Investigate, October 2005

INVESTIGATE

October 2005:

Child Divorce

Strokes

Alfred Kinsey

Issue 57

9/13/2005, 3:56 PM

1

Oct05_NZ_cover.p65

Oct05_NZ_inside front cover.p65

1

9/13/2005, 5:22 PM

New Zealand’s best cur rent affairs magazine

INVESTIGATE BREAKING NEWS

OCTOBER 2005

DIVORCING HER PARENTS Megan was 14 years old, from a well-off middle class family, when she began having group sex with two adult St John’s ambulance officers. The case has torn her family apart, and now she’s trying to legally ‘divorce’ her parents by applying to be made a ward of the state under the new Care of Children Act. IAN WISHART & NEILL HUNTER have the shocking full story

HEIDI CHARLES: WITHOUT A TRACE It is 29 years this Christmas since Wellington mother Heidi Charles vanished in Rotorua, never to be seen again. Now a new book asks whether she was the second victim of the man who killed hitchhiker Mona Blades. SCOTT BAINBRIDGE has more

THE KINSEY RETORT Alfred Kinsey’s ‘research’ on human sexual behaviour ushered in the sexual revolution, and his findings are taught to our schoolchildren as part of “sexuality education”. But what if the man was a paedophile quack and his research was made up? IAN WISHART backgrounds Kinsey, the DVD movie release

A CURE FOR STROKE? A New Zealand company believes it may have a worldbeating treatment for a medical condition that decimates millions – Stroke. But, as SHEILA DOGGRELL reports, not everyone is convinced

THE INVESTIGATE INTERVIEW British Labour MP Frank Field is the English version of John Tamihere – not afraid to tackle political correctness and speak his mind about the failings of liberal western culture. He speaks to JAMES MORROW

ENRON’S LAST LAUGH: KYOTO New Zealand’s Labour Government, egged on by the Green Party, signed NZ up to the Kyoto protocol at a cost of up to $1 billion a year. But as weather forecaster KEN RING writes, very few people realise Kyoto was a money-making exercise for corporate con-artsists Enron

ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN

32

40

46 32

52

58 40

46

62

68

62

68

Are our rules on overtaking schoolbuses too lax?

DANIELLE MURRAY investigates an annual tragedy Cover: due to privacy laws, image features models

Oct05_NZ_1-5.p65

1

9/13/2005, 4:29 PM

EDITORIAL AND OPINION

INVESTIGATE vol

5 issue 57 ISSN 1175-1290

Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart Customer Services Debbie Marcroft NZ Edition Advertising Jacques Windell Contributing Writers: Matt Thompson, Peter Hensley, Clare Swinney, Chris Carter, Laura Wilson, Ann Coulter, Tim Kerr, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, and the worldwide resources of Knight Ridder Tribune, UPI and Newscom Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Tel: +64 9 373 3667

6 8 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 30

Focal Point Vox-Populi Simply Devine Laura’s World Eyes Right Break Point Doublespeak Line 1 Tough Questions Diary of a Cabbie

Editorial The voice of the people Education brainwashing Boyz n da ‘hood Speak English, or else Ann Coulter on NZ’s Peter Arnett Hard times in the big easy Chris Carter Intelligent Design in the news Adrian Neylan’s Sydney

Investigate Magazine PO Box 302-188 North Harbour Auckland 1310 NEW ZEALAND Australian Edition Editor James Morrow Customer Services Debbie Marcroft, Sandra Flannery Advertising Jamie Benjamin Kaye Tel: + 61 2 9340 1091 Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 Investigate Magazine PO Box 602 Bondi Junction Sydney NSW 1355 AUSTRALIA

20

22

LIFESTYLE

Subscriptions Online: www.investigatemagazine.com

By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 NZ 09 373 3676

By Post: To the respective PO Boxes Current Special Prices: Save 25% NZ Edition $72 Aust Edition A$67.20 Email editorial@investigatemagazine.com ian@investigatemagazine.com jmorrow@investigatemagazine.com jkaye@investigatemagazine.com sales@investigatemagazine.com debbie@investigatemagazine.com All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted.

72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 90 94

Talk Money Education Technology Toybox Food Health Science Travel Bookcase Movies & DVDs

Peter Hensley on investment Discipline is the key A new internet The mobile world Pasta to go First Aid Contagious earthquakes A once-forbidden country Michael Morrissey Shelly Horton

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

Investigate magazine is published by NZ: HATM Magazines Ltd Aust: Investigate Publishing Pty Ltd

76

Oct05_NZ_1-5.p65

2

9/13/2005, 4:29 PM

84

Oct05_NZ_1-5.p65

4

9/13/2005, 4:29 PM

Oct05_NZ_1-5.p65

5

9/13/2005, 4:29 PM

Oct05_NZ_inside back cover.p65

1

9/13/2005, 5:30 PM

Oct05_NZ_outside back cover.p65

1

9/13/2005, 7:40 PM

FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

S

o the dust has settled, the game is over.

To the victor, the spoils. At the time of writing this the election was just a couple of days away, but the entire preceding week has been a fiasco of Labour and media-driven diversions from the real issues. Instead, we have focused on the Exclusive Brethren sect, and whether or not (shiver, gasp) they actually lobbied National.

How dare they, huffed woolly liberal talkback hosts, distribute pamphlets attacking the policies of our beloved Queen Helen and Princess Jeanette?

It was enough to get the When Brash was first asked latte set in Grey Lynn chokabout the pamphlets when the ing on the ciabatta, and of course every atheist fundastory broke, he had no idea who mentalist fruitbat that still was behind them haunts this part of the planet was on the phone or casting vituperative pen to paper to rail against this “unholy alliance” (yes, ironically, the godless ones may not know what holy is but they know ‘unholy’ when they see it) of “the religious right” and National.

“I’ve voted National all my life,” Mavis Gruntfuttock of Beachhaven told Radio Pacific’s James Coleman, “but I’m going to vote Labour now!”

“Why’s that?” quizzed the host, although the rest of us listening could already guess the answer - atheist fundamentalist fruitbat. Sure enough, we weren’t to be disappointed.

“Ooh, I don’t trust those Christian types,” blurted Mavis. “You just can’t trust those people”.

No, of course not. We can have a Prime Minister who can always get a job outside politics doing cheap rip-offs of the great masters in the Louvre, a woman who lied about the Doonegate affair and arguably about her speeding motorcade as well. But Don Brash has a couple of cups of tea with some Exclusive Brethren and suddenly it’s the collapse of civilisation as we know it?

Brash’s media team dropped the ball on this. They let 6, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

the media deliberately distort the circumstances, and failed to angrily spell out the facts: some religious types came to see him and eagerly explained they had a grand plan to oust Labour. Brash, who gets claims like this every week, nodded politely, said something like, “that’s nice” and privately thought “I’ll believe it when I see it”, not expecting to see anything on the scale of a nationwide leaflet drop at all.

When Brash was first asked about the pamphlets when the story broke, he had no idea who was behind them.

Why would he mentally connect the events of a Brethren reference to a pamphlet drop to the absolute blitz that followed?

Truth is, Investigate magazine knew someone was going to get up to something because they’d been sniffing around here seeking information, although they identified themselves only as a “group of businessmen” and the call had come from Christchurch. Weeks later we had a tip that they would be doing a pamphlet drop. But even then I had no idea when the story broke that it was the Exclusive Brethren. In fact, when I heard they’d used Investigate’s printing company I half-waited for the finger of suspicion to descend on us.

But the Brethren kerfluffle was a non-issue. Who cares if they met Brash? Who cares if they published leaflets spelling out reasons not to vote Green or Labour? Their reasoning was sound. As far as I’m aware they didn’t use false names and therefore broke no electoral rules.

The media and Labour have made it out to be “The Brethren” incarnate, but I was only ever told it was a group of businessmen. Who have now fronted up.

Labour has been guided by the Forces of Pinkness for three decades. Where’s the media investigation of that?

James Morrow October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM,

7

VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES TERROR’S PACIFIC BASE Terror’s Pacific Base is just the sort of article that needs to be continually forthcoming to keep our isolationist population informed on the real stakes in the War on Terror. It stands as one of the most pertinent issues of our time.

Sun Tsu would be the first to lay claim to the concept that fighting a enemy “over there” is far better than fighting it at home. The home-side advantage not withstanding. But still our government neglects the real needs of the NZDF. I do not see the NZSAS using NZLAV in the Philippines or in Afghanistan, nor do I see our engineers using them in Basrah. Surely even they can see, peacekeeping so often just does not cut it.

My letter to the Defence minister and his reply has been published on the web at the following URL ( http:/ /juniØr.orcon.net.nz/defenceletter.html) and demonstrates the sort attitude a pacifist administration holds to in these, far from benign strategic times.

The National party has now announced that it will not assure us of the reinstatement of the Air Combat Force, yet the most effective way of protecting our sealanes (over 90% of our trade routes) is by airpower.

Considering this it is interesting how rapidly the US wanted for our participation in Exercise Deep Sabre which deals directly with maritime issues, in this case hunting out vessels suspected of carrying WMD. The only reason our enemy’s capacity has shrunk, as James Morrow so aptly puts it, is because these “secret” wars are being waged. I for one am glad, in this PC age, that words like these are still being printed. Certainly not very Labour in style is it? But even they can’t deny the realities, even if they are willing to deny it to the people of this country.

Still, our waterways remain vulnerable. Our skies are subdued. And our soldiers beg for the most necessary equipment while big ticket items such as NZLAV and the MRV are waved in front of a, largely, naive New Zealand public.

8, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

I fear for our troops’ future but I am so thankful for their commitment to their work around the globe, from Iraq to the Philippines. And thank you for doing your part in keeping these pressing matters in the public arena.

Leon Harrison, Wellington

PM PILATE How upstanding it is of the PM to take a moral stand against the executive, being herself, commenting on the convictions of her drivers in the recent speeding case.

And how useful it would have been if she had rigorously followed that rule in the past. Unfortunately, New Zealanders the like of Peter Doone, to name only one of several, would rue the fact that the PM’s morality in this regard seems somewhat selective. However I confess myself confused - Is not the PM by definition able to comment on whatsoever she may choose? I do recall someone saying that.

Peter Tashkoff, Auckland

AND CHEAP, TOO The $10,000 donation offered by the businessman to avoid a drug conviction was correctly held be the judge not to be acceptable. Helen Clark’s $120 guilt offering toward the Police prosecuted for speeding is not only unacceptable but meaningless compared to the ordeal the officers faced on her behalf.

Mike Williams, Auckland

MEDICAL STATS Thank you for a fabulous magazine. I have been subscribing for a year now and enjoy each issue. I was an avid Listener reader until about two years ago and agree thoroughly with Richard Prosser.

I am a Physiotherapist and as a profession, we have been under a well thought out and sustained attack from ACC for a number of years now. We have just been offered a 42 cent raise, the first in 16 years. The point that everyone seems to miss is that it is not a pay

rise for us that is being offered. This increase is what ACC thinks is a reasonable amount of money to cover Physiotherapy treatment on behalf of you, the patient. But that is a huge issue in itself.

What I have been wondering of late is this. How do you get the same group of people over-represented in both the Obesity and Poverty statistics?

According to the Child Poverty Action Group; half Pacific Island children and one third Maori children “often or sometimes run out of food”. In 1997, the National Nutrition Survey found that 75% Pacific Island people are obese and obesity rates among Maori are 28%. What does this mean?? Food for thought!! (excuse the pun.)

Jenny Wills, Auckland

ZULU KILO DOWN Director of Civil Aviation John Jones letter in the September issue of Investigate contained some pretty shocking inaccuracies for which he needs to be brought to account.

He complained that the families of the pilot and loader driver killed in the accident failed to correct information on flight and duty times that he alleges was in the confidential CAA draft report: information detailing the amount of flying done in the days immediately preceding the accident. The fact is the draft confidential report said nothing about the pilot’s flying hours in the days or weeks preceding the accident, so how on earth could the families correct it? The false CAA statement Jones referred to only surfaced in the public CAA accident report, the one published after feedback from the families and the one read at the coroners inquest. That report carried the totally new and untrue sentence: “His [the pilot] total flying time for the preceding 90 days was 213.9 hours,

and he had not flown on any of the seven days immediately preceding the accident date.”

The investigator was aware of Mrs. Macrae’s concern about excessive flying time well before the final report was published and one must presume he had access to time sheets from WAW – which I understand were in the hands of WAW within one week of the accident itself. The investigator’s mistaken and false understanding appears to be wholly based on the pilot’s incomplete logbook.

John Jones has some serious explaining to do: Why did the false sentence on flying hours only emerge after circulation of the draft confidential report?

What was the source of the false information?

Why did CAA not get the correct information from WAW in the first instance?

Why did he (Jones) write in Investigate that this was in the draft confidential report when it was not?

As well as answering these questions Jones had better make public all three reports – the draft confidential report, the public version as presented to the inquest, and the corrected version published after the inquest. The only version currently available is the latter and this includes the revised and I understand correct statement on flying times “and he [the pilot] had flown on the three days immediately preceding the accident date.”

The confidential draft report, confidential for the protection of the parties, is now perversely being used by Jones to castigate them.

And of course CAA would have been reluctant to change their conclusions, but what those conclusions would have been had the correct situation been known when they were first made we will never know.

Once these three reports are published some other rather disquieting changes will then be open to public scrutiny. For example a safety

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM,

9

recommendation quoted as accepted by CAA in the confidential draft report is downgraded to “under investigation” in the public version.

Is this evidence of undercurrents between the safety arm of CAA and their other interests?

Jones in his letter to Investigate then goes to explain, inaccurately, what actually happened at the Inquest, an Inquest he did not attend.

As one who did attend I can correct his incorrect understanding of what happened. Regarding the evidence given by the CAA investigator, and in particular the question of whether the pilot had been flying in the days immediately preceding the accident, Jones writes “During his evidence, the investigator mentioned this issue to the Coroner and indicated he would look into it further.”

Not true. It was the Coroner who raised the issue. He asked the CAA investigator if he was sure of the accuracy of his written evidence that “he [the pilot] had not flown on any of the seven days immediately preceding the accident date.” The CAA investigator replied that it was correct on the information he had been provided with, but that he would check it and report back. It is important to note that immediately prior to the Inquest the Coroner met in private with Mrs. Macrae to read the evidence she wished to present to the inquest. This evidence contained copies of time sheets, which quite clearly showed the correct working situation. However the Coroner would not allow Mrs. Macrae to present any part of her evidence, though it had evidently alerted him to the error in the CAA evidence, as shown by his questioning of the CAA investigator on the accuracy of the flying hours.

Finally when Jones says the CAA investigations are undertaken without some sort of ulterior motive I am sure that is the case for the investigators, who I think do exceptionally well in difficult and trying circumstances. But for CAA as a whole Jones’ statement loses credibility when he himself, the Civil Aviation Director, fails to accurately represent the contents of the confidential draft report.

How much better were investigators free to act totally independently, which I think Jones’ letter illustrates is not the case.

Frank Cook, Wellington

ELECTION BRIBES Labour’s policies are encouraging to the lower income brackets and because they also “encourage” those in those brackets to remain there.

After all, why get out of a bracket if it is comfy to remain in it?

The reason Labour’s many schemes and policies come across as encouraging to the low-income brackets is because these are the brackets that are being rewarded over-and-over again with such incentives such as tax-cuts, allowances, etc.; while the higher income-brackets are constantly being targeted and punished for having done the hard yards.

The flaw with this is that it instills the wrong message into the younger generation as all that they can see is: if they stay where they are, they will be rewarded, and, if they even contemplate striving higher, they will be punished by losing out on their rewards and by getting taxed higher.

The sad thing is that some people on the border of an income bracket may even be so strongly encouraged by the incentives of a lower income bracket to allow themselves to slip from the higher bracket to the lower one.

The outcome of such mindset is detrimental to the wellbeing and wealth (monetarily and knowledge) of the country and the people that, ultimately, it will lead to our own self-destruction in all sense of the word.

Andreas Toth, Auckland

THE PEAK OIL DEBATE A note on ‘running out’. The main reason why the ‘running out of minerals (including oil)’ scenarios in The Limits to Growth (1972) have not materialised is that they were based on a confusion about catego10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

ries of resources - admirably cleared up in Ehrlich, Ehrlich & Holdren Ecoscience (Freeman 1977). The Meadowses (and the Ehrlichs in their 1st edn, 1972) had not grasped that mining companies do not bother to prove – by drilling two or more holes through lodes – resources corresponding to more than a couple decades of projected sales. Thus, Proven Reserves are in general much smaller than Probable Reserves.

The latter can be pretty confident just from seismic mapping but cannot qualify as Proven.

Failure to accelerate consumption of oil as fast as projected in 1972 is not hugely due to increased efficiency of use; much of the conserved oil is due to switching to other energy sources, failure of GNPs to accelerate as projected, and of course some deterrence of consumption by the OPEC price-hikes just after these pioneering 1972 books.

Finally, I wish people would face up to the astronomical lodes of primeval (not fossil) gas pointed out by the formidable Prof Gold in his book The Hot Deep Biosphere - and perhaps Cornell has kept available his http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/. Given 8-10km holes, many centuries’ worth of natural gas can almost certainly be brought up almost anywhere. Lubricants, no; but fuel – you better believe it.

Robert Mann, Auckland

THE PALESTINE CONFLICT The need for peace between Israel and Palestine is important. We acknowledge Israel for giving up land in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and can only hope that Palestine will be satisfied and not seek to incite further global sympathy for land occupied elsewhere in Israel.

Tania Kennedy, Otaki

BROTHEL CREEPERS It is good to see that the Christchurch City Council is going to appeal the court’s decision to overturn their bylaws on prostitution and signage.

For those of you who do not think that this is an important issue, may I tell you what it is like to have a brothel in a residential street because I had one set up in the house right next door to me and our street changed dramatically. Ours was a quiet cul-de-sac but after the brothel set up, we suffered the following: house values dropped dramatically in price once prospective buyers found that people were getting out because there was a brothel in the street; ‘clients’ knocking on the door late at night and early in the mornings because they had got the wrong address; regular fights – one night, a car’s lights were smashed in; ‘strangers’ walking up and down the street - people did not like their children playing on the front lawn because of this; traffic coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

All I can say is you will be sorry if you don’t oppose brothels in residential areas. I suggest you support your Council to make sure above doesn’t happen to you.

Patricia Gregory, Hamilton

GOD AND EVIL First of all thanks for the magazine and the obvious effort it takes to publish and get out. It is enjoyable to have a magazine that is not afraid to tackle the tough issues and does not skirt controversy. I have been reading for a few months now and it always provokes passionate discussion and debate around our place.

The main reason I am writing is to put forward a few thoughts regarding your Tough Questions article regarding evil.

It seems to me that traditional Christianity sees evil as outside the plan and purpose of God and that He has to somehow work around it as best as He can while trying to save as many as will listen to Him and damn the rest.

I believe that the truth is far greater than that and that God has had

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 11

a purpose for evil right from the beginning and nothing has gone wrong or taken God by surprise at all. His plan and purpose is to save all mankind and fully restore creation to a place greater than where it has come from.

It was part of the plan that man descend into the dark night of sin and death and in that place of brokenness and humility Christ can be planted in the man of dust. Thereby fulfilling God’s desire of making man in His image and bringing Him into full relationship through sonship. The first step in that long process was eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Lord’s own testimony of that was that when they ate He acknowledged that they had become like them – God – by knowing good and evil.

I believe that Genesis 1 is a not only the story of creation but a prophecy and the outline of God’s intention of bringing Man into the Divine image.

The fall and subsequent proliferation of evil activity was and is part of the process needed to bring man through Christ to a place of overcoming and ruling over the elemental forces. Romans 8:20 reveals that all of creation was made subject/enslaved to vanity/ futility not by their own will but by the will of Him who so subjected them, i.e. God. Satan is nothing more than an instrument in God’s hands to bring about our refining and to make sure that a man reaps what he sows. He is the smith that blows on the coals. The only authority Satan has is the authority that God gives him and the only activity he can engage in is activity that God allows. There is not a contest between God and Satan and the winner take the big slice as traditional Christianity would have us believe. God is almighty and He shares that mantle with no other being.

It is His will and purpose that is being played out on His planet.

We are accountable for our actions but He is responsible overall for evil and the effect of. He has no problem in scripture accepting the responsibility for evil as Isaiah tells us, Isa.45:5-9. It is prideful man who thinks that it is his will that is operating in the earth but as Nebuchadnezzar found out, it is truly God’s will that holds sway on this planet and every other one.

Ask yourself: Who was responsible for the ransacking and destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, Was it the Romans or the Lord?

Who was responsible for the Second World War, was it the Germans or was it the Lord? Who is responsible for the rise of militant Islam, is it the Arabs or is it the Lord? Who was responsible for 9/ 11and the Towers crashing – was it the Muslims or was it the Lord? It is only carnal/earthly wisdom that would suggest that man is in control and that God is on the sidelines of history hoping that He will be able to grab a few to safety before the whole thing goes up in flames.

When judgment is in the earth that is when nations learn righteousness. We are a species that learn by experience.

God creates vessels/people for honour and for dishonour but all for His own plan and purpose and according to His will and counsel.

Our concept of good and evil has to take that into account and it is not as simple as man is in control and has a choice.

Most people don’t know why they choose to go in certain directions or do certain things. It is not possible to measure or map all the hidden influences or forces that fashion a man into the person that operates on the physical level.

His choices and why he chooses them are in God’s realm not man’s.

