave. What I suggest is that you could give the victims of this outrage an opportunity to rectify matters, and at the same time give Investigate some priceless publicity and a big boost to its circulation by reprinting the article in booklet form, preferably in business envelope or A5 size for easy postage. Advertise in next Investigate and encourage purchasers to distribute to friends, relatives, parents

and particularly politicians. If you are worried about printing costs demand payment with order. Don’t forget to give Investigate and Eve’s Bite a “plug” in the booklet. You can record my order now for $50 worth. R.B.Dewar, Fremantle, Western Australia

NEOTAME JUST AS BAD?

Your article on aspartame was very frightening. Well I thought I was doing the right thing by not buying diet soft drinks, but after reading your article I looked in the pantry and found a bottle of Homebrand orange soft drink (not diet). On checking the ingredients I found ‘sweetener 961’. Is this aspartame I thought, surely not? Well a check on web and I found out that this sweetener is called NEOTAME and could be worse than aspartame. Unfortunately it was after we had drunk it, that I did the google search. We wont be buying any more of the stuff. Thanks for making us aware of this dangerous chemical. I would like to know what you have found out about neotame? Ian Faulkner, Nelson EDITOR RESPONDS:

Neotame was designed by Monsanto Chemicals, the same company that developed aspartame. According to the website of the American Chemical Society, “Neotame is structurally similar to aspartame, but is approximately 35 times sweeter. It would take over 15 pounds of sugar to equal the sweetening power of one gram of neotame.” Interestingly, the Nutrasweet company that now manufactures Neotame managed to slip it into the food chain via the backdoor – convincing the NZ and Australian Food Safety Authority in 2001 that it was safe. It then used the approval it gained here to convince the US Food and Drug Administration to give it the go ahead. Monsanto claimed to have tabled 113 scientific and medical studies on the effects of neotame on humans and animals, but a search of the PubMed database of 11 million studies found only five that dealt with neotame. Another website (http://www.feingold.org/PF/neotame.html) records, “By adding 3-dimethylbutyl (a chemical the Environmental Protection Agency lists as hazardous) to aspartame, scientists at Monsanto drastically increased the sweetening power of the additive. The new version was named neotame.” The same website continues, “Critics say neotame is even more toxic than aspartame, and call for independent research (not studies funded by the manufacturer) to evaluate its effects. They allege that Monsanto’s studies on humans lasted only one day! They accuse Monsanto of hiring a close business partner to conduct studies on the sweetener. The critics also say that it was discovered the researchers were hiding reaction-causing chemicals in the drinks given to control groups. “The non-profit group, Truth in Labeling, gained access to some of the neotame studies. They write, “At the time of our review of Monsanto’s application, three human studies on the safety of neotame were presented. The studies had few subjects, all of whom were employees of the company. Some of the subjects reported headaches after ingesting neotame, but the researchers concluded that the headaches were not related to neotame ingestion. Not mentioned in the studies was the fact that migraine headache is, by far, the most commonly reported adverse reaction to aspartame in the files of the FDA.” The kick in the tail for this particular sweetener as it relates to consumers is that because it is so powerful, much smaller quantities are

used, meaning it can slip under the radar in food labeling because it doesn’t meet quantity threshold triggers. In others words, it may be in far more processed foods and drinks than just those that choose to label it. Labelling of neotame should be compulsory.

EVEN IN HEALTH FOOD

Thank you for the very enlightening article on aspartame. I have been reading labels and avoiding foods with aspartame listed. However, I was unaware that food companies are now being deceitful and labeling it as phenylalanine. I have today checked the label on the Healtheries Relief product that I thought would be healthy, only to discover that it is an ingredient that is used. Healtheries you have just lost a customer. Helen Wenley, Auckland

CARTER GOT IT WRONG

I used to think that Chris Carter knew a thing or three but his diatribe in the October issue of Investigate has negated that thought. He extols the Australian economic system, as in Queensland, and, at the same time, extols the NZ model set up by “remarkable Roger Douglas”, a system that “serves us all pretty well.” The reason the Australian economy is doing well, compared with NZ anyway, is exactly because they did NOT have the Rogernomics economic model in the first place. GST and labour contracts have only recently been forced on them whereas we have has to suffer under them for decades. Control of wealth producing assets in Australia has not been lost to the people; they still own their electricity and water etc. They own their own banks and their interest rate is not 8.25%. University students do not have to mortgage their lives to get their degrees. They do not have the resource management act around their necks and have kept nearly all their manufacturing work places where apprentices can be skilled in occupations other than law, accountancy or computers. All their politicians stand before an electorate and their political costs, national and local, are, per head, less than ours. The last thing Rogernomics has done is to “serve us all pretty well”. Roy Ward, Tuakau

DYING TO TELL

I’m doing some research for a book about death and dying. I don’t need information about the practical aspects; that’s fully covered. Now I want stories about what things worked well at a funeral or memorial service – and what things went wrong. The good things will inspire other people struggling to express what they feel on such a sad occasion. The bad things will show them what to avoid. I’m hoping readers will share their stories with me. I can’t pay, but all will be acknowledged. Please keep stories short, and it helps if they are typed (unless your handwriting is easy to read.) It’s always sad when someone we love passes on. And comforting to discover the different ways people honour the life that has gone. That’s what I hope to learn about. With many grateful thanks. Jenny Argante, Tauranga

LAURA’S WORLDVIEW

Laura Wilson makes some comments in the latest issue about the

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 11

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visible poverty in the U.S.A., and suggests that Sweden’s liberal socialism represents a more humane alternative. I buy Investigate because of the conspicuous absence, usually speaking, of the advancement of such myths within its pages. Like Michael Moore with his latest sham documentary film, you can always find evidence in a country the size of the U.S., that things are not perfect. Michael Moore chooses to ignore that no health system in the world gets a higher percentage of the health interventions required by its population DONE, and no other health system gets those interventions done as QUICKLY. Socialised health care, the preferred alternative of Michael Moore, politicians in much of the world, and their ignorant constituents, actually ends up failing the maximum number of people, and only gets worse the longer it is persisted in. Similarly, the “rich get richer while the poor get poorer” myth which now seems to have been insinuated into the august pages of Investigate by Laura Wilson, ignores the fact no other economy in the world has been so successful at lifting people out of REAL poverty, than that of the relatively free-market U.S.A.. Take a look at the recent Heritage foundation report, “How poor are America’s poor?”, by Robert Rector. I’ll send you a link separately, shortly, via the Heritage foundation site. 37 million Americans are classified as “poor” by the U.S. census department, yet going by the statistics of that same department, the Heritage foundation report lists a whole host of indicators that would seem to show that America’s “poor” are actually better off on average than any other people in the world except the other 270 million Americans, including first-world Europeans. Living space, home ownership, health, nutrition, car ownership, baths, TV’s, you name it. To find real poverty in the U.S.A., one needs to focus on the poorest half a million or so. This is not bad at all for a nation of 300 million people. What’s more, a high proportion of THESE people are recent immigrants to the U.S., and many of whom are illegal. This is a reflection on the conditions in their countries of origin, not the U.S.A. A further interesting fact is, that these 37 million official “poor” are better off on average, than the U.S. overall national average in 1974. It is derisory that any sort of debate continues to be put up by socialist, welfarist, nanny State politicians and advocates all over the world, including N.Z., in the face of the miserable failure of their policies everywhere, including in Sweden, and the undeniable runaway success of free market capitalism. “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer” is not just a myth, it is a self-serving lie. The reality that is overdue for confrontation, is that the politics of envy and denial keep us ALL poorer. The failure of Social Liberalism in Sweden has taken a lot longer than it has elsewhere, for reasons that Social Liberals themselves despise. Sweden’s strong Lutheran culture including a strong sense of personal responsibility and responsibility to society, has been a strong counterbalance to the perverse incentives of welfarism. However, the same social liberalism has given them decades of open-ended immigration without assimilation, so that if Laura Wilson cared to look, she would find massive “no-go” slums, far worse than those trailer parks in the U.S., in virtually every major Swedish city today. Another consideration, is that minority cultures that seem to be weaker in those features mentioned above, are the first to show

the increasingly malign affects of welfarism and social liberalism. The Australian Aborigines and N.Z. Maori are like the canaries in the coal mine. If the rot isn’t stopped somewhere, expect the Kahuis to represent the natural state of things for your descendants sometime in the next few generations – either that or Staterun baby farms, the natural solution where our current social engineering leadership is concerned, along with their objective of the demise of the traditional family. Phil Hayward, Lower Hutt

AIR NEW ZEALAND COMPLAINS

We act for Air New Zealand Limited. We refer to the September 2007 edition of Investigate magazine and specifically to the article entitled “Mission Impossible – Air New Zealand’s cloak and dagger flights rattle staff’. The magazine and the article contain the following untrue statements: a) The cover page of the magazine features a photograph showing a soldier guarding an Air New Zealand aircraft. This photograph is a fabrication designed to create a sensational and false impression. While there is a reference inside to the fact that the picture is a montage, this is not immediately apparent from the cover image. There is no prominent indication that the image has been manipulated and the photograph is, therefore, misleading. In addition, the image appears on the Investigate magazine

• Written NZ Constitution • Binding Citizens Initiated Referendum • Representative Recall www.ddp.co.nz

“DDP – Your Right to Choose” Authorised by Leanne Martinovich, Party Secretary 44 Onehunga Mall, Onehunga, Auckland. Phone 021 286 8789

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 13

website without a statement indicating that the picture is a compilation. b) The cover of the magazine bears the statement “Air NZ’s secret flights – Why our state-owned airline is flying US troops into war”. This statement is untrue as Air New Zealand has not conducted any “secret flights” and has not transported US military personnel into any war zone. We also note that while the Government has a shareholding in Air New Zealand, the airline is not “state-owned”. c) The article states that Air New Zealand flights transporting Australian soldiers to Iraq were “under fighter jet escort” (page 6) and were “escorted by US jet fighters” (page 30). This is untrue and no Air New Zealand flights have been under military escort, either by US or any other military aircraft. d) The article states that Air New Zealand was “flying US marines between military bases on top secret flights” (page 29). This statement is untrue. Air New Zealand has only ever carried US defence personnel on flights travelling on commercial routes under commercial air traffic control into and out of commercial airports that host regular flights by many other commercial airlines. Also, as noted above in paragraph (b), Air New Zealand has not conducted any “top secret flights”. e) The article states that “all [Air New Zealand] staff have been sworn to secrecy” (page 30). This is untrue. No Air New Zealand staff have been sworn to secrecy. The article also wrongly infers that Air New Zealand has engaged in activity that could endanger the safety of other Air New Zealand flights and of New Zealanders generally. Passages creating such inferences appear at page 6: “But I do think the use of a branded New Zealand airliner was a mistake. They would have been better off using an airforce plane or a less recognizable jet than a fleet 767. The koru on the tail is distinctive enough to raise eyebrows in the Middle East, especially if it is under fighter jet escort” and further on page 30: “But to use New Zealand’s national civilian flag carrier seems like a dangerous marketing exercise for New Zealand. Whilst the contracts are likely to be lucrative, surely the use of an unmarked aircraft would be wiser.” Those inferences are untrue and are based on the other untrue and sensationalist statements in the magazine and article. We note that you contacted Air New Zealand on 14 August 2007 with the following questions: 1. Why has Air New Zealand been using its liveried passenger aircraft to ship US and Australian troops involved in deployments to the Middle East and elsewhere? 2. Was authorization obtained from MFAT or Civil Aviation for these flights? These questions were sent only two days before the magazine was available in stores and only one day before a summary of the article was posted on Investigate magazine’s website. At that late stage, any response from Air New Zealand could have had little or no effect on the article. Your communication did not therefore give Air New Zealand a genuine opportunity to respond to the questions posed and, in this respect also, the article was unfair and unbalanced. The inaccuracies and misleading inferences in the article require a full and prominent retraction and apology to be published in the next edition of Investigate magazine. David Cooper, Partner, Bell Gully

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EDITOR RESPONDS:

Thanks David. Investigate magazine was contacted on several occasions by staff or those close to them. Two of those contacts came after the very first flight, and we were unaware of further flights until a different staff member alerted us to the Hiroshima flight just a couple of days after it happened. Our initial information was that staff on the flights had been told not to talk about them. Whether that instruction was issued at head office level or flight level we were unaware, and we accept Air New Zealand’s assurance that it did not emanate from head office. The fact that Air NZ did run its intentions past MFAT (despite telling Investigate it wasn’t required to) illustrates the sensitivity involved, as does the reaction of the Government. It was not as if Investigate, or the NZ Herald, or TV3, or National Radio received a news release at the time of the flights advising that the airline had secured these lucrative contracts. Whilst there may have been awareness of these flights within the specialist aviation media, that in itself is not reflective of wider public or media awareness, and even the Government was in the dark. Additionally, not only did those who contacted Investigate after the first flight tell us about fighter jets, but TV3’s Campbell Live reported further alleged detail of the fighter jets, presumably from their own sources as the information was more detailed than ours. If the flight crew were mistaken about the fighter jets, or more to the point the significance of any fighter jets they saw, then we accept Air New Zealand’s assurances in this regard, although it is hardly a substantive issue in regard to the wider article’s concerns about alleged operational shortcuts. I am sure there are commercial international flights out of Darwin airport (which is also an RAAF airbase and according to RAAF was under military flight control at the time of the Air NZ flight) but I am unaware of any commercial route operating from Darwin to Hiroshima. The only commercial destinations listed on the Darwin Airport website are Dili, Bali, Brunei and Singapore. Our cover photo was acknowledged as a montage in the position that carries our cover credit information every single month, and was no different from news graphics used by TVNZ or TV3, or indeed composite imagery used by Air New Zealand itself in its marketing. Investigate accepts that US troops were not being flown to the warzone, and withdraws and apologises accordingly. As for the rest, get over it. The Government is the entity that overreacted. As you are aware from our own editorial comment, this magazine has no problem with the airline turning a buck and in fact thinks the Air NZ management team have done a pretty good job turning it around in such a short time. We stand by our opinion that flights to the Middle East in airline colours were not the smartest PR stunt in the book, and MFAT is on record as saying the reason it didn’t have a problem with the proposed flights was because the airline had initially promised to carry them out in non-liveried aircraft. So clearly our concerns were shared by others.

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

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SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE Why lesbians need men

he spontaneous public outrage over two Melbourne lesbians suing their IVF doctor because they got twins instead of the single baby they had requested has been dismissed by the louche left as “moral panic” from homophobes. But what really galls people about the case is not so much the two-mother angle but the audacity of these women, and their breathtaking lack of insight about their good fortune. Having been given everything – increasing societal tolerance of their sexual preference, subsidised medical remedy of their lifestyle-induced infertility and two perfect babies – they proceeded to bellyache and navel gaze for the next three years. They hired a lawyer “Parenthood is not about the who likened the error to parents but the child and, if amputating the wrong leg you don’t know it when you are and sued the poor docpregnant, the truth dawns soon tor, unloading all their emotional baggage – and, enough. That is, unless you fight wow, is there a lot of it – in reality every inch of the way, court. The non-birth-mother clinging, like these women have, mother testified in the ACT to the fantasy that your life will Supreme Court, where the be exactly as it was before, your couple are suing Canberra obstetrician Dr Sydney relationship with your partner Robert Armellin for more unaltered, as if the baby were than $400,000 for implanting two embryos instead of not its own person, with its own one. “She [the twins’ birth needs, desires and emotions.” mother] always said that she had a big heart filled with love,” she said. “I find that she doesn’t have the same ability to love that she used to and the same capacity to, I guess, embrace differences and issues as a couple or as a team.” The twin girls – conceived in 2003 in the Canberra Fertility Centre by in-vitro fertilisation using sperm from an anonymous Danish donor – had changed their relationship, she said. Their lives as a couple were lost as they became bogged down with the everyday tasks of raising two children. Ain’t motherhood grand.

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The 40-year-old birth mother testified too: “The experience of my pregnancy was so far removed from what I had anticipated that I was in relationship counselling, in a great deal of pain, and someone was suggesting that adoption was an option.” While she had enjoyed decorating the nursery, buying a pram was distressing, she said. “It was like the last frontier of acceptance to spend hundreds of dollars on a pram.” Perhaps some people don’t understand, when they go shopping for donor sperm, that a baby is not the latest adorable consumer item acquired to invigorate your lifestyle, like a steamer oven or a flat-screen TV. That’s what pets are for. A baby is not a new range of retail opportunities – the Peg Perego pram, the Armani Junior layette, the Steiner school. A baby does not exist to give its parents a fresh identity or to pep up their relationship. Parenthood is not about the parents but the child and, if you don’t know it when you are pregnant, the truth dawns soon enough. That is, unless you fight reality every inch of the way, clinging, like these women have, to the fantasy that your life will be exactly as it was before, your relationship with your partner unaltered, as if the baby were not its own person, with its own needs, desires and emotions. The couple issued a handwritten media statement saying they “cherished” both their daughters and the case was not about money but “principle”. They must have fought hard to nurture their sense of grievance for so long, in the cause of “pursuing our convictions”. One of the little-acknowledged advantages of having a father and a mother involved in the tricky start-up of a family is that there are few men who would indulge the sort of neurotic self-pity these women appear to have been wallowing in for three years. And few women would persist with such behaviour under the dumbfounded incomprehension or withering scorn of a husband. Less feminine empathy and more male pragmatism can be a circuit-breaker to hormone-drenched hysteria. It’s a metaphorical slap in the face. What the women really needed was not $400,000 but someone to tell them to snap out of it and be thankful for what they have – two healthy baby girls. Then they should have sent Dr Armellin flowers instead of a writ.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 17

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN All the terrorists need is love

ast month, I marked the anniversary of Sept. 11 by driving through Massachusetts. It wasn’t exactly planned that way, just the way things panned out. So, heading toward Boston, I tuned to Bay State radio colossus Howie Carr and heard him reading out portions from the official address to the 9/11 commemoration ceremony by Deval Patrick, who is apparently the governor of Massachusetts. Sept. 11, said Gov. Patrick, “was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States.” “Mean and nasty”? He sounds like an over-sensitive waiter complaining that John Kerry’s sent back the aubergine coulis again. But evidently that’s what passes for tough talk in Massachusetts these days – the shot heard around the world “Islamism is an opportunist and so forth. Anyway, Patrick didn’t want enemy, but you can’t blame them Gov. to leave the crowd with all for seeing the opportunity: In that macho cowboy rhetothat sense, they understand us ric ringing in their ears, so he moved on to the nub of far more clearly than Gov. Patrick his speech: 9/11, he continunderstands them” ued, “was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.” I was laughing so much I lost control of the wheel and the guy in the next lane had to swerve rather dramatically. He flipped me the Universal Symbol of Human Understanding. I certainly understood him, though I’m not sure I could learn to love him. Anyway I drove on to Boston and pondered the governor’s remarks. He had made them, after all, before an audience of 9/11 families: Six years ago, two of the four planes took off from Logan Airport, and so citizens of Massachusetts ranked very high among the toll of victims. Whether or not any of the family members present last month were offended by Gov. Patrick, no one cried “Shame!” or walked out on the ceremony. Americans are generally respectful of their political eminences, no matter how little they deserve it. We should beware anyone who seeks to explain 9/11 by using the words “each other”: They posit a grubby equivalence between the perpetrator and the victim – that the “failure to understand” derives from the culpability of both parties. The 9/11 killers were treated very well in the United States: They were ushered into the country on the

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high-speed visa express program the State Department felt was appropriate for young Saudi males. They were treated cordially everywhere they went. The lapdancers at the clubs they frequented in the weeks before the Big Day gave them a good time – or good enough, considering what lousy tippers they were. Sept. 11 didn’t happen because we were insufficient in our love to Mohammed Atta. This isn’t a theoretical proposition. At some point in the future, some of us will find ourselves on a flight with a chap like Richard Reid, the thwarted shoebomber. On that day we’d better hope the guy sitting next to him isn’t Gov. Patrick, who sees him bending down to light his sock and responds with a chorus of “All You Need Is Love,” but a fellow who “understands” enough to wallop the bejesus out of him before he can strike the match. It was the failure of one group of human beings to understand that the second group of human beings was determined to kill them that led to the crew and passengers of those Boston flights sticking with the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures until it was too late. Unfortunately, the obsolescent 1970s “multiculti” love-groove inclinations of society at large are harder to dislodge. If you’ll forgive such judgmental categorizations, this isn’t about “them,” it’s about “us.” The longterm survival of any society depends on what proportion of its citizens thinks as Gov. Patrick does. Islamism is an opportunist enemy, but you can’t blame them for seeing the opportunity: In that sense, they understand us far more clearly than Gov. Patrick understands them. The other week, you may recall, some larky lads were arrested in Germany. Another terrorist plot. Would have killed more people than Madrid and London combined, but it was nipped in the bud so it’s just another yawneroo: Nobody cares. Who were the terrorists? Mohammed? Muhammad? Mahmoud? No. Their names were “Fritz” and “Daniel.” “Fritz,” huh? That’s a pretty unusual way to spell Mohammed. Indeed. Fritz Gelowicz is as German as lederhosen. He’s from Ulm, Einstein’s birthplace, on the blue Danube, which, last time I was in Ulm, was actually a murky shade of green. And, in an excellent jest on Western illusions, Fritz was converted to Islam while attending the Multi-Kultur-Haus – the Multicultural House. It was, in fact, avowedly unicultural – an Islamic center run by a jihadist imam. At least three of its alumni, including

another native German convert, have been killed fighting the Russians in Chechnya. Fritz was hoping to kill Americans. But that’s one of the benefits of a multicultural world: There are so many fascinating diverse cultures, and most of them look best reduced to rubble strewn with body parts. Fritz and a pal, Atilla Selek, had previously been arrested in 2004 with a car full of proOsama propaganda praising the 9/11 attacks. Which sounds like a pilot for a wacky jihadist sitcom: Atilla And The Hun. Fritz Gelowicz. Richard Reid. The Australian factory worker Jack Roche. The Toronto jihadists plotting to behead the prime minister. The son of the British Conservative Party official with the splendidly Wodehousian double-barreled name. All over the world there are young men raised in the “Multi-Kultur Haus” of the West who decide their highest ambition is to convert to Islam, become a jihadist and self-detonate. Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and 20s? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of Deval Patrick cultural relativism, nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are “mean and nasty” to us, it’s only because we didn’t sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them – in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable. A while back, I had the honour of a meeting with the president,

“All over the world there are young men raised in the “Multi-Kultur Haus” of the West who decide their highest ambition is to convert to Islam, become a jihadist and self-detonate” in the course of which someone raised the unpopularity of the war. He shrugged it off, saying that 25 percent of the population is always against the war, any war. In other words, there’s nothing worth fighting for. And I joked afterward that some of that 25 percent might change their minds if Canadian storm troopers were swarming across the 49th Parallel or Bahamian warships were firing off the coast of Florida. But maybe not. Al-Qaida’s ad hoc air force left a huge crater of Massachusetts corpses in the middle of Manhattan, and Gov. Patrick goes looking for love in all the wrong places. How many people in any society think like Deval Patrick? That’s the calculation to make if you want to figure out its longterm survival prospects. Mark Steyn is a syndicated columnist and the author of the New York Times best-seller America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It. © Mark Steyn, 2007

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EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER Tweedledum and Tweedledummer

hakespeare’s play The Comedy of Errors is funny because it concerns identical twins being mistaken for each other. Conversely, the Comedy of Errors which is the New Zealand Parliament is not funny, because it concerns supposedly opposing parties which have become close to being identical twins, and which are now being mistaken for each other. Once upon a time, National and Labour stood for more distinctly different and separate ideals. National was a moderately centre-right party, economically quite conservative, socially somewhat liberal in a broad classical sense; the Party which represented farmers, business people, white collar types, the self-employed, and those of a nationalist bent. “National and Labour becoming Labour was the workers’ more and more like each other; Party, socially progressive if not permissive, economiand this process has continued, cally a little more wet than until now, when they are virtually their opponents on the the Party of choice indistinguishable” right, for academics, blue collar workers, internationalists and pacifists. That said, the New Zealand political landscape differed from that of other English-speaking western countries, in that the inherent differences between the two sides of the great divide were far less marked than they remain in some other places. Reflecting the quintessential nature of the New Zealand character, the Tories retained quite a sense of social justice, while the Socialists were actually still fairly conservative in matters economic. 1984 changed all that, or at least ushered in a new era which had perhaps been some time in the making. As far back as 1972, members from both sides of the house had made passing reference to the profound similarities between the two major Parties, namely their inherently conservative, socially responsible nature, and the lack of real distinction in terms of economic and foreign policy. Lange and Douglas et al turned the system upside down. They abandoned their traditional electorate, ambushed National with a breathtaking occupation of what should have been its own right flank, and replaced the established moderate New Zealand with something as near to fascism as we have ever seen. The rest is history. The Nats, stumped for any other

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response, jumped on the bandwagon, and Ruthanasia followed Rogernomics. Over the next twenty years, however, the tide of public acceptance for such counterproductive nonsense gradually and predictably went out, leaving only the Act Party forlornly waving the privatisation flag on the shores of a brave new land. New Zealand politicians are slow learners, however, and neither the realisation that nobody was interested in the New Right agenda, nor the truth that Governments are voted out in New Zealand, not in, came swiftly to them. Thus, as administrations came, and stumbled, and fell over, and went, their chosen course of action in attempting to regain power, was to become more like the opposing Party which had deposed them. Understandably, this led to National and Labour becoming more and more like each other; and this process has continued, until now, when they are virtually indistinguishable. This might not be such a bad thing, if they had morphed and melded into a singular entity which represented the core values of the heartland of New Zealand from a generation ago; but they haven’t. The Evil Twins who are our two major political Parties have instead both become the supporters and promoters of that which nobody wants. This makes for some difficult choices for voters in this country. Ingrained in this writer’s psyche is a snippet of wisdom regaled by my father, and doubtless countless others before him, that in Governments we have a choice between Fools and Criminals. I have always preferred the Criminals, because at least they knew they were bad, whereas the Fools believed themselves to be right; but what are we to do when the Fools go bad, and the Criminals become stupid? Since its resurrection by the politically-late Don Brash, National has been on the comeback trail, the polls reflecting a new approval of the old “natural Party of Government”, to almost election-winning levels. Some of this redemption has been driven by the ‘new direction’ signposted by Dr Brash (actually the old direction revisited, but we’ve forgotten that); but most, I believe, is still as a result of Joe Public’s dissatisfaction with the present mob. Helen Clark’s tiring Labour Government, obsessed with social engineering, and nearing the end of a long spell of fine economic weather (during which almost anyone can successfully hold the tiller of State), has begun to

annoy ordinary voters to the point where it is about to be given the push. A steady-as-she-goes approach could probably have seen National sleepwalk to victory in 2008, as they have done many times in the past. But the Nats have spent much of the last couple of years determinedly reinventing themselves as “Labour Lite”, motivated, no doubt, by the quite stellar, and seemingly unassailable, performance of the current “coalition” over the past twoand-a-bit terms. They have a new Leader (again). He’s young, apparently charismatic, bright, a good performer in the House, and comes complete with an electorally credible “State house to millionaire” dust cover. They have a rejuvenated front bench, good standing in the opinion polls, and most importantly – up until this week, as I write – no policy, which is a good thing in politics, because if you don’t have any policy, no-one can criticise it. The flipside, however, is that such policy as National does have, is pretty much the same as Labour’s sorry collection of burnt offerings. Deliberate or not, product of an expert think-tank or no, the present incarnation of the New Zealand National Party is little different from, or better than, a “Me, Too” version of the Helen Clark Party. Labour wanted smacking banned. Eight out of ten New Zealanders didn’t. “We’ll compromise, and support the ban as well,” replied National. Sorry? Labour doesn’t want nuclear-powered ships visiting our shores, and won’t countenance the idea of nuclear electricity generation. “Fine by us, we don’t care what half the country thinks, we’re with Helen and the Greens,” say the Nats. Beg pardon? Labour believes in Greenhouse Warming, and has embraced the folly of Kyoto. “Us too, it’s good idea,” chorus Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. What’s going on here? Just this month as I write, the Nats have adopted Labour’s position on Defence as well. They already approve of the insane LAVIII purchase. They think the new unarmed Navy is just fine. And now, John Key “doesn’t see the Air Combat Force as a priority” and won’t be resurrecting it. Gee, thanks, John. These past seven years we’ve all been praying for a return to sanity along with a change in Government, and now it turns out that the Party we have regarded as the saviour-in-waiting is as unconnected with reality as the sad collection of pacifists which it stands to replace. Which begs the question; why would one bother to change? I mean if you’re going to vote out one Government, and swap it for another which is, to all practical intents and purposes, exactly the same, where’s the point? Especially when – just this week – the potential alternative, obviously giddy on opinion poll points, comes out and announces that it is keen, in the face of public sentiment, common sense, and the history of the last two decades, to revisit Rogernomics, yet again! I despair of the Nats, I really do. I mean if people wanted asset sales (there can’t be much left to sell, surely?), and privatised health, and toll roads (have they mentioned them yet?), then Act would be in Government, instead of at 1% in the polls. The revelations of this week suggest that there may, in fact, remain some underlying differences between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, after all. My response is that if we’re going to be saddled with Kyoto, and No-Nukes, and a socialist control-freak Government either way, why put up with having the last of the