It is only as we have our eyes opened that we can begin to cooperate with God from a point of knowledge and understanding, and our choices begin to carry with them some responsibility. But even so the buck always stops at God’s desk and rightly so.

Michael Moore, Wellington WISHART RESPONDS

Interesting position. Hopefully I can provoke more debate with this response: 12, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

There are different kinds of Evil. Natural Evil, such as hurricanes or earthquakes, and Moral Evil. It is the latter that my essay on child abuse referred to.

The passage in Isaiah45:7 that you referred to is a good example. Although some bibles use the catch-all word ‘evil’, the correct translation of the specific Hebrew word in that passage is ‘calamity’, or ‘disaster’. In other words, God is the author of calamity in that sense, and there are plenty of examples in the Bible (Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho and others) where God warned of impending doom and carried it out as a warning to others. Admittedly, his method of calamity has included allowing foreign armies to invade and kill, but in the Bible all those incidents were preceded by prophetic warnings about what would happen if citizens did not repent.

Websites in the US are currently abuzz over the New Orleans tragedy for precisely this issue – was the hurricane a divine act because of New Orleans’ reputation as the home of Voodoo in the US, and the fact that a 100,000 strong “Day of Decadence” march by transsexuals and gays was to have been held the week that Katrina struck. One’s first reaction is to dismiss it as mere coincidence, but now punters have found a prophecy made by evangelist Kim Clement back on July 22nd at a public event attended by hundreds in neighbouring Houston Texas, where he said: “O New Orleans, God speaks to you from Houston tonight and says enough of this! For a judgment is coming says the Spirit of the Lord, and I will take the men that have stood in faith, raise them above the flood that shall destroy those that constantly bicker and stand against my servant Moses or my servant Bilbo [a local pastor in New Orleans]...the bodies will even rise and they will come forth on the water, but I will keep you and the stench of death will only last a few days. And then what I promised two years ago will come to pass for August, September and October of this year...God said be strengthened now, for enough is enough says the Lord.” (For those interested, we’ve linked to an MP3 recording of the prophecy on our website).

Another evangelist, Richard Berget, wrote back in July 1998: “The cup of God’s wrath trembles over New Orleans, full to the brim. The innocent blood of aborted infants and those murdered in our streets cry out from the ground for judgement. (Genesis 4:5-11). Elected officials, entrusted with the duty and privilege of serving and protecting its citizens, have “framed mischief by a law”. (Psalm 94:20-23). Pastors, rabbis, and priests, fearful of upsetting their financial bases, have remained largely silent. The passionate flames of holiness and sharpened sermons able to sever the binding shackles of sin holding their flocks are sputtering and dying.

“And yet, God is silent. Perhaps the calm before the storm? Judgement, like iron filings to a magnet, is drawn to unrestrained, unbridled sin.

“God told His people in Amos 4:7 & 8 that He held back the rain from one city because of their sin and allowed rain upon another city. Mark this down.

God WILL get the attention of this city. Pastors, priests, politicians, professionals, professors, pushers, pimps, prostitutes, performers, and perverts—listen carefully. God wants to extend mercy. Who knows? Perhaps we might turn to the Lord with all our hearts and be spared as was Nineveh. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

“Why wait until He withholds the rain? Why wait until He strikes your river and causes it to stink? Why provoke Him to dry up the lifeblood of tourist dollars sustaining the city? Why dare Him to lift His hedge around the city, making us vulnerable to unbelievable lightening storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes?”

In other words, there will be arguments for years about the New Orleans ‘calamity’ and whether it was natural or supernatural in origin.

But the real premise of your letter is that God, in effect, causes Moral Evil, such as the rise of Hitler or the abuse of a child. God doesn’t cause that Evil, according to the Bible, but he does permit it to run its course, and seeks to encourage good from the occurrence of evil for the reasons you also spell out. At the time of the second coming, all evil will be banished.

In the meantime Satan is given free rein to tempt humans into evil, because of humanity’s original choice that led to the Fall in the Garden of Eden. God does not direct the specifics of what Satan does, or what people choose, but because of his total omnipotence he sees in advance where the choice you make today will lead you in 20 years time, or your descendants in 200 years. That is why Christ

could predict the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD with total accuracy, not because he necessarily caused it (although he could have) but because he knew it would happen, and he could sound that moral warning to followers so that when it did happen, they would remember, and believe, that he alone was God. While there are clearly times where God’s desire to visit judgment on a city or a nation has coincided with the rise of an evil empire somewhere, it is impossible to determine which came first - did God create the evil empire to wage war on a sinful people, or did God simply use his foreknowledge that Evil would arise at that time and place as a way of executing judgment at that time - using evil to achieve a good purpose.

Because God is almighty, you are right, he can never lose. No matter what Satan does, he’s toast.

The theological name for the suggestions you are making is “Determinism”, and it is the belief that God is so powerful that by definition he must be controlling the minutiae of everyone’s daily lives as part of his plan, directing both the evil and the good.

The logical hurdle for Determinism to overcome however is that the Bible repeatedly and overwhelmingly tells people to make good choices, not bad ones. Ultimately, it even tells people that salvation comes only by explicitly choosing Jesus as saviour and Lord. God could, if he wished, simply wave a finger and force everyone to behave. But he hasn’t, and we don’t. Instead, we have freedom. Moral Evil is a natural byproduct of that freedom, aided and abetted by satanic entities.

YOU DON’T LIKE THE ANSWERS, HANS Thank you for printing my letter, but we have the same problem as earlier this year – you don’t listen to what I am saying. I asked a simple question: Do we need to redefine science to allow for supernatural intervention? The current definition doesn’t provide for that, simply

because one wouldn’t be able to test such a conclusion in any meaningful way.

Secondly, you assert that if ‘the designer did it’ doesn’t mean it is the end of debate. Could you please elaborate on that? I would have thought that ‘the designer did it’ implies that we can close the books on that subject. Have you any examples where this conclusion, or any other ‘ID research’, has led to scientifically testable explanations?

Hans Weichselbaum, Auckland WISHART RESPONDS

Forget the dictionary definition of science - that’s a circular argument. Just because an atheist fundamentalist defined science in such a way as to exclude the possibility of the supernatural does not, of itself, make the definition a valid one.

Is a forensic pathologist only an artist, not a scientist, merely because they are looking for intelligent causation of a wound or a poisoning? Of course they’re a scientist! The application of empirical testing and the scientific method to a series of data or hypotheses is a process, and it is the process that is scientific, not the conclusions.

Defining science as embracing only “naturalistic” conclusions is an artificial human construct because, as Intelligent Design is proving, the evidence obtained by the scientific process may actually lead to a conclusion of supernaturalism.

Are we all supposed to ignore the truth, to keep on pretending that the earth is flat, just because the new Church of Scientism wants to keep it that way?

Intelligent Design scientists are the new Galilleos, persecuted because the Establishment doesn’t want the truth coming out.

The conclusions of ID at this time may appear untestable to science, but as evolutionist Richard Dawkins keeps reminding us, just because science can’t test something now doesn’t mean it won’t be able to in future.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 13

SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE Biased school teachers shape minds

Y

ou don’t have to look far for evidence to back Australian Treasurer Peter Costello’s claim that many of the nation’s teachers are left-wing and anti-American hangovers of the cultural revolution. Of course he could have said the same about many academics and journalists, but that is another story.

Costello made his point in a speech at the Art Gallery of NSW to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue forum, saying teachers trained at universities in the 1960s and ’70s, when Australia was very left wing, carried ideological bagJudging by the new wave of gage which they were passing on to students. youthful conservatism, the activists Anti-Americanism was may have subverted the curriculum part of this because the “believe capitalism is but have not been wholly success- Left evil and that the US is the ful in brainwashing their charges home of capitalism”.

There were predictable splutterings of outrage in the letters pages before the head of the Australian Education Union, Pat Byrne, popped her head up to prove Costello’s point, and then some. Her response was measured: “What’s important is that children are taught there are two sides to any argument and the power of critical and analytical thinking.”

But in an earlier speech about public education posted on the Queensland Teachers’ Union conference website she had declared: “We have to start by being on the progressive side of politics.” She disclosed her “brief ” at the teachers’ conference was to “talk about public education and give John Howard a couple of whacks”. And: “This is not a good time to be progressive in Australia; or for that matter anywhere else in the world. We need look no further than the election results here and in the US and … Britain.”

The sentiments are much the same from the revolutionaries of the NSW Teachers Federation, whose 14, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

annual conference last month declared: “We are engaged in a battle of ideas with the Federal Government about the future and fabric of our society. As inequality increases in our society and notions of redistribution disappear our role as teachers and unionists is critical to positive change.”

A resolution from the conference was to: “Liaise with the growing NGO movement, such as AFTINET [an anti-globalisation network] and the anti-war movement, to oppose neo-conservative policies such as economic rationalism.”

An earlier declaration, from the 2003 conference, included an admiring definition of the concept of “proactive solidarity … which characterises the NSW Teachers Federation”. It is “the force that causes us to band together to overcome the injustices of domination and oppression. It is a powerful historical force, evident in the class struggles that dominated the politics of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries”.

As Kevin Donnelly, a former Coalition staffer and author of last year’s Why Our Schools Are Failing, wrote in Quadrant magazine in April: “Left-wing academics, teachers unions and sympathetic governments have all conspired to use the education system to attack the so-called capitalist system and indoctrinate children with left-wing ideology.”

Judging by the new wave of youthful conservatism, the activists may have subverted the curriculum but have not been wholly successful in brainwashing their charges.

While many individual free-thinking teachers have remained valiantly unpolluted by ’60s leftist ideology, there is no doubt that the political wing of teachers, made up of their various unions and associations, is a museum piece of pre-Berlin Wall socialism untouched by reality.

As Costello says, a central plank of this ideology is anti-Americanism, which found expression in protest against the Iraq war, which teachers’ unions heartily endorsed. The view that the anti-United States sentiment fashionable around the globe hasn’t taken hold in

Australia is hard to maintain. As Costello points out, the results of a Lowy Institute poll last year found that only 19 per cent of Australians felt positively towards the US. The danger of anti-Americanism is that it “can easily morph into anti-Westernism – particularly we’ve seen that with terrorists”, he says.

“They don’t really draw distinctions between Americans or Britons or Australians; they just like to hit anybody who they consider to be a part of the West.”

Antipathy to the US, as the Hungarian-born American academic Paul Hollander wrote in his seminal 1992 book Understanding AntiAmericanism, may be rooted in genuine historical grievances, or resentment of the pervasiveness of US mass culture. It may stem from “envy, resentment, dogmatic leftism, simple-minded anti-capitalism or mindless utopianism”.

It is also a reaction against modernity. “To the extent that Americanisation is a form of modernisation, the process can inspire understandable apprehension among those who seek to preserve a more stable and traditional way of life. [Who are unhappy] about living in a basically secular excessively individualistic society which, while providing a wide range of choices and options, offers little help for its members to make their lives more meaningful.”

His words look prophetic after September 11, 2001. Since those terrorist attacks on the US, anti-Americanism can be seen as a “Trojan horse” with the power to undermine the West’s belief in itself. It provides the intellectual justification for Islamic jihad terrorism, and by devaluing Western culture, it creates vulnerable recruits at home for radical Islamic imams.

Consider that the London suicide bombers were British citizens, comfortably middle-class, British-educated, mad on cricket and Elvis Presley. Like New York’s September 11 bombers, they were young Muslim men at home in Western culture.

“If Australians are taught that the Western values they have inherited are no better than the values of any other culture, no matter how primitive, and that America is the world’s most dangerous terrorist, then radicals offering certainty will flourish” As the French social science professor Olivier Roy wrote this month in Le Monde, they all had a secular upbringing, and none was radicalised in a madrasa. “Almost all of them became born-again Muslims in the West … The young second-generation Muslims radicalised in the rundown suburbs and inner-city slums of Europe are motivated by their situation, not Iraq. They have not been sent to fight somewhere: they fight where they live and where most of them were born.”

Rootless and conflicted, these young men are unable to identify with the old culture of their parents and nor can they embrace a Western culture which is ambivalent about itself and riven with moral uncertainty. They become ripe pickings for radical imams.

If Australians are taught that the Western values they have inherited are no better than the values of any other culture, no matter how primitive, and that America is the world’s most dangerous terrorist, then radicals offering certainty will flourish.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 15

LAURA’S WORLD

LAURA WILSON Just another wasted youth?

ccording to a young Hastings hoon interviewed after the funeral of his mate who died speeding souped-up cars, there’s absolutely nothing to do in sunny Hawke’s Bay. The inference is that unless responsible adults get out there and create some recreational fun for bored youth they will have no option but to continue being a grave risk to themselves and society.

This young man’s claim would seemingly warrant more consideration were he speaking from the Bronx, or one of the many nightmarish concrete jungles peppering countries like eastern Europe, China and the Middle East. Places with a colour spectrum of multiple shades of grey, literally without relief from nature in the form of a green playing For life to appear worth the field or stony brook.

But Hawke’s Bay? Are effort of living, children need young men really preto frequently experience the pared to die because no has built them a skate joy of overcoming obstacles, one park or basketball court, of making adults proud and the endless bounty of nature just bores them to tears? I would dearly love to relieve him and his ilk of the incredible cornucopia of outdoor pleasure that surrounds them, and plop it on the doorstep of youth in Kiev, Vladivostock or Ulan Bator.

I would then hang around to watch the joy of youth who had never seen water except from a faucet, discover surfing, and those who had never seen a forest discover camping, hunting, river fishing. Or just hanging out on massive stone boulders resting in the centre of pristine streams, diving in when the sun overheats the greywacke.

So many millions of kids in our world will never even be able to conjure such pleasures in their imagination.

But perhaps there is more to the hoon’s boredom claim than an inability to utilize nature’s offerings. I 16, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

remember the one time in my life I went to my mother and complained of boredom. I was nine, and life in the Bay of Islands was about as outdoors as it gets. My mother’s response was to tell me that as a child on a large Northland farm she had never, ever been bored, as there was always a tree to climb, or cave to explore. I left feeling slightly inadequate, and instead went to read a book. There is something that adults forget when it comes to young folk entertaining themselves, that thing is the allure of interaction with those older and wiser.

I wonder how much youthful antisocial, destructive or otherwise undesirable behaviour stems not from mere boredom, but severe underchallenging. For life to appear worth the effort of living, children need to frequently experience the joy of overcoming obstacles, of making adults proud. The thing is, kids can’t provide their own obstacles, nor be their own audience. When I complained to my mother at nine, it was not through lack of imagination, but because I was literally bristling for a new challenge, all my former pursuits now seeming trivial. The craving for extension is not something ones peers can really satisfy either. They are there to go through it with you, not to set the challenge.

Maybe what the boy-racer is missing are the potent experiences formerly described as rites of passage. Cultural rituals that test adolescent mettle and invite them to step up into adulthood. Masai elders would banish youth into the wilderness, not to return until they had something to offer the tribe. Earning an ‘Achieved’ for NCEA English seems a little dry in contrast. As far as rites of passage go, pain, self-reliance and danger are important elements, and modern society has all but culled these out of youthful experience.

‘Responsible’ adult time is spent largely at work, earning the income to provide for families. Down-time on weekends and in evenings the priority is relaxing, not setting challenges for frustrated youth. So who are we expecting to provide this essential component of maturation? School-teachers and after school coaches of sport,

drama, music etc. are on the front line, but seldom have the time (or incentive) to forge deep and trusting relationships with each individual child, without which challenges fall on deaf ears. Kids don’t really care unless adults really care.

Our current tirade against the irritating and dangerous behaviour of the boy racer clan lacks information. According to Land Transport statistics the 15 to 24 year old bracket of drivers has in fact cleaned up their act enormously since the 80’s. The level of death and injury caused by young drivers has halved in twenty years. Quite remarkable considering the plethora of speed-inducing drugs has probably doubled.

I loathe and detest the aggressive anarchy of wayward teen testosterone, including graffiti on private homes and garage doors, car paint pointlessly scratched with keys, burn-outs down neighbourhood streets, or simple foul language at top volume in the shopping mall. All of

which dangerously overshadows the equally desperate behaviour of under-challenged female youth, which elects more quietly selfdestructive modes of expression such as wayward sexuality and eating disorders.

But I know what they are really saying. Whilst they can appear snotnosed, demanding, unappreciative buggers intent on blaming their carousing on anyone but themselves, I think they have a point. What the Hastings youth means by his cavalier attitude to dying young, is that all the incredible energy and passion of youth has got to go somewhere. If that somewhere is not orchestratedly positive, then left to its own devices it may take negative expressions. And if our grown-up lives are filled with drudgery and boredom then we are foolish to expect teens to step up to the plate, keen to have a crack at adulthood.

Underinspired youth will always be a threat to society, that’s their role.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 17

EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER English spoken here

I

n May 1990, I came back to New Zealand after three years OE in Europe and the United Kingdom. Actually, that’s not strictly correct; I didn’t just come back, I came home. Home. A simple word, but an emotive one. Home to the familiarity of my upbringing, home to the nation of my birth. Home, to family, friends, accent and custom; home, to things cherished and remembered, to values held, to security and belonging.

I remember quite clearly the moment I decided to return home to New Zealand. I was driving “home” from work along the M25 motorway, west of London, six lanes of traffic slowed to a crawl thirty-five miles long, wrestling with the options for finding an exit and a route to take me to the We speak English here. We expect M4 faster than the prevailing prospects offered. those who wish to be accepted As a possible itinerary unfolded in my mind’s into our fold to do the same. It is eye, a revealing thought not merely a legal requirement; accompanied it. it is simple courtesy I realised that I had begun to put down roots in a place where I had no desire to grow; a place which, in spite of its many and varied attractions, its obvious economic advantages and financial opportunities which to this day New Zealand has no hope of matching, was not, and was not ever going to be, home.

An accident of birth – my father’s, not my own – affords me British citizenship, and the right to live, work, and vote in the UK, or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter. Had I applied before the age of 24, and relinquished the right both to this and to my New Zealand nationality, I could also have opted to carry a Danish passport, Denmark being the country of my mother’s birth.

So I am the son of migrants, and the first generation of my family to be born here. Yet this is home, always was, and ever will be. I know no other; no other place, no other people, no other culture.

18, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Again, this is perhaps not strictly correct. I do know aspects of other cultures, and within my family we retain and celebrate certain of these aspects. We have pride in our heritage. But even as the disparate sides of my family privately honour the traditions of our past, we do so within the framework of the society which is the New Zealand nation. This country is our first loyalty, this culture is our highest acclaim.

I would venture to suggest that as much cannot be said for all recent arrivals to New Zealand.

When my father got off the boat in Wellington in 1956, having finished his service with the RAF, it was not with the intention of trying to recreate Britain down under. He was disillusioned with UK society, knew and admired something of New Zealand, and wanted to be a part of it. Within a few years his father and older brother had followed him here.

My mother’s family arrived, via Australia, in 1941, having escaped Denmark just days before the Occupation. My grandfather, Hans Hansen, had lived in America in the 1920s, and knew more than just a little of the world outside of Europe. When he fled that continent’s madness with his family, it was to the country which made most sense; the place he felt that he would feel most at home. Hans spoke English well enough. My grandmother didn’t; so she learned.

When their son, my Uncle Jack, represented his country in the Flying Dutchmen at the Munich Olympics, it was the Silver Fern he was wearing. That was in 1972, the year before Hans died; a man who carried pride in his Viking lineage to the last, but who was prouder still to have become a bonefied Kiwi.

In recent years, many more migrants from many farflung reaches of the globe have arrived here, ostensibly with the desire to become Kiwis too. But also, in recent times, it has become increasingly apparent that many would-be New Zealanders are motivated not by a desire to benefit from becoming as we have become, but rather, by a desire to extract such personal benefit as is possible

from the advantages we have created here, in industry, education, science, commerce, or even medical treatment, without contributing either commitment to this country, or respect for its culture.

New Zealand is officially a secular nation. However, despite the fact that a majority of New Zealanders do not attend church or identify themselves as being such, most would agree that we are a Christian society.

We speak English here. We expect those who wish to be accepted into our fold to do the same. It is not merely a legal requirement; it is simple courtesy.

We hold that women are the equal of men. Women are not chattels or second-class citizens. We expect new arrivals to adopt this point of view, and live by it; the same goes for all the rest of our laws and codes of behaviour.

We don’t eat dogs, or cats, in this country. They’re our friends. We don’t eat whales either, as we regard them as our fellow citizens here on God’s earth.

We have no wish to become a Muslim nation, or a Hindu nation, or a Buddhist nation, or a Shinto nation, or a “Pacific Rainbow” nation (whatever that may be), or anything other than what we are. And in spite of what the “politically correct” might wish for, the great majority of us have no desire or intention to speak anything other than the Queen’s English.

No-where is it carved in stone that we have to change ourselves, or accept anything or anybody who doesn’t fit with our society. This is who we are, the way we are, and the way we like it.

I have a suggestion for those who appear bent on flooding our small nation with foreigners of every ilk, and it is this.

Certainly, we as a nation have a need for our population to grow.

Certainly, there are skills and abilities which migrants can bring, which will be of use to us; our needs may change from time to time, and we may seek to bolster the homegrown ranks of trades and professions with newcomers eager to better themselves, and their families, by becoming part of our society.

We look to help those who genuinely seek refuge from tyranny and oppression, because that is in our nature. We look to offer a hand to those who are in need. That’s just the way we are; we’re Kiwis.

But we do not need to open the floodgates. An essential ingredient in the magic recipe that is New Zealand, is that there aren’t too many of us. We are a small population in a world of teeming giants. We are a quiet and uncluttered country in a planet of bustling crowds. We are a relatively remote backwater amidst a raging torrent, and the inventiveness and interdependence born of a pioneering spirit and the necessities of isolation, are part of what has made this country such a forward-thinking and comfortable place to live in.

We need to grow; but in accordance with our own requirements, not with those of anybody else. It is of no advantage to New Zealand to become larger for the sake of becoming larger, and to lose our essential character along the way.

And I believe that a further factor needs to be taken into consideration when we are assessing prospective migrants. Along with priorities already afforded to age, health, skills, qualifications, investment and lack of criminality, I believe we should make provision for cultural familiarity as well.

If we have, for example, in any immigration category, fifty places to fill, and 100 applicants chasing them, and all are equal in terms of skills and qualifications, and all are sound of mind and healthy of body and clean of criminal convictions, then I do believe that those from the English-speaking world, and from the other Christian nations, should go to the head of the queue.

Yes, I’m talking about the so-called “Traditional Source Countries” – Britain, Ireland, Australia, the US and Canada, Scandinavia, and Continental, Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe.

“ An

essential ingredient in the magic recipe that is New Zealand, is that there aren’t too many of us.

We are a small population in a world of teeming giants” I’m not much fussed by what the PC brigade thinks about that. I don’t mind admitting that I’m becoming a little tired of the worldwide media culture which wants me to continuously apologise for being God-fearing, male, English-speaking, and a white man – and heterosexual, at that. Looking around, I think I’m in some pretty good company.

The message to would-be migrants is simple. Come and live here, by all means, but not in greater numbers than we are able to absorb. As you benefit from our society and its values, so you must contribute to them.

Leave your second-rate culture at Customs when you arrive. It is not as good as ours. If it were, the nation you left behind would be one in which you would have chosen to stay.

Learn our language, and get some respect for our customs and traditions. We celebrate Christmas here, not Ramadan, and the New Year begins on the first of January.

The face of this nation may be changing over time, though there is no rule which says we must allow it to; but its heart must, and will, remain forever New Zealand. Those who come with genuine intentions will know what that means.

This is us, who we are, warts and all, what we are proud of, and the way we are staying.

If we want diversity, we’ll go traveling, thanks.

Anyone who doesn’t like it is more than welcome to go back where they came from.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 19

BREAK POINT

ANN COULTER Blame conservatives for the liberal media

I

n case you missed this week’s top story, I halfagreed with something a New York Times editor wrote in a “Letter to the Editor” of his own paper. If nothing else, at least Bill Keller now knows how it feels to have to write an angry letter to the editors of The New York Times.

I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but now that Keller has opened the door, Judge Posner did write a ridiculous review. Reviewing a spate of books about the media last month, federal appellate court judge Richard Posner argued that all the complaints about the media from the right and left simply reflected how market forces are changing the news business. He says the mainstream media are “more liberal than they used to be” and attributes that to Now that’s what I call a business “the rise of new media ... model: American news consumers pushing the already liberal media farther left.” are moving to the right. Quick, let’s His premise is obviously true – no industry move to the left! can remain immune from the laws of supply and demand as long as there is competition. After a century of running an oligopoly, media chieftains are now facing competition for the first time – from the Internet, radio and cable TV. The Internet alone ensures that the supply will not abate.

But the result Posner sees doesn’t correspond with either the laws of capitalism or my TV screen.

The old media aren’t moving left: They already were left. If anything, they are moving to the right. (This can be hard to detect inasmuch as Pravda was their starting point.) When they resist, they lose customers.

That was precisely Keller’s complaint with Posner. He objected to the idea that the august New York Times is subject to the laws of capitalism, blathering about reporters’ “idealism” and their commitment to the craft of journalism, blah, blah, blah. Of course, if I were losing readers as fast as The New York Times, I might want to believe I was immune to the laws of the market, too.

20, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Posner’s description of the media, then and now, leaves the impression that he does not himself consume the news. Contrary to evidence, he says: “The rise of the conservative Fox News Channel caused CNN to shift to the left. CNN was going to lose many of its conservative viewers to Fox anyway, so it made sense to increase its appeal to its remaining viewers by catering more assiduously to their political preferences.”

Now that’s what I call a business model: American news consumers are moving to the right. Quick, let’s move to the left! It doesn’t make economic sense that CNN would respond to the runaway success of Fox News by moving to

the left, as Posner claims. In every other industry, competitors follow trends; they don’t run from them. When a reduced-calorie snack food is introduced and becomes a hit, that doesn’t “push” the other snack food companies to roll out their own “extracalorie!” versions.

I enjoy making fun of CNN as much as the next guy, but CNN is not that liberal. It may be liberal compared to an average American, but it’s certainly not liberal compared to CNN pre-Fox News. Consider that New Zealander Peter Arnett used to be treated as a serious journalist on CNN. Even his work on the “Tailwind” hoax program did not jeopardize his standing.

Now, even MSNBC won’t hire him. (Although I hear Arnett has a big interview at al-Jazeera next week – good luck, Peter!) After initially trying to stand by him, NBC was forced to fire Arnett after Americans erupted in fury at his traitorous comments on Saddam’s state-run TV at the outset of the Iraq war. This is what liberals mean when they say the country has become “polarized.” Now when they try to put traitors on air, Americans complain.

Indeed, the only network still assiduously following Posner’s “give the consumers what they don’t want” business model is MSNBC. They will go to dead air before giving a conservative his own TV show (except poor, lonely Joe Scarborough, who has a terrific show – if only anyone knew how to find MSNBC on the dial!).

Turning on TV and seeing Wolf Blitzer instead of Peter Arnett is not evidence of the media becoming more polarized. It’s evidence of the media becoming more sane.

Instead of recycling tidbits he picked up from books written by people who subscribe to the bizarre notion that the media has a conservative bias, Posner should occasionally consume some media himself. It’s a wondrous example of the virtue of competition. The country isn’t more divided. All that has happened is that, now, conservatives are talking, too.

Fire, Sparkle, Brilliance...

The Tycoon Cut Diamond is a masterpiece of modern gemology. With 9 crown facets, the Tycoon Cut Diamond is significantly more brilliant than traditional fancy cuts and reflects light unlike any other diamond.

GIA certified, discreetly laser-inscribed for authentication

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 21

DOUBLE SPEAK

IAN WISHART Hard times in the big easy

S

o what went wrong in New Orleans? Why did an entirely predictable event – a Cat 5 hurricane – in an entirely vulnerable area (New Orleans lies below sea level) come as a surprise to both local and federal authorities in the US? As the hours and days post-Katrina unfolded, the lack of organised response took even diehard Bush supporters by surprise. How is it that the world could mobilise so effectively to assist during the Tsunami, but President Bush could apparently be so incompetent when it came to saving the lives of his people. So slow was the response, in fact, that some liberals began to openly use the “R” word - suggesting the government was racist, and not interested in helpWhile middle class citizens ing poor black people.

Left to one’s own dejumped in their cars and fled, vices, one could be forNew Orleans mayor Ray Nagin given for believing this at went on the radio pre-storm face value. But is it true?

Did the US Republican and told citizens to find their government really mute its own way out reaction to the disaster because the victims were predominantly Democrat voters? Having taken a closer look at this, I’m coming to the view that much of the blame can be sheeted home to local - rather than Federal - officials. Go back to my opening paragraph. It’s not like the New Orleans city council or the Louisiana state government can plead ignorance about the risk of a hurricane like Katrina. So where was the coordinated local and state evacuation plan? That’s right. It didn’t exist. While middle class citizens jumped in their cars and fled, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin went on the radio pre-storm and told citizens to find their own way out. Nagin, so quick to criticise Bush, devoted nothing to helping those who didn’t own cars or couldn’t afford to fly.

At a news conference called jointly by Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco the day before the hurricane hit, it was revealed that President Bush had already been on the 22, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

phone to them personally to plead for a mandatory evacuation. But although the city had nominated its Superdome as an evacuation centre, it didn’t bother to provide security or assistance for the thousands who showed up.

We’ve seen news reports that National Guard troops sat in their barracks playing cards while thousands of New Orleans residents drowned. Guess what - those National Guard troops were Louisiana State National Guard. They weren’t controlled by George Bush.

Why, after all these years, did Louisiana have no comprehensive civil defence plan in place? Why had National guard troops not been brought in earlier to supervise a complete city evacuation for all who wanted to leave, rich or poor, and to ensure there was no possibility of civil disorder?

None of these failings were Bush’s. They are the fault of Louisiana’s Democrat state government.

Sure, one can criticise the federal funding cuts that might have strengthened the levees, but would they truly have prevented a nine metre storm surge?

You may have seen the photo of a black “looter” wading through the water with “stolen” goods, while another photo showed a white couple wading with “food” and essential supplies. The captions may speak volumes about the racism of US journalists and photo editors, but they prove nothing about alleged federal racism.

Listening to Newstalk ZB I was perturbed at the preachy tone of news stories criticising “looters” in the wake of the flood. For heaven’s sake, the entire city was laid waste. Why shouldn’t hungry citizens raid the top shelves of flooded convenience stores and supermarkets in order to survive? After all, the stores are largely writeoffs anyway. Stock losses were covered by insurance, and perishable foods would not be salvageable anyway. And if some toerags stole TV sets, well, good luck to them. If they’re mugs enough to carry a 29 inch set through alligator and shark infested streets they deserve whatever fate awaits them.

The world, and certainly the US, must surely have learned a lesson in the swamp that is now New Orleans.

DEFENSELINK

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 23

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER The stories you didn’t hear about

D

ogs and fleas, Politicians and the media, who could ever imagine one without the other, and who amongst us at the moment has not seriously OD’d as to the daily doings of those political A-listers Helen & Don, not forgetting of course the myriad of bit players hoping upon hope that they might be favoured with a small part to play in the next grand production. Good God have I had it up to the tips of my little pink ears with the earnest prating of the media fleas as they minutely dissect every single utterance or for that matter bodily function of any that would seek our vote, or even better be actually trusted to dwell What about the other worthies awhile upon the Treasury Benches. And who that may well find themselves in amongst these parasitic power as cabinet ministers? What scribes can muster up the to actually speak do we actually know of any real courage the unspeakable? Well worth about very many of them? of course, in nature it is almost unheard of for a parasite to do a lasting mischief to its host when, by simple nibbling and sucking away there at the benevolent donor’s body, a goodly lifestyle can be obtained with very little effort at all. Which, to me at least, explains almost in total the sickening and fawning approach of the major part of our so-called political commentators during the 2005 election.

“On the public’s behalf, to probe and inform!” You have to be kidding don’t you? If ever in the whole of New Zealand’s political history the opportunity existed to examine what it is that the two major parties have done, and plainly are fully intending to keep doing to the hapless, if dreadfully naive New Zealand taxpayers and people at large, then this election is surely the one!

For instance, extortion on a grand scale where enormous amounts of money have been gouged from Kiwi 24, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

workers in the main, but not of course forgetting every other living human being in the country who spends as little as even a single dollar, scarcely a mention! Then having accumulated billions and billions of dollars in surplus funds, the two major political parties engage themselves in the most shameless attempts to bribe the large pool of swinging voters with what in essence is their own money. Each party is seemingly quite happy to spend all this money with all of the care usually displayed by a poker machine addict just as long as these miserable creatures can hang on to the power and position that they quite obviously value beyond all else.

And the legions of media fleas attached to the shaggy coats of these unspeakable wretches? Does plain extortion and bribery even figure in their daily ramblings?

Not on your Nelly, not when they may much more safely ruminate on the ‘performances’ of the various party leaders as they meet in various forums that are laughingly described as being debates, when in fact a much more accurate description would more likely be found in the reporting of your average kiddy set-to in your local play centre sand pit!

Where, oh where, are today’s Austin Mitchells, the Brian Edwards of old, the Simon Walker feller who lit a fire under Sir Robert Muldoon or for that matter Gordon Dryden in his prime? All of whom could be absolutely counted on to look well past this so called ‘presidential’ frippery and ask the questions and make the observations that actually help to make democracy work? Has the time arrived where we now select our nations’ leaders and indeed the actual Government itself almost entirely based on our media’s woolly-headed analysis of the very best host that they plainly would like to feed themselves on for the next three years, or should we perhaps be examining much more closely the actual character and intelligence of the main contenders and equally importantly those that they will be taking into parliament with them?

For instance, what exactly is a seasoned politician, or

for that matter a tough leader? These are terms that have been totted out on a daily basis to describe Helen Clark, they may even be a fair and accurate description of the woman’s prime attributes. The major question, however, is not in any substantive way being answered: how does this in any way suit the lady to lead our country for the next governmental term? One could easily translate such attributes for instance, much less kindly to be sure, with the term ‘tough leader’ construed as being over-bearing with delusions of grandeur. Similarly Don Brash, at least with the ever superficial media, is mostly being portrayed by these self-elected pundits as being a mere pawn at the political feet of Ms Clark, which once again on a purely superficial level may very well be true, but what insights of worth have we received from the media as to what actually makes this main contender tick? Does the term bugger all strike a note here do you think?

Then what about the other worthies that may well find themselves in power as cabinet ministers? What do we actually know of any real worth about very many of them? Certainly we have no doubt formed some opinions as to the abilities or otherwise of many of the cabinet ministers currently still in possession of the keys to the ministerial thunder boxes, some who are undoubtedly quite talented. Michael ‘Fagin’ (we gotta pick a pocket or two) Cullen, having a talent for gathering and then misplacing vast sums of money that really is quite unique. Phil Goff, talented beyond belief in the ability to grind down any political adversary with a combination of steely gaze and unstoppable streams of incomprehensible verbiage, making it therefore quite impractical to really question Phil about anything to do with his portfolios, his average answers being quite capable of filling a complete newspaper or a full evening’s viewing! Trevor Mallard, the ‘Enforcer’ and sometime Minister of Education, would be a shoe-in for another term, during which time it is more than likely he will achieve a life time ambition to make literacy and in particular spelling a completely forgotten art. (A brief check of current spelling and other crimes against the English language are there for all to see by checking out most of the ads on Trade Me). Pete Hodgson, the somewhat mathematically-challenged champion of the Kyoto accord seems to have landed us right in it, but a real political trouper our Pete, it’s all to save the planet he tells but one wonders which one he means. Then I am sure most of us now are imbued with much confidence for our future health needs as a result of the ministrations of our Minister of Health Annette King. Future needs of course being the operative term in that the chances of getting near the head of the enormous queue for hospital treatment lengthens in direct proportion to the money Annette tosses at the problem. Chris Carter is Minister of Conservation, and in particular he is trying to conserve his Government’s credibility with a real hot potato he’s also nominally in charge of – leaky buildings. A probably billion dollar problem that really needs to be well and truly stonewalled until the other mob finally gets into power. Mark Burton, peacenik extraordinaire, naturally the very man to be our Minister of

“Has the time arrived where we now select our nations’ leaders and indeed the actual Government itself almost entirely based on our media’s woolly-headed analysis of the very best host that they plainly would like to feed themselves on for the next three years?”

Defence, a position that now, with an almost complete lack of actual defence forces to administer, Mark finds much more time for the Treaty negotiating stuff, which should he keep getting re-elected should keep him busy for the next hundred years.

And so the list goes on, and yes we do now know quite a bit about these characters don’t we? But what do we know really about the Opposition? Like just at random from the latest list of Opposition hopefuls we see Judith Collins as a possible Minister of Health. Goody…what do we know about her? John Carter, Minister of Defence? Do we have a hawk here or another dove? Simon Power, conservation... does he like fishing, hunting, four wheel driving and neat stuff like that, or does he perhaps prefer a quiet evening at home catching up on his crocheting? Richard Worth, Attorney General and Justice. Is this guy a poor-criminal or a poor-victim supporter? Who at the moment really knows? Sandra Goudie, Consumer Affairs, may be a really nice lady, but what does she think or believe?

And so we could continue down the list of the candidates and hopefuls of the major political parties, and that’s without even stopping for a moment to consider how little, if anything at all that we know either about or especially the character of those either standing or on the lists of the smaller parties, some of whom under MMP may achieve positions of quite extraordinary power and influence. And most, if not all of this entirely due to the lack of information coming to us from those self-described doyens of the Fourth Estate who, in my opinion, out of sheer laziness are currently engaged in trying to persuade us into thinking that the democratic process revolves entirely around the skills or otherwise of just two political leaders.

The danger of that approach has been well-signaled in history, I would have thought, as it inevitably leads to little else than a form of dictatorship. If it is indeed true that knowledge is power, then it appears that the people of this country at least are certainly being deprived of the power to vote with anything other than abject nonsense to be their guide, oh yes, with a little bit of extortion and bribery to garnish the whole sorry process.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 25

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART

Why Intelligent Design is replacing the Theory of Evolution

T

here’s been a lot of media attention on Intelligent Design theory in recent weeks, not least of which a full page article in New Zealand’s Week end Herald. Chris Barton’s article was informative, but nonetheless weighted towards the evolutionary position in the sense that bald statements from evolutionists were allowed to go unchallenged.

The evidence for Intelligent Design is far stronger than Barton’s article acknowledges. At the level of astrophysics and cosmology – Stephen Hawking territory – it is now widely accepted that the universe was created in a mere instant of time – consistent with the Genesis story.

Less than five years ago, If evolution has nothing to hide, science discovered someelse very odd about then it has nothing to fear. If the thing our universe. Normally in theory of evolution turns out to an explosion, the energy be wrong, as we believe it is, then dissipates. A bullet fired from a gun is fast at first it will eventually go the way of flat but gradually slows down earth theory and falls to the ground as it runs out of energy.

Thus, scientists studying the universe through the Hubble telescope expected to see the outward expansion of the universe slowing down as the energy from the Big Bang dissipated. Indeed, it was slowing down.

However, new research has turned that on its head.

After billions of years, the expansion of the universe is mysteriously picking up speed for no obvious reason.

Some scientists speculate that some new undiscovered force must be permeating the very fabric of space, powerful enough to not only shift galaxies, but shift them faster than ever before. For lack of a better name, they call this force the “cosmological constant”, or “dark energy”.

In terms of ID, however, the accelerating universe mystery encapsulates how scientists can look at the same data but still come to different conclusions about a pos26, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

sible cause. For example, this ‘dark energy’ might just as easy be called a ‘mystery force’ or even ‘the hand of God’. Because currently we have no way of knowing what it is, and may never. We can see its effect, but we can’t seem to see the force itself.

This mystery, and the growing evidence for the anthropic principle – the acknowledgement by science that the universe appears to have been specially designed to favour human life – were investigated by a Stanford University research team whose findings were published in the science journal Nature in August 2002: “Our universe is so unlikely that we must be missing something. In an argument that would have gratified the ancient Greeks, physicists have claimed that the prevailing theoretical view of the universe is logically flawed.

Arranging the cosmos as we think it is arranged, say the team, would have required a miracle.

“An ever more rapidly expanding universe is destined to repeat itself, says Leonard Susskind of Stanford University, California, and his colleagues. But the chances that such re-runs would produce worlds like ours are infinitesimal.

“So either space is not accelerating for the reasons we think it is, or we have yet to discover some principle of physics, the researchers conclude. Like a guardian angel, this principle would pick out those few initial states that lead to a universe like ours, and then guide cosmic evolution so that it really does unfold this way.

“The incomprehensibility of our situation even drives Susskind’s team to ponder whether an ‘unknown agent intervened in the evolution [of the universe] for reasons of its own’.”

That quote was not written by creationists. It was written by scientists. Stephen Hawking is another who, reluctantly, has acknowledged in a scientific paper he co-authored in 2002 that it is possible some kind of God must have kickstarted the universe into existence, although Hawking doesn’t accept that a Deity had any ongoing role in keeping things ticking.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 27

Chris Barton in his Weekend Herald piece quotes school science teacher Martin Hanson as saying “There are no geologists I am aware of who think the world is only 10,000 years old. That’s the most fatuous idea one has ever come across.”

Perhaps it is, but maybe it isn’t. I’m no promoter of the Young Earth theory and I argue the Intelligent Design perspective on the basis of 13 billion year old universe and a 4.6 billion year old Earth.

Nonetheless, I would not be so scientifically arrogant as to suggest that a Young Earth position is impossible.

Firstly, Hanson clearly is not aware that the Young Earth camp numbers quite a few professional geologists and geophysicists, people like Dr John Baumgardner, who’s on the staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US. Baumgardner holds degrees in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University and Princeton, and holds an MS and PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA. He specializes in planetary mantle dynamics.

One of the intriguing things in reading some of Baumgardner’s research, and indeed from reading astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez’ book The Privileged Planet, is the number of key facts that are well known in science but never make it onto the school curriculum because they are ‘inconvenient’ facts.

For example, most people would be unaware that current popular scientific theory about the age of the Earth or the universe rests on a series of assumptions, rather than proven facts. We assume that we know how old the Earth is based on the way the planet behaves geologically in the present. We know about modern rates of erosion, for example, and we know about plate tectonics, where the Earth’s crust is a giant jigsaw of continental plates that grind into each other, causing earthquakes and volcanic activity. We assume, based on current processes, that the deeper the rock strata the older they must be. But we can’t actually carbon date rocks.

And here’s the fly in the ointment. We’ve only recently discovered that Earth appears to be the only planet in the solar system with that kind of geology. Satellite missions to other planets and moons are showing the surfaces of those objects are subject to cataclysmic changes where every few thousand years an entire continental plate tips up and sinks without trace like the Titanic. Instead of being billions of years old, the surfaces of those planets are only a few thousand years old.