“Perhaps the time has come for a new Conservative Party in New Zealand. I’m talking about Conservative in the old New Zealand sense; economically responsible, morally noninterventionist, socially just, but not excessively liberal. A Party of the old proven values, the ones which built this country”

family silver flicked off from under us as well? Quite frankly, if this is the best that National can manage, Clark might as well carry on with the job. At least if she tries to get too uppity, the farmers (bless them) will still tell her where to get off. I don’t really mean that. Seriously, she has to go, and something else has to happen. We need a sea change; and a real one, not the “same product, new label” alternative on offer from the cross benches. Perhaps the time has come for a new Conservative Party in New Zealand. I’m talking about Conservative in the old New Zealand sense; economically responsible, morally non-interventionist, socially just, but not excessively liberal. A Party of the old proven values, the ones which built this country. A Party which means what it says when it promises to crack down on crime, which understands the risks faced by a small isolated nation in a dangerous modern world, which appreciates the importance of the family without insisting that everyone go the Church; a commonsense Party, a free-enterprise Party which understands the value of workers, a Party which knows when to tell the hysterical people, and the busybodies, and the doomsayers, to sit down and shut up. It could be called the Country Party, despite not being restricted to rural folk, for those are the core values it would espouse; in the same way that a Party originally formed to look after the interests of the Labour movement, grew to encompass the concerns and support of many more groupings than working people alone. I suppose it could be called the South Island Party for the same reasons, and I will unashamedly proclaim that in this writer’s opinion – about which there is nothing humble – the Mainland remains the last bastion of the true values of the New Zealand of old. Whatever its name, it needs to be – in the words of one former MP whose views I have canvassed on the matter – what the National Party used to be. Indeed, and what it should be, and what it owes us, and what we should require it to be. But it is not, and I fear it will never be again; National has sold out those to whom it is most beholding, exactly as Labour has done. They are but shells of their former selves, nearing the ends of their useful or constructive lives, each of them morally bankrupt, bereft of vision or nationalist sentiment, two indistinguishable and fading shades of grey in what should be a vibrant and colourful future. New Zealand needs a genuine choice and a new Party. Maybe I’ll start one myself.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 21

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER Grumpy old men

ne of my favourite shows on television would have to be UK TV’s Grumpy Old Men, most likely because, sad to relate, I find a certain affinity with the views of many of the main characters. How and when one might qualify for being a Grumpy I’m not altogether sure, although best that I can tell, it appears to be around about the time that one begins to develop almost homicidal thoughts about matters that previously would have passed us by almost unnoticed. A little like the old question “What noise annoys an oyster most?” The answer being of course “any noise annoys an oyster” a viewpoint, which sadly, I increasingly find myself in almost total agreement with. So the following is prob“ Get the word out; say over the ably more of a catharsis, Internet, so that everyone over a rather than any real intention on my part, to re-enter short period of time simply starts my pre-grumpy mode of to deduct the GST every time we essential sweetness and So what is it that pay our rates!” light. annoys a true Grumpy, that perhaps is worthy of publication, or perhaps just simply dismissed as coming from a mind still locked into the fond memories of another era? Well, where to begin? Why not with this Grumpy’s version of “Swindlers List” sub-titled “Robbin’ Bastards”. As any true paranoiac well knows, they really are out to get us – like young or old if we are unfortunate enough to live in a main centre these days, then the fiscal future of anyone of us is in serious jeopardy. With bald faced effrontery, Civic “Leaders” have put into place all manner of nefarious schemes to systematically rob the whole population with local taxes so onerous that they make the Sheriff of Nottingham look like a philanthropist! Mind you, looking at the backgrounds of many of the candidates in our recent Local Body Elections, it’s hard to imagine that they actually mean harm to anyone, after all, when was it that being stupid became some sort of a crime? But back to the main Grumps: For our City’s youngsters, little show at all of ever getting their own homes, mainly because, in Auckland for instance, the ARC won’t allow the City to grow beyond our old and still current boundaries, thus causing land prices to become astronomical. Then we have $40 to $60 grand in

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B.S. Council charges to subdivide a chunk of the parent’s section, plus rates, water charges, enough to make your eyes water if you ever manage to get through the whole process and get something slightly bigger than your average garden shed actually built in any case. If you’re retired, then look forward to these same Councils simply driving you out of your home with the ever increasing demands for money that they have to know you just cannot afford. “Vote for me?”, “Yeah Right!” It’s like turkeys being asked to vote for a couple of extra Christmases isn’t it, so either we don’t vote, as we can see most of the candidates are rubbish, or those who do tick the boxes tend to vote on name recognition only, so that if Jack the Ripper was on the paper, odds on he’d be a shoe in for Mayor! Oh, mustn’t forget another major iniquity that we folk have stupidly allowed to continue that would lower our current rates by a very worthwhile amount…Grab, Snatch & Take or GST being applied to the rates, like a tax on a tax for God’s sake! And like a collection of mentally retarded lemmings we cheerfully pay this just as we head for the office of the Official Assignee. This really is a matter that must be sorted out and I think a wee bit of Civil Disobedience would be the caper. Get the word out; say over the Internet, so that everyone over a short period of time simply starts to deduct the GST every time we pay our rates! Would that ever-greedy and grasping old history teacher Michael Cullen be upset? You bet he would, which is precisely why we should do it! Our Michael knowing better than most from his historical studies what inevitably happens to people who are caught out whilst unfairly stealing from the poor, would very likely fill his knickers in fright at such insurrection. Then even more Grumpiness was engendered when I visited the fair City of Brisbane a few weeks back, and gazed upon a city of around a million people, (same as Auckland), in a State with a population of 4,500,000, (Same as New Zealand, or near as dammit) and wondered, just why it is that the roads, motorways, bridges, sports stadiums etc are so modern and plentiful? Why is it that their houses are so well built and reasonably priced, why rates, taxes and the price of petrol are so low, wages and salaries, by comparison to ours, so high? Then most alarmingly, why virtually every fourth or fifth person I met there was quite clearly a Kiwi. Simple answer

“Looking forward a couple of decades, perhaps the only way you’ll be able to talk to an English speaking New Zealander is when you’re on holiday overseas”

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 23

Cre8ive 3898CI

to this one I guess, no one could ever accuse New Zealanders of being stupid enough to ignore the opportunities that quite plainly are waiting there across the ditch, and indeed the thing that should be worrying the hell out of all of us who chose to live right here in Godzone, is how the heck do we stop this exodus of some of our brightest and best to Australia? Well, you don’t have to be very bright to work it out do you? Due almost entirely to having voted into office, both at central and local government level, a collection of people who scarcely have the intelligence to draw breath, let alone being capable of managing a city or a country, we New Zealanders have yet to realise that we are collectively responsible for allowing this situation to occur in the first place, and worse, much worse, for doing absolutely nothing of any real worth in recent times to turn things around. I mean as an example of the kind of stupidity that now is endemic in Wellington, when finally it is noticed that we are haemorrhaging population, do any of these nit-wits in Parliament ever consider why this might be happening? Well to be fair, when you have a cabinet largely comprised of people who have never done a day’s real work in their lives it probably is very hard for them to relate to the wants and needs of people who are prepared to get stuck in, work hard, and to make something of their lives. Similarly, The Family, being a concept completely foreign to our current law makers, it has now for some considerable period been attacked, with all manner of appalling intrusions and shameless social engineering being inflicted on the NZ family group, and guess what, an increasing number of Kiwis have had quite enough, thank you very much, and have had the courage to sell up and to bugger off! This major exodus has been very well concealed by this Government who quietly opened up the immigration doors to Uncle Tom Cobbly and all, which included a high percentage of immigrants who could be counted on, in gratitude, to vote Labour in the future. “Need a State House, a benefit whatever? No worries mate. Welcome to New Zealand. Yes, by all means feel free to bring all the family and the aunties and uncles, just remember to vote for us come the next election”. Jeez, I’m grumpier than I thought! Never the less, is it only we Grumpy Old Men who can see through this classical piece of political deception that others seem quite willing to blindly accept at face value. Then again, looking forward a couple of decades, perhaps the only way you’ll be able to talk to an English speaking New Zealander is when you’re on holiday overseas. A wonderful thing it is to “celebrate diversity”, just as long as New Zealand maintains the essential cultural edge that makes us what we are. After all, in many ways, a healthy population mix is not unlike baking a cake. The ingredients, once carefully selected are best added to the mix in well measured amounts, lest too much, of one or more of the ingredients, buggers the whole thing up. There you go…Grumpiness assuaged, feel much better now!

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART Is God dead?

here is a tidal change looming in the affairs of men, and those who don’t see it first will be swept away by it. Across the entire planet, people are talking about God. In the Middle East, with waves of aggression emanating from Saudi Arabia and Tehran, there is a spiritual tide rising. In Asia and Africa, where tens of thousands of people every day are converting to Christianity, abandoning long held faiths like Buddhism or ancient tribal beliefs, there is a quickening taking place. And in the West, countering an establishment push to sideline religion, we are now witnessing a rising up of religious belief as well. Take the case of the new movie, Expelled (www.expelledthemovie.org), which is being released this coming February. It’s a doc“The much-proclaimed “Death of umentary film, a bit like God” movement of the 1960s is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit except its target is looking increasingly hollow and 9/11, atheist scientists who have desperate, because everybody is tried to close down debate talking about the Big Guy” on Intelligent Design by adopting the sort of tactics used in the Spanish Inquisition to silence opponents. Although still several months away from being screened, Expelled has already hit the front page of the New York Times because of complaints that it “tricked” atheists into being interviewed. Who would have believed five years ago that a film about the Intelligent Design controversy would be front page news in America five months before it was even released? The much-proclaimed “Death of God” movement of the 1960s is looking increasingly hollow and desperate, because everybody is talking about the Big Guy. You only have to watch atheist fundamentalist Richard Dawkins on TV or read one of his books to know what I mean. The bluster, the bravado, the vicious attacks and raging rhetoric. He is obsessed by God and, as I will soon reveal in my own new book The Divinity Code, Dawkins actually believes in God. Incidentally, Dawkins is one of those who claimed he was “tricked” into appearing in Expelled. He failed to mention that he and the other leading atheist lights received “appearance fees” as part of agreeing to take part in the documentary. No offense to the atheists or agnostics who regularly read this column, but the scientific evidence that life contains a

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divine spark and that the Universe is fine-tuned to allow life on this particular planet is becoming thunderingly overwhelming. It doesn’t matter whether you are Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Wiccan, New Ager or whatever: the gap between those of us who believe in “something”, and those who believe only in a natural, scientific explanation for everything, is widening rapidly. Yet the biggest irony is that the new scientific data suggests there is, indeed, a supernatural “Something” behind it all, as you’ll see in the book. No wonder people like Dawkins, or his fellow atheist authors Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, are shouting so loud that God does not exist – it is almost as if they are trying to reassure themselves, rather than convince anyone else. But hang on, I hear some of you saying, what about the works of people like Lloyd Geering, Karen Armstrong, Don Cupitt or John Shelby Spong – haven’t they shown that religious belief simply evolved out of the “Axial Period” and that the next “Axial Period” is a “post-religious” one, beginning now? Well, no, in a word, the scholarship of Armstrong and the others simply doesn’t stack up. While writing The Divinity Code I was staggered to find that inconvenient truths were being swept under the carpet by these authors – that they’ve been using long out-of-date research to bolster their theories while ignoring the latest scientific and archaeological discoveries that disprove their conclusions. For this reason, I felt it was time to pull together the best scientific and archaeological evidence available in the world today, and once and for all work out: is there evidence of a divinity code in life and in the Universe? What do we really know? What haven’t you been told in some of these bestselling books by people like Dawkins or Armstrong? Co-incidentally (or perhaps not, if you believe in God), The Divinity Code is not the only book mounting a major challenge to Dawkins and the others this summer. In the US, WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day will release in February The Irrational Atheist – I’ve just been sent an author’s preview copy and it is stunningly good, using secular reasoning to beat Dawkins around the ears – and New Holland Publishing have just released God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by Oxford University’s John Lennox. Expect reviews of these books in upcoming issues of Investigate. Far from being buried, God seems to be more alive and kicking than ever.

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A Line in the Sand Why You Should Be Very Afraid Of The EFB

Labour’s Electoral Finance Bill is being rammed through Parliament to take effect from January 1, in a bid to quash free speech in New Zealand. If passed, it will make it illegal for many ordinary people to express their opinions on political issues. IAN WISHART backgrounds the issue and draws on the submissions of Kiwiblog’s DAVID FARRAR and the NZ LAW SOCIETY to explain why all New Zealanders need to make a last ditch effort to oppose the legislation

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 27

ometimes, to appreciate the freedom that you have, you must lose it first. If that’s true, then New Zealanders could soon be learning that lesson the hard way. Labour’s Electoral Finance Bill will soon be referred back to Parliament by the select committee investigating it. With the backing of Labour, NZ First, Peter Dunne and the Greens, it is almost a certainty to pass into law. Labour has tried to assure the public that any problems with the Bill can be ironed out by the select committee, but this statement is misleading. The public have been given the chance to make submissions on the Bill as it currently stands. The select committee can now make any changes they like, and there is no guarantee that the public will be given the chance to officially comment about the new version. So, for example, if one of the “fixes” recommended by the government-dominated select committee is the sudden introduction of multi-million dollar taxpayer funding of private political parties, this could then pass into law without the public having a chance to protest. That’s one of the reasons many critics are calling for the Bill to be totally scrapped and sent back to the drawing board, because it is a stake through the heart of democracy in New Zealand. For the first time in 160 years, genuine totalitarian legislation used to repress dissent in countries like China or Burma is dangerously close to being passed here in New Zealand. How exactly will it affect you? In real terms, it means you as a private citizen will be unable to express your political views in many cases unless you first register with the State. You will have to fill out bureaucratic forms in triplicate, and if you fail to do everything that Labour wants, you could be prosecuted as a criminal for breaching the electoral rules. This legislation has the power to turn New Zealand from a democracy to a dictatorship, by heavily stacking elections in favour of incumbent governments, and allowing parties like Labour to spend up large while new parties are gagged. Is this the New Zealand you want your kids to grow up in? To help clarify exactly what this Bill does, we’ve taken highlights from the submissions of David Farrar, of KillTheBill.org. nz, and the New Zealand Law Society. Once you’ve read them, we strongly recommend the following course of action: Labour is being supported in this by its coalition handmaidens, United Future, the Greens and New Zealand First. On the front page of Investigate magazine’s website we have established special one-click email links allowing you to send a message to those three minor parties. We believe that once those parties realize how many ordinary New Zealanders are opposed to this draconian legislation, they will have no choice but to abandon support for it or face annihilation at the ballot box next year. It’s up to you. You can do your bit, and tell your friends as well. If you value your right to free speech and to criticize politicians, then you must take action now, before this Bill is rammed into law.

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DAVID FARRAR

The Electoral Finance Bill is the worst legislation I have ever come across. It is so badly drafted that it is quite simply unworkable. Even if the unintentional mistakes are fixed, it is still a repugnant law which promotes MPs and Candidates to a political elite, and requires all other New Zealanders to jump through hoops to express a view on any issues an MP or candidate has already associated themselves with.

Under the Electoral Finance Act, the Governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to control free speech in election year will be almost absolute. PHOTO: NZPA/Ross Setford

The Bill as it currently stands fails in almost every single purpose listed in Clause 3. It will undermine public confidence in the electoral process, it discourages the public from participation, it fails to bring in greater transparency for parties and candidates and it is so badly drafted the controls will be neither clear nor effective. It needs to be recognized that MPs have a much-vested outcome in the provisions of the Electoral Act, as this lays down

the rules for how they get elected. This is arguably our most important constitutional Act, and major changes to it should have maximum public input. It is entirely unacceptable for MPs to consider such wide ranging restrictions on third parties, when there has been no consultation or engagement with third parties on the proposed law. Transparency International pointed out in April that MPs are conflicted in deciding such issues, and recommended INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 29

use of an independent panel. I would support this, whether a Commission or a Citizen’s Jury. The other reason that I submit the bill should be rejected in its entirety is that the changes that would be needed to make it workable, let alone desirable, law would be so great it would almost be a new Bill. The current Bill is simply too flawed to be used as a template. It treats third parties (i.e. the public) as undesirable players in election year that will be heard only under sufferance. Major Criticisms 1. The EFB will restrict the ability of New Zealanders to speak up on political issues for 30% of their lives by extending the “regulated speech” period to all of election year. 2. The EFB defines as election activity almost any New Zealander expressing themselves in any way on almost any issue during the regulated period. 3. The EFB promotes political parties and their MPs and Candidates to first class citizens, as once they take a position on a proposition all the second class citizens are then restricted as to their advocacy on that proposition. 4. The definition of publication is so wide that much speech over the Internet would be subject to regulation, such as newspaper websites, journalist blogs and even e-mails between friends. 5. The proposed system of statutory declarations is unworkable, and would requite tens of thousands of New Zealanders to have to be swearing such declarations under oath just so they can have a say on a political issue. 6. The rules for registered third parties discriminate against groups with a member under 18, and the restriction on when you can register robs individuals and groups from the ability to refute attacks on them during a campaign. 7. The disclosure regime on third parties does not apply to political parties, and is set at such a low level that real issues of privacy will affect supporters of third parties. 8. The low limit on third party advertising, especially in light of the year long period, will muzzle groups from being able to have their message effectively communicated. 9. The Police have not been removed from their role as prosecuting authority for breaches, despite their demonstrated incompetence in this area. 10. The penalties for breaches of the Act remain far, far too low, and no mechanism is provided for political parties to be held accountable for breaches. 11. The failure to crack down on anonymous and trust donations on the grounds that such money is needed in the absence of further state funding is grossly hypocritical and also wrong. Money and Elections I do not argue a libertarian position that there should be no restrictions at all on expenditure by political parties and third parties. I think there is a case for some reasonable restrictions, but they should be based on logical empirical evidence. Research I have done into the correlation between spending and votes in the last four elections, finds it to be a very weak correlation. In 1996 NZ First and Labour spent almost the same amount, yet Labour got twice the votes. ACT almost spent the same as 30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

National, yet got one sixth the number of votes. The Alliance spent half of what ACT did and got almost twice the votes. In 1999 National spent over 50% more than Labour in 1999, yet lost the election by around 10%. In 2002 Labour spent more than National by around 25% yet got around twice as many votes. ACT spent more money than National, yet got one third the number of votes. The Greens got the same votes as ACT for under half the spent. NZ First got 50% more votes than both Greens and ACT despite spending 60% and 25% respectively of what they did. Labour for two elections in a row has had a higher total spend than National. This time in 2005 they spent around 30% or $950,000 more than National yet got only 2% more. ACT spent twice as much as NZ First for one quarter the votes. The Greens spent more than NZ First yet got less votes. Of the parties that made Parliament the spend per vote ranged from $3.40 to $34.00. This research clearly shows that money does not “buy” elections. Obviously it has an effect, but the effect is more around the margins. Spending money allows a party to communicate its message, but if that message is not palatable then the voters are not overly influenced by it. Transparency is far more important, than limits, even though there is a role for both. State Funding A leaked earlier version of the Government’s proposals for changes to the Electoral Act, proposed full state funding of political parties. These provisions were dropped after public opposition. A Colmar Brunton poll in April 2007 found only 26% of respondents in favour. The dropping of these provisions has been used as justification by the Prime Minister for the failure of the Bill to crack down on trust and anonymous donations, on the basis that without state funding, the money from these sources is too badly needed. Putting aside the moral issues of labeling such donations as dirty money, and then legislating to keep them as you need the dirty money, I do wish to draw to the Committee’s attention the wide gap between the current level of anonymous and trust donations, and the regime looked at for state funding. For example, Labour has only had $1.7 million of anonymous donations over 12 years. Hardly enough to claim one can’t survive without. Incidentally the state funding proposal would have delivered $12.6 million over the same period. In setting limits for spending [the proposed limit is just $60,000], the limit should be high enough so that a party can be effective in its communications. This should be based on empirical evidence. A limit should not just be picked out of thin air. It is no small thing to ban a person, party or group from spending their own money as they see fit. Such restrictions must be clearly justified, and be set at a level which is not artificially low. Definition of Publication Clause 4(1) defines a publication as including (g) disseminate by means of the Internet or any other electronic medium; or (h) store electronically in a way that is accessible to the public. This addition of electronic messaging to the definition of a

Political advertising by lobby groups, like the Kyoto Forestry Association who paid for this billboard at Wellington Airport, will be heavily restricted in election year under the Electoral Finance Bill, PHOTO: NZPA/Nick Brown

publication poses major problems. Without a massive list of exemptions, one can end up including bulletin boards, websites, e-mails, blogs and the like. It will be incredibly complicated to work out what portion of the costs of such facilities would be tied to any political advertising. Generally the money one spends on traditional advertising means your message gets sent by more and more people regardless of whether or not they wish to see it. People buy a newspaper to read the news. A political advertisement in a paper takes advantage of that. The same goes for television. Again not many people clear their letterboxes wanting to see a newsletter from a candidate. Traditional advertising is all about placing your message in front of people who are not actively seeking it out. Internet communications work very differently. They are on a pull, not a push, model. One can spend $100,000 on a website but that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean a single extra person will see it unless they choose voluntarily to do so. The same applies for e-mail. Only those who have asked to receive emails from a party or organization will receive such emails. So why should this be regulated by the state when it is a voluntary communication, asked for by the voter? The equivalent to traditional advertising is not a website or

e-mail, but online advertising of your own website. If someone spends $5,000 on advertising and promoting their website, then that should count as election advertising. But merely running a website or an e-mail list should not count, as only those who voluntarily choose to do so, will see any messages on that site. With third parties especially, it will be near impossible to separate out the costs of their overall Internet presence with the costs of those parts of their presence which advocate on political issues. Regulated Period Extending the regulated period from 90 days to all of election year will favour the incumbent Government massively. Opposition parties and third parties will be severely limited in their ability to respond to Government initiatives and campaigns. The low limits for third parties make the length of the regulated period quite draconian, but even with higher limits there is no sound public policy reason for a regulated period of up to eleven months. There is a very sound reason for the existing 90 day limit. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 31

“The bill unduly restricts free speech. The spending limits and restricted period proposed by the bill will shut down criticism of a government at the time when it is to answer to the electorate and when such criticism should be most salient”

Considerable research shows many people decide during that period. The active intense campaign occurs during that period, and it is also a short enough period of time that one can halt Government and Parliamentary advertising. This last point is critical. The regulated period should see all but the most necessary and basic taxpayer funded campaigns come to an end, at the same time as the actual parties are restricted as to their expenditure. If you do one without the other you greatly advantage the Government. The rationale put forward for extending the period from 90 days is that last election some parties started spending money before that 90 day period. Well this is hardly anything new and has been the case for the last 20 years that parties sometimes expend money to campaign on issues in between election campaigns. The reality is today the campaign is permanent. It starts the day after the last election. If one accepts one should regulate political speech back to 1 January of election year, then one day someone will argue it should apply for some or all of the year before. And then maybe we should never have a period where political speech is not regulated, and it will apply for all the time. Definition of Election Advertisement Paragraph (a)(iii) of Clause 5(1) is cast far too wide with its definition of “taking a position on a proposition with which 1 or more parties or 1 or more candidates is associated”. This will cover almost all political discourse. In fact it will also cover commercial advertising and allow candidates to close down commercial advertising by becoming associated with a proposition. The Chief Electoral Officer would need to update the Elections website several times a day with an ever expanding list of propositions that are now “off limits” for non regulated discourse. It would be a laughable proposition if it were not actually in a Bill before Parliament. If the regulated period stays at a full year, then such a clause will be too restrictive on advocacy. An organization which promotes climate change policies for example should not have to close down most of its advocacy every third year. Clause 5(2) deals with the exemptions to election advertising. The fact that these exemptions are needed show how ridiculously wide the bill is drafted. The exemption for media does not extend to their online activities. It also does not cover purely online media such as Scoop. 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

The exemption for an organization communicating with its members should be expanded to include a company communicating with its shareholders, and an employer communicating with its staff. It is unfair to only allow organizations which are incorporated societies [such as trade unions] to be exempt. The exemption for blogs is welcome. However the limitation being they must be non commercial may nullify this. Many blogs accept advertising yet are not run primarily for profit. Also blogs by political journalists as part of their job are not exempted. I propose the exemption should be for generally all Internet communications unless it is specifically paid advertising on sites which are not your own. Third Party Eligibility Clause 14(1), paragraph (c) states that an unincorporated society can only be a third party if all of their members are registered electors. This would stop churches and many other groups from registering. The restriction should either be dropped, or replaced with a percentage requirement – i.e. that at least 75% of members must be registered electors. Clause 17(a) stops a third party being registered in the period immediately prior to an election. This means a third party has to register before it even knows who the candidates are. It also means that if a third party is attacked during the campaign by a party or candidate, they will be unable to spend any significant money refuting the attack, as it will be too late for them to register. This restriction should be abolished. The specified amounts in Clause 22(2) are the levels at which a donation must be publicly notified. They are $500 for third parties, $1,000 for candidates and $10,000 for political parties. The failure of the bill to ban anonymous and trust donations for parties and candidates means that their specified amounts are effectively unlimited. One could give $500,000 to a political party and have it recorded as anonymous or go through a trust. Hence the $500 for third parties is far too small. It is hypocritical to require such disclosure for the incidental players but not require it for the main players. There is a wide variety of views on what the specified amount should be. A sensible approach is to look at whether one is just sating curiosity or wanting disclosure to apply only when a donation is large enough to suggest undue influence may be involved. New Zealanders value their privacy greatly. Unlike the United States we do not register our political affiliations. Only a very small majority publicly declare which party they support or belong to. The right to privately support causes you believe in should not be unduly constrained. The current level of $10,000 for political parties seems adequate to me. I don’t think anyone can make a serious case that one can “buy influence” for anything close to $10,000. $10,000 also represents well under 1% of a major party’s total income for the year. Third parties should have the same limits as political parties. If $10,000 is not enough to buy influence with a political party, it is not enough for a third party. Anonymous Donations The provisions for third party anonymous donations should apply also to political parties, or they should be scrapped as submitted by Professor Geddis. It would be quite outrageous for MPs to require incidental

Under the Act, blank protest placards in election year will be allowed, but writing an actual slogan on a placard could put you in trouble with the police if you do not first register with the State. PHOTO: Leif Norman

players such as third parties to hand over to the Chief Electoral Officer any anonymous donations, yet leave untouched their own anonymous donations. An April 2007 Colmar Brunton poll found 81% in favour of political parties being required to disclose where there campaign funding comes from. The public should be listened to. A specified amount of $10,000 should apply for both political parties and third parties. One should be able to donate $600 to Greenpeace without it being deemed an amount of significance which requires disclosure. The provisions to require disclosure of donations through trusts in Clause 44 should also apply to political parties. Election Advertisements The requirement for the name and address of promoters of election advertisements is sound in a general sense. However if the very wide definition of what constitutes an election advertisement and a publication remains, then it becomes impractical. Every protest march placard and every e-mail on a political issue would need such a disclosure statement. The system of statutory declarations detailed in Clause 53(3) is a bureaucratic nightmare and should be scrapped. A promoter who spends over the limit will have committed an offence anyway, without the need for statutory declarations. The proposed regime would see Internet users having to file statutory declarations with their ISPs merely so they can e-mail their views on a political issue.