We assume that because the Earth is more gentle now, it always has been, and this allows science teachers to make definitive statements about “proven scientific facts”. But what if the Earth has had similar cataclysmic crust changes in the past? Where does that leave modern scientific assumptions? Skating on thin ice.

Again, I’m not a supporter of Young Earth theory, but I would never be so arrogant as to categorically deny the possibility. Science, after all, used to believe the world was flat, and that thalidomide was perfectly safe in pregnancy.

Finally in his article, Chris Barton touched on Intelligent Design’s ‘king hit’, irreducible complexity, although he suggested critics had already managed to falsify this aspect of the theory. In fact, they haven’t managed to shoot it down at all. The leading critic on this is Professor Kenneth Miller in the US, who suggested that ingredients for irreducibly complex molecular structures might have been cobbled together from existing parts in an evolving organism. His theory is called ‘co-option’ and, as honest evolutionists admit, is itself riddled with problems, not least of which the idea that an organism could carry around a half built structure for hundreds of generations while it waited for the rest of the right bits to come along.

Then there was the segment on TV3’s Campbell Live. Campbell wheeled in a poorly prepared evolutionary biologist, David Lambert, and asked him a series of patsy questions. How patsy? Well, there’s no dispute between evolutionists and ID that there is plenty of evidence of change 28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

“For example, most people would be unaware that current popular scientific theory about the age of the Earth or the universe rests on a series of assumptions, rather than proven facts.

We assume that we know how old the Earth is based on the way the planet behaves geologically in the present.We assume, based on current processes, that the deeper the rock strata the older they must be. But we can’t actually carbon date rocks”

within a species. That’s why humans have different hair or skin colour, or why some birds have larger beaks, or a whole range of minor differences like that.

Nobody disputes this. But the real debate is whether one species can change enough to turn into a new species. And there is no evidence of this.

Campbell’s interview with David Lambert never covered this issue.

Instead, Lambert explained how his life’s work studying Antarctic Adelie penguins proved that their DNA had changed over 40,000 years.

“So even at the gene level we have survival of the fittest,” exclaimed Campbell.

Well, no. All you have is evidence of changes within a species. The bleedingly obvious question was never asked by Campbell of Lambert: “Does the fossil or DNA evidence show that penguins became seagulls?”

No, again.

Campbell Live wasted five minutes debating a non issue and then hailing it as proof that humans and chimps descended from a common ancestor, when all he’d managed to actually discover is that some penguins were different colours.

The fossil Adelie penguins of 40,000 years ago are virtually identical to the Adelie penguins you see walking down the street today (at Scott Base). Just like the fossil sparrows from 60-odd million years ago could have fallen out of your garden hedge last weekend. If that’s proof of major evolutionary change I’m a monkey’s uncle. Which is probably Darwin’s misguided point.

TV3 missed the boat, and embarrassed themselves scientifically, leaving the public no better informed about the real issues.

Intelligent Design should be taught in schools alongside evolution, because debating the controversy will sharpen the analytical skills of students and let them get their teeth into a genuine scientific argument on the most perplexing of all scientific mysteries – the origin of life.

If evolution has nothing to hide, then it has nothing to fear. If the theory of evolution turns out to be wrong, as we believe it is, then it will eventually go the way of flat earth theory.

It is ironic that Evolution – a theory priding itself on the triumph of market forces, survival of the fittest – is itself so terrified of the latest scientific discoveries that it wants special protection and it wants students to be forbidden from hearing alternative viewpoints because it knows it cannot compete on a level playing field.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 29

DIARY OF A CABBIE

ADRIAN NEYLAN All due respect

A

week doesn’t pass when my cab radio doesn’t issue broadcasts warning of youths throwing rocks at passing cabs, usually in the housing commission areas of Redfern and Matraville. Indeed the nightly bus runs out to La Perouse don’t operate without security aboard anymore.

The vicious attack I wrote of last month was not an isolated incident in that part of the City, where similar attacks occur on a regular basis. For many of these youths violence is fun. Where once kids were content to get drunk, these days a night out is not complete without proving oneself by smashing someone who can make the simple mistake of looking at them. And in a disturbing portent of things Parents are failing to nurture to come, such public violence in Britain has now their young, to teach them what graduated to sinister new constitutes civil behaviour levels, namely, the targeting of the weak and vulnerable in society, in particular the elderly. Labelled low level urban terrorism it has led to the Government instituting a legal instrument called Ant-Social Behaviour Orders.

Recently I picked up a visiting British Labor MP Frank Field, who has been championing the fight against this urban scourge and was in Sydney to deliver a series of lectures for the Centre for Independent Studies. Field says anti-social behaviour stems from the collapse of functional families, the unions and the church, adding that the issue was once taken up squarely by the Left, which ages ago stressed personal responsibility and selfimprovement.

Field had just been interviewed on radio when he hailed me outside the ABC in Ultimo. Having listened to the interview I sought to ascertain the extent of the problem. A talkback caller had confirmed it by likening it to A Clockwork Orange, a film which depicted a society 30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

spinning out of control. ‘Is it really that bad in your electorate?’ I asked. ‘Absolutely’, Field replied, ‘Pensioners are constantly coming to my office reporting how young lads run across their bungalow roofs, pee in their letterboxes, bang on their windows or jump out at them in the dark’.

Wondering how youth arrived at this point I asked, ‘Do you think it’s to do with the fact many parents simply don’t know how to parent, or won’t parent?’. ‘Most definitely’, he replied, ‘Those parents are failing to nurture their young, to teach them what constitutes civil behaviour’.

When I commented that some parents aren’t fit to breed he replied, ‘Well, you know what the saddest thing I’m seeing is the amount of grandparents forced to raise their children’s children’. ‘Well mate’, I told him, ‘obviously we don’t have the same problem here, yet.

But there are certain areas around town I prefer to pick up young adults. And one of them is the Bible belt in the north-west of Sydney where the kids are better behaved than other areas’.

Field noted his seat of Birkenhead was traditionally a Catholic constituency but had now changed to a secular seat. He noted the decline of religion in society had also coincided with the rise in yobbo behaviour. Just then he spotted St. Mary’s Cathedral and requested I drop him off there.

As he was paying the fare I congratulated him for his stand. ‘You know it’s hard and I take criticism from my own party colleagues for it. Gordon Brown, our Chancelor of the Exchequer recently told me, “Frank, your problem is that you defer”!?’

I pulled into the Domain to write up our conversation whilst it was fresh in my mind. Some 15 minutes later I looked up to see Field briskly striding past, heading for the Art Gallery. He saw me and as we exchanged a wave I noted he carried a pained expression. A man on a mission. It seemed as if he bore the hopes of the civilised world. Or at least Britain. Good luck to him.

Read more of Adrian the Cabbie at www.cablog.com.au

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 31

THE GIRL WHO WANTS TO DIVORCE HER PARENTS How a night of underage group sex destroyed a family

IT IS SHAPING UP AS A NEW ZEALAND TEST CASE: THE ‘RIGHT’ OF A CHILD TO DIVORCE HER PARENTS BECAUSE SHE WANTS THE ‘RIGHT’ TO ASSOCIATE WITH OLDER MEN. AT LEAST, THAT’S THE ISSUE AT THE HEART OF THIS SHAKESPEARIAN TRAGEDY PLAYING OUT IN ONE OF AUCKLAND’S LEAFIER SUBURBS. IAN WISHART AND NEILL HUNTER REPORT

32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

I

t was a hot November afternoon, sticky, redolent with the promise of Christmas and lazy languid days on the beach, and if the kids at the bus-stop by a well known girl’s high school in Auckland had been old enough to remember Alice Cooper’s teen an them, School’s Out For Summer, they’d have been singing it. In other words, it was one of those afternoons. As the TV news camera car pulled up at the traffic lights, windows rolled down to lure as much of the light summer breeze as possible into the vehicle, there was little interest from the girls at the bus-stop. Except for one. While, all around, her friends chattered amongst themselves incessantly, punctuated occasionally by giggles or peals of laughter, one girl locked eyes on the cameraman in the passenger seat, gave a waifish smile, and promptly hoisted her skirt into the air, Marilyn Monroe-style.

No one else around her batted an eyelid, but for the news crew being flashed by a fourteen year old girl was an unnerving indicator of how sexualised kids were becoming.

Labour’s plan to legalise sex between 12 year olds may have been shot down in a storm of protest two years ago, but there’s little doubt that underage teens are increasingly being seen as fair game.

Which is where Megan’s* story comes in. To friends and family, Megan was just an ordinary 14 year old, but to a 21 year old St John’s Ambulance worker and youth programme leader, Sam Brens, and two other men from St Johns, she and her underage friends were precocious sex kittens ripe for an orgy. The narrative of her journey, from schoolyard to a packed Auckland courtroom where three men were to face charges of statutory rape, is a gruelling one.

Some of it has been pieced together from entries in Megan’s diary, some from police investigations, still more from interviews with some of Megan’s friends. Her mother Donna, for example, discovered late in the piece that Megan was not the only girl the three men had preyed on. She located a second 14 year old, Phoebe, who in turn told of a third victim, Tiffany.

Megan’s father told Investigate: “Phoebe described to Donna during that phone call her contacts with the men. The modus operandi used on Megan was the same as on Phoebe, and also apparently with Tiffany: One of the men would befriend the girl (initially through a text message), then have sex.

“Then, eventually, he would introduce the girl to one of the other three men. The second man would have sex with the girl. This was followed by group sex. Phoebe said she was eventually having group sex with all three of the men. All three men are members of St John’s Ambulance, at least two of them were leaders in St John’s youth programme for six to 18 year olds.”

On the St John website, incidentally, the organisation boasts of its youth programme: “Providing a safe and secure environment for young people to learn new skills, meet new people, experience new things and, of course, have fun.”

“Yeah, they had fun all right,” says Megan’s father, Murray. “In my view, those three men are paedophiles, and there they were leading the youth group.”

It had begun, as far as police know, in early to mid 2003 while one of the ambulancemen commuted on a bus packed with hormone-charged schoolgirls from two nearby schools. The man was, according to Megan’s friends, “good looking”.

“We used to sit either behind or in front of him,” says Jill, now

*The names of Megan, her parents Murray and Donna, and friends Phoebe and Tiffany, have been changed. The names of the accused have not been changed. All photos in this article feature models, not the girls concerned

sixteen and appalled at the events of the past two years. It seemed innocent fun at the time, a little flirting with a good-looking older guy on the bus, but it graduated to an exchange of text messages. As Jill tells it, Megan was drawn like a moth to a candle to the illicit mobile messaging game. Megan didn’t use the bus, and seeing as she hadn’t met him, and he didn’t know what she looked like, she felt less inhibited in sending “jokes and stuff ” to the St John’s worker because she thought she’d never meet him so it didn’t matter,” recalls Jill.

But it did matter. The 20 year old was soon trying to persuade the girls to meet him socially.

“He used to text me and my other friend and ‘say do you want to meet, I’ll send a taxi?’ and we’re like nah-nah because we knew what he was like,” says Jill.

So why didn’t Megan? Why did Megan take a walk on the wild side where some of her friends knew not to go? She at least, given her family background, should have been safe: a tight-knit, upper socio family with a strong Christian faith, plenty of support and plenty of communication.

Jill remembers the old Megan.

“She wasn’t like that before. He changed her.”

He changed her…a young teenager’s words resonate long after the late night interview, her parents nearby. Two girls have spoken to Investigate on the condition of anonymity and they are quite clear, Megan wasn’t previously doing ‘bad stuff ’. One of the girls in front of us was angry enough about what was happening to her friend that she gave a statement to the police.

According to Megan’s close friend Kim, it was July 2003 when she discovered Megan had taken text and stranger-danger messages to new levels. Kim confronted 20 year old ambulance worker Karl Berghan about his sexual relationship with a 14 year old: “do you realise how old she is?”

But nobody told Megan’s brothers or parents. Between July and December 2003, the 14 year old and the older man rendezvoused on numerous occasions, sometimes socially but frequently for sex. Then, in December, a dark new twist on a hot summer night, documented by Megan’s father.

“After spending the day at home with her family, our daughter slips out her window at night where she is picked up by Karl Berghan and his 21 year old friend Sam Brens. They take her to Shakespeare Park where the two men have sex with her. Our daughter had never met Brens before that night. Our daughter said that Brens came along because Karl Berghan wanted to watch our daughter have sex with another man. Our daughter has said that she was intimidated into going through with the sex…”

When Megan’s friend Jill discovered Megan had become a sexual plaything for the older men, she confronted Sam Brens.

“I said, ‘Oh that’s so yuk, you’re way older than her’,” she tells Investigate.

Megan’s parents at this point still weren’t aware of what was happening to their daughter, not until a room clean-up three weeks later.

The discovery that Megan was on the Pill, in mid January 2004, was made by her mother. If it seems odd that a 14 year old can be on the Pill without parental consent or knowledge, and despite the risk of fatal blood clots, you can thank Labour for that policy, part of its “wimmins” legacy from the 1973 wish list referred to in the May 05 issue of Investigate.

It is a double indictment because sex with a 14 year old girl by anyone is a crime, punishable by jail, regardless of whether the child “consents”. Labour, in a move championed by Helen Clark, appears to turn a blind eye to sex with children, endorsing instead a campaign of October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 33

sexual education and contraception and, if necessary, abortion for children, all of it without parental knowledge.

Faced with a government that made it easier for children to work as prostitutes, and which wanted to make sex with 12 year olds legal in some circumstances, it is perhaps little wonder that Megan’s family would soon hit bureaucratic brick walls when they tried to get the statutory rape of their young daughter investigated.

When mum Donna made the contraceptive discovery, Megan fled the house. She wasn’t located until one the next morning, at a friend’s place.

The following day, say her parents, she “confessed” to being involved with an older man. She neglected to mention being involved with two men.

As a mark of her still-childlike mental state, Megan used her father’s cellphone that evening to send a secret text message to her new sexual partner, Sam Brens, asking him to come and pick her up. It is the beginning of a long and tragic rollercoaster ride for Megan’s family.

Her father Murray, tried to trace and identify the men who’d been raping his daughter. When he discovered Karl Berghan and Sam Brens worked for St John’s Ambulance, he was stunned, but recovered sufficiently to pay a visit to their employer and get them suspended, at least temporarily.

Megan, meanwhile, was leading Murray and Donna on a chase. Just a week into the new school year, she ran away from school.

“We find her at a friend’s house the next morning at nine am, five minutes walk from where Karl Berghan works in Takapuna,” Murray wrote in a diary note. “Megan later says she spent the night in a park in Takapuna. We did find out with the police, that late that night, our daughter had walked into a strange house on Takapuna beach, introduced herself to four men having a barbeque, told them she was 16,

finally convinced police to investigate the statutory rape issue. He thinks it took that long because the police youth aid officer originally handling Megan’s file was stuck in the mindset ‘runaway teen, hormones, parenting issue’.

Police youth aid, according to Murray, “even got angry with me and told me I wasn’t listening to them. I thought reporting it to CYF as police asked me to do was part of the investigation process. Then police told me I had to make a complaint so I went to the area commander and spent about one and a half hours with them, then I went back to youth aid who still told me I wasn’t doing things correctly and hadn’t made a complaint.” Eventually, Murray managed to convince police that his daughter was a victim, not a juvenile delinquent, but only after detectives took over. Detectives saw what their colleagues in uniform apparently could not, went hunting and when they cornered their prey with arrest warrants, two came quietly while another fled his work place, only to be caught later.

And there one might feel this story could end – police proactive, parents’ story believed, offenders arrested for enticing under-age girls into carnal knowledge which is how one lawyer described it. Surely these parents could focus on recovering their daughter from the dark side and leave police to do their job. After all, CIB investigations were now revealing that there were four other young teenage victims, so they were going to be busy.

But the urging of police youth aid to bring in CYF eventually poisoned the entire criminal case. And that’s because the prevailing social attitude today is that children can choose to have sex, and that’s a valid choice. Fourteen year old Megan was infatuated with her 20 year old boyfriend. As far as she was concerned, her parents had no right to

THEN, EVENTUALLY, HE WOULD INTRODUCE THE GIRL TO ONE OF THE OTHER THREE MEN. THE SECOND MAN WOULD HAVE SEX WITH THE GIRL. THIS WAS FOLLOWED BY GROUP SEX. PHOEBE SAID SHE WAS EVENTUALLY HAVING GROUP SEX WITH ALL THREE OF THE MEN. ALL THREE MEN ARE MEMBERS OF ST JOHN’S AMBULANCE, AT LEAST TWO OF THEM WERE LEADERS IN ST JOHN’S YOUTH PROGRAMME FOR SIX TO 18 YEAR OLDS and had a beer. On her return we find Megan’s diary in her bag and discover the events that occurred with KB and SB during 2003. The diary will be used as court evidence in the upcoming court case against the two men.”

But it is the events that followed the discovery their daughter had been raped that are most perplexing to Megan’s parents, and perhaps to parents everywhere. What should have been a straightforward criminal investigation of two men for having sex with a minor, instead became a story about a 14 year old’s right to have a boyfriend without her parents intervening. It is this essence, if you like, of the case that is a microcosmic example of the Labour Government’s social engineering.

Murray and Donna’s initial reaction, after talking to their daughter and counselling her, was to call the police. But the police reaction was to get CYF involved. Now remember, there was no suggestion in this case of sexual abuse happening within the family. There was no suggestion that Megan was not being brought up in a loving household.

This was a criminal case, little different in law than if Megan had been accosted in a park by strangers and sexually assaulted. In such a circumstance, CYF would not be called in. But in this case, police asked Murray and Donna to get CYF involved.

It happened because initially the family tried to deal with Megan, but Megan kept running away from home. Murray or the police would pick her up in the middle of the night, often close to where Karl Berghan lived or worked.

Murray says it took five weeks of this repeated behaviour before he 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

interfere in the way they did. Twenty years ago, such a claim from a person still legally a child would have been laughed out of court, and often was. But in modern New Zealand, that’s all changed.

When Labour’s Helen Clark lobbied hard for under 12 year olds to have the right to an abortion without their parents even being told, let alone giving consent, she was not only saying that children have a right to be sexually active, but that parents don’t have a right to know.

Just weeks ago, newspapers carried reports that 11 year old girls receiving MeNZB vaccinations in front of their classmates were being asked by health officials “are you sexually active?”. The question wasn’t being asked with a view to prosecuting anyone, but merely because the vaccine is not safe in pregnancy. The newspapers reported that one young girl had been found to be pregnant, but there was no report of anyone being arrested for having sex with a child. Instead, the New Zealand Government appears to have adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy based on a misguided belief that asking children who’s having sex with them is abuse in and of itself. While such a policy may be mooted with genuine intentions, it is fundamentally flawed not only because it lets paedophiles get away to prey on others, but also because it rapidly conditions society into thinking it no longer has a right to ask the questions, and that if a child chooses to have sex, and it is consensual, who are we to interfere?

When you add into the mix the growing number of kids who’ve gone off the rails, child prostitutes as young as nine, and 12 to 15 year old school students mating like rabbits, and then factor in the huge

growth in violent crime, it is also easy to see why police no longer assign a high priority to such grey area sexual offending.

So when CYF became involved in Megan’s case, although initially supportive of the parents’ efforts to deal with the situation, that quickly changed as the CYF worker assigned to the case developed an empathy with the opinionated and articulate 14 year old who blamed her family, rather than her boyfriend, for the whole mess.

The CYF file note from January 27, 2004, states: “Parents seem to be adequate protectors and have tried to address the issues themselves by involving the Police, engaging in the Tough Love programme and willing to link Megan to counselling.”

On February 4, another CYF note reads: “Parents are protective and willing to engage with whatever support and resource they can access to address the difficulties.”

February 6: “Mother did sound committed and said a member of the family will sit with Megan day and night to prevent her from running away. She really wants a social worker to talk to Megan, as they felt that may curb her behaviour. Mother appeared to be doing all the right things in attempting to manage Megan’s behaviour.”

24 February, 2004: “The parents were very cooperative and supportive of Megan. It appeared that they had her best interests at heart…The parents definitely want to assist their daughter.”

A

ll of those file notes record the actions of good, supportive parents. But things were about to change. On March 4, 2004, CYF arranged for Megan to meet with a counsellor from an organisation called the Rosa Counselling Trust. Megan’s parents, again, were “supportive”, believing the counsellor would gently bring Megan out of her confused and traumatised state, typical of victims of sexual abuse.

“I tried to speak to the Rosa counsellor prior to their meeting with Megan,” writes her father in a diary note, “but they are completely closed to any input from me. Megan has first session with Rosa Counsellors – 30 minutes duration. She is still in a negative mood and not talking to her parents since running away two days previously. The assessment the Rosa counsellors make during these 30 minutes is crucial to the disastrous events that follow in subsequent weeks. As parents we thought we had faced a nightmare in the past 7 weeks, however the CYF-appointed Rosa counsellors were about to make matters far, far worse.”

Megan spent just half an hour with the counsellor. But in that half hour, the counsellor quickly concluded Megan’s problem wasn’t the

fact that the 14 year old was having group sex with several adult men – it was her domineering family. And this comment, without having spoken to the family.

The next day, the counsellor – whom we’ll call Flora – met with Murray and Donna to discuss her conclusions, which Murray again noted: “They announce that ‘Megan is at the greatest risk in the home environment’. They are completely closed to any input from the parents and illustrate gross incompetence.”