It would also see protesters on a protest march needing to file such declarations to cover the costs of their advertisements. Candidate Expenses It is my view that the existing limit of $20,000 including GST for an electorate candidate is set so low that it prevents effective communication from a candidate to voters. If a candidate wished to post a direct mail letter (a recommended form of communication) to every voter, that would soak up their entire $20,000 budget – just one letter. The low level of the existing limit is bad enough. But if the regulated period was extended from 90 days to all year, this would seriously disadvantage any candidate challenging an incumbent MP. An incumbent MP starts with huge advantages in terms of profile and ability to attract media attention. Add onto that their ability to spend $60,000 a year from their parliamentary budget on newsletters and advertisements and their incumbency is even stronger. The extension of the regulated period to all of election year will be a huge advantage to incumbent MPs and make it much more difficult for new candidates to win. Democracy will be the loser and incumbent MPs the winner. This is another reason why a public policy process should have been used in developing this bill. Party Expenses Clause 80, paragraph (d) exempts as a party expense “anything done in relation to a member of Parliament in his or her capacity as a member of Parliament”. This is an outrageous attempt INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 33

to legalise actions which were previously illegal – namely publications such as the infamous pledge card. The public will be very unimpressed with legislation which massively clamps down on third party expenditure with draconian definitions, yet gives a green light to hundreds of thousands of dollars of parliamentary expenditure in the last few weeks of the campaign, without it even counting towards the limit. The current wording of Clause 53 effectively bans political parties from publishing issue advertisements. They are only authorized to run party or candidate advertisements. This is a major restriction on the rights of political parties and has no justification. Third Party Expenditure The limit of $60,000 is so low that it represents an assault on freedom of speech. The shorter the regulated period is, the lower an amount one can justify. Likewise the less wide ranging the definition of an election advertisement is, the lower the limit can be. It should be noted this limit applies regardless of whether the third party has a million members like the NZ Automobile Assn or ten members. It also applies regardless of whether the third party is a single issue lobby group, or a group which comments and advocates on a wide range of policy. Governments and parties often infringe the rights of various groups, such as with Maori and the Foreshore & Seabed legislation. They should have the ability to campaign vigorously against parties and candidates who took away their rights. The ability to campaign against repressive laws is part of what makes NZ a democracy. For example those New Zealanders who feel that the Electoral finance Bill is a massive attack on their democratic rights should be able to form a lobby group and campaign against those MPs who vote for the bill to become law. This is the NZ way. But the pernicious nature of the Electoral Finance Bill means its opponents won’t even be able to hold responsible those who impose it on us. The activities of the Exclusive Brethren are cited as justification for these draconian limits. However the major fault of the Exclusive Brethren was their lack of transparency over their activities. Once the media provided that transparency, the effectiveness of their campaign was greatly diluted. In fact most commentators would say that the net effect of their campaign was to damage National more than Labour or the Greens. Interestingly the April 2007 Colmar Brunton poll found only minority support for regulating third party expenditure, despite the activities of the Brethren. Only 39% of respondents wanted tighter controls on political advertising by groups outside Parliament. Enforcement The Police investigation into the 2005 election was incompetent, and that is a word I do not use lightly. I documented in a series of [Kiwiblog] posts in early 2006 how they stuffed up almost every aspect of the investigation. They investigated the wrong offences, ignored clear case law, failed to realize what strict liability meant, and confused their role under the Electoral Act with that of the Auditor-General under the Public Finance Act. 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

I have absolutely no confidence in the Police as the enforcers of the Electoral Act. As a bulwark against corrupt practices, they showed they could not be relied upon. Their actions last election should have forfeited them the right to remain involved. It is obvious they don’t treat breaches of the Electoral Act as “real crime”. I am happy to provide dozens of pages of writing to the Committee on how appalling their investigation was. They did serious damage to the authority of the electoral agencies with both their investigation and their decision not to prosecute. Not only did they fail to prosecute Labour officials for the deliberate over-spending, which was a matter of strict liability, they also failed to prosecute National for broadcasting breaches even though National effectively pleaded guilty and assumed responsibility for the breach. All the other clauses in the Electoral Act don’t matter if you do not have proper enforcement of it. This is the area that most needs changing. I would propose three major changes: The first is to remove the Police as the prosecuting authority and to grant these powers to the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission has the necessary judicial and legal experience to undertake this role. The second is to make parties, not just individuals, liable for breaches of the Act. The punishment of individuals only is a hangover from FPP when losing your seat is sufficient deterrent. With MMP parties have little deterrent as a minor fine to the party’s secretary is nothing compared to the benefit gained for example by overspending by $800,000. Again I note at the Victoria University symposium there was widespread support for making parties liable for any breaches of the Act. Parties gain the most from breaches of the Act, so they should be held accountable. The third is to massively increase the penalties form the joke levels they are at. As the Coalition for Open Government says, if you can get seven years for stealing a bike, then stealing an election should be worth at least that. I would support a regime where parties can be fined up to $1 million, individuals up to $100,000 and a maximum jail sentence of five years. The 2005 election showed that some parties, despite the explicit warnings of the Chief Electoral Officer, chose to break the law. No doubt the low level of punishment available for such breaches was a factor in that decision. Finally I urge the Committee once again to reject the Bill rather than amend it, even if for example all of my amendments were adopted. Because the public deserve a chance to have their say on the Bill as amended. It is vital that the public have confidence in the process used to amend the Electoral Act. If 51 % of Parliament forces through changes against both public opinion and significant opposition in Parliament, then the respect for electoral laws will be greatly diminished. It is better to do the job properly than to do it quickly.

THE NZ LAW SOCIETY

Some reform in the area may be desirable, but this particular bill should be returned to the House with the recommendation that it not proceed. The bill has serious defects, which mean it will not achieve its stated aims. Moreover, it is likely to curtail the legitimate expression of opinions while failing to curb (and potentially even incentivising) clandestine conduct in relation

While most third parties and members of the public will face severe restrictions carrying serious penalties, some organizations like trade unions are exempt. PHOTO: Brandon Laufenberg

to the electoral process. The bill as a whole represents a backward step in the integrity of democracy in New Zealand. The bill seems to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 as it limits freedom of expression in a way that cannot be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. The fact that redrafting and brokering is going on amongst political parties as to changes that will be promoted by the Government at the same time as submissions are being sought, excludes public participation and is an anathema to the Select Committee process. It would be inappropriate to repair such a measure with a complex, negotiated Supplementary Order Paper even if this were referred to a Select Committee. A Supplementary Order Paper would not usually be subject to Bill of Rights Act certification by the Attorney-General. This is particularly important given that the opinion on Bill of Rights Act consistency given by the Crown Law Office in relation to the present bill does not seem to engage with the points raised in this submission. In a matter as integral to our system of government as regulation of the democratic process, it is highly desirable that reform receives a high level of support and is subject to debate and comment by the public and interest groups as well as politicians. Withdrawing the bill and starting again would enable a Regulatory Impact Statement and a list of those consulted to be added to the Explanatory Note. Both are notably absent from this bill.

Spending and Restricted Period The current electoral regulations impose electoral advertising spending limits on parties and candidates in the 3 months prior to polling day. The Bill seeks to: Extend advertising spending restrictions to all persons; and increase the period of restriction to the entire year in which the election is held (if the election is in a designated election year). The quantum of spending limits for parties and candidates has not changed. Given the historical tendency in New Zealand to hold elections late in the year, the period of regulation will in most cases be extended, resulting in an effective increase in restrictions. For reasons described in this and the next two paragraphs, the bill creates an unjustifiable electoral advantage for incumbents. The incumbent government gains a substantial advantage from a longer restricted period. During a restricted period a government is able to advertise and promote government services and initiatives outside advertising restrictions. Many of these initiatives will be creatures of party policy and the dissemination of such information to the electorate realistically encourages the re-election of the incumbent government. Informing people about the services available to them from their government is a necessary, important and proper function of government. However, when a restricted period (during which any criticism of government initiatives is a regulated election advertisement) is too long and spending limits are too INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 35

“For example those New Zealanders who feel that the Electoral finance Bill is a massive attack on their democratic rights should be able to form a lobby group and campaign against those MPs who vote for the bill to become law. This is the NZ way. But the pernicious nature of the Electoral Finance Bill means its opponents won't even be able to hold responsible those who impose it on us.” low, the dissemination of information about government services provides an unacceptable advantage to the incumbent government. This is so even if used in good faith, though the advantage is easily amenable to abuse. The problem is compounded by the fact that ‘publications that relate to a member of parliament in their capacity as a member of parliament’ are specifically exempted from being party election expenses but not from being candidate or third party election expenses. This will have the effect of: 1) allowing a party with incumbent MPs to campaign significantly outside the spending restrictions (e.g. a flyer stating “James Smith of Party X championed the Carbon Emissions Reduction Bill during its passage through the House” would likely not be an election expense); and 2) putting at a substantial disadvantage any person (but arguably not another party) opposing an incumbent MP as any expense incurred in commenting on their actions as an MP will count as an election expense. That the parties represented in the House should be able to comment on their member’s performance while the people they govern are restricted in doing so is a proposition difficult to reconcile with democratic principles. Any spending restrictions on electoral advertising limit the right to freedom of expression in s14 the Bill of Rights Act 1990, albeit that the shorter the period in which the restrictions operate the lesser the overall degree of restriction – and (depending on all other circumstances) the more readily justifiable as “reasonable” (in terms of s5) the restriction may be. The Society submits that by: 1) extending regulation of election advertising to all persons; 2) significantly extending the potential restricted period; 3) failing to increase the financial thresholds for parties and candidates; and 4) imposing too low a threshold on third parties, the bill unduly restricts free speech. The spending limits and restricted period proposed by the bill will shut down criticism of a government at the time when it is to answer to the elector36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

ate and when such criticism should be most salient. These problems are exacerbated by the third party registration regime and the restrictions on issue advertising (discussed later). The overly technical nature of the regime can be illustrated by a hypothetical example: A small residents’ group decides to put together a banner and flyers advocating the banning of herbicides in their local community for display and distribution at their local farmers’ market. Somewhat aware of electoral regulation and that a local candidate may have taken a position on this issue, they attempt to be cautious and record the name and address of one of their members on the banner and on each flyer. They proceed to display the banner and distribute the flyers at the market. If the bill were enacted, the group above would have breached the law and may have incurred an unauthorised election expense on behalf of a candidate whose name they did not even know. In the first instance, the group member who allowed their name and address to be used on the flyer is apparently deemed both promoter and publisher of an electoral advertisement and has broken the law by failing to issue themselves with a declaration under the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957 to the effect that the cost of the advertisements published during the regulated period will not be more than the maximum amount. Of more concern is the fact that the banner and flyer may be a candidate advertisement. The group was uncertain as to whether a local candidate had taken a position on the issue, but if it turns out he or she had taken such a position and that consequently the banner and flyers could `reasonably be regarded as encouraging or persuading voters’ to vote for that candidate, then, in addition to further breaching the law by failing to have the material authorised by the candidate’s financial agent, they have incurred an unauthorised election expense in respect of that candidate. This is an offence and even though it was not committed ‘wilfully’ the person who incurred the expense is guilty of an illegal practice and liable for a conviction and fine of up to $10,000. (If it could be shown to be committed ‘wilfully’ it would be a corrupt practice carrying potential for a term of imprisonment – consider where the group had intended to promote the candidate in ignorance of the law.) This example serves to illustrate the complexity of the disclosure regime. The complexity itself will discourage rather than encourage those who should rightly participate in New Zealand’s democratic process. It was submitted earlier that the spending limits comprised in the bill were too low. The Society reiterates this with regard to third party spending and notes that it is unclear why the limits for third party spending during the restricted period should be so much lower than that for registered parties ($60,000 v $1 million). However, the major concern rests on the rules regarding registration as a third party. The effect of the bill is such that any person or entity that cannot register as a third party is effectively excluded from the political communications component of the democratic process – such a gravely serious effect warrants careful consideration. The first matter is the timing restriction on registration. As of writ day in an election year any person not registered as a third party is effectively silenced. This could have serious effects as illustrated by the following hypothetical example:

The Americans tend to take a more robust view of their free speech rights. PHOTO: Jorge Salcedo

In the 2008 election, election day is set for 13 September and writ day for 13 August. On 14 August a major political party releases a bold new health policy. Buried in the minutiae of the voluminous policy document is a statement that planned funding for new radiology equipment in public oncology units will be deferred. This aspect of the policy is noted by the Cancer Society, which advocated strongly for the funding and believes the equipment will significantly increase the success rates for radiotherapy treatment. However, the Cancer Society has not registered as a third party and it is too late for them to do so. As such they are prevented from advocating against this policy with any more than $5000 while the major party in question has a month to promote its revolutionising of the health system. This example illustrates how the timing restriction on registrations as a third party can lead to undesirable outcomes. The second concern relates to restrictions on who may register as a third party. The restrictions in clause 14(1) on third party registration will exclude a large number of people who should have the right to participate in New Zealand elections. Of particular concern is that unincorporated bodies may not be third parties unless all their members are registered electors. The following hypothetical example illustrates: One candidate running for an electorate seat in an urban area advocates the conversion of a park in one of the electorate’s suburbs into low density retail space and another wants it planted with native flora. A rugby club who uses the park for fixtures and training multiple times every week decides to register as

a third party to oppose the election of these candidates. Their application is rejected on the grounds that some of their members are not registered electors. The reason some of its members are not registered is that their under 12 team are club members and one of the club ‘s adult players is a foreign national not entitled to vote. Accordingly, the rugby club is limited to $500 in opposing either candidate and promoting its own view. There are many reasons why a person may not be a registered elector and not all justify total removal from the democratic process. The third party regime unduly restricts participation in elections. If participation of those not directly standing for election is to be regulated it should be done carefully and to the least degree practicable to achieve the desired outcomes. It is noted that much of the consternation regarding third party conduct in the 2005 general election is assuaged by a simple disclosure regime (provided it is enforced) – the identity of the person who is advocating something is likely to be more relevant to its persuasive effect than how loudly they are advocating it. Issue advertising ...Clause 5(I) of election advertisement Clause 5(1)(iii) causes particular concern. It deems the taking of a position associated with a candidate or party an ‘election advertisement’. The concept is vague and will likely be difficult to apply. However, this is not the major problem with the issue advertising provision. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 37

Accordingly, regulation of issues for debate is highly unorthodox and not supported by principle.

“Clause 80, paragraph (d) exempts as a party expense "anything done in relation to a member of Parliament in his or her capacity as a member of Parliament". This is an outrageous attempt to legalise actions which were previously illegal — namely publications such as the infamous pledge card”

The primary issue with this restriction is the potential for it to be used as a weapon for shutting down debate. Bizarrely, the regime seems to mean that the best way to take an issue off the table is to take a position on it. By taking a position on an issue a party or candidate ensures that any person or entity wishing to take the opposing view publicly will be required to go through the strict process of registering as a third party and then be limited to $60,000 in its spending. The net effect is a stifling of debate on important issues. Furthermore, the basic fact that collectively parties and candidates will be found to have “taken positions” on almost everything, entails the financial regulation of speech on almost all relevant issues at election time. The net effect is a stifling of political debate. The general objectives of the bill do not warrant the regulation of such a huge range of possible speech. The regulation of issues may have other unforeseen consequences. The following is a hypothetical example: A power generation company seeks to build a wind farm in an area of New Zealand and commences the resource consent process. A party issues a statement to the effect that it opposes the development of new wind farms anywhere. As a result, if the power generation company wishes to continue to advocate the benefits of the wind farm to the local community (and having no interest in influencing the outcome of the election) it is arguably required to register as a third party and even then will be limited to $60,000 in its spending merely because a party took a view on wind farm development generally. This illustrates how regulation of issue advertising has far reaching consequences. Moreover, in the above example there is an argument to be made that preparation for and advocacy at a resource consent hearing could be an election advertisement where a candidate or party has taken a position on the development in question – the Society notes that there is no exemption for official proceedings in what may amount to election advertising that could be a problem if issues are to be regulated. 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

Conclusion The broad purposes of the bill may well be admirable. However, it appears that its operative provisions have been formulated in a manner so divorced from these purposes that the bill will have the opposite effect to that which is intended. In this case a political compromise has resulted in a compromise of principles and this cannot be accepted in an area as important as regulation of the democratic process. The Society considers that the bill goes no way towards increasing transparency or accountability in the democratic process. Conversely, it risks encouraging large anonymous donations to political parties and candidates in preference to open participation in public debate. In this way it promotes rather than prevents the undue influence of wealth. The rules regarding registration, disclosure, spending limits and related offences are so complex, vague and uncertain as to make participation in our parliamentary democracy an arduous and perhaps even legally dangerous undertaking for ordinary New Zealanders. These considerations are additional to the fact that an overly long restricted period, unduly low spending limits and unfair third party regime, all place an unacceptable restriction on free speech. Overall, the bill would limit freedom of expression protected by s14 of the Bill of Rights Act, in a manner that is not justified as a “reasonable limit” under s 5. It is recognised that the Crown Law Office has advised otherwise, but the Society submits that the cumulative effect of the detail of the bill, as illustrated in this submission, is such that the Bill of Rights Act guarantee would be infringed by some margin, and beyond the “margin of appreciation” to Parliament upon which the Crown Law Office opinion relies. (The Society has reservations as to whether it is appropriate, in advice given to the AttorneyGeneral on the consistency of a proposed law with the Bill of Rights Act, to deploy the concept of “margin of appreciation”. That term is best reserved to describe the practice of courts in other jurisdictions who, acting under supreme-law constitutions and faced with legal challenges made after legislation has been enacted, choose to respect legislative choices that, while perhaps limiting rights a little more than necessary, do not seriously infringe them. The Society is inclined to see the concept of a margin of appreciation as being inapt when the issue is whether a proposed law should be enacted in the first place. In any event, this reservation is unimportant in the present context, given the submission that this bill is inconsistent with s14 by a wide margin.) In conclusion, there is no one part of the bill that is problematic. Rather, the bill in its current form is a flawed attempt to achieve a legitimate social objective. Its cumulative defects make it irredeemable: the democratic deficit associated with use of the Supplementary Order Paper procedure (even if that were referred to the Select Committee) means that redemption ought not to be attempted in that way. Hence the bill ought not to proceed. Instead, the issue should be approached afresh, as suggested in paragraph 8 above. David Murphy Vice-President, NZLS

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Credibility Hit Vaccine-maker caught funding NZ Ministry of Health ‘research’ The credibility of the Government’s latest child immunization campaign has taken a severe hit with revelations the Ministry of Health and vaccine manufacturer Wyeth had an undisclosed conflict of interest, as IAN WISHART reports

he Ministry of Health has been forced to make an embarrassing backdown after circulating false information to doctors and medical centres in support of a new immunization campaign. The revelation comes in confidential memoranda leaked to Investigate magazine, detailing plans for the rollout of next year’s childhood immunization schedule. At the heart of the controversy is the inclusion of the new vaccine, Prevenar, to tackle pneumococcal meningitis, a rare form of meningitis. To put the “epidemic” in perspective, of 139,000 deaths over the five years from 2000 to 2004, only 12 people died from pneumococcal disease. Expressed another way, that’s roughly 1 out of every 12,000 deaths in New Zealand. Even so, according to the Ministry of Health the disease is more common than the meningococcal version we’ve all heard so much about, which presumably makes MeNZB very rare. In a document detailing the 2008 infant vaccine schedule, and slugged “Confidential”, Ministry of Health policy analyst Vikki Cheer reveals that next year babies are to receive four immunisations per visit, with a cocktail of shots and sips to hit Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough, Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Meningococcal Meningitis and now Pneumococcal Meningitis. Cheer mentions research coded “Project Smile”, the results of which were tabled at an August 15 meeting of “stakeholders” in the immunization process. The “objectives” of the research study were: To understand knowledge of and attitudes to pneumococcal disease; To determine attitudes to the vaccine against pneumococcal disease; To determine the triggers and barriers to recommendation/ usage of the pneumococcal vaccine in NZ; The research was carried out in Auckland, using 8 GPs, 12

40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

nurses, and four groups of 5-7 “mums and future mums”. Clearly, from the objectives, the Ministry of Health wanted to know how mothers felt about both the disease and the Prevenar vaccine, including “triggers and barriers” to whether mothers would use the vaccine. The memorandum discloses, under “Key Results”, “low awareness of pneumococcal disease – if it’s so serious why isn’t the vaccine already funded?”. Parents also asked “Is the vaccine safe and effective? Is it used in other countries? We don’t want our children to be guinea pigs [as with MeNZB]”. The study, prepared by a market researcher from Jigsaw named Nicole Inglis, endorsed some of the methods doctors and health professionals should use to intimidate mothers into supporting vaccines: “The mother needs to weigh up intensive care visits with two seconds of pain at vaccination time… “The baby won’t die from feeling a bit poorly after the vaccination, but will die from the disease… “The risk of contracting this disease is low but the stakes are high…” The research then singles out midwives as a section of the health professional community who are not towing the line. “It’s frustrating that the mothers are being fed propaganda by the very people who should be encouraging them to vaccinate…I really don’t understand what their problem is, but it seems to be the richer, alternative types of parents who listen to these midwives and then decide not to vaccinate…” Practice nurses are then quoted further lamenting: “It’s the alternative types in Devonport you need to be careful of. They question everything and think you want to harm their precious child with your wicked western medicine ways… “The hippy midwife talks to the hippy mother and there’s nothing we can do to change their mind… maybe we need to tell them we’re vaccinating with soy milk or something!”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 41

Researcher Nicole Inglis then highlights the terrible situation of a midwife endeavouring to ensure that new mothers get access to both sides of the immunization debate. She quotes a “second time mum” who says: “At my antenatal class for my first child the midwife said we needed to think about vaccinations. Then she told us there is plenty of information for immunising, but it’s hard to find information against it so she gave us a handout on the side effects and complications.” Nor is the researcher impressed at GPs attitudes in the face of educated upper-socio mothers, quoting one doctor as responding: “These mums are very firm in their ideas so I may as well just support them… I don’t have all the final answers and immunisation is not 100% safe or effective…” Another says, “I’m not sure the world is as sickly as the schedule makes out…” Clearly, this is not the answer the Ministry of Health wants doctors to be conceding to mothers, and Inglis herself writes, “By contrast, nurses stand firm… less likely to take any nonsense!” Inglis reports however on the disastrous launch of the MeNZB vaccine, with perceptions that kiwi kids were “guinea pigs” for an unwanted batch of vaccines from Scandinavia; revelations that the vaccine used here was untested; and that kids fully vaccinated were continuing to catch Meningococcal Meningitis. She says in her research report that health care providers took a credibility hit, and that “if the [Prevenar] vaccine had been launched before the Meningococcal B debate, there would be fewer potential problems” in selling it to the public this time around. “For those left unaffected by the Meningococcal B launch, it will be plain sailing…but this may be a minority currently,” Inglis writes.

he Well Child books that each new mother receives are being updated with information about pneumococcal disease, but with this proviso from one advisor: “No need to go into too much detail or they’ll get scared”. As if following that advice, another page in the report suggests that if it is there in the Well Child book, “mothers will not question it - do not normally question others on schedule” which does raise issues about how committed the Ministry of Health is to the principle of “informed consent”. This, then, is the research that was tabled at the stakeholder meeting and later emailed to them on 24 August. But when Ministry of Health’s Vikki Cheer sent her advisory out to stakeholders, some were far from impressed to find that the “research” for Project Smile was in fact not independent but bankrolled by the makers of the Prevenar vaccine, Wyeth & Co. New Zealand College of Midwives director Karen Guilliland fired back with an email accusing the Ministry of Health of having “conflicts of interest” and deliberately trying to mislead doctors, other health professionals and mothers. “An email received by the New Zealand College of Midwives last week from the MOH established Immunisation Stakeholder Group, reported back on the group’s last meeting and the manner and content of some of this material was deeply disturbing at a number of levels. The recipients of the email were also asked to forward the attachments to their networks further compounding the issues of misinformation. In the attachments was a copy of a power point presentation of a piece of pseudo research pro42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

moting the uptake of vaccination for pneumococcal disease. The information was disturbing for a number of reasons. “Firstly that the Ministry is at risk of breaching its own code of ethics in that it is using a piece of apparently unpublished (and therefore unavailable for challenge/critique) piece of market survey work as if it was a real piece of research and evidence for the actions it recommended. The extremely small sample size and the open ended interview with primed targets as a methodology makes this survey completely non-generalisable and of little value in informing a nation’s public health programs. The MOH’s impartiality and reliability in the giving of evidence based health messages is essential if health providers are to trust the system and this information endangers the credibility of the MOH. “Secondly the market survey itself was undertaken in connection with Wyeth, the drug company responsible for the supply of the vaccine in question. This raises the seriously vexing question of conflict of interest when there is significant financial gain to be made by the drug company concerned. “The write up of a survey of 12 practice nurses and 8 GPs did nothing for the concept of informed consent. Information giving in a way that is readable, appropriate, understandable and unbiased is a statutory right for patients and this does include parents regardless of how the nurses and GPs involved in this survey regard alternative parental views. When a vaccine or any other intervention is safe and effective it should be able to stand up to promotion without subterfuge, innuendo, omission of detail or undermining other health practitioners and health services. In fact, honesty and perseverance with the facts will be the only way that will garner the long term results required. The framing of the responses by the “researcher” implies misinforming or forcing parents to take up vaccinations for their babies is superior to addressing their concerns. This approach is out of line with normal health promotion principles. “Neither did the write up do anything for the credibility of nursing. To attribute the comments of 12 nurses to nurses en masse is also concerning. “Comments which encourage the omitting of information and being hard on parents with questions is reported as if this was superior to the way some GPs and midwives provide information (“nurses don’t put up with any nonsense”). I am sure it is not something the nursing profession would support but you may like to seek a view from the profession itself before distributing such advice. “The way in which midwives and midwifery is referred to is scurrilous to say the least. No midwives were interviewed. All so-called “evidence” of a hostile anti-immunisation midwifery profession is based on the hearsay of a handful of “primed” participants but mainly the 12 practice nurses. “Midwives in reality are the health provider that succeeds in ensuring parents have the highest uptake of immunisation rates than all other services. It is galling that this is constantly ignored by the Well Child services and the immunisation services who apparently prefer to believe the mythology and prejudice they so vociferously accuse midwives of. “Such scaremongering and misinformation is in danger of seriously raising questions in the minds of those that it insults. If the information about their practice is being so badly distorted what of the immunisation message itself? Can that be

This page comes from a story book aimed at mothers and toddlers, delivered to every GP’s waiting room in the country earlier this year by a vaccine manufacturer and designed to scare parents into purchasing an $80 vaccine by comparing the stories of two toddlers, one who was vaccinated and one whose mother refused.

trusted? And so cynicism is born. “I would insist that the offending email is retracted and an apology to the midwifery profession is forthcoming and honestly meant and that this apology is also forwarded to all those who received the original email. “I look forward to a retraction of the email and an apology from the Ministry, Yours sincerely, Karen Guilliland.” A response from the Ministry of Health was swift, and contrite: “Dear Karen, The National Immunisation Programme (NIP) would like to apologise for any offence caused by the recent distribution of the “Project Smile” research, commissioned and funded by Wyeth. A formal letter of apology to you from the Ministry of Health will follow shortly. “An email has been sent to all members of the Stakeholder Group requesting that the research is not to be forwarded onto anyone else. “The research in question was limited and qualitative which meant it was based on opinion rather than fact and designed to give a flavour of what these groups are thinking. It was intended to encourage discussion and to assist in our own planning to promote the upcoming National Immunisation Schedule change. “Unfortunately the limitations of the research were not circulated with it. “No disrespect was intended to the College of Midwives and members of the nursing profession. The Ministry acknowledges the pivotal role midwives and members of the nursing

profession play in improving maternal and child health - and we look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with you in future. “My apologies once again. Vikki Cheer.” Catching the Ministry of Health effectively running an advertising campaign for vaccine maker Wyeth is not the only interesting thing about the documents leaked to Investigate, however. Exploring the networks disclosed in the documents is also important. In that original “confidential” email, for example, various propaganda ideas are discussed, including this one: “Fiona (Meningitis Trust) can provide some community stories regarding pneumococcal disease. However, the group agreed that stories won’t be used for the purpose of scaring people; they will be used to inform.” Immunisation awareness researcher Hilary Butler believes the Meningitis Trust has a conflict of interest as well, because it too is funded by the vaccine manufacturer, Wyeth: “Wyeth also funded Fiona Colbert and the New Zealand Meningitis Trust and their website, via grants from the UK Meningitis Trust, which is funded by Wyeth,” says Butler. “Vikki Cheer in her letter is plainly on first name speaking terms with both Nicola Inglis from Australia and Fiona Colbert from Meningitis Trust. “Vikki Cheer plainly endorses and agrees with both the research, and is happy for both Nicola and Fiona to orchestrate and back the campaign with stories, and information. “Wyeth commissioned and funded Nicola Inglis’s “research” and Power Point presentation, which was obviously seen at the INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 43