Further than that, Flora allegedly contacted CYF immediately after her session with Megan and told CYF that Murray and Donna were “problem parents”. That phone call and subsequent diary note are recorded in the CFY file on the case.

Murray was seething, and wrote in a complaint to the Ombudsman’s Office: “Flora, the Rosa counsellor who counselled our daughter, has no qualifications whatsoever. Flora took an instant disliking to the father from the moment she met him. She has described this in detail in writing. Her reasons for disliking the father are that he wanted to talk with her and tell her the background about the sexual crimes his daughter was a victim of, before she counselled his daughter.

“Flora refused to counsel our daughter in connection with the sexual crimes, she counselled our daughter that her greatest problem in life is her parents, and that she should leave home as soon as she was able.

“Flora maintained that the relationship between our 14 year old daughter and the adult men who committed the sexual crimes on her was ‘love and romance’ (the men have been arrested and are currently awaiting trial for the sexual crimes committed on our daughter).

“Flora refused to listen to anything the parents said (she told us she did not need to listen to us as she had 20 years’ experience and had heard it all before). Upon meeting Murray for a few minutes when he dropped his daughter off for her first session, she later that day contacted CYF and recommended that our daughter be immediately removed from the family.

“The outcome of the counselling, and of CYF’s behaviour toward us, is that our family has now been destroyed.”

Investigate has spoken to Rosa Trust, but spokeswoman Rowena Manning refuses to discuss the specifics of the case. We’d have liked to get an answer to an obvious question: “does a counsellor who condones sex between two 20 year old men and one 14 year old girl as ‘love and romance’ deserve to continue working in NZ?”, but sadly, that’s too specific. Investigate understands Rosa has however denied making the comment.

But if it didn’t say it, the documents in Murray’s possession suggest October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 35

that Rosa was definitely treating the case as if it was just a case of teenage love and angst.

Over the following week, matters slid from bad to worse. Although still with her parents at that point, Megan “wigged out” at one point when told she couldn’t dye her hair blonde, and began smashing crockery. So much crockery, in fact, that her mother felt compelled to call police, who removed Megan to an undisclosed CYF location for the night. CYF’s attitude towards the parents in the wake of Rosa’s recommendations was also rapidly changing.

A CYF diary note of 12 March by social worker Karen Goodwin states: “I advised [Murray] that by focussing on Megan’s previous sexualised behaviours it is not helping her move on.”

At that March 12 meeting, the parents say they are forced to sign a “temporary” order placing Megan in CYF’s care. CYF refused to change the counsellors, despite numerous requests from the family who regarded them as quacks.

For the parents, the problem seemed blindingly obvious. Older men had seduced a child into a deviant sexual relationship, the child was infatuated and throwing tantrums at not being allowed to continue her relationship with the men. Her behaviour, argued the parents, stemmed from the fact that she had been sexually abused. Under the law, this is certainly the case: Sam Brens and Karl Berghan had sex with a child. Statutory rape. End of story.

At the touchy-feely new age school of social work that many counsellors now graduate from, such views are seen as out of date. And parents who don’t like their kids being lured into group sex with adult males should apparently just “get over it”.

During the temporary custody arrangement, Megan was staying with a family friend down the road whose daughter attended the same

• She says that the process to achieve this has already commenced.

• When I asked her if she believed the state would be better parents for Megan than her own parents she said “Yes”.

Although Goodwin denied many of the allegations in a response to the Ombudsman, the family have obtained the full CYF file on their daughter and say they believe their interpretation of what was said is correct. As Murray put it in his comment to the Ombudsman, “A cursory glance at Ms Goodwin’s notes in the CYF computer system will leave the reader with no doubt as to what she thought of us as parents.”

And from the documentation Investigate has seen, there is evidence of some kind of clash. For example, Goodwin’s file note of 25 March records: “[Father] said he has not said Megan should come home, but that he wants the temporary custody arrangement cancelled. I said the next step could be possible court action.”

Another CYF diary note from May has Goodwin writing: “I have at times recommended for this case to be presented before the court…On the 25 March 2004…I advised the father at this stage that court action may be the next step. The Social Worker was anticipating that court action would be the next step in order to keep Megan safe.”

Another note records: “CYPFS to take court action against Father of Child for custody of Megan.”

Yet CYF area boss Peter Topzand at one point – before the file was released to the family - rejected the family’s complaint that CYF had been heavying them: “I have asked Karen Goodwin about your assertion that she said she would be initiating court action to remove Megan and that you would not be seeing Megan again. Karen emphatically denies this and believes you must have misunderstood her.”

FLORA MAINTAINED THAT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OUR 14 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER AND THE ADULT MEN WHO COMMITTED THE SEXUAL CRIMES ON HER WAS ‘LOVE AND ROMANCE’ (THE MEN HAVE BEEN ARRESTED AND ARE CURRENTLY AWAITING TRIAL FOR THE SEXUAL CRIMES COMMITTED ON OUR DAUGHTER) school as Megan. According to Murray and Donna, they didn’t try to contact Megan directly during this time, and spoke only to the caregiver, their friend. Additionally, on all but one occasion, the calls to the caregiver were made while Megan was at school. Yet according to Megan’s social worker, the mere fact that her mother was ringing up at all was “a source of distress”. The parents were ordered by CYF to back off, and warned that the next step would very likely be the permanent removal of Megan from their care.

Again, Murray diarised the conversation of 25 March: “Later, Karen Goodwin phones me: • She informs me that from now on, Donna is only permitted to telephone Mrs [Caregiver] 3 times a week and for a maximum of 15 minutes per phone call.

• She accuses Donna and I of “putting ideas of prostitution into Megan’s head”.

• She tells me that they wish to hold a Family Group Conference and because we do not have extended family in this country, the Rosa counsellors will represent Megan.

• She says that Megan’s greatest problem is her parents.

• She says that CYF refuse to change the counsellors of Megan.

• She does not address any of the issues I raised in the letters regard ing Rosa counselling incompetence.

• She tells me that if I do not allow Megan to go to Rosa counsellors they will go to court to have Megan permanently removed from our care. They say that if this happens we will never see our daughter again.

36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Goodwin later apologised via the Ombudsman if Megan’s family felt threatened. Remember, the family had approached CYF to seek expert sexual abuse counselling for their troubled daughter. Instead, they’d been cut out of their daughter’s life by Rosa Counselling Trust, the organisation CYF had hired to do the counselling, an organisation that allegedly wrote off the statutory rapes as “love and romance”.

Maybe grown men having group sex with a 14 year old is love and romance in Auckland’s west, where Rosa is based, but it shouldn’t be treated as such at CYF. Murray and Donna’s instant reaction was to find out everything they could about Rosa and its counselling staff.

The parents believed the counsellor was unqualified.

“The counsellor’s letterhead displays the letters MNZAC and MCTAANZ prominently. MNZAC indicates that she is a member of the NZAC. We made extensive enquiries to establish what MCTAANZ represents. NZAC they said they had no idea what the letters MCTAANZ represent. They referred us to the counselling department at the Waikato Institute of Technology who have also never heard of the qualification or membership association. So we wrote to 350 NZAC members asking if anyone knew what the letters MCTAANZ represented. One counsellor replied that it represents: ‘Creative Therapy Association of Aotearoa New Zealand’. She said that anyone could join, there were no entry requirements except payment of a $50 annual subscription.”

Rosa’s trustee and spokesperson Rowena Manning denies her organisation is staffed by bogus quacks, saying her team is qualified by

virtue of learning counselling on the job over a long period. The letters, she says, are not intended to imply qualification, only association affiliation.

“Anyone who practices in that agency (Rosa) is required to be either an applicant member or a member (of NZAC).”

We agreed, in return for an interview, to not mention the names of the counsellors involved in Megan’s case. Manning claims “both those counsellors had qualifications, both go overseas for training, over the past two years they have been employed by us and one gives training in tertiary institutions in the US and England. They are very experienced and competent but as far as their academic qualifications go I would have to check them.”

She agreed they were her staff but she did not have their qualifications “at my fingertips” and offered to try to obtain them by deadline.

She telephoned later to say she had been unable to get them.

The agency began nine years ago and Manning says “the two senior counsellors that work for us have over twenty years experience individually”. Manning says she is a “community member appointed to the human ethics committee” of Massey University and has a good working knowledge of ethical issues.

A

s the famous saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. No matter how sincere Rosa feels it was in the way it approached Megan’s case, her family feels Rosa fundamentally misunderstood both the law and its own role. Murray and Donna say they’re the ones now being sent to Hell in a handcart because of what they assert is Rosa Counselling Trust’s total incompetence.

When they protested to the New Zealand Association of Counsellors, NZAC, they claim they were stonewalled. The NZAC simply asked Rosa to file a report, then made a decision exonerating the organisation without seeking any input from Murray and Donna. To top it all off, the NZAC told Murray not to write to them on the subject again.

Incensed, the parents went over the heads of both Rosa and NZAC, emailing details of their case to hundreds of professional counsellors both in New Zealand and overseas, asking whether as parents they were overreacting, or whether in fact they’d become unwitting guests at a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party thrown by CYF and Rosa.

The response from other counsellors reassured them Rosa appeared to have crossed the line.

“I was very disturbed to read of the events you outlined in your email to me,” wrote Lyn Coker, a member of NZAC. “I am shocked that any counsellor would express the views your daughter’s counsellor did regarding your daughter’s sexual abuse.

“If what you tell me in your email is correct, then this counsellor has, in my opinion, committed a serious breach of trust and crossed professional boundaries. The fact that the counsellor reacted so strongly without knowing you appears to be a case of transference.

“With regard to your daughter – if the counsellor formed an alliance with her against you and your wife – your daughter is likely to be very confused. And once a teenager has made a stand, it is often hard for them to back down or see things from another perspective. She would benefit from proper professional help.”

Janne Sergison, another NZAC affiliate, wrote: “I’m sorry you had such a bad counselling experience with your daughter. Your counsellor in my opinion did not behave very professionally. Your daughter may have been seeing the whole situation as one of love and romance BUT the fact remains she is a 14 year old kid.

“There were crimes committed. In fact, consensual sex under 16 is statutory rape. This is because a child under 16 is regarded as being developmentally not ready to give informed consent as they do not

understand all the dynamics. Also, the effects are just as bad as any other abuse, as you are probably finding out.”

Said Warwick Smith, another NZAC member: “Sadly, the impact of such trauma has a profound effect upon the victim that takes time and skilled help to overcome. I am astounded that any counsellor would have taken such a position in regard to what is a criminal act and viewing it as ‘love and romance’.”

On the international front, support was just as strong. Dr Graham Cocking, the Registrar of the International Society of Professional Counsellors (ISPC), told Murray: “Under ISPC rules, the type of counselling discussed would be unethical.”

The co-Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Counselling Association, Professor Donald Anderson, told Murray he had “deep concern” about what had happened, while a professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary, Bryan Hiebert, said: “The situation you describe sounds like a travesty…it sounds like you have a strong case for pursuing litigation.”

Indeed, a large number of the international experts made the same comment: “I would consult a lawyer.”

The New Zealand Association of Counsellors may well find itself on the wrong end of litigation, as one of several co-defendants, if the parents decide to sue. NZAC, the ‘governing’ body for counsellors, purported to hold an investigation of Murray’s formal complaint without disclosing to Murray the contents of Rosa’s submission, or allowing Murray to comment on it. In other words, the NZAC simply rubber-stamped Rosa’s denial of wrongdoing without any real attempt at an independent investigation.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 37

Little wonder that another NZAC affiliate, Steven Dromgool, agreed with his colleagues in saying, “I unsurprisingly think that you have experienced abusive and coercive counselling and an enormously abusive response by the NZAC.” So where did this leave the family? In the midst of their battles with CYF and Rosa Counselling Trust, Murray had managed to persuade the local CIB to arrest and charged the two men who’d engaged in group sex with his daughter in a public park. As police investigated, they discovered four other underage girls who’d also allegedly been caught in their web, but only one other who they could positively identify, Phoebe. Two of the St Johns Ambulance men who’d raped Megan had also allegedly raped Phoebe, along with a third St John’s volunteer.

Throughout 2004, Megan remained living at home, after returning from her initial temporary custody arrangement. During this period, she cooperated with the police investigation, giving statements and providing information. But on 11 May 2005, just weeks before the scheduled criminal trial of three men on statutory rape charges, she stunned her parents once more.

“I wasn’t home,” says Murray, “but Donna was. It was in the afternoon, and suddenly Megan walks in with six girls from her school, all carrying boxes. They pushed past Donna and went straight to Megan’s room and began helping her pack all her things into the boxes. They were really abusive to Donna. It was really intense. And that was the last we saw of our daughter until the trial.”

The writing was on the wall, only Murray and Donna didn’t want to see it. Now 16, Megan had no intention of testifying against the men or remaining in her parents’ home. With the assistance of a school

yers tells Investigate: “None of these boys have ever been in trouble before, all have good jobs, one of them is training to be a nurse, another employed by a large public company and doing extremely well.

I’ve had to represent people who are always in and out of court and couldn’t give a toss, that’s life but these boys have never been in strife before and facing charges that if convicted could have seen them go to prison.” Then he quickly adds for effect: “Scary stuff.”

There is an ironic footnote to this tragic case, however. As this article was about to go to press, Megan tried to take legal action to prevent it, wrongly assuming that Investigate was going to name her.

The legal action is understood to be a New Zealand precedent, because it is an application by Megan herself to be made a Ward of the Family Court. In essence, Megan has applied to divorce her parents.

Who put her up to it? Arguably the team at YouthLaw Tino Rangatiratanga, but with the collusion of a guidance counsellor at her high school who gave Megan copies of a document her father had sent to the school, and physically accompanied her to see a barrister. As Murray makes the point, “What kind of country are we living in now where a government school teacher takes a child to see a lawyer in order to divorce her parents?”

It is as part of that application that Megan also tried to seek an injunction to prevent the story being told.

And the irony is this: After refusing to identify the men in the dock when she was in court, and after refusing to testify on oath, Megan then filed a sworn affidavit against Investigate, drafted by YouthLaw, admitting she had underage sex with the men: “In about the second half of 2003, when I was fourteen, I was having a sexual relationship with my, then, 19 year old boyfriend. We

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF A SCHOOL TEACHER AND A YOUTH PASTOR AT A NEARBY CHURCH, SHE’D ARRANGED NOT ONLY A “SAFE HOUSE” TO STAY AT, BUT ALSO TO RECEIVE PAYMENT OF THE INDEPENDENT YOUTH BENEFIT, WHICH THE GOVERNMENT PAYS TO CHILDREN WHO WANT TO LEAVE HOME WITHOUT THEIR PARENTS’ PERMISSION teacher and a youth pastor at a nearby church, she’d arranged not only a “safe house” to stay at, but also to receive payment of the Independent Youth Benefit, which the government pays to children who want to leave home without their parents’ permission.

When the trial opened in July in the District Court at Auckland, Murray and Donna and their two teenage sons – Megan’s older brothers – sat in the courtroom waiting for Megan to enter. When she did, she didn’t even look at her family. She simply walked straight past as if they didn’t exist, saving her greeting smile for the men standing in the dock, the men accused of statutory rape. The other police witness, Phoebe, had disappeared.

As the judge enters, a solitary young woman stands alone in the witness box on yet another cold, grey mid-winter day. Megan makes her final decision. Slightly built, she looks younger than her 16 years and three months, neatly dressed in a light coloured fur collared jacket, dark shoulder length hair tidily styled, head slightly bowed.

She says “no,” she won’t testify.

And, each time the judge asks her a question that faint smile reappears again, not in amusement, probably only nervousness as her body swings slightly side-to-side, her answers barely audible. “No,” she will not give her evidence. Finally, all efforts of by the veteran judge to firmly yet gently ensure she understands her actions, all efforts are exhausted.

The young student leaving court smiles briefly again towards three young men sitting tightly side by side in a low narrow wooden cubicle.

Two security guards stand like sentinels nearby. Later one of the law38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

had at that time been together for about six months. My parents did not know I was sexually active.

“My boyfriend asked if I would have a “threesome” with his friend.

I consented. As a result I had sexual relations with both my boyfriend and his friend whom I now know to have been 21. It happened on only the one occasion. I was a willing participant. I was not forced and I was not a victim. I realise now that it was a very silly thing to do and I very much regret it. I want to put the incident behind me and get on with my life.”

“Because of the pressure from my parents the Police did investigate and when I was interviewed again and under pressure from both my parents and the police I made a full statement identifying the men, in the hope that it would improve my relationship with my parents. The Police decided to prosecute.

“As the date of the hearing approached I retracted my statement.

The Police that I talked to said they did not want to continue with the prosecution but because of the pressure my father brought to bear, the prosecution continued anyway.

“The two men were charged with unlawful sexual intercourse. The Court trial commenced on the 25th July 2005 before a jury. I was the first witness. I had previously told the lawyer prosecuting the case that I did not want to give evidence. I was asked a couple of times to identify the accused but refused. As a result the case against the Defendants was dismissed.

“In addition to my IYB I have just started working part time. I earnt $230 for my first two weeks. I continue to attend school. I intend to sit

NCEA Level 1 at the end of the year and return to school for years 12 and 13. I hope to go to University to study Law.” Megan’s story raises a number of important issues. Regardless of how Megan felt about having group sex in a public park with two men – one of whom she’d never met before – the community has a wider public interest in ensuring that legal boundaries, especially those on sex between adults and children, remain in place. Although the men’s lawyers argued that they had never been in trouble before, there were up to five underage girls who had been seduced by three men in their 20s. One incident could be construed – on a good day – as star-crossed love. Perhaps. But adult group sex with a 14 year old, and a number of victims in law, raises much bigger questions about how far societal tolerance should go.

The case also brings into focus the sexualisation of children. Once upon a time, adults having group sex with a 14 year old would be regarded as rape not just by the law but by the 14 year old and her peers as well. Today, it’s increasingly no longer the case. The reality is that Labour’s legalisation of prostitution appears to have dramatically increased the number of child prostitutes on the streets, and police are

doing nothing about them either. Megan doesn’t want her story told because she feels it is personal. But it is a personal story played out in an orgy in a public park, involving men who allegedly had preyed on other underage victims.

Is the story a matter of serious public interest? Or does this case mark possibly the last time that a statutory rape charge will be heard in a New Zealand court, because of changing public attitudes to sex with children? Is it a victimless crime simply because Megan does not consider herself a victim, or does society have a wider interest in protecting other children from the advances of the same men? And should Megan have the right to divorce her parents, or is that an ongoing manifestation of the original trauma, compounded by transference and bad counselling?

If readers wish to comment on this story, they are welcome to post messages at our new blog site, www.thebriefingroom.com, or email us your thoughts to editorial@investigatemagazine.com.

i October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 39

40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

HEIDI SEEK A 29 year old mystery reignites

When Wellington mother Heidi Charles vanished without trace in the summer of 1976, one person more perplexed than most was a twelve year old Ian Wishart, who lived almost next door to the Charles home and was good friends with her two sons.

Wishart remembers Heidi Charles as a loving mother who adored her children. Was she murdered or did she disappear deliberately? Now journalist and author SCOTT BAINBRIDGE has re-opened the mystery in this extract from his new book, Without Trace

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 41

R

otorua on New Year’s Eve, 1976. The city was buzzing with the festive spirit. In a day crammed full of activities for locals, holidaymakers and tourists alike, it was estimated the population in Rotorua that day exceeded 70,000. Towards midday, crowds began lining the streets of the central business district to watch a parade of floats proceeding around Fenton and Tutanekai Streets, and then repeating the route. The lakefront was alive with musical bands and cultural performances. A fairground had been set up, and Lake Rotorua was busy with many water-based activities.

Amid the bustle and throng of activity it would be easy for somebody to slip away without being noticed, and simply disappear of the face of the earth.

That is indeed what happened to Heidi Charles, a 36 year old German-born mother of two. She had been holidaying with her family when she mysteriously disappeared during festivities that afternoon.

Her case still ranks as one of the most baffling missing persons cases of the 1970s, made more notorious by rumours of links with a famous unsolved murder 19 months earlier.

Heidi Rittberger was born in 1940 in Tilsit, East Prussia, then part of Germany. The second largest city in Kaliningrad, it is situated near the border of Lithuania. At the end of the Second World War, the territory was claimed by the Soviet Union, and the name Tilsit was changed to Sovetsk. Today it is still known as Sovetsk, and remains part of Russia. To escape the Nazi regime, and perhaps with foresight of what was to come, the Rittberger family fled to Switzerland.

Heidi was studying dentistry when she met Englishman Robin Charles while on holiday in Austria in 1959. In 1961 they married and moved to Assam, India, where Charles managed a tea plantation for the Jokai Tea Company. The couple remained in India for a further ten years, and during that time had two sons.

Charles’ contract expired in 1971. After briefly returning to England, the family moved to the small African state of Burundi, where Charles worked for a Dutch tea firm.

In March 1976, the family emigrated to New Zealand. They wanted a place to settle and raise their boys where they could acquire a solid education. Charles secured employment as an auditor for a tyre company in Lower Hutt, and the family purchased a home in Cheshire Street, Wilton.

Heidi was a loving wife and doting mother to her sons. Despite English being her second language she was fluent after the years spent in the colonies. She quickly became used to her new surroundings, and made a few friends.

With the boys at school, Heidi busied herself with redecorating the family home, and resumed her studies at Victoria University. Towards the end of the year she was looking forward to a visit from her father, Dr Rittberger, and his companion, Frau Bruder, who were retired and living in Stuttgart, Germany.