Immunisation Stakeholder Group’s meeting, and is plainly accepted by them as the most useful way to change the views of parents. “There are many factual errors in both letters and the pp presentation. NOT all babies are at risk: it is primarily a Maori, Polynesian or immunocompromised baby issue.”

here is no question the vaccine maker stands to make money by having its product added to the national vaccine schedule. There is also no question that drug companies are heavily funding supposed consumer organizations like the Meningitis Trust, raising questions about whether ringing endorsements about the need for vaccination, and the safety of vaccines, are compromised by financial conflicts of interest. The Observer newspaper in London tackled a similar issue seven years ago in a special investigation of its own: “Four of the medical experts advising the Government on whether the new meningitis C vaccine is safe have links to one or more of the drug companies that produce it, The Observer has discovered. The revelations, following last week’s report of a cover-up of suspected adverse reactions to the drug, has prompted concern among parents and MPs about conflicts of interest in the medical profession. “The Department of Health last night confirmed that Professor Janet Darbyshire, a member of the Government’s Committee on Safety of Medicines, had received support for academic research from US firms Wyeth and Chiron, who produce the two main meningitis products being used on children in Britain: Meningitec and Meninjugate. Darbyshire is professor of epidemiology at London University and director of the Medical Research Council. “DoH officials also confirmed that three members of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation had declared interests in vaccine manufacturers. “One of them, Dr David Goldblatt of the Institute of Child Health, has served on an expert advisory panel for Wyeth and received research grants from Wyeth and North American Vaccines, which produces a third meningitis C drug to be introduced this year. Another, Professor Keith Cartwright of the University of Bristol, received funding from the drug industry to ‘evaluate candidate meningicoccal vaccines’. “Exposure of the links between the advisers and drugs firms came as the Government’s Chief Medical Officer reacted strongly to last week’s Observer story of how information on possible adverse reactions to the vaccine was kept from parents. In a letter to The Observer, published today, Professor Liam Donaldson insists information on reactions to vaccinations is sent, on request, to members of the public, health professionals or MPs by the Medicines Control Agency. ‘There is not, and never has been, a “cover-up” over releasing information about reported deaths or suspected adverse reactions following meningitis C vaccine,’ he said. “This week every GP in the country will receive a statement from the chairs of the two committees, assuring them of the safety of the meningitis C vaccine. The statement, from Professor Alasdair Breckenridge of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, and Professor Michael Langman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, updates infor44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

mation made public by The Observer last weekend about bad reactions to the new vaccine reported by GPs and nurses. It says there have been 16,527 reported adverse reactions from 7,742 patients, and 12 deaths. It reiterates that none of the deaths reported by GPs was found to be connected to the vaccine. “The statement ends: ‘The balance of risk and benefit is overwhelmingly favourable. There is no suggestion that this vaccine has led to any deaths. We strongly recommend that those due for vaccination should receive meningitis C vaccine.’ “Latest figures show that more than 15 million doses of the meningitis C vaccine have been give to children and teenagers in the past 10 months. “Statistics from the Public Health Laboratory Service show that, in the 15-to-17-year-old group, in the last 12 weeks only six cases of meningitis were reported, compared with 26 in the same period last year. And in children under one year old, there was only one case reported in this period, compared with 19 in 1999. “Incidences of meningitis continue to rise in those who have not been vaccinated. “Despite assurances that information on possible adverse reactions to the vaccine is freely available, parents calling the Medicines Control Agency told The Observer they were still being refused the data. “In north Somerset, one mother of a 13-year-old was told ‘it wasn’t necessary’ for her to have that information. “ ‘My son is about to have his vaccination and, after reading last week’s Observer that figures on adverse reactions existed, I wanted to see them. I believe I have a right as a mother to have all the information to hand when I make a decision,’ she said. She said the agency employee had told her: ‘Stories like this should really be taken cum grano salis – that’s a pinch of salt in English, madam.’ “Another caller was told that the MCA did not have the information and referred her to her doctor. A third caller eventually managed to get a copy of the letter sent to GPs. “The figures collated by the agency are based on the ‘yellow card reporting scheme’. This seeks reports of suspected adverse reactions to drugs from health professionals. They are requested to submit reports of reactions whether or not it is clear that a drug or vaccine caused it. The 12 deaths reported under this scheme may be an underestimation, since only around 15 per cent of GPs and healthcare professionals use the yellow card scheme. The Department of Health believes that the reporting rate is higher where a new drug is involved. “The Liberal Democrat consumer affairs spokesman, Norman Baker, has tabled parliamentary questions about the financial interests of members of Department of Health advisory committees. He said last night: ‘This is a question of propriety. There must be enough independent people around to give advice without turning to those who clearly have a conflict of interests. I am not questioning their academic credentials, but with the best will in the world their judgments must be looked at in that context.’ “Tory Health spokesman Liam Fox, a GP, said the Government must reassure the public. “The Secretary of State authorised the licence for the Wyeth vaccine, Meningitec, when the mass immunisation programme began last November, on advice from the Committee on

Safety of Medicines. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation also recommended the vaccine. “Wyeth spokesman Don Barrett said the amount of money paid to the academic departments of government committee members was confidential. Chiron, whose vaccine was introduced in April, stands to make $200 million from the NHS deal. “Last night the National Meningitis Trust, sponsored by Wyeth, was drawn into the controversy when it refused to disclose how much money it received from the giant drug company. In a statement, Chief Executive Philip Kirby said: ‘We would refute in the strongest possible terms the suggestion that any information we provide is anything other than totally objective and the best available.’ ”

ascinating stuff, especially when you remember that Chiron is the manufacturer of the MeNZB vaccine used in New Zealand to combat meningitis. There can be no doubts of the links between the British organization and the New Zealand Meningitis Trust either – the NZ phone 0800 phone number diverts to the London office at various times of the day, and the NZ website refers to its parent organization in Britain. What about Fiona Colbert? According to one interview, “Fiona Colbert’s vision for establishing the Meningitis Trust in New Zealand was to see a country free from infectious diseases that cause meningitis and septicemia. “These diseases”, Colbert states, “recognize no boundaries and randomly attack the vulnerable and equally strong for no apparent reason.” With her medical background as a nurse and midwife and her strong commitment to this compelling cause, Colbert has been instrumental in driving PCV7 introduction policy forward in New Zealand. She currently serves as General Manager to Meningitis Trust and in 2005, became the Secretary for the Confederation of Meningitis Organizations.” Colbert gave an interview to PneumoADIP – an offshoot of the vaccine industry-funded GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation), where she was asked: “Briefly tell us about the Meningitis Trust and its organizational structure and function. What was its role in facilitating the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s decision to introduce PCV7 (Prevenar) nationwide?” “The Meningitis Trust was formed in 2001 as a response to the demand for education and support due to the meningococcal B epidemic that had been ongoing since 1991. With financial and practical support from the Meningitis Trust in the UK, the NZ Meningitis Trust was immediately able to supply quality educational and support materials. Also very quickly we were able to ascertain relevant service to best support those affected by meningitis and meningococcal disease. With the introduction of the MeNZB™ vaccine in 2004 we have supported the Ministry of Health with this initiative to combat an insidious disease. In early 2006 with the evident success of the MeNZB™ vaccine campaign we decided that it was timely to campaign for the pneumococcal vaccine to also be included in the immunization schedule. We embarked on a meningitis campaign to raise awareness on pneumococcal meningitis. This was supported by a number of families and individuals whose lives have been tragically affected by pneumococcal meningitis.” In other words, for all of its “independence”, the Meningitis

Trust may as well be a sub-unit of the Ministry of Health and the vaccine industry. The confidential MoH email obtained by Investigate is also good enough to reveal how the Ministry intends selling the new immunization campaign to the public. Based on the focus groups, they are asking GPs and health professionals to change the words they use regarding immunization, and talk about “expected reactions rather than side effects/AEFIs (adverse events)”. As Hilary Butler argues, this change in terminology appears designed to “normalize” expectations of vaccine reactions in the minds of mothers. The MoH memo urges doctors to start talking publicly about “serious pneumococcal disease – which can lead to blood poisoning, meningitis and pneumonia”, and “Key messages should be a combination of the value/importance of immunization and the new PCV7 (Prevenar) vaccine.” In a bid to boost public fear of the disease, medics are told they need to “move away from saying ‘high risk of [pneumococcal] disease in Maori and Pacific’ as this may lead to complacency in other populations, eg low risk = no risk, therefore no vaccination”. The memo lists strongly pro-immunisation paediatricians who can be used to front media interviews about the need for the new Prevenar shots. It’s not as if vaccines have been getting a great press lately. The compulsory rollout of the Gardasil vaccine across the United States to combat cervical cancer has backfired, with more than a dozen deaths in children as young as 12 within hours of being given the vaccine, and thousands more official adverse events (or “expected reactions” in the new terminology being introduced in New Zealand) being logged on federal registers. And here in New Zealand doctors and health clinics cannot escape the endless promotions from vaccine manufacturers. Glaxo Smith Kline, for example, recently sent a “Big Bad Bug Box” to every GP in New Zealand, urging them to sell the new rotavirus vaccine to the public at $80 plus GST per dose. Never heard of rotavirus? Well according to the contents of the Big Bad Bug Box it’s “the main cause of severe gastrointestinal illness in children worldwide”. The initial infection appears to be the most severe, notes GSK, and immunity develops within the first two or three years of life so that by the time we’re adults most of these tummy bugs don’t really affect us. GSK is offering to cut the waiting time and the whole natural immunity process by convincing parents they should immunize their kids against rotavirus at the same time as they get shots for the other eight major diseases. Included in the pack for doctors is a children’s story book designed, presumably, to be left on waiting room tables for stressed out parents to read to their kids, who will then storm into the surgery demanding immediate immunization because their children are terrified of “The Big Bad Bug”. All’s fair in love and war, but when it comes to vaccines, it helps to know who’s been chewing your doctor’s ear and who’s being funded by a vaccine manufacturer to do media interviews promoting the campaigns. As always, there are many cases where immunization may be appropriate, particularly in high risk areas or among high risk groups, but, Hilary Butler argues, the key issue for parents is informed consent, not PR spin. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 45

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Drafted

A New Zealander’s Call-up To War No New Zealander under the age of 65 has ever been compelled to go to war in defence of their country – except for those with dual citizenship. TODD SYMONS covers the story of a Kiwi forced to fight in last year’s Israel/Hizbollah war INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 47

econds after Stefan Silver switched on the television news one July morning last year, he knew his life was about to change. Up until then his compulsory service in the Israeli Defence Force had been routine. He had just returned from eight months patrolling the northern border, but suddenly the boy who grew up in Blockhouse Bay found himself being sent to war. “I didn’t wait. I just went and packed my bags and waited for my officer to call me. We spent the weekend at the base, getting ready, preparing for real … war.” Israel and Lebanon were at war for 34 days of July and August 2006. During this time Kiwi-born Silver was on the frontlines, commanding over 100 men in a war that left more than 1000 dead. Although the earnest 22-year-old’s service with the Israeli army is now complete, tensions�� are rising in the region, which means Silver could be called back to war at any time. Fifteen years after his family emigrated to Israel, Silver returned to New Zealand in August to spend time with friends and family and to share his experience of war. While many New Zealanders will never fight for their country, this tall, tanned young man has a maturity about him that could only come from his time at war. Just after his 18th birthday in 2002, Silver received a letter informing him that he had been called to his mandatory military service for three years. Serving in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is compulsory for both men and women in Israel. Men have to give up three years to serve in the IDF and women have to give up two. Silver calls being an 18-year-old in Israel a weird experience. He says just as you start to get some independence, being able to drive and buy alcohol, all of sudden you go into an environment of dictated control. “It’s quite difficult in the first four months, they kind of take away your identity. Everybody gets the same treatment, the same clothing, you all look the same – it’s uni everything.” Silver began as a private and quickly progressed his way through the ranks of the engineering corp. After a year he was selected to begin officers training which meant he would have to spend an extra year in the army. Three years after he began his service he held the rank of Lieutenant and by the time the war began, he was Deputy Company Commander. In three years and eight months of service, Silver had never fired his gun outside the rifle range. And then the war began. Silver’s first battle was in a town called Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. This was a battle in which many Israeli soldiers died. Up until that point he had never been shot at. “It was very scary. Every step I took, every inch I moved forward, I had these thought in the back of my head. Is this going to be my last? Is there a charge where I am stepping? Is there a sniper who has his cross on me?” Being in the line of fire is not an easy thing to deal with as a 22-year-old. Silver says you just don’t think about it. “All you can think about is what you have to do and the best way you can do it to serve your county.” Although he wasn’t born in Israel, he describes himself as extremely patriotic to the country he now calls home. Patriotic to the point that he says he would have been willing to give up his life if he needed to. Despite this he says that when he was at war he knew he was going to 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

survive. “Even though I was very scared, I knew deep down, in the deepest part of me that I was going to be okay. I knew God was protecting me and that nothing would happen.” It was an experience with God that caused Silver’s father, David, to uproot his family from Auckland in 1992. “God spoke to me seven times in a week,” he says. “Not in an audible voice, but in various ways and I knew he was telling me to move to Israel.” David is a Christian Jew, so shifting to Israel was almost like a home coming for the Kiwi-born car salesman turned preacher. “It was a difficult time,” says Silver, as he recalls the family’s shift. “We came from New Zealand which was very nice. My dad had a good job, we had a brand new house and I had my own room. Then suddenly we were in an immigrant absorption centre, in a house with two rooms and a kitchen, where the sofas in the living room doubled as beds for me and my brother.” Silver noticed the cultural differences immediately, but it hit him most when he began school. After only a month in the country he started at an Israeli public school. “I didn’t know a word of Hebrew and that was a big challenge. It was pretty lonely as I didn’t have any friends to start with.” David Silver says the area they lived in initially was full of immigrants which made it particularly hard for his son. “There were a lot of Russian and Romanians who could be particularly nasty. Stefan didn’t enjoy his first few years at school.” Within a year of arriving Silver was fluent in Hebrew. He says the language was fairly easy to learn for him and his younger brother Jordan, but much harder for his parents. “Even now when they speak it you can tell they are not Israeli.” At home Silver and Jordan speak Hebrew to each other, but with their parents, it is always English. It’s now 15 years since the Silver family left New Zealand. Despite this, Silver still has a Kiwi accent. “I don’t know how I kept it,” he says. “I guess I was in school in New Zealand long enough that it hasn’t faded.” There is one thing Silver loves to do when he spends time here. He has a soft spot for golf and says that in Israel the sport is not that big. “There are only two golf courses in the country and it is a sport reserved for the rich.” But it wasn’t only golf that brought Silver back to New Zealand in August. He came with his father to speak at churches about his experience of war. Silver’s faith in God is strong. He is staunchly Jewish, but also Christian. He says being Christian is not really an issue in the predominantly Jewish nation. “We are called Messianic Jews. Some people see it as strange, but most are pretty accepting.” Silver believes God protected both him and the company of men he commanded during the war. “I don’t know of another unit of 100 men that was in the battles we were in and served in the war as long as we did and didn’t have anyone injured, let alone killed.” Although none of his men died, Silver saw men from other units die. He says it was extremely hard seeing young men, only 18 or 19, being sent home wrapped up in white sheets. The idea of going to war is not an easy thing for anyone. Because of its history, Israel is a nation of great significance for any Christian or Jew. Silver says the fact he was fighting for Israel made it seem even more important. “Beyond the patriotism and the worldly aspects, there was a spiritual side for me going to war.”

Returning from Lebanon; Stefan is in front right

Briefing officers from the Herodion Mountain by Bethlehem in 2005

In NZ at Piha with girlfriend Keren

In France

He says the idea some people have that a Christian can’t go war, because Jesus said turn the other cheek and love your enemies, is ludicrous. “If a robber, a rapist or a murderer broke into your house in the middle of the night and was doing something to your mother, your brother, your sister or your father, then would you stand back and turn the other cheek? I don’t think so.” Silver seems at ease talking about details of the war and his faith but when the topic of Hizbollah comes up he seems somewhat defensive. “They are terrorists,” he says definitively. Hizbollah is a militant organisation in Lebanon. Under the UN resolution which ended the war they were meant to disarm, but that has failed to happen. In August the BBC reported that Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was promising that if Israel attacked Lebanon again, he was “reserving a surprise that will change the fate of the war and the region”. Hizbollah also has a political arm, which likes to promote the fact they build schools and help out the community. Silver says although it may look good, Hizbollah building schools, but when you look at what is taught in the schools, their agenda is obvious. “They are trying to embed hatred towards Israel and the western world into children. It is written in their text books that Jews are pigs and Christians are monkeys and that they all need either to convert to Islam or die.” Living in a country constantly standing in the shadow of war means Silver could be called back to war at any time. “I am in the reserves, so I get called in for three weeks each year and if

there is a war I will get called back immediately.” But would he be happy to return? “I wouldn’t say I would happily go back, but I realise the importance of it,” he says. Silver’s Israeli girlfriend Keren Seguin says leaving the army was almost as big of a challenge as going in for him. “He was really high up and in charge of a lot of men and all of sudden he was nothing. It’s like finding your identity again.” Silver says it is hard coming out of a system where everything you need is taken care of and going home where you have to look out for yourself. “You have to get a job and start making money. Most people need to break loose and find their freedom before settling down.” Silver now works part time as his dad’s office administrator and also as an English teacher in a private institute in Mt Carmel, Israel. He is about to start university, studying management and economics. He is unsure of what he wants to do in the future, but is pretty certain his future is in Israel. Despite this, in many ways, Silver seems like a typical Kiwi young adult. Sure he may have fought in a war for Israel, but he still loves to eat sausage rolls covered in tomato sauce. He considers himself to be an Israeli-Kiwi. “I’ve lived most of my life in Israel so I am Israeli, but I will always be a Kiwi as well.” He even has the word Kiwi in his email address. Silver and his younger brother Jordan loved to play war games when they were young. “What kid doesn’t,” he says. The only difference for them, was that once they moved to Israel, they realised that one day, they actually had to do it for real. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 49

INTERVIEW

Eat More Fat?

the man who believes we need more fat in our diets

Can fat actually be good for you? With growing obesity levels and increasing food obsessions in the West, Melody Towns investigates the fat controversy by speaking to the fat guru himself, and author of Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus

INVESTIGATE: There are obviously many issues surrounding fats and diet in the West today. From too much to too little, what do you think is wrong with our obsession with food? ERASMUS: To summarise all the issues on fats and diet in the West, you can basically put the problems down to two main things. Convenience and shelf life. As a society we want it now and we want it to last so that when we choose to eat it, all we have to do is open the packet. By raising the standards for convenience and shelf life, the standards on health have to be lowered. Although there is a need for convenience and shelf life, health should always be the priority, and health should take precedence over keepability. Most of the health problems usually blamed on fats should be blamed on the destructive processing of fats, normally used to obtain longer shelf life and greater convenience for manufacturers and consumers. In terms of the growing levels of obesity in the West, fat is not a fat issue; it’s a carbohydrate issue. Years ago we were all told that the best food advice to follow was the advice from government agencies and primarily the American food pyramid. We were all told to eat mostly carbohydrates and least of all fats. That was bad advice. As a result of this highly-followed food pyramid, obesity doubled, childhood obesity tripled mainly because it was taught in schools, diabetes doubled

and 65% of people in North America alone are overweight. The American food pyramid focused on carbohydrates as the main source of food therefore starting a cycle of bad fat production. It’s a carbohydrate issue because if you eat more carbohydrates than you need, which the majority of the population does, then your body turns on fat production and turns off fat burning. This is the beginning of a cycle that then puts your blood sugar levels up, leading to more cravings in which your will power goes out the window, you succumb and eat something like a doughnut or whatever, and then the cycle starts all over again. Carbohydrates are not bad, what’s bad is the amount of carbohydrate that you don’t burn. When you eat carbohydrates you either burn them or you wear them! It’s not only starches that will be turned into saturated fats by our body if we don’t burn them but it’s also sugar, sweets and even fruit if it’s eaten in excess. By trying to get your carbohydrates from green vegetables instead of breakfast cereals, bread, potatoes, pasta, grains and even corn, you can lower your carbohydrate input without compromising on energy. The only way to completely cure the growing obesity epidemic is to make that shift away from carbohydrates to good fats. INVESTIGATE: So how do we make that shift without being obsessive and can fat ever be good? There are so many

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low carbohydrate diets including the very recognised Atkins diet that has been criticized for compromising health because of their lack of carbohydrates and high levels of fats? ERASMUS: Atkins was highly criticized however he was right about one thing, carbohydrates. Where he didn’t get it right was with the fats. Atkins didn’t go to the same extreme as I have by focusing on the good fats, he only went straight to the junk fats. There is a huge difference between good and bad fats, and the health effects of eating a diet with high levels of bad fats can be disastrous. Frying food has been associated now for years with the hardening of the arteries, cancer and inflammatory diseases. Yet the majority of the population still fries their food. Even if you are using recommended oils, like Olive Oil, you can still harm your health, as it’s the burning of food that can create toxic poisons in our bodies. So it doesn’t matter if you are making a conscientious effort to use good oils to fry with, any type of frying, sautéing and especially deep frying can harm your health as once the oil starts smoking and the chemistry changes in that oil, then you are literally cooking your food in a slow poison. Even wok frying, which is widely thought of as a healthier option has been proven to produce a higher rate of lung cancer, just by breathing in the changed molecules from the smoke. Basically, anything that you turn brown is toxic. So by overheating the oil to do your frying you are creating a toxic lubrication on your pan. Now there are many oils that we are being told are good for us, but it’s simply not true. Any oil that you overheat, no matter what it is will turn toxic. So you not only need to stay away from the margarines and the hydrogenated fats but you need to not fry your food. Instead try steaming or dry frying your food in water. Junk fats, as what has been used in diets such as Atkins, are extremely toxic to our bodies. Hydrogenation, which is used to turn oils into margarine, shortening, or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, produces trans- fatty acids, which are twisted molecules. Twisted, their shape changes, and they lose their health benefits and acquire toxicity instead. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, trans-fatty acids double risk of heart attack, kill at least 30,000 Americans every year, and increase diabetes. Other research shows that they interfere with vision in children, lower intelligence, interfere with liver detoxification, make platelets more sticky, correlate with increased prostate and breast cancers, interfere with insulin function, and in animals interfere with reproduction. But that’s not to say all fats are bad for us. There are actually good fats, that our bodies do need. Saturated fats or hard fats like butter, dairy fats, pork, beef, and lamb fats, and tropical fats are natural. All foods contain some. The body uses them for energy and in cells and tissues. These fats cause problems only if we do not get enough Essential Fatty Acids in our diet. INVESTIGATE: What are essential fatty acids or good fats and how and where do we get them? Once we do eat them regularly can we reverse the toxic effects of bad fats in our bodies? ERASMUS: What I did that is different to Atkins is to focus in on the fats, but the good fats and not the junk fats. Good fats can be used as fuel instead of carbohydrates therefore reversing the cycle that is caused by recommendations from the American food pyramid that is literally causing obesity. By using good fats as fuel, the cycle begins by turning on fat burn52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

ing and turning off fat production. Therefore you not only have more stamina and your appetite is suppressed but the benefits of eating good fats are quite simply amazing. Essential Fatty Acids or EFAs have the opposite effects in our bodies. Like I mentioned before, if you are eating enough EFAs then the saturated fat that you eat can actually be good for you. Saturated fat if eaten without enough essential fatty acids, can not only increase insulin resistance leading to diabetes but make palates more sticky leading to clogs in our arteries. Yet by optimizing our EFAs we can make our palettes less sticky, therefore decreasing the risk of clogged arteries and decreasing our insulin resistance. The only way to balance saturated fats is to make sure that we are always having our maximum amount of Essential Fatty Acids. You have to make sure that your intake of EFAs is always winning the competition with saturated fats. Essential Fatty Acids or EFAs are essential to our health yet our body cannot make them. They are required not only for your health and your life but for the normal function of every cell, tissue, gland and organ that you have. Taken through food or supplements, Essential Fatty Acids are as their name suggests essential and without them our bodies progressively deteriorate eventually leading to death. And because they can only be found in fats, many people who avoid fats, more specifically good fats, are EFA deficient yet if you reintroduce essential fatty acids back into the body you can actually reverse the deficiency and return to a normal state of health. There are two essential types of fatty acids. One is omega 3 and the other is omega 6. The best-known food sources to find these fats are in high fat, cold-water fish. Omega 6 can also be found in evening primrose oil, mother’s milk and in meat, eggs, dairy products and seafood. My book, Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill provides a more comprehensive overview of how they work, but basically by introducing EFAs into your diet you can revolutionize your health. The best and richest source to find omega 3 is in flaxseed oil while omega 6 can also be found in sunflower and sesame seeds. What I have done is combined these Essential Fatty Acids into an oil blend so that you can cut the confusion and make sure you are getting the correct amount. It contains the correct balance of EFAs and the benefits of taking this good fat are numerous. For instance we have seen energy levels in athletes go up 40 to 60%. That is just amazing. If you think about it, that percentage could be the difference in whether or not an athlete leaves an event with a gold medal! Athletes that took EFAs in a study done in Denmark could not only exercise longer before reaching exhaustion but recovered more quickly from fatigue, could exercise more often without over-training, healed quicker from injuries, built muscle faster, and had less joint pain. Not only do EFAs improve energy in athletes but an energy increase has also been seen in non-athletes and older people. Add this to an increase in metal stamina and a better mood, and people’s lives can literally be changed. Not only does your skin improve once you correct your amount of EFAs but also moisture is increased in hair and nails, sleep improves and stress decreases. The effects are huge ranging from a decrease in cardiovascular disease, allergies, autoimmune conditions and reducing the risk of cancer. In fact

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“Some people are only eating 10% fats. The Pritkin diet went down to 7% fats that resulted in an impaired immune function, impaired level digestion and leaky gut. What you need to do is get the right amount of good fats instead” we have even seen cancer regress with the combination of EFAs and getting rid of all junk fats including frying. An increase in Omega 3 has been proven to improve every degenerative condition of our time; but taking a fish oil capsule is not enough. Fish oil is often damaged and contains toxins, which is why we recommend flaxseed oil. Because flax seed is five times more stable it creates a fantastic foundation for building upon with our other Essential Fatty Acids. INVESTIGATE: What about diets that limit fat completely, or use a very low fat ratio? There is such a huge market for low fat food but how much fat are we actually meant to be eating to maintain our health? ERASMUS: I have a huge objection to low fat diets because we need some fats to live and to be healthy. Eating good fats is 54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

just as important as ensuring you eat an adequate mineral, vitamin and protein intake. If you remove all the fat from the diet, then you have nowhere to get the good fats from. If you don’t get enough good fats, then basically your body is going to gradually deteriorate and fall apart. As I mentioned before no cell, tissue, gland or organ can function without them. Therefore people that limit their fats to very small amounts or in some cases virtually cut them out completely can suffer from a whole range of problems including dry skin, constipation, low energy levels, brittle hair and hair loss, poor nail growth and ironically an increase in their risk of being overweight. There is stunted growth in children, reproductive failure, nerve deterioration, learning difficulties, insulin resistance and the list just goes on and on. Everything we hear in the media is about avoiding fats, but it’s actually the avoidance of good fats that is leading to many serious health issues. Some people are only eating 10% fats. The Pritkin diet went down to 7% fats that resulted in an impaired immune function, impaired level digestion and leaky gut. What you need to do is get the right amount of good fats instead. It has to be the right amount of fat and the right kind of fat that is rich in essential fatty acids. We say 15% of calories from good fats are a minimum and 10% may be too low. But the quality of fats you eat is much more important than the quantity. In fact if you ate only good fats your fat intake could be as high as 60% of calories from fat like the Eskimos do. And now Eskimos don’t die from clots in arteries, diabetes or cancer. INVESTIGATE: There are so many different diets to follow these days. From raw food diets, to diets that just focus in on one food group. Do you think that we need to stop obsessing about our food and instead look for more of a balanced dietary intake? ERASMUS: I would advise to try and live along the same lines as nature. Yet so many people have such different interpretations of what natural is and means. From eating only raw food to more grains, to more proteins, everyone is different. Various people need different diets. Of course athletes may need a different diet to a more sedentary person. I have developed three food pyramids based on this so that each person can try and eat in line with nature, while maximising their good fat intake and minimising their carbohydrate intake. Basically my food pyramids are based around the same triangle shape with greens and non starchy vegetables being the greatest food source, followed by good fats and proteins found in seeds, fatty fish and nuts, then fuel from carbohydrates, fats and fruits, and finally white foods and burnt foods at the very top. (To see the pyramids in more detail go to http://udoerasmus.com/pyramid/pyr_index.htm). Eating whole, fresh, organic foods is always going to be your best option. In nature all foods are unprocessed, and that is where the optimum nutrition is. That’s what the animals eat, unprocessed foods, except to the extent that we pollute everything. That’s what the natural state is and health is the natural state. Every step you take away from the natural is a step closer to disease. I look at it like this, the higher you set you food standards, the more effort it is going to take but the higher standard of life is what you are going to achieve. Likewise if you set low food standards, you’re going to get minimum fuss but also a low level of health. It’s always better to try and set high standards no matter what you do.

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feeling 10 ways to wake up

TIRED?

Sleep deprivation is driving us bananas, reports Liz Stevens, but now the experts have a 10-step plan to improve your lifestyle

f you are not a tired person, read no further. If you are a tired person, you’re not going to like the dreaded phrase coming next: Lifestyle change. Sorry, somebody had to say it. A lifestyle change is the only way you’re going to get more sleep. It might be a small lifestyle change (cutting out The Late Late Show) or it might be a big lifestyle change (cutting out the 750ml Cokes). But if you count yourself among the 53 percent of people who regularly wish for a pillow and dark corner to crawl into during midafternoon, the sleep doctors say you need to do something different. Easier prescribed than done, of course. But the quantity and quality of our sleep affects everything, research shows, from how often we get sick to how much we weigh to how nice we are to other drivers. “Everybody I know is tired,” says Angie Shepherd, a mother of two. “We all just walk around in a stupor. It’s pitiful.” There is hope. And today we present it in the form of 10 ways to wake up from that walking coma. Once you’ve made friends with your pillow again, say the experts, you may view sleep the same way you currently view a double espresso: indispensable.

Eight hours or bust. It’s fairly obvious to say that most of us are tired because we don’t sleep enough. But just how much sleep do we need? The answer varies, but the vast majority of adults require seven to nine hours a night to stay healthy, happy and alert. Surveys by the US National Sleep Foundation, or NSF, show that sleep complaints have worsened over the past decade and, as of 2002, Americans averaged 6.9 hours of sleep a night. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed experience symptoms of insomnia (trouble falling asleep or trouble staying asleep) a few nights a week or more. In reality, a third of us “try to get by on six hours of sleep a night,” says Dr. Philip Becker, medical director of the Sleep Medicine Institute at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. “We are 56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

currently functioning on adrenaline, and this is going to have potential long-term health effects.” On adrenaline? Yep. Too little sleep stresses the body and activates the well-known “fight or flight” reflex in humans. The adrenal system switches on and puts the major organs into alarm mode: Blood pressure rises, lungs expand, and blood is diverted to the muscles, all in preparation for major physical exertion. “Which is exactly the way it should be if there’s a freight train bearing down on you,” says former sleep researcher Dr. Suzanne Griffin, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center. “But not the way you want to go through life.” A chronic lack of sleep means that adrenaline levels remain high, which, in turn, causes further sleep disruption, among other things. A scientific study in New Zealand, published in the British Medical Journal in 2002, has become an international standard on the effects of drowsiness on road traffic crashes. The study found up to one in four drivers on the roads are fatigued, and face an increased risk of a crash between eight and 11 times higher than the other drivers on the road. In the US, New Jersey has just passed the first state law against driving drowsy). Tired workers result in US$18 billion in lost productivity for the U.S. economy, according to the NSF’s calculations. Solution: Make sleep a priority. For Griffin, sleeping well is part and parcel of a slower, saner lifestyle. “Perhaps we need to step back and do less and live more and enjoy what we’re doing more . . . including enjoying sleeping.”

Deep breaths and bubble baths. Tired bodies are already physically stressed. Add to that the barrage of daily mental stressors: complicated relationships, bad customer service, the spectre of terrorism. Mental stress triggers the same biologic “fight or flight” response, putting that much more demand on our bodies. It’s exhilarating, er, exhausting.

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Actually, it’s both. “The first 24 hours after a person is sleep-deprived, the adrenaline burst may make them a bit more focused,” Griffin notes. “But if they continue to be sleep-deprived, all the data tells us they will become less and less effective, less and less productive and their anxiety will go up.” Which will no doubt keep them up at night. “I’m a worrier, so I don’t get much sleep,” says Shepherd. Shepherd worries about her kids’ homework assignments and making sure their gym shorts are washed. She worries, too, about oversleeping. “I’m lucky to get four or five hours” a night, she admits. Solution: Take a short break from a stressful environment. Ask for other people’s help. Postpone saying yes immediately to every request. These are good suggestions from Diane Sieg, a former emergency-room nurse and author of “Stop Living Life Like an Emergency: Rescue Strategies for the Overworked and Overwhelmed.” Build some time into your evenings to de-stress, she says. “Some people can just hit the pillow and turn it off, and those people are blessed. But I have to have a ritual winding-down period.” Sieg recommends deep breathing, or a warm bath. Ten minutes (or more) of quiet time can do wonders to prepare for a good night’s sleep.

An apple a day (hold the melted caramel, please). Here’s something you haven’t heard before: Our diet stinks. It’s not just our affection for fast food, super-sized portions and mega “big burp” sodas, says Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, author of “From Fatigued to Fantastic.” It’s also the fact that the processed foods we rely on have been sucked dry of so many nutrients. “We have a unique situation in this country,” Teitelbaum says, “and it’s called high-calorie malnutrition.” With the body running on so little fuel, it’s no wonder we’re sluggish. And then there are those familiar sugar cravings, triggered by a lack of sleep, Teitelbaum explains. Tired people have, as we know, decreased adrenal function and suppressed immune systems, both of which lead the body to crave sugar. Respondents to the sleep foundation’s survey report eating more when they haven’t gotten enough sleep. Solution: You don’t need us to tell you that cream donuts and french fries are not doing your body any good. Smaller, more frequent meals five times a day are better than fewer, big meals, says Jon Gordon, a restaurateur and author of “Become an Energy Addict.” Nuts, fruits, low-fat yogurt - even natural or low-sugar peanut butter - are better snacks than chips and candy. And there’s no excuse for skipping breakfast, stresses Gordon (who signs off his phone conversations with “Go get that energy!”). Hard-boil some eggs and cut up some fruit the night before, he suggests, and grab it on your way out the door.

Dread not the treadmill. The last thing most of us want to do when we’re tired is exercise. But we inevitably feel more energized and mentally sharper after we do it. That’s because exercise increases oxygen consumption and releases hormones that make us happier (i.e. less stressed). There’s always been anecdotal evidence that people who exer58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007

cise regularly sleep better, but only recently have studies proven a significant connection. “I’m always full of energy,” says Annette Perez. “People think I’m a freak.” But when Perez first appeared at David Dubail’s fitness center, she was sleeping so poorly that four workouts per week nearly killed her. Now she’s 25 kgs lighter and juggling her own accounting business - on top of working full time for an eye-care center. And she still gets her rest. Perez, the mother of a 17-year-old, will switch off the lights at 8:30 p.m. if she knows she has to fit in a 5 a.m. workout the next day. Another thing to consider: Obesity is a risk factor for sleep apnea, a potentially dangerous sleep disorder. Solution: Just do it. “All you need is a pair of shoes and a place to walk,” says Gordon. “If you can’t get 20 or 30 minutes in, just do 10.” Early-morning workouts can jump-start a day for some people. But for individuals with sleep problems, the sleep foundation recommends exercising after noon and at least three hours before bedtime. Less-fit individuals might even want to avoid exercising six hours before bedtime, according to sleep-disorders specialist Dr. Richard Simon.

Resist the quick fix. “I drink a lot of those energy drinks called Red Bull. I pop those like shots,” says 33 year old Terrence Edwards. The sleep/fitness/nutrition professionals are all in agreement about the negative nutritional value of caffeinated drinks and sugary pick-me-ups. In fact, caffeine and sugar are “loan sharks for energy,” says Teitelbaum. People tend to feel increased energy in the hour after they have ingested those things, but two to five hours later they tend to feel worse than they did originally. Over-the-counter medications are OK for occasional sleeplessness, says Dr. David Ostransky, medical director of a Sleep Clinic. But if the sleep problem has been ongoing “for more than several weeks,” he recommends that individuals begin exploring the underlying cause of their poor sleep with a health professional. Solution: You wouldn’t need the quick fix if you were getting enough sleep to begin with! Not that it’s a solution, but catching up on the weekends can be helpful, says Ostransky. “You should have a pretty regular sleep-wake cycle that you can abide by most of the time. But we all live our lives,” Ostransky notes. It would be silly to try and get to bed by 10 p.m. on Saturdays if that’s one of the rare evenings that you have to socialize. The most important thing is “to get the appropriate duration of sleep,” Ostransky says, and if that means sleeping in on the weekends, or sneaking in a nap, then fine.

Quit your job! (OK, just take a day off.) Work falls under the stress category, to be sure, but it’s also worthy of its own heading when it comes to sleep. That’s because Americans work more hours than people in any other industrialized nation. In 2002, an American study found people averaged 1,978 hours of work annually, compared with 1,942 in 1990. Forty percent of us work more than 50 hours a week. For tired people who can afford to cut back their hours or take

a less-stressful position, Griffin (who did so herself) encourages it. “We’re trying to cram more into our day,” she says, “and I think at the same time we’re not really living.”

Slow down the kids. “In general, when you have children, the total amount of time you have to sleep is markedly less,” Ostransky says. “The younger the children, the more impact it does have.” No offense to the precious kiddos, but you half-pints are wearing your parents out! Infants that wake every few hours, toddlers with nightmares, older children that still like to sleep in mum and dad’s bed. Sleeping is hard enough for parents, but then there’s also the drain of daytime activities: carpool, homework, debate club, rugby or soccer team, birthday parties, sibling squabbles, etc. A Harris Interactive survey found 44 percent of parents saying they wake up earlier than usual to prepare kids for school. Not to deter anyone planning to have kids, of course. But it’s stressful and time- (i.e. sleep-) consuming to be a parent. “When you’re dealing with a family and young kids, there’s always something to do,” says Kelvin LaFond, a 42-year-old firefighter and father of two kids, 8 and 10. For Vipha Phimphrachanh, a single mother of two, finding time to relax during the day means staying up later than she would if she were childless. “I work from 8:30 to 5:30, pick up my kids from my grandma’s house and help them with their homework,” she says. “Then there’s, of course, dinner and when I’m done putting them down to bed by 9 p.m. I want some time to myself.” Solution: The answer for David Kirkpatrick, a father of four (including 11-year-old triplets), was cutting back on afterschool activities. “Last year I coached my daughter’s and sons’ soccer teams,” he says. “It just went on and on.” Some experts have recommended no more than seven hours of after-school activities per week. Helping kids wind down in the evening by avoiding computer, television and phone use close to bedtime will probably help parents wind down, too.

Unplug your modem. Researchers are curious to know the role our 24-hour, high-tech, multimedia society plays in sleep deprivation. Anecdotally, it would seem like a big one: all-night grocery stores and restaurants; around-theclock cable television and Internet access; a global economy, notes Becker, that relies on markets 10 time zones away. “The human is poorly designed to try and work at night,” Becker says. “The internal biologic clock, the circadian rhythms, are at their very lowest ebb in the middle of the night. It’s not that you’re just getting sleepy, your whole body is trying to slow down. “You’re really intended to be in a quiet, dark, comfortable place at that time, so you can get your rest.” Solution: Ostranksy believes that individuals who are genetically more susceptible to sleep disorders are, indeed, “more prone to be affected by external influences.” But there are simple, “common-sense” solutions to unplugging from the modern world. “If you’re really having trouble falling asleep at night, you don’t need to be answering a lot of e-mails” right before bedtime and “watching `Terminator 3’ at 11 o’clock,” he says. Other suggestions include removing computers, televisions and other distractions from bedrooms, and making sure the room is sufficiently dark.

Call the doctor. There are more than 80 recognized sleep disorders, and huge numbers of us will suffer from them in our lifetimes. The most common, insomnia, has 30 potential causes, Ostransky says. People with sleep disorders generally don’t get enough deep sleep: the slow-wave sleep that rests the body and/or the rapideye-movement (REM) sleep that rests the brain. “And when you get shorted on either of those,” Ostranksy says, “you’re going to have daytime consequences.” Mental illness and sleep problems also go hand in hand. And for women, sleep deprivation is almost biologically built-in. A third of women report disturbed sleep during the first few days of their menstrual periods, and sleep problems accompany menopause, too, says Griffin. “One of the most common triggers for postpartum depression is sleep deprivation.” “Men have plenty of sleep problems,” she adds, “but they don’t have those.” Solution: To diagnose sleep disorders, Ostransky examines patients’ sleep history and orders a sleep study, which, from the description, sounds like something out of “Frankenstein.” The patient arrives at the sleep lab around 8 p.m. He or she is wired, strapped and miced. Tests monitoring brain waves, eye movement and chin-muscle tone tell medical staff which of the five stages of sleep the person is experiencing. A microphone measures snoring, a probe on the finger gauges oxygen levels and bands around the belly and chest note movement. A special device around the nose and mouth measure air intake, especially important for diagnosing sleep apnea, a disorder in which the muscles in the throat collapse during sleep, closing the airways. The test also watches for “arousals,” when a person goes from deep sleep to light sleep. “Arousals have the same consequence on your sleep as awakenings do,” Ostransky explains. The bottom line is that many sleep disorders are treatable, but finding out what’s keeping you awake at night is crucial.

Admit your denial. There are people who are simply loathe to say they’re tired. One colleague told me (and then quickly ducked for cover) that he thought being tired was a “woman thing.” Several women interviewed suggested that men equate being tired with being weak. Whatever the gender lines, there remains a “general sense that sleeping less makes you a more productive person, a more efficient person, a stronger person,” says Griffin. “People say, ‘I don’t need that much sleep. I can get by on six hours,’ “ notes Sieg. “I think they’re deluding themselves.” Griffin concurs. “Focus on the phrasing,” she adds. “They are ‘getting by.’ But also remember that in getting by they are running around with elevated levels of stress hormones, possibly on a more chronic basis, and we do know that there are health effects, not least among them are reduction in immunity. “Yeah, that’s getting by,” she adds, “but that’s not how I want to go through life. What’s so wonderful about getting by?” Solution: Be honest with yourself about how much sleep you need. Adjust your work schedule, start eating breakfast, or make up your mind, like Griffin did, “that my house is not going to be the nicest, neatest, prettiest, best-decorated home on the block.” You won’t be Martha Stewart. But you won’t be tired, either. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 59

thinkLIFE money

Thrifty’s list

Peter Hensley reviews the current spate of finance company collapses

oira came in, the phone glued to her ear, demanding to know where Jim had put the list. Jim looked dumbfounded and asked, “What list?” “The finance company ranking list, we received an updated one several days ago.” Their guest, Robyn, looked a little amused at the interaction between her life-long friends as she was over to check out the same list, it was just that she had never discussed her financial affairs with them before and did not know how to broach the topic. She had previously overheard Jim and another friend George talk about their investment adviser and how he published a sheet that rated both finance companies and capital notes on an A through

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E system. With the current goings on in the market place she was keen to get her hands on a copy. She took a deep breath and asked Jim if it was OK if she had a look at the list as she was nervous about some of her investments. Now Jim, who could never be described as shy, was more than helpful and said that Robyn could borrow the sheet as often as she liked, but it was also available from their adviser’s website as were all his newsletters. Robyn assumed that this information was password protected and asked Jim if he was comfortable giving her that information. He laughed and said that it was open to everyone and no login was required. This took Robyn a little by surprise as she had thought that it would be

a subscription service. Having said that, she was thrilled to be able to access the information as her accountant was pushing that she take a debenture with a particular company and she needed to source an independent opinion. Moira, having located the sheet eventually hung up the phone went back to the lounge to finish her coffee with their guest. She then related to Jim and Robyn who was on the phone and it turned out that it was another friend with the same accountant as Robyn. She too had been encouraged to invest in the same finance company and wanted to check the ranking sheet. Jim quickly snatched the sheet out of Moira’s hand as he was keen to identify the said company’s rating. It was an E. That was enough for Robyn, her money would not be going there, no matter how attractive the interest rate was. She did ask Jim what their adviser thought of the whole issue. Moira groaned and asked him to keep it short, something that Jim was not very good at. Jim stated that his adviser was not overly concerned. Obviously no-one can foretell the future, but it was apparent that he was definitely leaning towards the positive side for the economy. Robyn asked how this could be so, as more than several finance companies had recently headed south with close on a billion dollars of punters monies. Jim said that it was all a matter of perspective. He could not deny that a billion dollars was a lot of money in anyone’s viewpoint, however in the greater scheme of things, it’s not all doom and gloom. The investors caught in the carnage would receive a decent portion of their capital back once the receivers had completed their unenviable task. It should be acknowledged that the companies that had hit the wall could not all be counted as mainstream players. The business models they adopted suggested they were never going to be sustainable in the long term. They were deficit in either one or all of the following; share capital, management skills, directors’ ability, liquidity management, loan management, bad and impaired debt management. Mismanaging any one of these meant they were doomed from the start. The surprise was, that they failed when the economy was expanding. These failures generally occur when the economic cycle is slowing. Jim’s adviser suggests that the current issue affecting the market was not a credit

squeeze or crisis but a liquidity issue. Uninformed media commentators (and common sense) suggest that the recent period of credit market expansion would normally be followed by a credit contraction, however market indicators show quite clearly that the recent finance company collapses have not been accompanied by other market forces which suggest a change in the economic season. The media has been spooking the market without justification. They have unfortunately extrapolated unrelated blips in the economy. The media frenzy has fueled an environment of fear and highlighted the issue of investor confidence or rather a lack of confidence. Punters are unusually gun shy and nervous about their ability to discern the difference between quality finance company dentures. Managing liquidity is a vital cornerstone of operating a finance company. Mismanagement of cash flow can spell disaster and easily lead to its premature and unexpected demise. Robyn queried Jim and asked him to explain in layman’s terms what this meant. He went on to explain that when

companies borrow money from either a bank or the public, they then on-lend this money to others at a higher interest rate. In addition to finding suitable people to lend the money to, they also have to ensure they have enough cash on hand to pay debentures as they mature. This is called “matching a loan book to the debenture book”. Wise companies borrow long and lend short, meaning they have cash coming in from maturing loans at a faster rate than funds going out from maturing debentures. Borrowing short (from the public) and lending long is a recipe for disaster. Frightened investors can create havoc in the market place. In recent months Northern Rock in the UK, the 5th largest provider of mortgages, has experienced a run on their funds. The Bank of England has had to step in and provide reassurances for deposit holders. Similarly the Bank of Adelaide in Australia had to publicly deny rumours they were in fiscal difficulties. Without detracting from these significant market events, there are few collaborating events occurring to suggest that we are at a major turning point in the economic

cycle. Jim’s adviser believes that the current strength of the economy will see the system pull itself through, and the current level of fear should begin to evaporate. This is not to say that there won’t be any more finance companies collapses. There could be and they should be expected, it is a normal occurrence in the market place, Companies that mismanage their loan and / or debenture book, or are poorly managed or simply lack strategic direction will likely fall victim to a competitive market place which does not tolerate mediocre performance. Jim went on to explain to Robyn that their adviser strongly encourages investors to practice the law of diversification. He acknowledges that while he can reduce investment risk, he cannot eliminate it. Clients should be aware of their own risk tolerance level which is also known as the sleep easy factor. So, unless the liquidity crisis develops into a full blown credit crunch which could push the economy into the dark side, it should be acknowledged for what it is, an unfortunate part of the normal business cycle.

thinkLIFE education

What education? Amy Brooke analyses the intellectual wasteland for young New Zealanders

hat a leftwing bureaucracy has a monopoly control of education in this country is not a recent phenomenon. Its power grab has been part of the long war against the West to indoctrinate children, and to gain control of the directions of this and other Western democracies. For over 50 years, its ideologists have used every available means to retain a hugely important monopoly over the minds of the young, and so of adults emerging from the system. Give me a child until he is seven has been bettered by hand her to me right throughout childhood. The biggest canard of those manipulating the curricula is that they’re teaching our children how to think. Rather, they have progressively withdrawn

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as many as possible of the tools to achieve this. We are culpably naive if we do not take on board the fact that a Left bureaucracy has long been teaching our children what to think. As big a scandal is that successive, conservative governments have done nothing to remedy this, with the exception of former Education Minister, Merv Wellington. Hated by the establishment, virulently mocked by the well-controlled teacher unions, he was the last minister to try to rectify what was happening. Successive ministers have basically been under-informed individuals from various walks of life, effectively captured by their departments. Soft National Party thinking, for all its hype, at present offers lit-

tle hope in this area, already repudiating national standards of external assessment. The teaching of English is undoubtedly the most important subject in our schools. Competence in the area of thinking and writing well is the gateway to achieving in all others. Yet a university science professor laments failing scholarship candidates because their grasp of English, after all their years of schooling, is too poor for them to express what they know in scholarship examinations. Mathematics teachers express the same frustration at the white-anting of their students’ chances through inadequate language teaching, and unfair assessment systems designed to penalize the best students. Underground mutterings have long tes-

tified that many teacher trainees are not up to scratch. How can they be, when their English teachers, well-paid to teach the basic rules and skills of language usage, didn’t and don’t, have these themselves? In a brilliantly analytical Landfall article previously referred to, Dr Margaret Dalziel, Emeritus Professor of English at Otago University, was, as far back as 1961, hugely concerned that most of the English teachers she encountered knew no more about the correct use of the language than the pupils they were engaged to teach. Slovenly-spoken English graduates emerge from university, the very worst of them, as a senior English lecturer confided, going back into our schools, or to Japan, to “teach” the correct English they’ve never themselves learned. Dr Dalziel was gifted with that rare commodity among education theorists, common sense. A fine teacher and life-long friend of the internationally respected philosopher Karl Popper, she foresaw the next half-century’s disastrous education outcomes, introduced by the Department of Education with its new English syllabus, Language in the Primary School, appendixed by the syllabus of reading pre-published in 1953. Her concern stemmed from the fact that she recognised language as “the chief achievement and instrument of civilization”. As the shadows lengthen over our diminished civilization, we can see the actual promotion by educationists of the misuse and abuse of language, in both spoken and written language use. Given that Dr Dalziel was right in her assessment of the importance of language to maintain civilised standards, we can only conclude that the attack mounted on language teaching by this politburo is deliberate. So why should we be surprised at their promoting short-word answers in examinations, to spare students the rigours of attempting to write coherently, and their efforts to replace any remaining competence by allowing text message usage as a substitute for written English in schools? Contrast this with the aim of the preceding primary school syllabus, to achieve “fluent reading with clear enunciation, correct pronunciation, tone and inflection, and expression based upon intelligent comprehension of the subject matter; to cultivate a taste for an appreciation of good literature… to form the habit of reading good books…. [which} might well replace all other kinds of homework… to

“

Appointed Minister of Education by the 1936 Labour government, Dr Beeby and his school inspector appointees then minimised the importance of excellence in language use, grammar and spelling, dumbed down other specialized subjects, argued for the removal of external examinations and worked to remove excellent academic disciplines from the school curriculum

”

train the children in the correct and ready use of the mother tongue, both on speech and in writing.” The radicalised 1961 English syllabus was essentially an attack on promoting the best in writing, reading, speaking and thinking. This revolution of the Left produced the specious concept of “childcentred education” with phrases such as “teach the child, not the subject” underscoring a great deal of what followed, in particular the failure to state any aim specific and detailed enough to be of much use to the practising teacher. Instead, we find deliberately opaque statements such as the student (no longer a pupil) “will have some idea of… will show some understanding of…” and the concept that no teacher should feel obliged to adopt any systematic method of teaching, except, of course, in highly politicized areas such as sex education, ethnic, feminist, gender, environmental and other brainwashing issues where teachers fall into line, with parents compulsorily acquiescing. The history of education in this country falls into two main periods. Traditional education from the late 1870s had all primary students well-grounded in basic disciplines of reading and grammatical writing, some knowledge of English literature, English history and geography. Secondary schools offered mathematics, specialized sciences, history and English, with one or two foreign languages. The non-academically gifted were well-served by courses in technical, industrial and commercial skills. As a constant background, the prevailing Christian ethic expected individuals to exercise their consciences with respect to the virtues of honesty, truthfulness, courtesy, and respect.

The second period from 1937 until the present began with Dr Clarence Beeby of the New Education Fellowship convening a conference attended by disciples of John Dewey. This conference gave its blessing to the “progressive” system undermining traditional standards, and demonizing our debt to Britain as a colonial imposition. Appointed Minister of Education by the 1936 Labour government, Dr Beeby and his school inspector appointees then minimised the importance of excellence in language use, grammar and spelling, dumbed down other specialized subjects, argued for the removal of external examinations and worked to remove excellent academic disciplines from the school curriculum. Latin, the most useful of all of all the schools subjects I encountered as a tool for learning the hard work of thinking and analysis, now has its syllabus dumbed down to the point where its useful rigour has virtually disappeared. The “progressives’” retrograde theories were vigorously resisted by many fine, well-grounded teachers, principals, and inspectors. But as these retired or left the profession, the way was open for the nearly complete hijacking of what was once an education system worth respect. The result is the intellectual wasteland of the growing anti-culture around us, and of academically cheated New Zealanders. It will take another revolution, this time by parents, to even begin to reclaim what has been lost for so many. But first they must begin to take on board what has been happening. Time is running out. And who is capable of teaching so many under-taught teachers? www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds.co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/user/brookeonline/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 63

thinkLIFE education

Nonsense or revelation?

Len Restall critiques the direction shift suggested for education

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recent article by Catherine Woulfe in the Sunday Star-Times suggests that there should be a major departure from the cognitive nature of the education curriculum within the NZ school system to embrace metacognitive factors associated with learning by replacing the emphasis on knowledge learning with the teaching of students on how to hold a conversation or to ask for help rather than remember facts. This, if taken to an extreme could considerably affect the knowledge base for many students. It is the knowledge that provides the base for effective conversation and to ignore this would hardly improve conversation skills. Is this brainwave nonsense or is it a venture into the realms of speculative revelation? Whatever it is it needs to be extensively examined to see whether or not educational needs, primarily for the students, are being met. Certainly, metacognitive factors should be included more within the learning environment to improve learning outcomes, but not at the expense of cognitive ones. Cognition refers to the mental activities such as thinking, conceiving and reasoning, whereas metacognition refers to all the necessary actions that support or reinforce learning. These are many, including the evaluation and exhibiting of what one has learned, which could be developed during conversational activities within a lesson. Both cognitive and metacognitive processes are required for effective learning and it may be that only cognitive actions are emphasised as being important and thereby feature in most classrooms and revealing a lack of conversational skills and thereby causing an outcry against the present curriculum.

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This move should be contested strongly as it suggests that knowledge in its various forms is irrelevant, but being able to hold a conversation is more important. This writer contends that useful conversation depends and relies upon wisdom, knowledge and understanding. It does not suggest that no effort is spared within our learning environments to improve communication but the tools should be obtained from within the curriculum and its recognition of the two forms of intelligence such as intra-personal and interpersonal kinds. To only use one of these kinds of intelligence at the expense of other forms such as linguistic, logical, spatial-visual, and kinaesthetic or physical intelligence, as suggested by Howard Gardiner from Harvard University, would still leave a gap for many students in their cognitive development. It could be as inappropriate to have concentrated only on the literary-numeracy kind of intelligence activities, which has been familiar within our schools, as that of only concentrating on interpersonal intelligence. Fortunately there is some evidence to show that there is some movement away from the one form of intelligence. Some schools are doing this at present but may need to become a more regular practice. The backlash for poor conversational skills may be the reason to want to change

the present curriculum, or it may be that accountability issues regarding learning outcomes has caused a concern to change the present system. Certainly changes can be made within the current curriculum to include greater use of metacognitive activities without discarding knowledge learning. I would suggest that a closer look be made at whatever metacognitive activities could be used to improve conversational skills. One thing that may have been overlooked in this situation is that there are differences in individuality that enable certain types to be able to direct their energy outward towards other people and therefore could be very good conversationalists, whereas others may direct their energy inward towards ideas. This is a basic difference between introverts and extroverts. To expect each of these type to respond in the same or similar way would not be useful, but to identify what would be the best for each type. Individuality within education needs to be recognised much more, and to meet the various needs of individual differences. To sum up: it is both a nonsense and a revelation: for to depart from the long established curriculum for the sake of improving conversational skills would be nonsense, but the inclusion of metacognitve features within the learning environment would be a revelation. Dr Leonard Restall PhD, Educationalist

TO DISCOVER...