Her father and Frau Bruder arrived in New Zealand in mid-December. After spending Christmas morning at their Wellington home, the family and their two guests piled into their Volkswagen campervan and drove to Rotorua. On Boxing Day they checked into the Okawa Bay Motor Lodge, where they had earlier booked a family cabin.

Okawa Bay is about 14 km northeast of Rotorua City, and the motor camp is situated on the shores of Lake Rotoiti. For the next few days the family enjoyed visiting the city’s attractions and relaxing at the camp.

Shortly before midday on Friday, 31 December 1976, Charles, Heidi and the boys left Dr Rittberger and Frau Bruder at the motor camp and drove to Rotorua’s city centre to do some shopping.

After dropping the boys at the lakefront fairground, Robin and Heidi parked their campervan in Arawa Street at 12.30 p.m. Heidi planned to buy food at a local delicatessen for the night’s meal, and told her husband she wanted to go by herself. It was agreed they would rendez-

42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

There was an initial thought she might have fallen into one of the hot springs. It was assumed that once you fell into one of those that would be it. Gone for ever. We tested this theory by throwing in some sheep carcasses, and after a short time they would bubble up to the surface. Those tests dismissed that theory vous an hour later near the swings at the lakefront. Charles watched as she walked from Arawa Street into Fenton Street.

An hour later, Charles met the boys at the swings as arranged. They waited until 2 p.m. Heidi did not turn up. Thinking she may have returned to the campervan with the groceries, Robin returned to Arawa Street, and decided to drive closer to the fairground, but could not get through due to the procession.

He then parked the vehicle behind Durrants Supermarket, and returned to the boys where they waited until about 4.30 p.m. When Heidi did not show up, Charles thought she may have become lost, and had taken a taxi back to the camping ground. They returned to Okawa Bay in hope.

Heidi was not there. An anxious Robin Charles left his sons with the older couple and returned to Rotorua city centre. After driving around likely places, he checked at the local hospital in case Heidi had met with an accident. She had not been admitted. He then went to Rotorua Police and reported her missing.

Heidi Charles was described as being of medium build, and 167 cm in height. She had shoulder-length brown hair with a centre parting, and brown eyes. When last seen, she was wearing orange slacks, a blue and white striped sports shirt, and a navy blue cardigan, with light tan canvas shoes. She was carrying a brown leather handbag, which contained her driving licence and purse. Heidi was understood to have had about $400 cash on her at the time, as well as the family chequebook.

Charles said they had split $400 between them, but believed her father had given her a further $200.

Heidi spoke fluent English, but with an accent that could easily be mistaken for a New Zealander of Dutch heritage.

A small team of police led by Rotorua CIB Sergeant Ron Leitch began making enquiries on Saturday, New Year’s Day, 1977. A check on local motels, hotels, travel agencies and the bus stations was carried out. A description of Heidi was circulated throughout all police stations in the country. At this early stage police were keeping an open mind and did not suspect foul play.

Former Assistant Commissioner Brion Duncan was a detective inspector at Rotorua CIB at the time.

‘Initially the case was given to the uniform branch because it was assumed she may have become lost or had a mishap of some kind.

The whole township was covered, in particular ladies restrooms, travel centres and motels. When it became apparent it would possibly lead to a full-scale enquiry, the search area was expanded to include hot pools and bush-covered areas.

‘There was an initial thought she might have fallen into one of the

HEIDI CHARLES: MURDER OR PLANNED DISAPPEARANCE? hot springs. It was assumed that once you fell into one of those that would be it. Gone for ever. We tested this theory by throwing in some sheep carcasses, and after a short time they would bubble up to the surface. Those tests dismissed that theory.’

Robin Charles told police he and Heidi had a happy and loving relationship, and she doted on her two sons. She had been looking forward to moving to New Zealand and had felt very settled here. This fact was confirmed when police later interviewed neighbours and the few friends they had made since arriving in New Zealand just over seven months earlier.

For Heidi to leave her family of her own volition was simply unbelievable and totally out of character. Those friends that she had lived in Wellington, and she knew nobody in Rotorua.

Of her mood at the time, Charles stated she had been happy about seeing her father again, but had been feeling the strain of having to interpret for her family. She was the only one in the group who could speak both German and English. Because her father could not speak English, he placed a heavy reliance on Heidi to accompany them, and shop for him and Frau Bruder. This stressed her somewhat. Charles had not been surprised Heidi wanted to go shopping by herself, as she needed some time out.

Information filtered in as to Heidi’s movements after 12.30 p.m.

Three shop assistants from a women’s fashion store in Tutanekai Street, Rotorua, stated they had seen a woman matching Heidi’s description, browsing in their shop around 4 p.m. on Friday, New Year’s Eve. Although remaining in the shop a while, she made no purchases. This October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 43

would have been around the time a worried Robin Charles contemplated returning to the motor camp, which he did 30 minutes later.

There were a number of possible sightings of Heidi in the Waipa area, Dannevirke and Blenheim. There was also an unconfirmed sighting of Heidi late Friday afternoon at a Rotorua motel. These were checked but found to have no substance.

By Wednesday, 5 January, police had no clear direction as to how enquiries would proceed. Then, during that day, they received a vital lead from two independent motorists. These people separately witnessed a woman matching Heidi’s description hitchhiking along the Atiamuri Highway, seven miles southwest of Rotorua, on Sunday, 2 January 1977. The estimated times were between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.

The sightings were considered genuine, but what mystified police was the apparent lack of any rational explanation to her actions.

It was unlikely Heidi had become lost and was attempting to find her way back to Okawa Bay. The recent sightings placed her walking in completely the opposite direction. She was spotted heading in the direction of Taupo or Tokoroa. Even though English was her second language, Heidi spoke fluent colloquial English, and would have the confidence to ask for directions back to Okawa Bay. She would have done so much sooner than two days later.

One theory was that Heidi planned her own disappearance. This was out of character, but there were no reported accidents, or any reports of suspicious activity.

The sightings of Heidi walking along a busy road made the theory of a planned disappearance unlikely. People who choose to disappear usually have a method well planned in advance. On a busy street without anyone knowing her circumstances, it would not have looked suspicious if she had climbed into a car parked at a pre-arranged place, and simply driven off.

Heidi would know her family would be concerned enough to contact police within hours of her non-appearance at the lakefront. Knowing police would be looking for her as early as Saturday, it was unlikely she would attempt to walk along a busy highway a day later, if she had not wanted to be found.

If Heidi had been abducted it would have been in the area where she was last positively seen — which was in the middle of the day, in a busy city street. Or, if the latest sightings were genuine, she may have been the victim of an offender in a car she accepted a ride in.

When this latest information was released, the public immediately compared the circumstances of Heidi Charles’ disappearance to another similar unsolved case 19 months earlier. Were they related?

O

n 31 May 1975, Queen’s Birthday weekend, 18-yearold Mona Blades disappeared while hitchhiking from Hamilton to Napier. She was last seen in an orange Datsun 1200 stationwagon, which had turned into Matea Road, a metalled side-road off the Napier– Taupo highway. It was widely suspected the driver of the vehicle murdered Mona Blades. The owners of around 300 orange Datsun stationwagons were interviewed, but neither Mona nor the driver were ever located. Today this case still remains unsolved.

Heidi Charles also disappeared on a public holiday, in the central North Island, while supposedly hitchhiking. Could these cases be linked?

On Sunday, 9 January 1977, Sunday News published an article expounding this supposition. The story made mention that police had not discounted a theory Heidi Charles was the second victim of Mona Blades’ killer. This was based on views that Rotorua was considered a key area in the Blades case, and because one of the prime suspects lived there. This sent conspiracy theorists into a frenzy with rumours of a serial killer operating in New Zealand.

44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Four hundred dollars was enough money for an airfare to Australia.

Instead of going to the delicatessen, had Heidi walked to a travel agency and booked a flight overseas? One hour would be sufficient time to book a flight, and quickly find a way out of town The next day, Monday, 10 January, Detective Senior Sergeant Ned Ryan angrily responded to the claims as ‘arrant nonsense’.

Based in Rotorua, Ryan and Detective Inspector Phil Berryman, from Hamilton, were in charge of the Mona Blades investigation from the outset. Several days earlier, Ryan also inherited the Heidi Charles file when the case was upgraded.

Ryan angrily refuted the newspaper’s assertions as ‘sensational and totally unfactual reporting’.

In 1985 Ryan said the following: ‘There was never any known link between the disappearances of Mona Blades and Heidi Charles. We are absolutely certain Mona Blades was killed in the vicinity of Matea Road. Although there were perhaps half a dozen or so people we interviewed in the Rotorua area, there were none we considered to be prime suspects.

‘When Heidi Charles disappeared, we did not consider it to be in a similar vein. The sightings near Atiamuri were never substantiated. We had police driving that road on the day she was supposedly seen. This wasn’t ruled out, of course. When CIB was passed the file in the first week without any results, we did look into the aspect she had been abducted and killed, but there was never any evidence of such. There certainly were no actual suspects we had in mind.’

If police publicly refuted the link, it was certainly an avenue they considered privately.

What police did not admit was there were actually two men interviewed independently, in relation to both cases. Both were living in the Rotorua area at the time Heidi Charles disappeared, and one was known to have had access to an orange Datsun stationwagon at the time Mona Blades disappeared. Both men had a history of violent sexual offending.

A police source says suspicion fell on these two men after a list was compiled of possible suspects, in the event they would find Heidi Charles’ murdered body. However, it was learned both men had reliable alibis that were thoroughly checked and their names cleared.

In 1999, Rotorua Detective Inspector Graham Bell examined a theory there may have been a serial killer in New Zealand during the 1970s.

Bell claimed a high number of unsolved murders during the decade involved female victims hitchhiking, or at risk to an offender in a vehicle. Mona Blades, Jennifer Beard, Tracey Patient and Olive Walker were all killed by an offender in a car, and their bodies dumped in remote locations (Mona’s body was never found but it was considered she was killed and her body hidden in dense bush in the desolate Rangitaiki Plains). However, Bell stressed it was unlikely these particular cases were linked.

Heidi Charles was not mentioned in Bell’s examples. Although there was no evidence of such, it was possible Heidi had been abducted and killed in a similar manner.

As the enquiry progressed into its second week, police maintained an

open mind to her fate. To date there was no evidence suggesting she had been abducted and murdered.

Evidence pointing to the possibility Heidi planned her own disappearance was strengthened when two employees of Okawa Bay Motor camp came forward stating Heidi approached them on two separate occasions. She allegedly made enquiries about alternative methods of transport from the camp, sometime between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve. If these assertions were correct, it could be assumed Heidi had been considering leaving her family from at least the time the family arrived in Rotorua.

R

obin Charles stated he had a loving relationship with his wife, and she had a close bond with her sons.

Friends the family had made supported this fact. For Heidi to voluntarily leave her husband and sons was inconceivable. But perhaps Heidi had been secretly unhappy and was waiting for her father to arrive before making a decision to leave? She was the only one in her family able to converse with him. Perhaps Heidi had discussed her feelings with her father and he offered to assist her in leaving?

Robin Charles stated he had given Heidi $200 cash. He was aware Dr Rittberger had given her a further $200 cash. Therefore she was carrying a total of $400 cash, as well as the family chequebook. She had insisted on going shopping alone.

Four hundred dollars was enough money for an airfare to Australia.

Instead of going to the delicatessen, had Heidi walked to a travel agency and booked a flight overseas? She had arranged to meet her family an hour later. One hour would be sufficient time to book a flight, and quickly find a way out of town.

But it was New Year’s Eve, and many of the travel agencies in town were not open. Police checked the agencies open, but there were no sightings of Heidi, or record of her making any arrangements.

If Heidi had been in a hurry to leave town, then her actions displayed a relaxed attitude. While her worried family was racing back to Okawa Bay, she was patiently browsing in a clothing store several hundred metres away.

The scenario of Heidi spontaneously leaving her family is uncharacteristic, but is feasible. She had the financial means to travel to Australia. But having to find a way out of Rotorua to an international departure point showed the lack of a clear strategy.

If the sightings of her hitchhiking in the Atiamuri area were correct, it would prove she had no clear plan.

She would know a missing persons report would have been filed that evening and police would be searching as early as Saturday. Yet on Sunday she was seen by two separate motorists, hitchhiking on a busy stretch of highway, which local police were driving over in an attempt to locate her.

Brion Duncan doubts Heidi left New Zealand.

‘Heidi leaving the country was certainly an early possibility. However, we located her passport on the Monday, and kept an eye on the possibility she might apply for a new one, or even a passport under her maiden name. This never eventuated.

‘The day following the missing person report, the uniform branch was quick to check with all the local travel outlets, like the transport centre, bus companies and travel agents, but there was no proof she left the city by bus or any other form of public transport. When enquiries were stepped up, we checked all airports and ships, but there were no signs she made attempts to leave the country.’

Dr Rittberger left New Zealand in mid-January and regularly kept in contact with Rotorua Police and Charles of news of his daughter.

Meanwhile there were further sightings.

While Ned Ryan was busy admonishing the press, police received a

call from the manager of a hamburger bar in Pt Chevalier, Auckland.

The man stated a woman matching Heidi’s description patronised his restaurant at 6 p.m. on Sunday evening, 2 January – two days after she was reported missing.

What prompted his suspicions was upon asking about her accent, the woman replied she came from a part of Germany that was now Russian. This was a vital piece of information because the personal background of Heidi Charles had not yet been released publicly.

Several days later, two further people came forward saying they had seen a woman matching Heidi’s description, shopping in the vicinity of the Pt Chevalier shops on Thursday, 6 January. Local police carried out shop-to-shop enquiries in the area she was allegedly seen, but did not hold out hope she was still in town.

As optimistic as these latest sightings seemed, Brion Duncan questioned the validity.

‘There were many alleged sightings of Heidi, but none we could absolutely confirm. Hopes were not pinned on the Pt Chevalier sightings.

If we considered them genuine, a large team of officers would have immediately been sent up to Auckland to search the area thoroughly.’

If the hamburger bar sighting was genuine, one would have to question the weight of the two independent sightings earlier that day in the Atiamuri area. However, it was viable for Heidi to have been picked up while hitchhiking between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., and driven to Auckland to be in time for the 6 p.m. sighting in Pt Chevalier.

There were no more reported sightings of Heidi Charles after Pt Chevalier. By mid-February, searches in the bush-clad hills around Rotorua were scaled down and police shifted focus to Wellington in case she attempted to make contact with family or friends, but to no avail.

Searches were called off and information ceased to filter in. Police were perplexed as to the fate of Heidi Charles. There was no evidence she had been abducted and killed. The police investigation proved she couldn’t have left New Zealand. Police now tended to believe she left her family, created a new identity, and was living somewhere in New Zealand.

Even if this was uncharacteristic, it seemed the only logical explanation. But if she had started a new life, wouldn’t she have needed assistance from a third party?

If Heidi had not used the $400 cash on a ticket out of New Zealand, she could have used it to help establish a new life somewhere locally.

This money would not have lasted long. She had the family chequebook, but enquiries revealed it had not been used.

It was possible she had met another man. She may have made arrangements to meet him in Rotorua that New Year’s Eve. Upon meeting at a specified place and time, they could have left town together without creating suspicion.

Or more likely, Heidi may have arranged to leave Rotorua by her own means. This would account for the two separate queries she allegedly made at the motor camp about alternative transport from the camp.

Once in town and separated, she may have realised the lack of transport facilities being a public holiday, so she made her own way out of Rotorua. On the Sunday afternoon she found a car to take her to Auckland and to her destination.

Whatever happened, the Heidi Charles case remains one of the most puzzling missing person cases of the 1970s. Police remain divided about her fate. By the very nature of their circumstances, Mona Blades, Jennifer Beard, Olive Walker and Tracey Patient have all become household names. Yet the average person today has not heard of Heidi Charles. Public and media interest in the aforementioned cases remained high for years afterwards, yet very little was reported about Heidi Charles after the Pt Chevalier sightings. We may never know.

There has been little reported since about the case.

i

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 45

DARWIN’S

ROGUE MONKEY

How a diehard evolutionist used junk science to kickstart the sexual revolution

HE’S OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE FATHER OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION. BUT ALFRED KINSEY WAS NO SAINT, DESPITE THE WAY HE’S PORTRAYED IN A DVD RELEASE THIS MONTH. IAN WISHART BACKGROUNDS THE REAL KINSEY

B

ack in 1948, evolutionary biologist Alfred Kinsey published a book that turned the world upside down, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. Kinsey followed it up five years later with Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, and in doing so set off a media firestorm that continues to this day. In fact, as gay film director Bill Condon pointed out in publicity interviews for his film Kinsey this year, without Kinsey there would be no Playboy, no sex in the media, no sexual revolution.

What Condon doesn’t point out is there would be no gay marriage movement, and no paedophilia rights movement either. In short, Alfred Kinsey’s “groundbreaking research” is recognised by most experts as paving the way for the western culture we have today.

46, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Kinsey’s motivation for studying human sexual behaviour and publishing the findings was ostensibly to research one of society’s hidden taboos so people could judge for themselves what was “normal”.

Unofficially, however, Kinsey’s motivations were a lot less scientific and more driven by his own desire for gay sex and paedophilic pornography.

This month, Kinsey the movie is being released on DVD and video.

The film flopped at the box office, but its release for home viewing will make it more accessible. So how does the movie stack up against the reality of what Kinsey was up to? Read on.

In the film, Kinsey is portrayed by actor Liam Neeson as a committed evolutionary scientist who didn’t want moral issues like love or fidelity interfering in the pure science of studying sexual behaviour.

Alfred Kinsey, seated, with assistant Wardell Pomeroy (L) and bisexual lover Clyde Martin (R). HULTON GETTY ARCHIVE

Kinsey is portrayed as being a stickler for impartial, objective scientific facts.

Granted, director Condon concedes a scene to Kinsey’s bisexuality, sleeping with a young male research assistant, Clyde Martin who then ends up sleeping with Kinsey’s wife as part of their ‘liberated’ household. Granted, also, that Condon acknowledges how Kinsey’s ‘research’ turned into staff orgies where wives and partners were swapped so Kinsey and his crew could film them, in flagrante delicto, for the purposes of figuring out how to make women

achieve orgasm and other ‘scientific’ niceties.

In the film, Condon refers briefly to the moral pain of Kinsey’s pursuit of scientific free sex, by showing the strain on his researchers’ marriages and indeed on his own family (his son practically disowned Kinsey).

But overall, the film version of Kinsey remains a sugar-coated, great evolutionist, ‘all hail the man of science who gave us sexual tolerance and freedom’ hagiography reinforcing Kinsey’s sexual myths and fantasies.

Here’s the reality of Kinsey’s research. Kinsey

cruised gay bars, prisons, brothels and other less salubrious locations to find suitable interviewees for his sexual behaviour study, because most eligible American men were overseas fighting in World War 2. Unsurprisingly, his published research then purported to have discovered that between 10 and 37% of American males were gay or bisexual. As studies in the past decade have established, the real incidence of homosexuality in the wider community is less than 1%, but Kinsey used his false data to assert that homosexuality was entirely normal in the human species. Similarly, he published extensive data on adults having sex with children, and likewise determined that this was a “natural” process because children were “naturally” sexual creatures.

Bill Condon’s film makes a glancing reference to the paedophilia issue in a scene where Kinsey interviews a sexual psychopath who claimed to have had sex with or raped more than 9,000 men and women between 1917 and 1948, including more than a thousand pre-pubescent children, and hundreds of animals as well. Although the movie portrays Kinsey as disapproving of anyone being forced to have sex, Condon is rewriting history.

According to Kinsey researcher Judith Reisman, the world’s first sexologist used paedophiles to collect data on their ‘experiments’ on children. Not one child but certainly hundreds and possibly thousands. “Kinsey’s study claimed young boys could orgasm, and in his book cited the children’s “screams,” their “convulsions,” their “hysterical weeping,” “fighting” and “striking the partner (adult)” which are judged by Kinsey as reflecting “definite pleasure from the situation,” writes Reisman.

The Kinsey study has been used to support the contention that sexual activity in children is natural and healthy and should not be repressed. It has also been used by the North American Man Boy Love Association – which hit the headlines in NZ recently over gay bookstore owner Jim Peron’s alleged advocacy in favour of child sex – to support their own calls for lowering the ages of sexual consent with children.

But Reisman, in a statement countering the release of Kinsey, wrote: “Kinsey’s data are based on reports from co-workers who sexually abused more than 300 minors to prove that children ‘enjoy’ sex with pedophiles. Some of the victims were only 2 months old and subjected to more than 24 hours of non-stop sexual atrocities. One Kinsey contributor was a WWII Nazi officer.

His young victims had to choose between rape or the gas chamber.”

That officer was “Dr. Fritz von Balluseck”.

In 1998, a British Yorkshire TV documenOctober 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 47

tary, Kinsey’s Paedophiles, revealed that Kinsey’s links to the former Gestapo director were discovered when von Balluseck was placed on trial for the sex-slaying of a little girl in 1956. German newspapers covering the case found letters from Alfred Kinsey thanking the paedophile for his regular reports on his ‘experiments’ with children. Apparently Kinsey’s correspondence with the Nazi continued right up until 1954. Kinsey’s encouragement of the man’s ‘experiments’ undoubtedly led to the child’s grisly death.

Kinsey in one letter warned the Nazi to “watch out” in case he got caught, but to keep sending the data.