The only limit is the horizon. Test ride a Honda trail bike today at your local Honda Dealer, visit www.honda-motorcycles.co.nz, or call 0508 466326. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 65

BWH 1964

Endless possibilities, ultimate freedom

thinkLIFE science

HILADELPHIA – The shaggy-coated giant with the long, curved tusks has not walked the earth for thousands of years. Fundamental details about the woolly mammoth – in particular the reason it died out – remain a subject of debate. Now scientists say they’ve found a way to unlock key secrets of the big mammal by making use of a defining characteristic: its woolly fur. Hair shafts taken from 10 of the giant beasts yielded a surprising amount of undamaged genetic material, even from one specimen that had been sitting in a room-temperature museum exhibit for 200 years. The researchers, six of them from Pennsylvania State University, announced their findings in last month’s issue of the journal Science. Success in reading ancient DNA has become increasingly common recently, but most efforts have taken months, even years, to complete. The new research was unusually fast, thanks to a novel technology that took just a few days. This “pyrosequencing” technique had previously been used to read DNA from bone, but the authors say the hair DNA was far less prone to decay and contamination. And because it did not involve grinding up a tooth or cutting into a skeleton, obtaining it was less destructive to the animals’ remains. That fact already has drawn the interest of curators at natural history museums, who want to make their vast collections available for research while preserving them for the next generation of scientists. In theory, the new genetic techniques could answer countless questions about the origin of species, where they roamed, and why they died. “When you open up that box that DNA allows, the number of questions just grows and grows,” says Ted Daeschler, curator of vertebrate zoology at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. During the course of evolution, mam-

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Bringing back the mammoths

New DNA techniques have given scientists access to fresh data on woolly mammoths, writes Tom Avril

moths are believed to have split from their cousins, the elephants, about 6 million years ago, and migrated eventually to northern Asia and North America. Most died out about 11,000 years ago, though a few smaller populations hung on for a few thousand years more. The 10 mammoths in the new study were originally found buried in Siberian permafrost, ranging in age from 20,000 to 50,000 years old, and are housed in various collections in Russia and beyond. One sample was located on eBay, though the researchers bought it through traditional channels after Russian museum

curators assured them it was for sale by a legitimate fossil dealer. The Penn State team, which worked with Denmark’s Centre for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen, obtained two types of DNA from the mammoths. They got partial stretches of the more commonly known nuclear DNA – so named because it is found in the cell nucleus. And they read complete sequences of DNA from the ubiquitous cellular structures known as mitochondria, often called the power plants of the living cell. This latter type of DNA is increasingly used in forensics, as it remains rel-

Penn State University genomicists Webb Miller and Stephan C. Schuster, in front of the Roche / 454 Life Sciences' Genome Sequencer 20 System that was used to sequence mammoth mitochondrial DNA from the hair of 10 woolly mammoths atively intact in the bits of bone or hair that remain from the scene of a crime or mass disaster, says Max Houck, director of the Forensic Science Initiative at West Virginia University. It was used to help identify victims at the World Trade Center after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The DNA from human hair is in better condition than that from bone, Houck says. The same held true for the mammoths, says Penn State’s Stephan C. Schuster, who co-directed the research published last month. That’s because hair is made of a durable organic material called keratin, says

Schuster, an associate professor in the university’s Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics. “The hair material is like a biological plastic,” Schuster says. “The DNA is preserved in the plastic.” Hair can easily be washed of any contaminants, such as DNA from other organisms, says Denmark’s M. Thomas P. Gilbert, another of the authors. Bone, on the other hand, is porous, and it picks up contaminants almost like a sponge, the authors says. Contamination is a big issue in the small – and competitive – world of ancient-DNA

researchers. As scientists develop newer and faster techniques, they have been known to question each other’s ability to accurately decipher the genes of long ago. An ancient-DNA specialist not involved in the new paper, Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University in Ontario, says the methods described would be invaluable in studying animal populations. But he says the authors did not provide enough evidence that hair DNA is better than bone; the paper compares decay in the 10 hair samples with just one from bone. Penn State’s Webb Miller, one of the authors, acknowledged that more work remains to be done. And he is excited about doing it, hoping that further analysis might show why the woolly beasts became extinct. “Is there something we can learn from that about why elephants are alive and mammoths aren’t?” Miller says. Disease, climate and hunting all have been suggested as culprits. DNA might point the way to a fatal genetic defect. Or it might show researchers which populations are closely related, and thus which groups of animals could be linked to known influences from humans or climate changes. In the 1700s, when scientists first found enormous tusks and teeth in Siberia, they struggled to explain why an elephant would have strayed so far from the tropics. They came up with a biblical explanation: The animals were swept away by the flood in the book of Genesis. Later findings showed that the mammals were in fact a different species, which scientists now believe were about as close to elephants as humans are to chimpanzees.Hair from 20,000-year-old animals is hard to come by, but there is plenty of analysis waiting to be done on more recent creatures. The Academy of Natural Sciences, one of the world’s premier repositories of plant and animal specimens, has pelts and other preserved remains of 20,000 mammals stored in drawers. Many are from the 18th and 19th centuries, when gentlemen scientists collected such things from far afield. The specimens of mountain lions alone come from Florida, Alaska, Mexico and California, says curator Daeschler. Told of the museum’s interest, Penn State’s Miller says he’s ready to help. “Give us some hair,” he quipped. “We’ll try it.” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 67

thinkLIFE technology

Scan me

Ian Wishart puts the latest OCR package through its paces, and makes the paperless office come one step closer

egular readers of Investigate will know by now that I’ve developed an affinity for the stable of home/business software packages that have come on the market over the past 12 months from Mistral Software – local agents for the giant Nuance corporation. For those who are not aware, Nuance’s biggest claim to fame is the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software, which we reviewed at the start of the year. As I pointed out then, in many respects the software designers at Nuance have had to wait years for computer hardware grunty enough to run the programmes they desperately wanted to bring to market. That time arrived about 24 months ago, and the latest installment from Nuance is another must have – in this household anyway. It’s Omnipage Professional 16, a programme that uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert PDF files, scanned documents and even photographs of text, into editable, searchable Microsoft Word documents (or a range of other formats you can choose). Like Dragon, the OCR technology has been around for about a decade, but it has taken that long to get this good. Once upon a time, on a then state-of-the-art Pentium II (remember those?), you could scan a document for OCR (about 90 seconds per page for the scan) and then wait five to 15 minutes while the Pentium processor crunched the data and tried to deliver text within cooey of the original. As often as not, there would be errors every five or six words, such were the limits of the scanners

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“

Four columns of text plus photos? Not a problem! You could scan in this magazine spread and it would lay it out in Word the same way

and processors back then. Today, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. Over the past year we’ve bench-tested a range of Nuance products designed to make the work/life balance easier. Some of those products already included an earlier stripped-down version of Omnipage OCR. That version was already pretty good, but Omnipage 16 is twice as good again. We are getting down to an average of one error per page, which is far more accurate than your or my copy-typing, I’ll wager. On many pages, when the source document is clean, there are no errors at all.

”

The real stunner here however is not the accuracy, but the speed. With modern scanners taking about 15 seconds to scan a page, it takes only about 10 seconds to drag and drop the scanned page icon, via Nuance’s included PaperPort 11 document management hub (a major tour de force in its own right), into Omnipage Pro 16 and output it as a Microsoft Word document. As Nuance itself boasts, a 6,000 word, 20 page document would take nearly three hours for an average punter to copy-type, but Omnipage Pro 16 will process the same document in less than two minutes

with 99% character accuracy (we found the accuracy was actually closer to 99.9% – less than four character errors per page). For a magazine whose in-trays burst at the seams every morning with mail, Omnipage promises to be a godsend in helping eliminate the tree byproducts cluttering our desks. How much of a godsend, however, depends on how much effort you put into the process. I’m not big on manuals, especially those with technical jargon. Omnipage comes with a 100 page mini-manual, which is a clue that there are many more things it can do than you necessarily suspect. I was able to skim the manual during the time it took to load the software, but it is a trifle jargonized. Intuitively, however, just like the Dragon software, Omnipage is also pretty easy to drive straight out of the box, simply by taking the time to peruse the various options available from the drop-down menus. If you can navigate a Microsoft Office product, you can

use Omnipage 16. The key to getting the most out of it, however, does lie in taking time to set it up properly, and I recommend a good three hours on a night or weekend to give yourself time to play and plan. Workflow templates, for example, allow you to preprogramme the software to automatically process certain jobs in different ways. You might have a “Letters” workflow where incoming general mail is scanned to a particular directory folder. Omnipage can be set to automatically monitor that folder and convert the files in it to Word documents which are then saved to a different folder for work colleagues or family members to access at their leisure. Or you might have workflows set up for particular people, so for example all the kids can have their own homework scanning folders, and the software will automatically convert whatever they scan into text and images they can use in Word – individually tailored to each person’s requirements.

And that’s the other neat thing about Omnipage: it recognizes different page layouts and automatically adjusts to cope. Four columns of text plus photos? Not a problem! You could scan in this magazine spread and it would lay it out in Word the same way. Heck, you could scan in the entire phonebook if the mood caught you. If you need to keep a searchable record of something, this is the way to do it. No more ferreting through boxes of archived paper files when, with a little set-up and common sense, you could have all your incoming correspondence saved on hard disk and instantly searchable, allowing you to leave the paper copies in storage and saving you time. Another useful feature, particularly for those who are visually challenged – Omnipage Pro 16 can convert scanned documents into an audio book that reads itself out to you. All up, more highly versatile software that will once again save you time and effort, and help clear your in-tray.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 69

feelLIFE

sport

End of the road

Investigate columnist and Radio Live Sports Editor Chris Forster was in the thick of the rucks, mauls and airport snarl-ups for the month leading up to the knockout bout with France at Cardiff’s magnificent Millennium Stadium

he whole raison d’etre for this sojourn around France and the detours to Scotland and Wales, is about to be realized on this Welsh evening as I look out over the stadium. There are scores of journalists, camera crews and technical bods who’ve almost been treading water for the quarterfinals. Now it’s all about New Zealand’s quest for rugby redemption, and fate has delivered an unexpected tune-up with the hosts in neutral territory. It’s week five of the ramshackle media road show following the All Blacks from stunning city to beautiful hotels, through chaotic airports, to training grounds and

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hotel foyers. Sometimes – usually when you’re queuing for a delayed flight at 4 in the morning – the whole experience feels like an eternity. But as usual with hectic travel schedules and daunting deadlines, the time seems to have zipped by. If the All Blacks produce anything close to their best tonight they will swipe aside France – and advance to the semifinals and beyond. Then we’ ll be in Paris and the homeward leg. LONG HAUL It takes around 40 hours to get from Auckland to Marseille, with connect-

ing flights, transit lounges topped with a fraught metro trip into the depths of a city with a dangerous reputation. This bedraggled reporter ended up in a housing estate far from where he should’ve been, carrying around 30 thousand dollars worth of radio broadcasting equipment. There wasn’t a taxi in sight. No-one understood my faltering fifth form French, and it was getting dark. Eventually a “parlez-vous Anglais” got a response and an immaculately dressed Marseille university student ordered me a cab to an apartment complex on Avenue du Prado, which is the main drag from

NZPA/Ross Setford

the central city to the magnifique Stade Velodrome – venue for the All Blacks’ Pool C opener against Italy. Unfortunately there was another petit crisis to endure. There had been a cockup with the bookings, and there was no room for me. An hour of frazzled and exasperated negotations later and I finally had my digs, and a bed – and a base camp for the first three weeks of the campaign. Marseille is a fascinating city. Edgy, cosmopolitan, steeped in history – with a balmy Mediterranean climate. The coastline is stunning, craggy rocks, spiralling cliffs and sparkling, deep blue

waters befitting the famous Cote D’Azur. It’s also a rough diamond with an attitude – contrasting dramatically with the more refined French cities of Paris and Lyon. Rugby’s a poor cousin to football – but there was still a capacity crowd of 62,000 people packed into the stunning outdoor arena of Stade Velodrome for the tournament’s number one drawcards against Italy. The All Blacks started all fire and brimstone, and raced to a 38-nil lead after just 18 minutes – to underline their class and kill the match as a contest. The lopsided affair ended 76-14 in New Zealand’s favour – but not before a couple of huge roars from the festive crowd when the Italians scored tries against the black tidal wave. A Scottish side trip away from the host country proved an ordeal for everyone. Edinburgh’s a lively, convenient city – full of grand old buildings and jampacked pubs. But the hassles in travelling there and back – for the players as well as the fans and media – made everyone pine for the French sunshine. The expected rugged battle against the Scots never eventuated. Their coach Frank Haddin named a second string side, which was duly walloped 40-nil in front of a packed house at Murrayfield, to ensure his side had enough gas in the tank to beat Italy and qualify for the quarterfinal. The New Zealand entourage made a smart planning decision and flew out of the UK that night on a charter flight to the more relaxing environment of Aix-enProvence, a quaint university town north of Marseille. For many of the media, including myself – the following day entailed a travel nightmare bordering on the inhumane. It took 21 hours to get from Edinburgh to Marseille. First a delayed flight, then miscounted baggage – and an inevitably missed connection at the colossal and confusing Gatwick Airport. Valuable equipment for my TV 3 colleagues failed to show, and a couple of hours restless downtime at an Airport hotel didn’t help our moods. Up at 3 am – a long walk to the departure terminal – and we’re informed the 6:05 am flight we’d booked the night before had been cancelled. The only option left to me was a flight one hour later to Nice – before British Airways bundled myself and 18 patient French folk

onto a bus without food and water for 2 1/2 hours back to Marseille. They didn’t even have the courtesy of dropping us into the city, but dropped the bedraggled survivors way out of town at the airport. It took me two days to get over that mixof airline cruelty and incompetence. Toulouse is a provincial city in the South-West of France, which lives and breathes rugby. The All Blacks were treated as heroes when they arrived from their Aix-en-Provence vacation for another formality against the Romanians. The reverence for the haka was something special that Saturday afternoon. You could’ve heard a pin drop as the 38 thousand fans at Stadium Toulouse savoured every second of this most famous of all war dances. Richie McCaw had never experienced anything like it. 13 tries later and an 85-8 scoreline – and the All Blacks were packing their bags for Wales. The next day it was confirmed gracious host France will face them in what’s sure to be the biggest collision of the six week tournament. Kickoff’s only minutes away now. So much riding on one match for both nations. The big match tension in Cardiff today has been unbelievable. France has embraced this tournament with typical flair and passion. The impressive stadiums have been packed for clashes between lesser lights like Fiji against Japan. The people I have met, socialised and spent money with have been helpful, patient and understanding. They even let me practice my gradually improving French. It’s a great place for a global tournament. The politics in farming out games to Scotland and Wales are questionable though. Murrayfield and the Millennium Stadium are world class arenas with plenty of rugby aura. But the fate of France facing a knockout punch tonight in foreign territory is galling, and unfair. They’ve also set a very high standard for New Zealand to follow in four years time. 40 minutes in: It’s half-time. New Zealand ahead of France 13-3. This is what it’s all about! The crowd go wild. 82 minutes in: Merde! It’s all over rover. France pack on 17 points in the second half to the All Blacks’ five, for a final score of 20-18. The hopes of all kiwis dashed. A few dodgy ref decisions and the lights go out. A bitterly ironic denouement to my trip. At least I got to practice my French. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 71

feelLIFE

health

Check-ups pointless?

Annual physicals may cost more than they’re worth, writes Marie McCullough

s a young physician, Mary Ann Forciea was taught to give patients an annual physical exam that included a chest X-ray. Now 58, the internist shudders to think how many healthy patients were exposed to yearly chest radiation before doctors concluded it was pointless and possibly harmful. “We thought that was a way to prove you were healthy,” says Forciea, a geriatric medicine expert with the University of Pennsylvania Health System. These days, doctors are questioning whether the annual physical exam itself is an outdated ritual that wastes time and money. A new study led by the University of Pittsburgh may fuel the simmering debate. It found that an estimated 20 percent of adults receive these routine check-ups, at a cost of billions. This includes unnecessary

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tests – such as urine analyses and electrocardiograms – that are not recommended by preventive health experts. The study, in the September 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, also found that many preventive services that are recommended – such as cholesterol screening and quit-smoking counseling – are provided during visits to treat illness or chronic problems, not during routine physicals. “Most patients believe they should see a doctor every year for a physical in which the doctor will examine them from head to toe and order lots of tests,” says lead author Ateev Mehrotra, a physician and public health expert at Pitt. “There are many doctors who disagree. Physicians need to reach greater consensus on what we should advise patients to do.” The public is basically clueless about this

controversy, and no wonder. Medical professionals harp on the importance of “early detection” and “prevention,” without explaining that major medical organizations do not recommend preventive health exams, or agree on how to define them. About 80 percent of health insurance plans pay for annual physical exams, however ill-defined. Why is the annual physical, which has been around for decades, so hard to define? Because the nature of the check-up depends on the patient’s gender, age and risk factors. “I personally believe an annual physical is a good idea,” says Jefferson Medical College physician Christine Laine, senior deputy editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine, published by the Philadelphiabased American College of Physicians. “It would be very difficult for a patient to col-

lect all the information about age-appropriate screening. For most people, even those who are very smart and motivated, unless you have time to sit and talk to your doctor about preventive health care, it’s going to get back-burnered.” Still, even well-accepted, well-studied cancer screening approaches, such as mammograms and PSA tests, stir debate. “There’s a range of opinion about whether the PSA should be done annually,” says Jack Ende, an internist and chief of medicine at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. “I do it annually.” Many doctors now prefer a vague term such as “periodic health evaluation” to annual physical exam. Standard parts of that exam – peering in the patient’s eyes, ears and mouth, listening with a stethoscope to the heart and lungs – are popular with patients, even though they have not been shown to be beneficial. “That doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial,” Ende stresses. “The jury is out. It’s certainly not harmful.” The idea of keeping patients healthy by checking them out regularly was first proposed in 1861 by British physician Horace Dobell. While it sounds logical, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an expert committee created in 1984 by the federal government, has found that some cherished preventive measures do not improve health – while some that are effective can be performed without a head-to-toe exam. Mehrotra’s study, which analyzed data from a federally-sponsored survey of outpatient visits, estimated that physicians spend 10 percent of their time – an average of 23 minutes per patient – on periodic health exams. Yet when Mehrotra and his Harvard co-authors looked at eight specific preventive care services, they found five – cholesterol screening and counseling on weight, diet, exercise and smoking cessation – were usually provided during visits for chronic or sudden illness. “I find physical exams valuable because it helps build a relationship with the patient,” says Mehrotra. “But I’m concerned that they’re not useful for their major purpose, which is to prevent illness and to improve health.” The opposite conclusion was reached earlier this year by researchers from John Hopkins University. In the Annals of Internal Medicine, they say routine physicals are justified because they increase the chance that patients will get Pap smears, cholesterol tests, and colon cancer screening. The exams also reduce patients’ “worry” about their health. Some physicians are looking at completely different approaches to keeping the human engine humming. At Thomas Jefferson University, researchers increased colon cancer screening rates simply by sending information and reminders to appropriate patients. The doctors didn’t require patients to come in for a visit first. “Does all preventive care have to be delivered in a practice setting?” asked Ron Myers, an epidemiologist and colon cancer researcher who led the Jefferson study. “Maybe the role of the physician could be to link patients to the services they need.” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 73

feelLIFE

alt.health

The coffee fix

Caffeine can be boon or bane – it’s all about moderation, reports Lisa Eisenhauer

ydnie Liev admits she’s an addict. A hit in the morning and another in the evening help Liev, a 19-year-old Washington University student and cross country runner, get through the day. Even if she could – and Liev says she can’t – she’s not looking to give up this dependency, which began when she started college a year ago. “It’s a very controlled addiction,” she says, a cup of her vice in hand. Like many of us, Liev has fallen under the often sweet and always powerful spell of caffeine. Health agencies estimate that 80 to 90 percent of Americans get a daily fix, usually from coffee, tea or soda. Without it, we’d be a nation of irritable zombies reaching for the aspirin bottle – at least for a couple of days, until we shook the stuff out of our systems. But why would we do that, especially with some recent studies elevating caffeine

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to the status of a near miracle drug? Just last month Japanese scientists reported that drinking three or more cups of coffee a day may cut the risk of colon cancer in women by half. Researchers in France chimed in with the finding that caffeine seemed to help preserve the cognitive skills of older women. That study came out just months after another on men showed similar results. Earlier studies had already given caffeine lovers a rallying cry by showing that the stimulant – found in the beans and leaves of many plants, such as coffee shrubs and cacao trees – can keep them alert, help them concentrate and even improve athletic endurance. THE DOWNSIDE Sounds as if we might be doing our bodies a favor by downing Big Gulps of Pepsi with its 3 milligrams of caffeine per ounce, doesn’t it?

Not so, say dietitians and other health experts. Don’t even get them started on the obesity risk that comes from all the sugar, whipped cream and other extras that often spice up our caffeinated treats. Too much caffeine itself can cause heartburn, nausea, anxiety, muscle tremors and, in extreme cases, seizures, they point out. In fact, in what appears to be a trend, caffeine overdoses are sending more and more adolescents and young adults to hospitals. At the Illinois Poison Center, Dr. Michael Wahl has seen caffeine overdose reports for ages 13-30 rise steadily from 131 in 2002 to 186 last year. Those numbers are going up just as the amount of caffeine in many consumer products popular among young Americans – especially diet supplements and so-called energy drinks – is climbing. That parallel isn’t lost on Wahl. The jump in caffeine overdose reports “has to do with availability,” he says.

UPSIDES OF CAFFEINE

DOWNSIDES OF CAFFEINE

Improved alertness

”Caffeine crash” or fatigue once the effects wear off

Sharper concentration

Can cause anxiety or irritability

Boost to athletic endurance

Could cause rapid heartbeat

Used in asthma and migraine remedies

Disturbs sleep

May help prevent Parkinson’s disease

Has diuretic effects in high doses

May reduce risk of colon cancer Could improve cognitive skills

Wahl and others are quick to note that most caffeine consumers never get close to dangerous doses. The red flags go up when about a gram of caffeine gets into the bloodstream. Downing eight cups of brewed coffee could put about that much into your system. But someone looking for a quick pickme-up, say a college student preparing for an all-nighter, could get into the red zone with just a few 200 milligram tablets of NoDoz chased down by an energy drink such as Monster, with its 160 milligrams of caffeine per 16-ounce serving. Even devotees of caffeine in its other forms say the wallops in energy drinks scare them off. Washington University student Emily Guhl, 19, has a two-cup-a-day coffee habit that goes back to her high school years. She’s sampled high-caffeine energy drinks but was put off by the weird feeling they left her with.

“I think those are a little too much,” she says. Calum Angus, a soccer player on the St. Louis University team, says he gave the energy drink Red Bull a whirl to see whether it improved his game. The energy drink packs 80 milligrams of caffeine in each 8.3-ounce can. That’s less than the amount in a cup of coffee but more than double the 35 milligrams found in a 12ounce can of Coke Classic. The boost didn’t amount to much for Angus. “I never saw signs of enough change that I wanted to carry on drinking it,” he says. Jaime Rothermich, director of nutrition at the custom fitness center HammerBodies in Missouri, would probably applaud Angus’ decision. Rothermich says he is well aware of studies that show caffeine can give athletes a performance boost. Yet he never advises any of his clients to add caffeine to their diets. He says caffeine comes with a downside – including diuretic effects, interference with sleep patterns and the potential to prompt an irregular heart rate – that makes strong doses of it unreliable and potentially dangerous for athletes. Jonathan Burch, assistant athletics director and director of sports medicine at SLU, worries about the stress that the stimulant puts on the heart and lungs. That stress can potentially overload a body already straining for maximum athletic output and even more so if the body is already being taxed by the heat and humidity of summer. In their advice to athletes about how to fuel their bodies, both Rothermich and Burch say to stick to the basics. “We kind of give old advice – a multivitamin, plenty of water and maybe a sports drink of some kind, like Gatorade,” Burch says. And, maybe, the sports trainers say, a cup or two of coffee and an occasional soda if it’s already part of your routine. But don’t look to those supercaffeinated

sports drinks with their mysterious herbal supplements to send your game or your fitness regimen over the top. “Making your body work on too many things will actually just slow it down,” Rothermich says. MODERATION IS URGED In general, if there are any benefits for the body from caffeine, the consensus among health professionals is that they come from using it in moderation. Dr. Alan Leviton, a professor of neurology at Harvard, has seen the studies that seem to extol the wonders of caffeine, such as links to reduced rates of diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes. Nevertheless, he says, “I wouldn’t encourage people to drink caffeine or coffee for that.” Your caffeinated beverage of choice is less a remedy and more a comfort drink, says Leviton, who is not only a coffee and tea consumer but a consultant to the scientific advisory group of the National Coffee Association. And despite warnings in some circles about the proliferation of Starbucks turning us into overstimulated addicts or raising our risks for heart disease or other maladies, the doctor isn’t worried. He says he has seen “no convincing evidence that any disorder can be attributed to moderate use of coffee.” He points out that while we might crave our caffeine, our bodies also seem to have an amazing natural ability to know their limit and to stop sipping or slurping when the blood content reaches a familiar and comforting level. That might explain David Stewart’s occasional coffee habit. Stewart, a student at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, says he only tips a cup when he can’t quite wake up. “If I don’t need the pickup for work,” he says, “I don’t find myself craving it.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 75

tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

Greeced lightning

Greece’s Delphi retains the power to inspire, reports Chris Welsch

ELPHI, Greece – Rain fell in sheets on the broken columns and stone blocks. I stood on the ancient ground where Agamemnon, Socrates and Cicero, among others, had humbly stood, hoping to get answers to their big questions. I was alone outside the ruined Temple of Apollo, where for more than 1,000 years the Oracle of Delphi enigmatically answered the questions of curious pilgrims – including kings, generals and philosophers. Now, she was silent. But Zeus wasn’t. Thunder shook the ground. Above me loomed the rain-darkened Phaedriades – or “Bright Ones” – twin, broad-shouldered limestone cliffs that frame the sacred hollow where the temples, stadiums and shrines of Delphi were built. Once the hub of the religious life of the Greek classical world, Delphi, on

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a late afternoon in April last year, played host to one wet tourist and several bored security guards. I had arrived by bus from Athens at about 1 p.m. with the mistaken assumption that guides would be lined up outside the gates of the ruins, just waiting to interpret Greek history. There weren’t any. So I went back to my hotel in modern Delphi and spent a couple of hours consulting the Internet and the phone book. I learned that there are four guides in Delphi who don’t work full time for bus-tour companies. And for the next three days – orthodox Easter weekend – they were working full time for the bus-tour companies. From what I knew of the Oracle, this situation wasn’t unusual; getting information here, historically, was never easy. The cautionary inscription “Know thyself” greeted

every traveler who crossed the threshold of the Temple of Apollo. The Oracle’s responses to questions, especially for the unprepared, were often caustic or misleading. So perhaps this made sense. I would have to learn what I could on my own. The next morning, the skies cleared. It took only a half-hour to walk from my hotel, at the western end of town, to the ruins, on the eastern side. The modern town of Delphi consists of several narrow, parallel streets stepping up the side of Mount Parnassus and overlooking the spectrally blue Gulf of Corinth. Hotels, cafes and shops (selling postcards and plaster busts of Greek gods) align tightly along those precarious lanes. The new town has been around for about a century; after Greece converted to Christianity roughly 1,700 years ago, they

“

But the ruins of the Temple of Apollo kept drawing me back; this is where the pivotal episodes in Delphi occurred. This was where history was made, and this is where the most secrets remain

”

knocked down the temples of the pagan gods. A new town with a different name was built over the ruins, and Delphi was willfully forgotten. When French archaeologists finally got permission to excavate at the turn of the last century, they had to move the whole village down the road a mile to get at the ruins. I was the first person through the gates at 10 a.m., and I walked up the stone path known as the sacred way, which was still shiny from the night’s downpour. Even if I hadn’t been told that this was once a sacred place, I could see why it might be; the landscape’s epic beauty is humbling. Built into a cleft on Mount Parnassus 600 metres over the sparkling gulf, the temple complex presents a stunning view in every direction. According to legend, Zeus loosed two eagles with instructions to find the center of the world; this cleft in Mount Parnassus is where they alighted. By 11 a.m., bus tourists and guides swarmed the ruins. I surreptitiously edged in on the groups when I could, pretending to look at the dry signage by various landmarks while I eavesdropped on the guides’ patter. The snippets I picked up varied in quality. n Delphi’s athletic games were second in importance to those at Mount Olympus, explaining the various stadiums and theaters, and in the attached museum, the many statues of muscular champions. Poetry and singing contests were among the most competitive and well-attended events (foreshadowing the “American Idol” phenomenon by more than 2,000 years). n Gymnasium means “school for naked exercise.” Athletes practiced and competed nude; this was why women couldn’t attend the events. n The stones on the various structures are covered in inscriptions. Most of the inscriptions are deeds, contracts and the transfer of ownership of slaves to Apollo – in other words, giving them freedom. The Greek guide told his elderly British patrons that slavery was a common outcome for vanquished soldiers and citizens in ancient times. “When Rome began winning battles with Greece, many of the educated prisoners of war became tutors to Roman children,” he said, while eyeing me suspiciously. “Thus it is said that while Rome conquered us by arms, we conquered them by brains. ... You’re not with this group, are you?”