None of this is covered in the movie.

So what are the implications of Kinsey’s work for modern society?

F

irstly, as the movie itself correctly shows, back in the 1930s there was no data at all on how often people had sex, what positions, who with or any of the other myriad pop-psychology questions that are now run of the mill in women’s magazines. In a biography published on the website gayhistory.com, Andrew Wikholm writes, “Kinsey, an ardent atheist, considered most of what he read about sex prudish because it was based on traditional ‘JudaeoChristian’ ethics he considered repressive.”

In other words, Kinsey set out to conduct a study that would reinforce his own liberal attitudes to sexuality, not because of pure scientific motives but because of his atheism and his belief in the Darwinian view that humans were merely animals and morality was repressive.

New Zealand gay activist and atheist fundamentalist Chris Banks, a one-time Queer Nation host, positively fizzes at the bung in his praise of the Kinsey movie earlier this year, for precisely the same reasons: “Dr Albert (sic) Kinsey is a landmark American figure in gay/lesbian history, as one of the first scientific voices to lend evidential weight to debunk claims that homosexuality was abnormal…he was a social and sexual liberal in a time of stifling puritanic conservatism. And, as the film shows, he was one of the first to debunk Christian junk science and replace it with solid evidence about real human behaviour.”

Presumably Chris Banks would endorse Kinsey’s logic, depicted in the movie, that if it happens it must be natural and therefore “not abnormal”. Using that same definition, paedophilia should be legal, along with bestiality and even cannibalism.

But what if Kinsey’s research was actually wrong? What if the so-called sexual liberation he claimed to have found was in fact a phenomenon he created, the result of the study being skewed by his many interviews with paedophiles and gays (reflecting his own personal biases)? What if Kinsey’s reports, being the admitted only studies of their kind, in effect set the agenda: telling the people that a certain set of activities is so normal that everyone’s doing it, and sooner or later it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as people rush to try what Kinsey claimed everyone else was doing anyway?

That’s why Chris Banks’ appeals to Christian “junk science” are themselves specious – up until Kinsey there was no science on the issue, one way or the other. And to use Kinsey as evidence that homosexuality is normal and widespread is likewise to accept that paedophilia is a normal sexual activity, as Kinsey implied it was.

Except that, fifty years later, we now know Kinsey’s research was Darwinian “junk science” that today has been largely discredited in subsequent studies.

For example, the incidence of homosexuality. While Banks is approving of Kinsey’s “solid evidence” proving homosexuality rates of 10% to 37%, Kinsey was so far from being accurate it wasn’t funny.

The biggest sexuality study since Kinsey is Sexual Behaviour in Britain, published in 1994 and based on interviews with 20,000 men and women. It found that true homosexual orientation was limited to 0.6% in men, and a staggeringly low 0.1% in women. Ninety percent 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

FOX

of people claiming to be gay, the study found, are actually just uninhibited bisexuals when push comes to shove. But when you consider that Labour’s Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1986 was pushed through on the strength of publicity campaigns quoting Kinsey’s mythical 10% figure, it is easy to see the impact of Kinsey’s evolutionary junk science on popular culture.

The poisonous Kinseyisms also live on in the New Zealand education system. Our sex education curricula is largely based on the falsified data in the Kinsey report. The Auckland sexual abuse HELP Foundation is currently touting a “Keeping Ourselves Safe” programme in daycare centres in the region. Among the gems from this taxpayer-

But what if Kinsey’s research was actually wrong? What if the so-called sexual liberation he claimed to have found was in fact a phenomenon he created, the result of the study being skewed by his many interviews with paedophiles and gays (reflecting his own personal biases)? What if Kinsey’s reports, being the admitted only studies of their kind, in effect set the agenda: telling the people that a certain set of activities is so normal that everyone’s doing it, and sooner or later it becomes a selffulfilling prophecy as people rush to try what Kinsey claimed everyone else was doing anyway?

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 49

assisted programme, under the heading “Common sexual behaviour among two year olds” is the answer, “they masturbate”. The same answer is given for three, four and five year olds. The HELP Foundation apparently doesn’t make a distinction between twiddling with your bits or vaguely exploring while you are bored as a child, and full blown sexual masturbation. Traced to its roots, the 1994 book Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia by Vern and Bonnie Bullough tells readers: “Kinsey reported that 32% of boys two to 12 months old were able to reach climax. One boy of 11 months had ten climaxes in an hour and another of the same age had 14 climaxes in 38 minutes.”

Human Sexuality also reports that babies get “turned on” by sucking their mother’s breasts, and that parents who don’t educate their children sexually at an early age are “inhibited”, having “an implicit goal of keeping dormant the young child’s pervasive curiosity and imitativeness, postponing the onset of sexual self-gratification, and limiting sexual activity.”

The way that “inhibited” parents achieved this terrible end was this gem of a paragraph: “The family attempts to govern how, when and how many of the ‘facts of life’ the child learns. As part of the conspiracy of silence, parents maintain a secrecy and privacy concerning their own sexual activity…as aids to sexual control in the home (eg, closed bedroom doors, separate sleeping arrangements for each child, separate bathing, and early modesty training).”

The Kinsey research on child sexuality is also the basis of claims in the 2003 parenting bestseller Mothers & Sons: Raising Boys to be Men, which criticises “inhibited” parents of yesteryear and urges parents to embrace the fact that we now know “male and female babies…have orgasms” as part of an entirely natural process of child sexuality.

Neither the encyclopedia nor the bestseller point out, as Judith Reisman has done, that the only ‘scientific’ study in the world is the Kinsey one, and Kinsey obtained his data this way:

K

insey had 317 to 2,024 children timed with stop-watches by his hired and volunteer child rapists who sodomized and digitally and genitally assaulted the children for 24 hours around the clock to get what the rapists’ called infant ‘orgasms’,” says Reisman. “[See] Table 34 from Kinsey’s book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (p. 180) in which he claims his 5 month old victim had three ‘orgasms’, although the rapists didn’t provide the “time involved.” This is the source of the phoney “orgasm” data being cited by sexuality “experts” nationwide.

“Oh, what was the “orgasm” the little five month old had? Well the children, he said, screamed, some fainted, many of the “younger” ones wept “hysterically” and struck their “partner” (page 161, recording the adult rapists). But not to worry. Kinsey, who had a habit of sexually torturing himself, called the children’s terror and pain “orgasm.” For “orgasm” for Kinsey was pain. His Kinsey Institute biographer, James Jones, testified that Kinsey circumcised himself with a knife in a bathtub without anesthetic.”

So what do we call mad bisexual ‘scientists’ like Kinsey, supported by apologists like gaynz.com’s Chris Banks, who conduct monstrous paedophilic experiments on two month old babies? We make movies about them and call them heroes of the sexual revolution.

If you watch the Kinsey DVD, bear in mind that not only is its director a gay activist, but exec producer Francis Ford Coppola is also close to convicted paedophile film director Victor Salva who was found guilty of sodomising 12 year old boys on a joint Coppola/Salva film production. After his release from jail, Coppola immediately rehired Salva to direct what critics described as another ‘homoerotic teen flick”.

Also bear in mind that the 2005 movie was bankrolled by the Ford Foundation, which had earlier agreed to fund a PR campaign for the Kinsey

50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Institute to try and repair its battered and discredited image. In other words, Kinsey is little more than part of a public brainwashing exercise.

The Kinsey Institute, incidentally, denies that its founder was a paedophile, despite the testimony of a number of people and the detailed nature of the data that Kinsey published. On its website, the Institute claims Kinsey never asked paedophiles to experiment on children or time their ‘orgasms’ with stopwatches. The Institute also emphatically denies that thousands of children were abused, citing only the 317 that Kinsey’s report alluded to. However, contrast those denials with admissions by Kinsey associate Dr Paul Gebhard in 1992 that paedophiles were told to use stopwatches “at our suggestion . . . we would ask them [paedophiles] to watch it, and take notes, and . . . report back to us.”

And on the Donahue TV show, former Kinsey photographer Dr C A Tripp told the audience “Kinsey would only listen to ‘responsible pedophiles’ who used stop watches to time their thing.”

Intriguingly, all four directors of the Kinsey Institute throughout its history have made totally contradictory statements about what went on. None, however, has released the names of the hundreds of victims of the paedophilia experiments to authorities, even though many are still likely to be alive – the youngest in their fifties.

Commentator Michael Craven, writing on the controversy recently, noted that the full scale of paedophilic experiments was verified by a Masters & Johnson scientific report back in 1980: “In Ethical Issues in Sex Therapy, Volume II (1980), influential sexologists Masters, Johnson, Kolodny, and Weems present a series of papers reprising the history of the research on the “Ethics of Sex Research Involving Children and the Mentally Retarded.” One important essay by Albert Jonsen and J. Mann, states that Kinsey “included observational reports on the speed of reaching orgasm in 1,888 boys, ages 5 months to adolescence, who were timed with a stop watch,” and “147 pre-adolescent girls, for a total of 2,035 children. The authors cite

FOX

The Kinsey Institute, incidentally, denies that its founder was a paedophile, despite the testimony of a number of people and the detailed nature of the data that Kinsey published. On its website, the Institute claims Kinsey never asked paedophiles to experiment on children or time their ‘orgasms’ with stopwatches their “personal communication” with Kinsey and co-author Wardell Pomeroy, who validated the 1,888 boys in the Kinsey reports.”

As for the movie, the public, in the US at least, voted with their feet. The movie took only US$9 million at the box office (it cost $10 million to make).

Finally, look at the evidence. Although Bill Condon’s puff piece portrays Christians as prudish idiots objecting to the progress of Kinsey’s science, the reality is that many of Kinsey’s fiercest opponents were other left wing thinkers who could smell the fraud.

Additionally, a sexual abstinence campaign introduced in 1950 saw STD rates plummet to only 3.9 cases per 100,000 people by 1957.

Kinsey was appalled at the abstinence campaign, and called for comprehensive sex education and contraceptive advice for children.

His advice was followed in the US and later New Zealand by Planned Parenthood and its NZ affiliate, the Family Planning Association.

By 2000, 52 years after Kinsey’s sexual revolution was launched, US gonorrhea rates alone had skyrocketed to 589.8 cases per 100,000 men, and 656.6 cases per 100,000 women, and that was in the 20 to 24 age group only, let alone everyone else.

In the 1950s, children did not appear in the STD statistics, and only around 10,000 adults were found to have sexual diseases during an entire year. Today – as WorldNetDaily reports – 8,000 teenagers in the US contract an STD every day of the week. In the US, every year, there are 70,000 new incidents of syphilis; 650,000 gonorrhea; 64,000 HIV; three million Chlamydia; five million trichomoniasis; one million genital herpes; 5.5 million human papillomavirus (genital warts, can lead to cervical cancer).

Additionally, there are a further 20 or so other STDs that afflict modern society. In Kinsey’s day, it was just gonorrhea and syphilis.

So much for Kinsey’s claim that freeing up sexuality was the only way to improve the

‘appalling’ STD rates of 3.9 cases per 100,000 people.

But never mind. Like the safe sex myth that condoms will protect against STDs, the Kinsey myths about human sexual behaviour will continue to indoctrinate young people as long as there are liberal media outlets who keep ignoring the facts, and people like Chris Banks prepared to promote Kinsey’s junk science as reality.

Oh, and here’s the real kicker. In the movie, Kinsey is portrayed as falling ill because of the hounding he got from horrible fundamentalist Christians. In fact, Kinsey fell ill from the venereal disease orchitis, his health gradually worsening until he was finally killed by a heart attack in 1956.

Kinsey, R16, contains sex scenes, 113 minutes

i October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 51

52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

different strokes STROKE, NEUROPROTECTION AND SPIN - IS NEUREN A GOOD BET?

They strike, often without warning, and leave devastated lives in their wake. Now a New Zealand company believes it’s on the verge of a breakthrough in treating strokes, although it is not without its critics, as SHEILA DOGGRELL notes

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 53

S

troke (the sudden onset of paralysis) is the third leading cause of death in Western industrialised countries, and the leading cause of disability. Fifty to 70 percent of stroke survivors regain functional independence, but 15 to 30 percent are permanently disabled. These disabilities include problems controlling movement, loss of sensations (touch, pain, and temperature), problems using or understanding language, problems with thinking and memory, and emotional disturbances.

The New Zealand company Neuren is developing drugs to help people who suffer brain damage from strokes, road accidents and heart attacks. All of these conditions cause nerves to die, and this underlies the long-term damage. One of the agents being developed to stop the nerve dying (to be neuroprotective) is glypromate. The news that glypromate is to be fast-tracked in its clinical testing has seen a surge in Neuren’s share values. However, the claims made by Neuren are being challenged on a web share chat room by a correspondent known only as ‘Labrat’. So, what is the likelihood of glypromate being a useful neuroprotective?

One of the reasons that stroke remains so devastating is that we have few treatments for it. Any successful treatment will have a huge market and will potentially be very lucrative for the company marketing it. Thus, it is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies, including Neuren, are attempting to develop treatments.

The most common type of stroke is due to a lack of blood supply (ischemia) to the brain and occurs when a blood vessel to the brain

54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

becomes blocked. Without the blood that carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain, the nerves in the brain progressively die.

Are there any warning signs that a stroke is imminent? Some people have a mini-stroke (transient ischemic attack, TIA) before they have a full blown stroke. With mini-stokes there are similar symptoms to strokes – weakness on one side of the body, and trouble in speaking, understanding, seeing, and walking. The only difference is that with a mini-stroke the symptoms resolve within an hour or so, whereas with a full blown stroke they don’t. Mini-strokes are due to a partial blockade of the blood vessels in the brain.

About one-third of people who have a mini-stroke will go on to have a full blown stroke within a year. These people may be the lucky ones as they have been warned to take steps to prevent a full-blown stroke. Such steps include taking aspirin to help prevent blood clots forming in narrowed blood vessels. Unfortunately, most people do not know that a stroke is imminent.

When treating stroke it is important to distinguish between ischemic stroke and the other kind of stroke, a hemorrhagic stroke. In hemorrhagic stroke there is a burst blood vessel and bleeding into the brain. In ischemic stroke, a new approach is to use an agent to unblock the blood vessel by dissolving blood clots, in the same way as coronary arteries are unblocked after a heart attack. Clot dissolving agents make a hemorrhagic stroke worse. So, when stroke is suspected a CT scan is used to distinguish between the ischemic and hemorrhagic types.

If it is an ischemic stroke, clot busting drugs can be given. If they are

A major breakthrough came in 2004, when Dr Gluckman’s group showed that glypromate was neuroprotective after administration into a vein in the neck of rats that had had an ischemic stroke. This suggests that glypromate can be administered intravenously to human stroke victims. Also, of interest was that glypromate was neuroprotective when administered 7 hours after the stroke in rats. This will give a greater opportunity to use the drug than the 3-hour limit with the clot busters

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 55

given within the first 3 hours of the onset of stroke, unblocking the blood vessel to re-supply the brain with oxygen and nutrients, leads to better outcomes (less disability). However, there is major drawback with these drugs – we don’t really know why, but if they are given any later than 3 hours, they make things worse. In New Zealand, clot busting drugs are only administered in specialist centres. Unfortunately, only a few people with strokes get to these centres within the 3 hours.

S

o what else can be done to stop the nerves from dying? Many pharmaceutical companies have tried and failed to develop neuroprotective agents. Dr Richard Green from AstraZeneca has been involved in the development of neuroprotective agents for many years. When Dr Green visited New Zealand, he discussed what was needed for a drug candidate to become a neuroprotective suitable for use in stroke. For instance, in testing, realistic animal models of stroke must be used, and the drugs must be administered after the stroke. Indeed, neuroprotective drugs that are helpful when administered long after the stroke would be particularly useful.

So, how does Neuren’s glypromate measure up? It was back in 1992 that Dr Peter Gluckman (Neuren’s Chief Scientific Officer) first proposed a protein in the body known as insulin-like growth factor was neuroprotective using an animal model of brain injury. Subsequently, Dr Gluckman’s group showed that the neuroprotective effect could be mimicked by a tiny fragment of the protein. That tiny fragment was initially developed as glycine-proline-glutamate (GPE), but is now known as glypromate.

When glypromate was injected directly into the brain, it was shown to be neuroprotective in an animal model of ischemic stroke. More importantly, it was effective when given 2 hours after the stroke. But it is difficult to imagine injecting drugs deeply into the brains of people without the needle causing serious damage!

A major breakthrough came in 2004, when Dr Gluckman’s group showed that glypromate was neuroprotective after administration into a vein in the neck of rats that had had an ischemic stroke. This suggests that glypromate can be administered intravenously to human stroke victims. Also, of interest was that glypromate was neuroprotective when administered 7 hours after the stroke in rats. This will give a greater opportunity to use the drug than the 3-hour limit with the clot busters.

After evidence of a benefit in an animal model of a medical condition, the next stage in drug development is clinical trial. Thus, having been shown to be neuroprotective in an animal stroke model, glypromate has gone into clinical trial. No results of clinical trials with glypromate have been made available to the general public or published in peer-review journals to date. Going into clinical trial is no guarantee that a drug will be successful – most drugs that make it to clinical trial do not become commonly used drugs in medical practice.

So why isn’t Labrat convinced? Apparently, glypromate acts as a NMDA site blocker, and Labrat thinks this is a problem. Indeed, synthetic NMDA site blockers have already been made and tested in stroke.

One of the early difficulties in stroke is that the nerves release huge amounts of glutamate that act at this NMDA site to promote more nerve death. So, logically, anything that blocks the NMDA site should be neuroprotective. The main problem with many of the synthetic NMDA site blockers was that they caused too many side effects to be used in stroke victims. However, recently a weak synthetic NMDA site blocker (memantine) has been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, another indication for neuroprotective agents. So, it may be possible to use an NMDA site blocker after all in stroke, provided it is too weak to cause side effects. Perhaps it is time to give NMDA site blockers another chance.

Neuren have obviously highlighted their work and the best interpretation of it, but Labrat seems to have a problem with this spin. But

56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

surely, it is standard procedure for companies that list on the stock exchange to put the best spin on their products, and all pharmaceutical companies do this, so why not Neuren? As, Labrat points out, other people have done work with glypromate, which is not highlighted by Neuren. Thus, glypromate was first described as having effects on nerves in 1989 by a group from the well-respected Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Other groups have shown that glypromate is neuroprotective, and are (as is Neuren) trying to develop similar drugs as neuroprotective agents.

Labrat objects that Dr Gluckman has been telling the media since 1998 that Neuren ‘expect’ or ‘plan’ or ‘hope’ or ‘could’ start clinical trials ‘within months’ or ‘within 2 years’. I agree that this is a problem, but I don’t think the problem is with Gluckman/Neuren. Surely, it is up to the media, to pin him down.

The Business Herald has reported that ‘Glypromate helps stem the loss of brain function after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery’.

Where is the evidence for this? If the Herald has been shown clinical evidence from the Phase II trial to support this, it may have been reasonable to have reported that ‘early evidence from a Phase II trial suggests that glypromate may be useful in reducing the loss of brain function after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery’.

Also from the Business Herald: ‘Neuren also says the drug can be used after strokes or other brain injuries – markets totalling a further US$4.5 billion’. This seems to be implying that glypromate has been shown to have major benefits in humans after strokes or brain injuries. If this was really true, the shareholder would all be guaranteed to be millionaires! Surely, it would have been more realistic to have reported that ‘Neuren is also developing glypromate for use after strokes or other brain injuries. Encouraging results have been obtained in animal studies, and they now hope to take the drug to clinical trial for this indication’.

Neuren is not the only company with promising leads for the treatment of stroke. Clinical trials of 12 different agents for the treatment of stroke have been reported in the peer-reviewed literature in the last year. However, in recent years, many of the major drug companies have abandoned their stroke programmes after the spectacular failure of the synthetic NMDA site antagonists.

The large pharmaceutical companies run several programmes for developing drugs for different indications simultaneously. With this approach, it is hoped that the millions lost by drugs that fail in clinical trials, can be countered by drugs that succeed. Small pharmaceutical companies are not able to spread the risk. Thus, they are likely to loose it all, or make millions.

i In summary • Stroke is a devastating •

•

condition, presently without good treatments Neuren’s glypromate (and related drugs) shows promise in early development for use in brain injury All investment in small pharmaceutical companies is speculative!

About the author Sheila Doggrell is a biomedical researcher, lecturer and writer.

She was working at the University of Auckland at the time the early development of glypromate was being undertaken. However, she has never had links to the research of Dr Gluckman or any of the companies he has/is involved with, and is not ‘Labrat’.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 57

THE INVESTIGATE INTERVIEW

BRITISH MP FRANK FIELD CAME DOWNUNDER RECENTLY ON BEHALF OF THE CENTRE FOR INDEPENDENT STUDIES,AND TOOK THE TIME TO SIT DOWN WITH JAMES MORROW TO DISCUSS THE GROWING CRISIS IN ENGLISH SOCIETY – FROM DRUNKEN YOBS TO HOME-GROWN MUSLIM TERRORISTS – AND SHARE HIS IDEAS ON JUSTWHAT CAN BE DONE TO RESCUE THE ‘MOTHER COUNTRY’.