I bought a guidebook and dutifully visited every monument and site in the expansive archaeological park. At its pinnacle, Delphi was a large temple town, with hundreds of gilded statues, colorful shrines and towering monuments lining the stone road that switchbacks up the side of the mountain. There would have been shops, restaurants and places to stay. It takes some imagination to see that great ancient precinct while looking at cracked foundations, partial columns and tilted pedestals. But much remains vital. The Kastalian springs, where the Oracles drank holy water, still flow; the rock of the Sybil, a boulder where an early prophetess predicted the Trojan War, stands where it always has, and the well-preserved stadium, where games rivaling the Olympics played out, could still seat several thousand spectators. But the ruins of the Temple of Apollo kept drawing me back; this is where the pivotal episodes in Delphi occurred. This was where history was made, and this is where the most secrets remain. Historical accounts produce agreement on some simple facts. Inside the temple, the Oracle occupied a small inner sanctum where she would sit in a metal bowl on a tripod and enter a trance state, awaiting pilgrims. Petitioners had to pay a small fee and sacrifice an animal to ask one question of Apollo. The divining days happened once a month during the warmer months. The Oracle wasn’t one woman, but many over the years. Most women acting as Oracle, also known as the Pythia, had been married and had grown children, but had to renounce family life to assume their mystic duties. The wisdom passed down by the Oracles was never as simple as it seemed. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi was inscribed with three maxims: “Know thyself,” “Nothing too much” and “Make a pledge and destruction is near.” They are indicative of the kind of insight the Oracle offered; her pronouncements were most often puzzles, challenging the receiver’s intellect and soul. The first of the maxims is the most famous and perhaps the most challenging. Socrates put it this way: “Isn’t it obvious that people derive most of their benefits from knowing themselves and most of their misfortunes from being selfdeceived?”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 77

The most famous example is that of King Croesus, who asked the Oracle whether he should wage war on Persia. The Oracle says, “If you attack, a great kingdom will fall.” The king assumed it would be his enemy’s loss, and he attacked. He lost the battle, and it was his kingdom that fell. Socrates himself received a vexing pronouncement from the Oracle when a friend of his asked the mystic source at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates. The answer: “No man is wiser.” Socrates suspected the answer had hidden meanings and spent the rest of his life trying to find someone smarter than he was. He aggressively and publicly questioned supposedly wise men and leaders of Athens to

IF YOU GO

test their knowledge against his own. In each case, Socrates found, those who considered themselves geniuses considered themselves infallible, too. Socrates says he wasn’t the better man because he was smarter, but because he knew his knowledge was limited. Just the same, he offended many rich and powerful men, and he was put on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens with his heretical attitude. His brilliant self defense in that trial was recounted by his student, Plato. “The truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise,” Socrates says. “And in this Oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing.” Even this didn’t save him; he was sentenced to death

THE DELPHIC DILEMMA: Modern Delphi is set up to accommodate the thousands of tour groups who pass through for a few hours daily. And many independent travelers try to cram a visit to Delphi into a one-day trip from Athens (it’s two to three hours by road each way, depending on traffic). Resist the urge and spend the night. The ruins, Delphi Museum and other ancient sites nearby are worth at least a full day of exploration, and there’s more to do and see nearby. Hiking trails lead to Itea and other villages by the sea and up Mount Parnassus to a sacred cave where followers of Dionysus held revelries. MODERN INTERPRETATIONS: The topic of the Oracle has gained some currency – and made headlines – in recent years. In the late 1990s, an astute American geologist partnered with an archaeologist to reinvestigate the temple. Their research indicated that two fault lines cross under the temple, and that it was quite possible that the structure of the temple allowed for the capturing of intoxicating gases (mainly ethylene) that might have assisted

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– not for the stated cause of corrupting youth – but for challenging authority, and inspiring that spirit in others. After a day and a half of lurking around bus groups, I got bored. A diversion appeared in the form of a friendly British hiking group I met on the road between the town and the ruins. They invited me to join them on a 16km hike down the mountain to the port town of Itea the next day. We would be walking the pilgrim’s path; most of Delphi’s visitors would have come by sea and walked up the hill to the sacred precinct. Spring never seemed more glorious. The rain-washed grass shined, and stop-sign red poppies bloomed on patches of open ground. The footpath meandered through ancient olive groves, adorned with new, silvery-green leaves. When we arrived in Itea that afternoon, I looked back toward Delphi, a tiny cluster of buildings partway up the slope of that mile-high mountain. Arrivals from all over the ancient Greek world would have seen a similar sight and been braced for their own encounter with the Oracle. It seemed to me that the particulars of human life have changed in the past 3,000 years, but not the dilemmas faced by individuals. The wisdom of the Oracle is current; it’s no easier to know oneself now than it was then. Ideologues are just as dangerous and foolhardy, following their egos into battle like dogs chasing their own tails. Innocents still die as a result. The sun was out, and it wasn’t a day for philosophizing. A taverna owner set up a long table by the beach, served us beer and soft drinks, olives, fresh bread and tart feta cheese. We ate and drank and, for the day, left the big questions to others.

the Oracles in reaching the trance states in which they made their pronouncements. This thesis offered scientific support for historical accounts of how the Oracles operated, and challenged years of accepted archaeological conclusions, which downplayed the possibility as myth. New York Times science reporter William J. Broad wrote a fascinating account of the Americans’ research, which is also an insightful history of the Oracle of Delphi. Don’t go without it. (“The Oracle,” Penguin, 320 pages,). WHERE TO STAY: Because the whole town is built on a steep slope, there is almost no hotel in Delphi without amazing views. Make sure you don’t get stuck on the mountain side of any given hotel. I stayed at the clean but characterless Hotel Amalia on the western edge of town, which at the time cost about 90 euros a night. Were I doing it again, I’d choose one of the smaller hotels and pensions in the town center (such as the charming Hotel Castri, currently 67 euros a night), which are cheaper, closer to the ruins and have a little more local flavor.

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www.mistralsoftware.co.nz INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 79

tasteLIFE

FOOD

The organic panic

A new study gives James Morrow cause to revisit the natural foods debate

n the subject of children – particularly those other than my own – I have always been something of a cynic, subscribing to the wisdom of such wits as W. C. Fields (who claimed to like his “parboiled”) and Robert Benchley (“Travelling with children corresponds roughly to travelling third class through Bulgaria”). The last few weeks have given me no reason to doubt the wisdom of this approach. While my own offspring are, as always, perfect angels, the behaviour of their contemporaries often leaves something to be desired. Exhibit A: the little girl who announced in our local park on a recent Sunday, with all that top decibel faux-sophistication six-year-old girls are so eerily able to mus-

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ter, “Dad, like no offence, but this park is lame”. Exhibit B: the tow-headed delight at my son’s kindy who nonchalantly walked up to me one morning when I was doing the school run, placed his two index fingers in the appropriate spot in his mouth, and announced to me, “Hey! You have rabbit teeth!” Exhibit C: the eight-year-old girl whom I overheard the other morning on the street rhapsodising about how superior her lunch was because “it’s all organic”, and how her would-be mate’s lunch indicated negligent parenting of the sort demanding an inquiry by the authorities because the enclosed sandwich was made on – shock, horror – white bread.

Well, to the first one I say, the park may be lame, but no one’s making you come back. Or stay, for that matter. To the second, it’s not polite to point, and anyway I have a fear of dentists. And to the third, well, I hope your reading skills are above grade level, because you’ve got some reading to do. Specifically, the recent feature in the Australian science magazine Cosmos, which debunks many of the claims of the US$40 billion – and growing – organic food industry. “A comprehensive review of some 400 scientific papers on the health impacts of organic foods, published by Faidon Magkos and colleagues in 2006 in the journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, concluded there was no evidence that eating organic food was healthier”, reports the article. Surely that can’t be right? Organic food must be healthier – after all, it’s all natural, right? Not so fast: “Regardless of how it is grown, the nutritional content of fruit and vegetables is more likely to be affected by freshness or varietal differences. One study reported by Magkos tried to narrow things down by growing the same variety of plums in adjacent fields, with one using organic and the other conventional methods: the conventionally grown plums contained 38 per cent more of the potentially beneficial polyphenol compounds than the organically grown ones did.” OK, but even if it’s not better for people, it must be better for the Earth. Here again, the evidence doesn’t stack up. If anything, artificial farming methods, especially notill techniques advanced in often inhospitable farmlands of Australia, are ultimately environmentally more sustainable: “Many agricultural scientists estimate that if the world were to go completely organic, not only would the remaining forests have to be cleared to provide the organic manure needed for farming, the world’s current population would likely starve … the poor yield of organic farming means that food production would be a major problem. In Australia, for instance, organic farming yields 50 per cent or less per square kilometre because of pest problems and phosphate-depleted soils.” Yeah, but aren’t all those synthetic chemicals, like, bad for you? Again, the study’s authors have news: “If chemical pesticides are hazardous to health, then farm workers should be most

affected. The results of a 13-year study of nearly 90,000 farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina – the Agricultural Health Study – suggests we really don’t have much to worry about. These people were exposed to higher doses of agricultural chemicals because of their proximity to spraying, and 65 per cent of them had personally spent more than 10 years applying pesticides. If any group of people were going to show a link between pesticide use and cancer, it would be them. They didn’t.” I am told that in way out in rural New South Wales, there are sheep farmers who are rough as guts and slightly to the right of even your esteemed columnist who are making vast profits on the organic racket, simply because they’ve been too cheap to improve their land for so many years and now their ancient mutton has green cachet. Look, there are plenty of reasons to like organic food. In my experience, organic can but does not always mean quality. Nature is pretty damned dangerous, if human experience and history is any guide, and the genius of our present condition is that we are able to retreat to the redoubts of civilisation. Personally I prefer to look for more meaningful indicators of food that has been raised to meet my taste and ethical standards: Thus I will always pay a premium for free range eggs or pork, because to my palate the end results are demonstrably better. And while chickens, to my way of thinking, are just feathery balls of squawks and salmonella, somehow pigs to me seem to deserve better than the factory farm. Perhaps it was too much E. B. White or George Orwell as a child. But as I have noted on this page before, while much of the thinking behind biodynamic farming is a lot of New Age hoo-hah straight out of Rudolf Steiner’s brilliant but slightly daffy mind, the technique produces great results in terms of produce. Though here I suspect it is a case of the intimate involvement of the farmer with his land encouraged in a side-long manner by such methods that is doing the trick, not the burying of a ram’s horn stuffed with manure at midnight during a full moon. While typing this I have had a highly unscientific experiment quite literally on the boil. Having picked up a packet of “organic” mince from the local supermarket, and a few tins of organic tomatoes

UPSTATE NEW YORK BREAKFAST APPLES Can you believe there was a time when we used to slap our foreheads half in wonder, half in trepidation, at the latest consumer marvel to come out of the land of the rising sun and wonder, “what will those Japanese think of next?” Perhaps I’m biased, but I really think that the high honours in the innovation stakes must go to the Americans, if for no other reason than residents of that wonderful land can subscribe to something called the Bacon of the Month club which sends out a couple of pounds of artisan-crafted bacon to lucky recipients every month. I recently signed my father, who lives in upstate New York State, up to this marvellous service, and he hasn’t stopped raving about it. Even better, he’s taken up the pans with all the confidence of a man with a medfrom Italy from the local health food palace, I whipped up a bolognaise sauce to see if there was a demonstrable difference. While the meat does have more flavour than the usual stuff, it seems inferior to a line of “Angus certified” beef my supermarket sells, when I tried some the other week. Somehow it seems wrong to raise an animal for food and then turn it into something as tasteless as the plastic it is ultimately packed in. The tomatoes? Perfectly fine, and packed in a sugo that was more tomato than water, a nice change from many labels. Taste-wise, almost no difference. The beef, however, was another story. After years of foolishly buying sealed plas-

icine chest full of statins and discovered a late-in-life passion for cooking. This recipe, made with Fuji apples from trees on his own property, is his new favourite breakfast. Multiply numbers as appetites and guests accrete. You’ll need: 1 Fuji apple 1-2 rashers good quality bacon Maple syrup Method: Preheat your oven to 210 degrees C. Core your apple, and wrap it in a turban of bacon. Place on baking sheet and fill cavity with maple syrup. 210 degrees C. Bake for 45 minutes. Bliss. tic trays of insipid mince, this was a revelation: it actually tasted like meat. It was almost lamb-like in its richness. The proof was in the pudding, or the eventual lack thereof. Like elderly golfers who boast their score matches their age, the oldest boys with great chronological assurance went for five and nearly three helpings each. It was, in the words of one, “the best pasta ever”. I’m no scientist, but I know results when I see them. When it comes to taste, fresh and free range are your indicators of quality. Organic on the other hand strikes me as something that is all too often a middle class indulgence – of the sort that medieval Catholics once bought to absolve their sins – which I can do without.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 81

seeLIFE PAGES

An evening with Kate

Michael Morrissey enjoys Kate Camp and finds another must-read WWII anthology KATE’S KLASSICS By Kate Camp Penguin, $29.95

ome on, admit it you readers, have you actually read Crime and Punishment, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Moby-Dick, Odyssey,, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Wuthering Heights plus the Old Testament? And if you haven’t, what is your excuse? Three children under five? Too much Internet? Can’t be bothered? You, my friend, are missing out on one of life’s great treats. Treats, of course, doesn’t say it – these books are a necessary feast – food for the mind and soul. Whatever your pathetic reasons may be for missing out on ten of the milestones of Western culture, this wonderfully enthusiastic resume and analysis of these works should kindle your appetite. I can claim to have read (or in some cases half read) all except Jane Eyre. And having read Ms Camp’s brilliant and stimulating overview of it, I am resolved to give it a go next summer even though I realise with a sinking heart it’s probably a woman’s book. This could be said of Middlemarch and Pride and Prejudice though both have keen male readers and critics. I’ve always considered Moby-Dick a very blokey book, but here is Kate loving it to bits. Hopefully, I will get to feel the same way about Jane Eyre. My own personal favourite is Crime and Punishment which I have read three times and it seems to get better ie deeper

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each time. Camp is almost as enthusiastic and only finds fault with the “pat ending” whereby the murderer’s crime and soul are redeemed. This straightforward redemption is in contrast to the tortured uncertainty of Raskolnikov’s motives. Agreed up to a point, but of course Dostoyevsky himself underwent such a change of heart. What is particularly engaging in this collection of essays is Camp’s wicked sense of humour. Here she is emoting about Jane Eyre: “Reading about a child’s horrible home life is enjoyable, but reading about their terrible life at boarding school is even better. I can hardly describe my pleasure as Jane wakes to find frozen water in the washing jugs, burnt porridge for breakfast, and cruel treatment at the hands of the bullying benefactor Mr Brocklehurst”. One is tempted to send Ms Camp off for five years to a Gulag camp to see if she still enjoys such treatment or to speculate that her own childhood must have been boringly pleasant to relish such discomforts. However, she redeems herself by adding that is “satisfying to occupy a moral universe where the goodies and baddies are shown in black and white”. Which I am tempted to say makes Dostoyevsky the deeper writer because his characters are often more morally complex. Is there in all literature a more sympathetic and human murderer than Raskolnikov? Camp’s analyses are full of this kind of daring wit which makes her essays a refreshing change from the usual ponderous academic/feminist critiques of recent times.

Who else but Kate Camp – would dare compare the Odyssey’s Calypso with Pussy Galore and Odysseus with James Bond? Many of Camp’s remarks are the sort of thing academics would say but couched in accessible language. Examples abound but I’ll mention just two – the dissection of Ahab’s fixation on Moby-Dick’s whiteness and inscrutability and the examination of fire and ice imagery in Jane Eyre. Of all her essays, the one on the Old Testament is the thinnest – she treats of Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, Joseph, Samson in rather cavalier fashion (and the summary of the plot of War and Peace is even skimpier) While it is true the Old Testament is a “classic” in that it is much read and much loved, as well as a foundation stone of Western and world thought, it is a religious and historical document – not a work of fiction. Taken from this perspective, it does not belong in this lineup of novels. Overall, Camp’s summaries and explorations of these ten great works are lively, impudent and engaging. A joyous exercise in High Camp.

TRAINLAND By Neill Atkinson Random House, $39.99

love trains. (Do trains love me?) And to prove it, when the Overlander was threatened with with extinction I travelled to Wellington and signed up everyone (save two) on the train for a petition

to save the iron beast. And behold – the train was saved! Though not, alas, as a result of my efforts alone. To be honest, I haven’t (to my shame) journeyed on the train since. If only they would make the Overlander a steam train then I’d be a regular passenger. Meanwhile, as listed in Atkinson’s lovingly researched book, there are various steam train organisations around the country that can give a taste of yesteryear. Today’s car commuter may not realise it but trains were once the dominant form of transport in New Zealand – as in other developed countries. The train was, as Atkinson reminds us, the first form of transport that could travel faster than a galloping horse. From its humble beginning at Ferrymead Christchurch in 1863, railways hit their peak in the 1920s when the New Zealand Railways was the country’s largest single employer with over 15,000 employees and a nation of but one million could boast of taking 28 million journeys. Though numbers rose to greater heights in wartime, this dominance faded due to the increased use of cars and buses. Nevertheless, in my childhood, trains were a very strong presence. Because my father, like poet Hone Tuwhare, worked at the Otahuhu Railways Workshops, our family enjoyed the privilege of a free railway holiday. Atkinson’s account is an artful combination of many fact and statistic-studded sentences (perhaps a mite too many) together with human accounts. There are

insert episodes and many photographs, paintings and posters to round out the mix. Though I remember circuses, I was unaware there were circus trains as shown in a wonderful photo picturing elephants aboard an open topped wagon – alas not holding the legendary all but bullet proof railway cups in their trunks. Another lovely photo is from around 1911 showing a picnic train filled to overflowing with over-dressed picnickers. For the steam lover (count me in) there is a terrific shot – though disappointingly small in reproduction – of a KA engine majestically emerging from a Kaikoura tunnel ejecting as much smoke as a small volcano. Of course this is a nostalgic perspective – at the time, as noted by novelist Robyn Hyde, passengers who did not wind up their windows before a train entered tunnel were unpopular, for the acrid smoke entered the carriage to the discomfort of passengers. Comparing the menu around 1904 which included fresh trout, strawberries and pears, whitebait and flounder, to the 1950s fare of luke-warm greasy meat pies, miserable sandwiches, tea likened to “bad disinfectant” or “deteriorated mouth wash”, the abandoning of the dining cars can only be considered a sad loss. Then there was the scrum-like charge for the ten minute counter stop which I frequently led having mastered the dangerous art of jumping off trains still in motion. During my recent trip on the Overlander, I enjoyed a leisurely 45 minute stop at National Park and excellent food – alleluia! So it appears railway cuisine has come full circle. Though I doubt whether it would equal the diner cars of the past or the dining rooms at Marton or Oamaru with their long tables and crisp white linen. Atkinson concludes his excellent study of the railways with chapters on the writers (especially Janet Frame and Robyn Hyde) and artists who have celebrated train travel. This would be an excellent Christmas gift for train lovers and those who have yet to flirt with the iron horse.

ON CHESIL BEACH By Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape, $26.99

an McEwan, so the cliche goes, is a writer who needs no introduction. He has already won the Booker Prize and

been short-listed four times. Arguably, he is England’s most distinguished contemporary novelist. Until recently, he was the bookie’s favorite for the pending 2007 award though excitingly for us New Zealanders he was recently overtaken by Lloyd Jones’s Mr Pip. On Chesil Beach is a smallish novel particularly so for the Booker, for many of the winners have been relatively large and cast on a broad canvas. This latest McEwan is a closely focused study of a young English couple’s disastrous honeymoon. They have several factors working against wedded bliss – they’re middle class, English, educated, virgins, and it’s 1962 – a few years before the sexual revolution of the mid to late 60s. Or as McEwan puts it: “And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, their lack of entitlement or experience, or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself.” Edward is worried about premature ejaculation and Florence simply feels uneasy, anxious, and indeed nauseous at the prospect of conjugal activity. Their first attempt at lovemaking is a catastrophe. In all literature, I do not recall a more non-erotic account of an activity normally thought to be erotic. Whatever may be lacking in the bedroom, the touching thing was that the couple still love each other deeply – and Edward is often a model of male sensitivity. McEwan’s prose is frequently wonderfully elegant and very acute. Here is a succinct summary of attitudes of the time: “While one heard of wealthier people going in for psychoanalyis, it was not yet customary to regard oneself in everyday terms as an enigma, as an exercise in narrative history or a problem waiting to be solved.” Compared to the epigrammatic virtuosity of the main part of the novel, the shift into full dialogue is less impressive. The novel tends to hasten towards its narrative conclusion and it maybe this hurrying and the almost obsessively close focus on the couple that has prompted some critics to say that it is a novella rather than a novel – however the elegiac yet curiously lyrical ending is profoundly moving. At age sixty plus, Edward realises that his life might have been fuller and more successful with Florence and that their love and

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patience would have seen them through whatever adversities life might put before them – even a disastrous honeymoon. The wisdom of maturity has arrived too late.

THE BEATS By Mike Evans Running Press, $59.99

he Beats is a pictorial and text history of a group of American writers who rose to prominence in the 50s. The most famous – or notorious – were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, though there were many others – Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Clellon Holmes, Kenneth Rexroth and Gregory Corso being among the most prominent. Like many a literary or artistic movement it began with a chance meeting between the 17 year-old Ginsberg and the 29 yearold Burroughs – “a strange-looking guy with sallow skin and a spindly frame” who “casually quoted Shakespeare as if it were everyday speech.” In turn, Kerouac recalled Ginsberg as a “spindly Jewish kid with horn-rimmed glasses and tremendous ears sticking out, seventeen years old, burning black eyes, and a strangely deep voice”. The bridge person was Lucian Carr who, like Burroughs, was a budding intellectual who typically for an intellectual young man, liked to discuss art, politics and life. Ginsberg and Carr were both students at New York’s prestigious Columbia University under the tutelage of the famous Lionel Trilling, arguably America’s most distinguished literary critic. In early 1944, Ginsberg met Kerouac who was a returned dropout from Columbia University. And then Kerouac met Burroughs at an 118th Street apartment, close to Harlem and Columbia University. In contrast to his more egg-headed and physically frail companions, Kerouac was a muscular football player who had been to sea. Ginsberg and Burroughs were mainly homosexual and Kerouac was heterosexual though all had cross-over sexual experience different from the orientation they were comfortable with. Kerouac was the first to publish a book The Town and the City in 1950. However, it was Ginsberg who first achieved notoriety with his long and lewd in parts poem Howl which (for poetry) became a best seller. On the Road, Kerouac’s second book became the best known and loved

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text. Curiously enough, I have never been able to get through it preferring his less known works The Dharma Bums and The Subterraneans. It was On the Road that explored the almost sacred activity of being on the road, either hitchhiking or driving helter skelter especially with the fiery adventurous Neal Cassady, thinly disguised as Dean Moriarty. Burroughs’ defining work was The Naked Lunch, which was both condemned as obscene and hailed as a masterpiece. My own view is that while it is an important and influential document, it is filled with excessive purple passages and could do with a touch more narrative structure. All three literary theories relating to their writing – Burroughs had the famous cut-up method (“one in ten works”), Ginsberg had a breath-based practice drawn from Walt Whitman and Kerouac’s bop prosody prose was to be linked with jazz. Though known originally as the Beats and/or the Beat generation, the subsequent term beatknik (coined from sputnik by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen), was hated by Kerouac, who once declared , “I’m not a beatnik, I’m a Catholic”. The Beatnik phenomenon was celebrated or satirised in publications as various as Playboy, Life and Mad magazine. When Kerouac was guest on the Steve Allen TV show watched by 35 million Americans, it was clear their days of being “underground” were well and truly past. The whirling, drug and alcohol-soaked odyssey of the beats was not without its casualties. Cassady died at 41, Kerouac at 47, both victims of their own drug abuse. Joan Burroughs, wife of William was accidentally shot through the head by her husband during an imitation William Tell feat gone wrong. Both had been drinking and Joan’s volunteering for such an escapade could be interpreted as a suicidal wish, though egos were at stake, for Burroughs claimed he was an expert marksman and Joan used to mock his boasts. This book is a colourful and compendious overview of a wild time. The text celebrates and narrates rather than the critiques – often the way with such imagedominated works. The photos are great – especially of Harlem and New York in the 1940s and include a very rare shot of the normally sunken-cheeked Burroughs smiling. Love them or hate them, despise or respect them, the Beats have left their mark on literary history. Their impudent

vitality and aggressive street-smart style was a badly needed antidote to the more inward-looking academic atmosphere of the time and even though we tend to often look more at their personalities and their colourful flaws, it is their work on which they will ultimately be judged.

EUROPE AT WAR 1939-1945 By Norman Davies Pan Books, $27.99

he Second World War is one of the most awful, historically influential and written about events in human history. Hitler continues to be of deep fascination and it has been estimated over a 1000 biographies have been written about him. As for the war as a whole, Davies notes in his Further Reading section that Amazon.com lists 54,673 titles! So even for a professional historian, an overview of this catastrophic event is a challenging if not daunting task. In this section, he also offers favourable or reserved comments about other historians like John Keegan, and John Erickson, Ian Kershaw, Richard Overy, Antony Beever and Soviet overviews. Using an admirably fresh approach, Davies’ book provides a different perspective from other histories. He divides his book into six large chapters – Interpretation, Warfare, Politics, Soldiers, Civilians and Portrayals. This format allows him to range widely over material which most histories do not include. The Civilians chapter is easily the largest and in human terms the richest. In it, Davies includes a multitude of sub-chapters that range over topics such as Partisans, Slave Labour, Child-Stealing, Heroines, Interpreters, Saints, Scientists and Spies and many other such. These provide a moving exploration of the human side of war – often overlooked in military histories. The Child-Stealing sub-chapter, for example, alludes to the SS Lebensborn organisation set up by Himmler to breed tall, blond, blue-eyed Aryan types (Himmler himself would never have qualified). This scheme came into being after the SS leader noticed many children of the ideal Aryan type in conquered Poland. Deciding they were Polanised Germans, Himmler set about stealing them. In order to get things in proportion, Davies notes early on that he sometimes lays down a challenge to audiences to

“

Though the Soviets played the major role in defeating the German army, they also committed atrocities. Like the Katyn massacre of 25,000 Polish officers. For many years, the pro-Russian view in the West made it almost gospel to blame the Nazis and the matter was not finally settled until 1990 when Gorbachev admitted it was Soviet security forces that had perpetrated the action

a tribute to our many dedicated staﬀ, supporters and friends over the years and to all those we’ve had the privilege of helping.

”

13th October 1882 - 2007

1882

2007

For celebration registration please contact The Ashburn Clinic Private Bag 1916, Dunedin, NZ. Tel 03 476 2092 Fax 03 476 4255 Email ashburn@ashburn.co.nz www.ashburn.co.nz

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 85

Cre8ive 4000I

name the five largest battles in terms of loss of life in the Second World War. If an Anglophile respondent was to answer (say) D Day or the Battle of the Bulge or even El Alamein they would be wrong. The biggest were Battles of Smolensk, Moscow and Byelorussia; Stalingrad; Siege of Leningrad; Kiev; and Operation Bagration which took from 1,582,000 to 450,000 lives. By contrast, El Alamein saw 4,650 dead. The size of the Russian armies is mind-boggling – Zhukov had 3.8 million men under his command as he stormed towards the Elbe river. As all the major battles were in the Soviet sphere, Davies is at pains to re-emphasise how the war was really won in that vast arena and not in Europe. Towards the end of his book, he dismisses argument that try to counterbalance the massive Russian effort on land against Western predominance in the sea and air. For, as he points out, Germany held out against bombardment and blockaded and had to be conquered on the ground by the Red Army before the war could be won. Another argument which suggests that the Russians were only able to achieve victory through allied aid is also discounted by reason of the fact that they had gained the upper hand before Western aid had reached them in any quantity. As Davies writes: “Contrary to prediction, it (Russia) had gained superiority not only in numbers, but also in generalship, in tactics, in military production, and in key areas of technology. Western aid may have been something more than the icing on the cake but it was not the decisive factor.” Though the Soviets played the major role in defeating the German army, they also committed atrocities. Like the Katyn massacre of 25,000 Polish officers. For many years, the proRussian view in the West made it almost gospel to blame the Nazis and the matter was not finally settled until 1990 when Gorbachev admitted it was Soviet security forces that had perpetrated the action. Only in recent times have a lot of classified or concealed information been released. The concluding chapter looks at photographs, artwork, cartoon, films and novels that portray the war. It also rather cautiously mentions the Internet in passing and adds a warning about Wikipedia. For a war history that is like no other I’ve encountered, this account is warmly recommended. It opens many doors previously closed.

seeLIFE MUSIC

Hunting the real Moa

Chris Philpott is impressed by Ben Harper, doubly so by Foo Fighters, but still searching for the real Anika Moa BEN HARPER & THE INNOCENT CRIMINALS Lifeline

ometimes things in music make perfect sense. Ben Harper and his band, the Innocent Criminals, spent their spare time during their latest world tour – supporting last year’s Both Sides of the Gun – writing new material and songs; then, when the tour finished, they promptly locked themselves in a small, out-of-the-way studio in France and made this latest offering. As a result, this is probably Harper’s most intimate release to date – an effect that was unavoidable really, given the way in which it was written and recorded; Lifeline has a real worldly, earthy, gritty feel about it, that also makes it incredibly hard to describe. In fact, if I could be so bold, I would go as far as saying that this is Harper’s best work since his breakthrough record Fight For Your Mind, carrying that same loving, hopeful, overcoming spirit on each tenderly made track. One can’t help but feel like Lifeline isn’t so much a collection of songs as it is a series of love letters and desperate cries sent out from the day-to-day grind of touring in support of a hugely successful album. Given the circumstances in which it was written, I’d say that makes perfect sense.

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ANIKA MOA In Swings the Tide

f the history of Anika Moa’s career has shown anything it would be these two things: 1) she is incredibly gifted as a musician, both in terms of instrumentation and in terms of her vocal talent, and 2) she is great at writing a cute, 3-minute love pop-ballad. As you would expect, Moa herself is impressive on In Swings the Tide, with her soaring vocal work standing out among the 12 tracks presented here and giving testimony to the enormous talent she possesses. The problem here is the songs themselves. There are several highlights here – including the first radio single “Dreams in My Head”, and my personal favourite “Standing In This Fire”, an acoustic ballad complete with a beautiful, sweeping orchestral movement – however, the standouts here appear to be few and far between. To compound the issue further, Moa has begun leaning toward a more obvious folkcountry sound, which is most evident on tracks like “Day In, Day Out” or quickmoving acoustic shuffle “My Old Man”. I’m not saying that In Swings the Tide is a monumentally bad album, because it’s not that bad at all; it’s just that the real disappointment is that I thought Moa was capable of something far more noteworthy.

FOO FIGHTERS Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

adies and gentleman, may I present the best album of 2007! Its been 2 long years since the Foo Fighters last graced our charts with In Your Honour, a somewhat disappointing double album split into typical Foo tracks, and acoustic ballads – of course, as seems to be the case with all double albums, I thought the best idea would’ve been to combine the best parts of both albums. That is exactly what has happened here. On Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, singer Dave Grohl and company have successfully managed to combine the moving, sweeping arrangements and ballads of the acoustic Honour disc, with the typical Foo Fighters sound, circa 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, which they are well known and universally revered for. The result is an album which quickly moves from beautiful acoustic movements, to heavy rock at its best – sometimes in the same song, like on highlight tracks “Let It Die” and “Come Alive”. In fact, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace is not just the best album of the year so far, but it could be the best rock album of the past decade. I implore you to get a copy; I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Olympus Tough 770SW • Waterproof to 10m • Snowproof to -10ºC • Shockproof to 1.5m • Crushproof to 100kg For more information please contact: H.E. Perry Ltd. Phone: Christchurch (03) 339 0028 or Auckland (09) 303 1479

seeLIFE MOVIES

Little sparrows and mighty hearts The biopic of Edith Piaf fills the blanks, while A Mighty Heart gives a glimpse of the Afghan problem La Vie en Rose Rated: M for offensive language & sexual references Starring: Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Gregory, Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Martins Directed by: Olivier Dahan 140 minutes

ost music biopics follow a familiar arc, and in some ways Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose appears no different: a childhood of pain and poverty, false steps and shaky beginnings, a mentor or two, wild times on the road, discovery, debauchery, success, fame, death. But this brilliant account of the life of Edith Piaf – the French songbird, born of the streets and the brothels, who became a cultural icon for a nation – visits the usual benchmarks, juggles them around, emphasizes sharp detail over seismic events, and delivers the portrait of a life that is vividly, explosively real. Populated with whores and boxers, thugs and impresarios, the low and the mighty, La Vie en Rose covers two World Wars and a whirlwind of history, zooming in on the big, doleful eyes – and big, beautiful voice – of the woman nicknamed “la mome,” the kid, “the Little Sparrow.” As portrayed by Marion Cotillard, in a performance that has to be recognized

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when Oscar time rolls around, Piaf comes off as uniquely talented and tortured, a strong-willed woman whose rough childhood and impoverished early years forged a fiery soul – in the frailest and most abused (drugs, alcohol, you name it) of bodies. Lip-synching (perfectly), Cotillard transforms herself from the plucky street crooner with the lesbian sidekick to a grande dame of the music world, and all phases between. She is, quite simply, amazing. The actress (A Good Year, A Very Long Engagement) brings new meaning to the word transformation: There isn’t a second of screen time when you’ll find yourself thinking that you’re watching an actor at work. With Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, you are witnessing some kind of unexplainable, extraordinary inhabitation. Filmmaker Dahan – heretofore known for a slick Luc Besson-produced thriller and a pretty good Isabelle Huppert drama, La Vie Promise – toggles around the decades, getting great supporting work from Sylvie Testud, Emmanuelle Seigner, Gerard Depardieu, Clotilde Courau, Jean-Pierre Martins (as Piaf’s prizefighter lover, Marcel Cerdan) and a pair of magnetic kid actors who portray Piaf at the ages of 5 and 10. Jettisoning any sort of straightforward chronology, Dahan instead creates a timeline of emotional moments, of unimagined lows and highs, and of the supremely gifted, mad-

deningly difficult woman at its center. For Piaf fans, La Vie en Rose is a must-see. For fans yet-to-be, Dahan and Cotillard’s film is an opportunity rich with discovery. Reviewed by Steven Rea

A Mighty Heart Rated: M for offensive language, content may disturb Starring: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irrfan Khan, Archie Panjabi, Will Patton, Denis O’Hare, Gary Wilmes and Adnan Siddiqui Directed by: Michael Winterbottom 108 minutes

Mighty Heart lends new shape and palpable intrigue to a horrific, highly publicized real-life story. Though we already know Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman) was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Pakistan in early 2002, director Michael Winterbottom brings urgency to this movie centered on the investigation of his disappearance. A Mighty Heart also immerses us in a world that our Western sensibilities sometimes prevent us from comprehending. The film offers relatable guides to this world, in Daniel, or Danny, who vanished while investigating a possible link

to “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; Mariane (Angelina Jolie), Danny’s six-monthspregnant wife and fellow journalist; and the diverse group of journalists and law enforcers working alongside Mariane, trying to unravel the mystery of her husband’s kidnapping. Adapted by John Orloff from Mariane Pearl’s memoir, the film doesn’t present political and religious strife on the usual cinematic grand scale. Rather, it takes a grittier, street-level approach to the realities of everyday life in the unruly city of Karachi in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Via documentary-style handheld camera work, British director Winterbottom, familiar with this part of the world through his films In This World and The Road to Guantanamo, captures the bustle of Karachi. A Mighty Heart also imparts the combination of excitement and dread that springs from being in a foreign environment, reliant on parties who might or might not be on the level. That driver who seems so helpful could be the neighbor, or brother, of an al-Qaida member. Danny knows the dangers of this place. But breaking stories in post-Sept. 11 Pakistan requires risk-taking. To minimize those risks, he ensures that his meeting with a Pakistani cleric linked to extremist groups will occur in a public setting, at a restaurant. When he doesn’t arrive home, Mariane

and Asra Nomani (a lively Archie Panjabi), the friend with whom the Pearls are staying, seek their own answers. Mariane and Asra, a writer on leave from the Journal, work their sources and the Internet. Jolie brings a tensile strength to Mariane. Often contained but always sympathetic, Mariane needs to maintain a cool head as the Pakistani authorities come in and rumors start to swirl. People supposedly there to help turn out to have other agendas. Amid the chaos, Mariane finds a true ally in Captain (the charismatic Irrfan Khan from The Namesake), the businesslike but empathic head of counterterrorism in Pakistan. With American diplomatic security agent Randall Bennett (Will Patton), two Journal colleagues and FBI representatives, Captain forms a command center in Asra’s airy Karachi home. When the kidnappers, accusing their Jewish American captive of being a CIA and then a Mossad agent, release a photo of Danny with a gun to his head, A Mighty Heart threatens to become simply depressing. But it doesn’t, because Winterbottom underscores the intensity with which the investigators continue to pursue the criminals. Winterbottom shows restraint, thankfully, in revealing the brutal circumstances of Pearl’s slaying. But he is frank elsewhere. The camera follows closely as Captain and his men hit the streets seek-

“

Winterbottom shows restraint, thankfully, in revealing the brutal circumstances of Pearl’s slaying. But he is frank elsewhere

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ing suspects, wheedling, threatening and on occasion, torturing. American security agent Bennett, given a gung-ho gleam by actor Patton, expresses his relish for such tactics to Mariane. She looks alarmed. But such details add texture to a picture whose good-guy characters sometimes come off as too perfect. Futterman lends Danny intelligence and a gentle spirit that reveals itself in flashback scenes of the Pearls in happier times. But the film’s focus on Mariane and the investigation means Danny sometimes emerges more as a noble idea than a person. One leaves A Mighty Heart wishing that Daniel Pearl, whom we know from real-life accounts as a well-rounded individual, were better developed as a movie character. Reviewed by Carla Meyer

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seeLIFE DVDs

The long fight against slavery Two movies span two hundred years of efforts to end racial oppression Amazing Grace PG, 110 minutes

e know the hymn. Atheist or Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Jew, you’d be hard-pressed not to have stumbled across it somewhere. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.” That hymn’s unknown history, its place within the first civil-rights movement – the abolition movement in 18th-century Britain – is the subject of Amazing Grace, an emotionally engaging drama from a director famed for his screen biographies and his sermons. It’s about William Wilberforce, an evangelical British parliamentarian who found his voice, and his cause, when his minister taught him this song and the minister’s friends brought him their cause. Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, whom we meet as a sickly, lonely older man, beaten down by the battle he has waged, for years, to get Britain to abolish its slave trade. Friends nurse him, and do a little match-making. As he recovers from a bout of colitis and is wooed by the fetching and feisty Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai), we flash back to the signal events in his life that made him dedicate himself to this cause, and feel him rally to it once again. It wasn’t a popular cause, especially when it started. Wilberforce, a Tory, was going up against shipping interests, pro-

tected by Lord Tarleton (Ciaran Hinds), the royal family (Toby Jones plays a bigoted Prince of Wales) and the vast majority in Parliament. His religious zeal for the cause first alarms his friends, but then the wily future prime minister, William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberpatch), finds a way to use it, and him. Rufus Sewell, playing the abolition brigand Thomas Clarkson, gives the guy a mouthy, Quixotic demeanor even if he plays this more as a hair-carefully tossled-overone-eye pose. Hinds, as the man Americans knew from the Revolutionary War as “The Butcher Tarleton,” gives us another reason to hate the British “war hero.” The scene-stealer here is the man who wrote the hymn that changed the young politician. Albert Finney is John Newton, ex-slave ship captain, the “wretch” turned preacher and hymn-writer. Here is the guilt, the heartfelt grief over the “20,000 ghosts” he transported to the Indies that the movie begs for. “Wilbur, you have work to do. Do it, for God’s sake!” The movie’s shortcomings are in its limited focus. This is the fight, as fought, in Britain. The slave trade itself is kept abstract, with empty (but stinking of death) slave ships and empty manacles as props for speeches. It’s the way the average Briton, civilian or Parliamentarian, would have known the trade, but the movies can be expected to make it more vivid, give slavery more of a human face. Reviewed by Roger Moore

Catch a Fire M, 101 minutes

atch a Fire, based on the real story of Patrick Chamusso, is, like the Oscarnominated Hotel Rwanda, a powerful thriller rooted in a continent’s recent history of violent oppression. Chamusso (a brilliant, beaming Derek Luke) is the model black South African: A diligent worker with a wife and two young daughters, he is one of very few black men who have been made a foreman at the huge Secunda refinery. But when ANC radicals sabotage part of the refinery, Chamusso is stopped and interrogated at a roadblock – and then arrested and tortured, at an antiterrorist police security hideaway. He cannot – well, he will not – explain where he was on the night of the explosion. It is at the hands of a shrewd, steely Boer police colonel, Nic Vos (Tim Robbins), that Patrick becomes radicalized. After finally being let go, his job and house gone, his wife physically and psychologically abused, Patrick joins a core of revolutionary militia training in Mozambique. Robbins is the manipulative policeman and family man convinced that if the ANC succeeds in toppling the government, he warns, the black South Africans won’t take over – the communists will. A coda to the film, featuring a freed Nelson Mandela giving a speech urging forgiveness and healing, puts the lie to Col. Vos’ forecast. Reviewed by Steven Rea

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To kill the Electoral Finance Bill, donate to the Free Speech Coalition now. Next year will be too late. Next month may be too late. Right now, the Labour, United Future, NZ First and Green Parties have their Electoral Finance Bill before Parliament. It’s the most dramatic attack on free speech in New Zealand history. How badly does the Electoral Finance Bill stink? The government’s own Human Rights Commission says this bill “will have a chilling effect on the expression of political opinion during an election year.” It wants the bill replaced, not just revised. The New Zealand Law Society agrees. It says the Electoral Finance Bill breaches the Bill of Rights and “represents a backward step in the integrity of democracy in New Zealand.” If you agree that the Electoral Finance Bill must be thrown out, not just tinkered with, there’s not a moment to lose. We’ve formed the Free Speech Coalition to fight the bill. We want to run full page ads in all the main papers. We want to persuade the bill’s supporters like Peter Dunne, Winston Peters and the Greens that this is no way for proud human rights supporters to behave. Never mind China and Myanmar, democracy is under attack here in New Zealand. To run these ads, we need your money. As much as you can afford. As soon as you can. Please. If you want to see free elections next year, give to the Free Speech Coalition today. You can donate instantly online at www.killthebill.org.nz You can use Internet Banking to deposit money in our BNZ account 02-0500-0908920-00. Or you can send a cheque to the address below.

Speak up for free speech. Before it gets expensive.

I’ll help you Kill the Bill! To: Free Speech Coalition PO Box 12270, Thorndon, Wellington. Here’s my cheque for $...................... Name................................................................................... Address................................................................................

Authorised by D. Farrar on behalf of The Free Speech Coalition, 53/70 Hobson Street, Thordon, Wellington

Email...................................................................................

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TOYBOX NAVMAN’S NEW S-SERIES

With more than 500 internal and external enhancements to the range, adding style and security without compromising its simplicity, the three models in the S-Series range – the S30, S50 (pictured) and S90i – have been designed to accommodate both firsttime users looking for the basics and experienced GPS buyers looking for uncluttered depth of features. With an array of additional innovative features, the new S-Series is easier to read and operate than ever before thanks to a brand new interface. The most up-to-date 2007 map data comes as standard, for ultimate reliability and accuracy. While the brilliant anti-glare widescreen display ensures that the maps offer an unrivalled view of the journey ahead and text is clearer and crisper than ever. RRP $599999. For more information call Navman on 0800 GO NAVMAN (0800 46 628626) or visit www.navman.com

Sound and vision

New gadgets for the looming Christmas season

Epson EMP-DM1 projector

Epson has released the newest of its fun, lighthearted, and simple to use single plug all-in-one widescreen home theatre and games projectors for go anywhere large screen entertainment. The Epson EMP-DM1, with integrated DVD/ CD player and speakers, is a light, versatile and portable widescreen multifunction projector. With its simple power on and play operation – no audio and video connections needed – the EMP-DM1 makes child’s play of viewing favourite movies or photos or listening to music any where and any time. For widescreen viewing and playing of games, cable and broadcast TV, and internet, the EMP-DM1 has component and composite video and audio input, and a USB2.0 plug for plug and play devices. With two 8W virtual surround speakers integrated with the DVD/CD player, you can be cheering with the crowd at the big sporting event or concert, or sitting back enjoying the action and rich audio of your favourite movie within seconds of switching on the EMP-DM1. The EMP-DM1 will accept input from a laptop computer or PC, video and still digital cameras, external DVD and video players, games consoles, multimedia players such as an iPod, multi-card readers (via the USB slot), and USB drives. The EMPDM1 has XGA resolution of 480p in a native widescreen format (480 x 854), and lamp brightness of 1000 ANSI lumens, making it a great companion for those who like big image widescreen sports, concerts, games and movies. The EMP-DM1 has an RRP of $1,199. Visit www.epson.co.nz

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LCD1510, LCD1910 and LCD2210 The new AXIA and AXIAV LCD’s are a fusion of contemporary design and funcionality, backed up by remarkable technology. AXIA provides eight models that offer a versatile solution for your viewing pleasure – both at home and on the move.

LCDV1001M and LCDV1901M A point of difference – how about a built in DVD Player. These LCD / DVD combos from Teac are a great addition to any family – packed full of features with the added advantage of AC/DC power input means portability is a easy option for families on the go. The LCDV1001M also features an in built 2 hour battery back up – for families who love the outdoors lifestyle.

for more details please contact sales@direct-imports.co.nz

CRX240 Style by the bedside, The new release CD Clock Radio from Teac packs a whole lot of features into a little machine. the CRX240 is a dual alarm clock radio that allows you to wake to your favorite CD, the morning radio or standard buzzer. Also featured is a line input for playback from an external source such as MP3 player. This easy to operate clock radio also features a hi/ lo dimmer switch so you can set the clock brightness to your liking DPF700 Set to be the biggest thing this Christmas, the New Release DPF700 7” Photo Frame from Teac allows you to view your digital photos via USB input, MS/MMC or SC Card Slot. Onboard stereo speakers assist with playback of MPEG4 and MP3 files for Audio and Video files. The DPF700 is supplied with a full function remote control allows easy navigation of the menu and special effects. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, November 2007, 93

realLIFE

LAST WORD

War & peace

As the tom-toms beat in Tehran, Tel Aviv and the Oval Office, Marc Ellenbogen and Arnaud de Borchgrave offer perspectives on what is, and what might be… Defenselink

OLAN HEIGHTS, Israel, – A tour bus perched atop the Golan Heights waits for tourists taking pictures of U.N. peacekeeping forces below. A young man hugs and kisses his girlfriend as someone takes their photo. All seem oblivious to the Israeli troops massed one kilometer to the south facing a Syrian army just over the hill and out of site to the north. Welcome to the Golan Heights, where all is not as it seems. I am standing with my friend David Hercky. We have just traveled from a meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, with the Slovak and Mexican ambassadors – old friends both. Milan Dubcek is the son of the famous Alexander Dubcek, who briefly led a democratic Czechoslovakia before the Soviet invasion of 1968 known as the Prague Spring. Frederico Salas is an old compa-

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triot who we know from his postings in New York and Prague. The afternoon sun blazes down at some 100 degrees. Birds fly overhead as though peace surrounds the area. Vineyards, some of Israel’s most famous, dot the landscape below and ahead of us. All this belies two countries at war. And, yet, Golan is the quietest of all of Israel’s simmering borders. After meeting U.S. Ambassador Richard H. Jones and Ambassador Arthur Avnon, the deputy director general for science and culture, I had shoveled free the afternoon. David has offered to take me up to the North to several historic sites. We stop at the baptism site of Jesus of Nazareth – at the Jordan River not far from Jericho – where groups of pilgrims have followed Jesus’ steps into the stream below. We travel around the Sea

of Galilee, to the synagogue where Jesus prayed. A church, looking somewhat like a spaceship out of a science-fiction film, is now perched atop the site. Evidently it is an attempt by the Vatican not to desecrate the temple. It is nonetheless an insult to the Jewish people. I am conscious of Jews, Christians and Muslims living side by side. I also feel the tension in the air – the tension of war, the tension of being in the middle of a war zone. We are now in Tiberius, a city that was hit by Katyusha rockets from Lebanon during last year’s Hezbollah-Israel battle. We drive to the Golan and agree to stop at a Druze-owned restaurant at the foot of the Golan. David knows the owner and has eaten there before. The Druze are an ancient culture. A sect of Islam, they are permitted to serve in the

Israeli armed forces. Druze live in the border areas between Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, though there is a large diaspora. The Druze in Israel are a bit like Turks in Germany; they are not quite at home in Israel – and they are shown great mistrust among their own brethren. The restaurant is cramped, but somehow comfortable. The hosts are superbly friendly. The address me in Hebrew, I answer in English with a thank you in Arabic. They are pleased to be shown respect. Israeli soldiers sit at tables and enjoy a respite from their long hours on duty. They are relaxed, but very much on guard – sentries stand near and on the sides. Most around me appear to accept this as normal. I like the Israelis, but they are inyour-face New York on turbo, which takes some getting used to. There have been a series of backdoor meetings between the Syrians and Israelis about the Golan. The Syrians lost the Golan to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel has since kept it as a security perimeter. In 1998 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in secret negotiations with his Syrian counterpart, Hafez Assad, about transferring back the Golan with conditions. These conditions and what was said at the meetings – or if they even took place – continue to be a matter of contention. Lebanon borders the Golan to the northwest. We travel though the city of Kiryat Shmona, and somewhere between Avivim and Kibbutz Malkia we stop at the security perimeter between Israel and Lebanon. The yards of the homes back up against the Lebanese border. David and I travel along the Northern Highway, which is a highway directly against the security zone into Lebanon. This is the area controlled by Hezbollah. It is also the area from which Israeli soldiers have been abducted. A new Israeli command post high on the hill monitors our movements. We can see a security camera following our every move. David is not excited that I want to be here. “We are not getting out of the car,” he says somewhat irritated. I am agitated, but understand, and we continue to traverse the parameter and Northern Highway. As the sun sets with us having arrived in Haifa, I look down below at this coastal city. From Stella Maris, the Carmelite church, it is peaceful. In the distance is Cyprus. Many lives have been lost in here. The quiet belies the hard work ahead. Marc Ellenbogen

ASHINGTON – Journalism of verification in the blogosphere has been displaced by a journalism of assertion where rumors become facts and where facts are censored by omission. Hardly surprising then that 200 million Americans, two-thirds of their population, concede they don’t understand foreign policy issues. And only one-third say they understand major domestic issues. TV comedian Jay Leno’s Jaywalking interviews confirm these figures. With 80 million blogs and more than one billion people now online, it becomes increasingly difficult to sort factoid from fact and truth from untruth. Today, all you need to become an online know-it-all is a Web site, a blog and an attitude. Creative reporting is the new genre. And you achieve instant mass readership

by turning your darkest suspicions into reality. No wonder newspapers are losing readers and advertising revenue – and shedding domestic and foreign bureaus. Newspapers are dull next to the fantasy lucubrations dished out as hard news, or an unconfirmed front-page report next to the hard fact moving through the blogosphere courtesy of electronic tools that ensure mass diffusion. A conservative journalist, speaking at a think tank meeting, said he hoped President Bush would order the bombing of Iran in his last few days at the White House in January 2009. Iranian retaliation? The Iranians are already attacking us in Iraq, he responded matter-of-factly. The bombs-away-over-Iran advocates are unfazed by Iran’s retaliatory capabilities. They dismiss a wider conflict, much the

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Defenselink

way they portrayed a cakewalk in Iraq. But What World War III May Look Like is already a cyber favorite. Picture a minor incident involving a U.S. Marine patrol operating out of the new base at Badrah on the Iranian border, posits former CIA operative Philip Giraldi. Superior Iranian forces claim the Americans strayed inside Iranian territory, and surround the Marines. They refuse to surrender and open fire. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (which the Senate branded an international terrorist group) return fire. Helicopter gunships are called in and artillery fire is directed at Iranian military targets. Bush calls it an act of war and, in an emotional speech to the nation, orders U.S. forces into action. The rest of the scenario has a plausible ring. The U.N. Security Council votes 171 (U.S. veto) urging restraint. In the U.N. General Assembly, only the United States, Israel, Micronesia and Costa Rica support Bush’s decision. Overwhelming U.S. air and naval superiority destroy Iran’s principal air, naval and army bases. Revolutionary Guard facilities are obliterated, as are known nuclear research and development sites. Population centers are avoided, though smart weapons destroy communications centers and command-and-control facilities. But there are still large numbers of civilian casualties and widespread radioactive contamination as many targeted sites are in or near population centers. The U.S. media, which had (by and large) backed the administration’s plans to engage Iran, rallies round the flag, prais-

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ing the surgical strikes designed to cripple Iran’s nuclear weapons program. No sooner do the Pentagon and the White House call the attacks a complete success than Iran strikes back. With five years to prepare, Iran has successfully hidden and hardened many of its military and nuclear facilities, a large percentage of which are undamaged. The aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower operating in the Gulf is hit by a Chinese Silkworm cruise missile. Three other support vessels are also hit and are severely damaged when they are attacked by small craft manned by suicide bombers. Pro-Iranian riots break out in Beirut. Lebanese soldiers open fire at the crowds. In the south of Lebanon, Hezbollah fires salvos of rockets into Israel. The Israeli air force responds by bombing Lebanon and Syria. Iranian Shahab-3 missiles also strike Israel, killing a number of civilians. The Israel Defense Forces is mobilized. Syria and Lebanon also mobilize. Rioters in Baghdad attack U.S. troops. Insurgency mortar shells hit the U.S. Embassy. Snipers target American soldiers all over Iraq. Shiite oil workers sabotage Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil fields. Hundreds of alleged saboteurs are shot dead by Saudi security forces. An oil tanker hits a mine in the Strait of Hormuz. Oil tops $200 a barrel. Wall Street suffers its biggest loss in 20 years. The Dow plummets more than 800 points. The United States offers Iran a ceasefire. Iran rejects it. Tehran orders the assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez

Musharraf flees to Dubai. Pakistan’s tribal areas that shelter Osama bin Laden declare their independence. U.S. troops fight their way out of Baghdad with heavy casualties. Rioters in Basra cut the main roads to Kuwait that supply U.S. forces. And it’s downhill from there. Anti-U.S. Pakistani forces seize control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. NATO’s European forces in Afghanistan disengage from what they say is now a civil war. Taliban reconquers Kabul. The Shiite Afghan north and Mazar-i-Sharif secede to join Iran. Waves of Iranian troops cross into Iraq where they are greeted by Iraqi militias. Shiite clerics take over the government in Baghdad. U.S. troops fight their way back into their bases. A Hezbollah-led coalition takes over in Beirut. Iranian Silkworm missiles set Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil fields ablaze. The Saudi monarchy declares its neutrality and pledges not to assist the United States. Kuwait and Egypt follow suit. In Bahrain, rampaging Shiite crowds depose King Sheik Khalifa, establish an Islamic Republic and demand the U.S. 5th Fleet dismantle its headquarters and go home. The Dow Jones loses another 1,000 points. China and Russia refuse U.S. requests for mediation. Suicide bombers attack London, Washington, New York and Los Angeles. Poorly planned. Few casualties, but panic sets in. The White House tells Iran’s theocracy to cease and desist or nukes will be used on select targets. Tehran refuses. Israel is shelled from Lebanon and Syria. Rioting rocks the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas flees to Cairo. The United States drops a neutron-type bomb on Iran’s nuclear center at Natanz, already bombed and destroyed. Defiant Iran fires volleys of Silkworms at U.S. ships. Russia and China place their nuclear forces on high alert. Pakistan’s religious extremists, backed by radical elements in the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, occupy Parliament. India launches a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan’s suspected nuclear centers. But the nukes are elsewhere and Pakistan strikes back – bombing New Delhi, World War III is under way. Or IV, as the neocons now call what we’re already in against alQaida; III was the Cold War. Those hoping Bush will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before he leaves office should think again. Arnaud de Borchgrave