WILL THERE

ALWAYS BE AN

ENGLAND? I know one banker who is on a million pounds a year, and every weekend he goes to the pub with the aim of getting as drunk as possible, and he drinks about 17 pints a session. But this sort of behaviour, when it is in the lower classes, it wreaks much more havoc

INVESTIGATE: I’d like to begin by reading the following extract from The Age’s ‘Eye on Britain’ column, and get your reaction to it: ‘Come the weekend, the high streets of Britain are puddled with vomit. It is part of a ritual that begins in the early evening and ends in the wee small hours, when pubs and clubs close. As their patrons pour out, there seems to be a collective loss of control; bellies give up their contents, bladders burst and tempers fray. The action is caught on closed-circuit television and makes grim viewing.

‘As the police try to restore peace, fights break out like forest fires; when one is dowsed, another flares. The night air is putrid with the smell of food you’d think twice about feeding to the Empress of Blandings. Oaths and invitations to engage in fisticuffs ensure that sleep for the unfortunate residents is impossible. Even on the coldest of nights, the population seems to have dressed for the beach. In the morning, you’d think the place had been paid a visit by Vandals and Goths.’ Is this an accurate description of life in 21st Century England?

FRANK FIELD, MP: In my experience of it is, certainly in some areas. It’s not like this every night but certainly towards the weekend and the weekend itself. In my experience the police don’t try and take the licenses

58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

away from people who are serving people who are drunk; they say they need more proof than people falling out of pubs at two o’clock in the morning legless to show that people are being served inappropriately. And when the police do do something they then treat it like a military operation, charging up and down the street, some of them on horssback, and then the whole thing cleaned up in the morning and repeated the next night. So yes, for some areas it is an accurate description. And presumably things will become worse when the government gets is new 24-hour licensing scheme approved.

That whole approach comes about, to me at least, because a few cabinet ministers have friends who rush to the pub late at night and down a few quick pints before closing, and think that if hours were extended they could drink ina more civilized manner.

INVESTIGATE: Is this happening across all strata of society, or just in poorer areas?

FF: It’s widespread – the aim of many people is not to go and have a drink the aim is to go and get drunk – I know one banker who is on a million pounds a year, and every weekend he goes to the pub with the aim of getting as drunk as possible, and he drinks about 17 pints a session. But this sort of behaviour, when it is in

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 59

Well, we had t wo bomb attacks, and the ones who failed turned out to have also been the ones who were on welfare.

What lessons you draw from that I’m not sure, but it does of course make you think about the success of the welfare-towork program, through which it was virtually assured that no one remainded more than 6 months on the dole. Now some of these guys had been on the dole for 10 years!

the lower classes, it wreaks much more havoc. And one of the reasons why it makes more of a difference to poorer people is because if they have problems with a neighbourhood, they can’t toddle off and move somewhere else. So maintaining order is more crucial to them than it is to the rest of us.

INVESTIGATE: Can you paint a picture of life in some of these areas and what makes life so intolerable there? It sounds like the social fabric has really been ripped in some places in England in a way we haven’t seen so much in Australia.

FF: Well there are certainly some areas you don’t go into if you don’t want trouble. But what is more important is the sort of low-level terrorism of unacceptable behavior which is making life in poor areas miserable and is now spreading to middle class areas. I thought at first that people were exaggerating about this sort of thing, but I still remember the time ten years ago when a group of very serious working class pensioners came to my offices and described what life is like when there has been a complete breakdown of younger people having any respect for older people. They told me of young lads running over their roofs, peeing in their letterboxes, and smashing on their windows and giving them a heart attack when they were watching TV. I said, ‘have you been to the police?’ And you can imagine the look of these poor red-strained sleep-deprived eyes looking at me and saying, ‘oh no, we’ve got to go through this again! We went to the police and the police said we have no control of these people.’

I started thinking about what might we do about this and how we could implement government policy to help. At the time I said we needed surrogate parents in society because of the breakdown of the family, and my idea was that we should give the police powers to show warning cards and then be able to show a red card, and the penalty would then be immediate. Now some of that the government did in a convoluted way with the creation of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and the like, in which the criminal justice system gets involved and you go off to collect evidence and they set it up in an adversarial way, but the problem is months and months have gone by since the offense.

The problem with this is that I don’t believe we need to get more people criminal records, but this is what happens now. Often, I just don’t think that the behaviour as appalling as it is warrants the criminal justice system. But people get bored doing one thing, so they ratchet it up, and unless you can nip them in the bud, which I wanted to give the police the power to do, the yobbos will be on to the next thing and on to the next thing – they’ll go from breaking windows to stealing cars. And the horrors that they would visit on pensioners would increase.

INVESTIGATE: And what has happened in these families where there is no control – where are the parents to say, ‘this is not acceptable’?

FF: Oh, you can see even with 3-year-olds which ones able to bully their parents. I was walking through a forest recently and I saw father in what must have been his early 20s, and his young lad ran away by this rocky pool which was really quite dangerous. Well, the dad gave

60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

him a whack, and his kid cried, and then he gave him a cuddle and mussed his hair, and the son knew that he wasn’t supposed to do that. I didn’t have courage to say it, but I felt like going up to him and saying, ‘would you like to come sort out the youth of Birkenhead?’

Similarly you need in a community other people in the neighbourhood not being frightened of saying, ‘stop doing that’ so that younger people know that in a public space other people have a say in how you behave.

On the parenting side, we assume that parental skills are passed on by osmosis, just as what makes a civilized nation is passed on. But that respectability that we’re talking about as a nation was built up over 150 years, it doesn’t happen overnight.

INVESTIGATE: The columnist Theodore Dalrymple says that many social problems occur when poor people see rich people acting out certain pathologies, but that poor people are unable to handle the consequences and insulate themselves.

FF: Well, some of the rich can’t handle it either, particularly with drugs. But when you’ve got neighbours from hell and you don’t have a bank balance and can’t leave, that’s terrible for poor people. Similarly, people who are better off can get their life back together in some way if they have a circle of friends and associates to help, and most of those things are not present in a working class community. The carriers of culture in working class communities are not always in the position to see whether in fact that culture is carried on, and indeed behaviour is often so bad that those who purvey culture do wind up moving out.

INVESTIGATE: In a way it is the downside of social mobility.

FF: One of the things the post-war education reforms in Britain did is break off the cleverest of the working class, and that certainly had a big impact on leadership in working class areas. I’m not in any way making a plea to turn the clock back, it’s certainly been a good thing, but you used to have the people who would run their trade union or friendly society and other local institutions of culture now running corporations. And I see the impact as I go around the world and I see the number of Birkenhead boys and girls who’ve made their fortune somewhere else – that would have been inconceivable fifty years ago.

INVESTIGATE: What role does deindustrialization have to do with all of this? Does the fact that there’s not as much unskilled work around for those left behind make a difference?

FF: When I came to Birkenhead there were 16,000 dockworkers. Today, there are 400 dockworking jobs in my electorate. When you lose unskilled jobs that do pay well, you change the social ecology of the area, not just the economic ecology, in that unless an area pays family wages, you put men at a huge disadvantage in whether they’re marriageable or not.

INVESTIGATE: How do the 7/7 tube attacks come in to all this? Those guys had been on the dole for years.

Are we creating cultural cesspools that immigrants can come into and get sucked into as well?

FF: Well, we had two bomb attacks, and the ones who failed turned out to have also been the ones who

were on welfare. What lessons you draw from that I’m not sure, but it does of course make you think about the success of the welfare-to-work program, through which it was virtually assured that no one remainded more than 6 months on the dole. Now some of these guys had been on the dole for 10 years!

I don’t know whether you saw the recent poll that said that 6% of British Muslims thought the attacks were justified – that’s 90,000 people – and that something like a third sympathize with the attackers who say we’re so decadent that the society should be wiped out.

And does all of this come back to the behaviour policies we talked about. We need to have a serious conversation about the our society. What is required in a good life?

What sort of qualities do we expect from ourselves and our politicians so that life continues and we’re not blown to smithereens?

That, incidentally, is also the question in international politics in that were are now suddenly confronted with how to stop nuclear weapons from going into the hands of terrorists. The chances are that we will have a nuclear terrorist attack somewhere within the next 10 years – if that doesn’t concentrate the mind, I don’t know what will.

INVESTIGATE: So are we too decadent to defend ourselves, as the terrorists say?

FF: Look at that description of life you gave at the beginning of our talk. If you were an immigrant, would you want your son or daughter to be a part of that? Of

course not. We need to have a discussion about what we think about citizenship, and find out what people value about the place they’re in, and I think some of the things we hear will be very unpalatable to the elites. And when you’re a Muslim and you’re trying to save your kids from the barbarism, all around you, that creates an internal tension – the kids must feel that their parents have a point.

INVESTIGATE: What do you think Muslims would say in such a conversation?

FF: ‘How dare you instruct us in civilized behaviour when you allow your young to run in the street and run around drunk and abuse drugs!’

INVESTIGATE: Sounds like we need a rebuilding from the ground up…

FF: That is what is so extraordinary in Britain.

Although the elites built civil society they used national policy as framework, and that translated into character, but then character became a dirty word. And that’s created a big divide with Muslims. But I think the biggest tension there isn’t going to come over civilized values like respect, or hard work, it is going to be about tolerance, and instructing them that tolerance is a two way process, and that that is a virture that has to be universally applied.

i October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 61

The Kyoto conspiracy HOW ENRON HYPED GLOBAL WARMING FOR PROFIT 62, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Not one single day goes by in New Zealand now without a reference somewhere to global warming, and New Zealand’s requirement to comply with the Kyoto protocol. But few people realise that Kyoto was the brainchild of a corrupt multinational energy company, looking to make a buck out of the green movement. KEN RING explains

A

midst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is supposed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten especially amongst the greenies how Kyoto was born in the corridors of very big business. The name Enron has all but faded from our news pages since the company went down in flames in 2001 amidst charges of fraud, bribery, price fixing and graft. But without Enron there would have been no Kyoto Protocol.

About 20 years ago Enron was owner and operator of an interstate network of natural gas pipelines, and had transformed itself into a billion-dollar-a-day commodity trader, buying and selling contracts and their derivatives to deliver natural gas, electricity, internet bandwidth, whatever. The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to put a cap on how much pollutant the operator of a fossil-fueled plant was allowed to emit. In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade program, the forerunner of today’s proposed carbon credit trade. This commodity exchange of emission allowances caused Enron’s stock to rapidly rise.

Then came the inevitable question, what next? How about a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program? The problem was that CO2 is not a pollutant, and therefore the EPA had no authority to cap its emission.

Al Gore took office in 1993 and almost immediately became infatuated with the idea of an international environmental regulatory regime. He led a U.S. initiative to review new projects around the world and issue ‘credits’ of so many tons of annual CO2 emission reduction. Under law a tradeable system was required, which was exactly what Enron also wanted because they were already trading pollutant credits. Thence Enron vigorously lobbied Clinton and Congress, seeking EPA regulatory authority over CO2. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars - $990,000 - to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promotes global warming theories.

Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to “reduce” global warming. Executives at Enron worked closely with the Clinton administration to help create a scaremongering climate science environment because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a monstrous financial windfall. The plan was that once the problem was in place the solution would be trotted out.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 63

A lawyer named Christopher Horner was hired who had worked in Senator Liebermann’s Environment Committee. Horner, employed

by Enron, became director of relations with the Federal Government.

That was in 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was drafted. According to Homer, on the second day at the job he was told that the Number One Objective was to obtain an international treaty that would impose cuts in CO2 emissions, but at the same time allowed trade with emission rights. Enron had the biggest natural gas production behind Russia’s Gazprom. Enron was making a lot of money trading with coal, but they had already calculated that the profits they would lose with coal would be more than compensated by the profits derived from its privileged position in other areas. With clever positioning and anticipation Enron had bought the world’s biggest wind power company, GE Wind, from General Electric. They now also owned the biggest solar power company in the world, in society with Amoco (now belonging to British Petroleum – BP). Enron then started to finance everything related to the global warming hype, including grants to scientists – but asking for results favorable to their interest – “proof ” that humans were responsible for the excessive emissions of CO2 through fossil fuel burning. The fire of malaise, now lit and kindled, only required feeding.

T

he expressive term ‘Baptist-bootlegger’ derives from the days of prohibition. Under prohibition bootleggers and those who transported and supplied illegal alcohol made fortunes. One such entrepreneur was Joseph Kennedy whose second son, John, became US President in 1961. The bootleggers had allies in the Baptists and other teetotalists, who believed that alcohol was a deadly threat to the social order, and had worked for decades to get prohibition onto the statute books. The Baptists provided the political cover and the bootleggers pocketed the proceeds. In public the two groups maintained a great social distance from each other. Now Enron had positioned itself at the centre of an awesome Baptist-bootlegger coalition. The gargantuan rents which Enron energetically sought could be realized only if the Kyoto Protocol became established as part of US and international law. Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO saw Enron as not only making billions from sales of the natural gas which was to displace coal as the preferred fuel under the Kyoto commitments, but he realised that as the main if not the only international and domestic trader in the new barter world of carbon credits, Enron could realise hitherto unimagined wealth. Such credits, of course, would only become bankable pieces of paper if governments, particularly the US Government, established and policed a global policy of decarbonisation under which a global tax on carbon was to be enforced.

Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to George W, but few are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush because the coal industry in that state decided to back him because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference

64, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace. A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron’s way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to moderate the political aspects of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission. The purpose of this commission was clear – high-level trashing of dissident scientists. Setting up a panel to do this was simple; just look at the recent issue of Scientific American where four attack dogs were called out to chew up Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish The Skeptic Environmentalist demonstrating that global warming is overblown. David Bellamy, the world’s foremost environmentalist also stepped out of line with his widely printed article “Global Warming? What a load of old Poppycock.” In the same way Galileo was forced to publicly utter that the moon had no effect on tides, so Bellamy under pressure backtracked on some of his claims.

Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.” One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Recently he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA. True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public, self-censoring them while it pleaded with the Bush administration for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That pleading continues today – the remnant-Enron still views global warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate oblivion. Some greenie campaigning in America is still directed from this source. On July 7, 2004, Kenneth Lay was indicted by a federal grand jury for his involvement in the scandal.

Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to George W, but few are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush because the coal industry in that state decided to back him because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference. ”Enron stood to profit millions from global warming energy-trading schemes,” said Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association and American Coal Coalition. The investigation into the collapse of Enron will reveal much more about the intricacies of the Baptistbootlegger coalition which was promoting the Kyoto cause within the Republican Party and within US business circles. Coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going – from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices. If the Kyoto Protocol were ratified and in full force, experts estimated that Americans would lose between $100 billion and $400 billion each year. Additionally, between 1 and 3.5 million jobs could be lost. That means that each household could lose an average

One of the men who helped dream up the Kyoto Protocol is led away in chains: former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay begins his new life as a corporate con artist. Enron realised it could make a fortune trading carbon credits if it could convince governments there was political mileage in milking the gullibility of green voters. ZUMA

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 65

of up to $6,000 each year. That is a lot to ask of Americans just so large energy companies can pocket millions from a regulatory scheme. Moreover, a cost of $400 billion annually makes Enron’s current one-time loss of $6 billion look like pocket change. Little wonder Americans and the incoming Bush administration did not want a bar of it.

In NZ the Labour government was forced to agree to the Kyoto Protocol because the Alliance Party self destructed and Labour needed the Greens for support in Confidence and Supply. The cost of that support was agreement to GE legislation and the Kyoto Protocol.

Labour could see that the GE debate had no financial return, but the carbon credit trading game looked much more promising. Positive credit-trading with all our trees acting as CO2 sinks made politicians see dollar signs. But just as Enron came unstuck mired in financial ruin and scandal, so too is the Kyoto Protocol set to ruin economies and bring down governments and any players foolish enough to be taken in. Enron collapsed in a quagmire of bribery, misinformation, energy price manipulation and the use of political connections to exert pressure on energy boards. Anything connected to the Kyoto Protocol will turn out to be good money after bad, because a scheme instigated by half-truths and hype must eventually collapse under the weight of the spin of its own cover-up. The half-billion dollar debt NZ now owes

Since the Rio Conference in 1992, the greens have tried using the threat of global warming to induce Protestant guilt in us all, to cap growth, to change lifestyles, to attack the car, industry and the Great Satan of America. They have lost could be just the beginning. In 2002 Helen Clark said “Climate change is a global problem ..the Kyoto Protocol is the international community’s response to climate change and New Zealand is playing its part”. This contrasted strongly with Enron’s own internal report expressing doubt that global warming was real. It is hard to accept that Clark does not know that the Protocol only became real through Enron.

Real problems are the gullibility of satellite western economies, the dangers of being the tail of giant corporate dogs and the perceived need to appease the EU for trade deals. Global warming itself does not even get a look in. In NZ the only funding for environmental research comes to the NZ Climate Change Office for the Ministry for the Environment and is funded through the Ministry of Fisheries and the Public Good Science & Technology fund. The particular institute

concerned has all the appearance of an independent research body whilst at the same time proclaiming to be spokespeople for government policies re the environment. In this way debate is suppressed in NZ, because there is no funding for alternative viewpoints, no panel for review or accountability of government-science agendae and no voice of balance in government-funded public media.

I suggest you look out the window to see if there is any catastrophe happening. While looking, check to see if any ocean is yet rising. Also look up – exactly where is this methane cloud? Please, someone, explain how heavier-than-air car emissions can get 6-8 miles up where weather is generated? We are not all that taken in. Despite all the handwringing and increasingly desperate hysteria, where global warming is concerned there has been a failure to force this paranoid religion onto the world. Since the Rio Conference in 1992, the greens have tried using the threat of global warming to induce Protestant guilt in us all, to cap growth, to change lifestyles, to attack the car, industry and the Great Satan of America. They have lost. Only schoolchildren remain rich fodder willing to believe it is up to them now to Save The World, which hasn’t needed saving one iota during the last 4,000,000,000 years or it wouldn’t still be here. Now it is surely time to face the facts: there isn’t a snowflake-in-hell’s chance of global warming altering real life.

But the failure of the greens is not just with the public. While playing the climate-change card at the G8 Summit, the final Gleneagles’ declaration shows that the leaders of the developed world have no intention of sacrificing growth and economic success for an ascetic global warming religion. To quote Michael McCarthy, the environment editor of the Independent: ‘The failed agenda that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wide Fund for Nature and others were complaining of – that the US has still not agreed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions – was the green groups’ own agenda, not the British government’s. At G8 the idea of capping greenhouse gas emissions was cleverly replaced by an emphasis on technological innovation and imaginative development. The Kyoto Protocol is effectively dead.

REFERENCES http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2002/Feb/ 20020226Comm007.asp http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26124 http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/EvansEnron.html http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=204 http://ff.org/centers/csspp/opeds/80320040418_landrith.html http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CAC72.htm http://www.niwa.co.nz/pubs/ar/2004/14ncc.pdf

In NZ almost the only funding for environmental research is invested in NIWA and comes via the NZ Climate Change Office for the Ministry for the Environment, but mostly funded through the Ministry of Fisheries and the Public Good Science & Technology fund. The institute has all the appearance of an independent research body whilst at the same time acting in the appointed role of spokespeople for government policies on the environment. NIWA is a fine organisation when it comes to marine biological research, but when it comes to climate projection theirs must still be only an opinion. Sadly, though, other opinions that might make for lively debate are somewhat suppressed in NZ, because there is no funding for alternatives, no panel for review or accountability of government-science agendae and subsequently no voice of balance across most government-funded public media. Consequently the work of NIWA is perceived in some quarters as having become politicised which is sad for an otherwise valuable and necessary national research resource.

i

66, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 67

N A

T N E D I C C A

WA ITI NG

e Ar

68, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

TO

HA PP EN

is ng s pa s u lb o ho c s r ou

lu es r

to o

? al x

Every year in New Zealand a child is killed while getting on or off a schoolbus. Others are injured. As DANIELLE MURRAY discovers, there’s growing pressure from parents for a ban on overtaking stationary schoolbuses at all

R

ichard Murray will never forget the day his daughter was run over. The year was 1968 and she was seven years old. It was the beginning of the school term and Kristine had begged to be able to walk home from the bus by herself. It was supposed to be so easy – she was to get off the bus and wait for the monitor to take her to the other side of the road where she could now walk the 100 metres to the front gate without her mum or dad, just like the bigger kids. But nothing went according to plan that afternoon. The bus was early, the monitor had not arrived and there was no one to guide the children across the busy street. Even Richard, who had hoped to spy on her from behind a nearby tree, did not make it in time. When the bigger kids made a run for it, Kristine followed them. But she was not fast enough. She ran straight into the path on an oncoming vehicle.

Kristine was lucky. She survived. But every year in New Zealand, one child is not so fortunate.

Of the 120,000 Kiwi kids who take the bus to school every day every year, one child will be fatally injured by a passing motorist as he or she gets on or off the bus. This year, so far, we’ve been lucky.

In 2004, it was 15 year-old Katie Hunkin, hit in Te Puke by a fourwheel drive as she crossed the street immediately after getting off the bus. The year before it was eight year-old Lucy Waring, struck as she ran out into the road, in full view of her mother on the other side, just after her bus had driven away. In 2002, it was seven year-old Zachary Hide, killed as he ran to catch the bus as it waited for him on the other side of Waipu Cove Road in Waipu.

While current legislation allows motorists to pass a stationary school bus at a speed not exceeding 20 kilometres per hour, some say, when it comes to school bus safety laws in New Zealand, this is not enough.

North American-style “Stop arms” on both sides of the bus along with bold flashing lights, alerting motorists that students are boarding and disembarking, should be made mandatory. And, they say, motorists in both directions should not be allowed to pass a stationary bus at all.

Kym Small came to New Zealand eight years ago after marrying a Waimate crop farmer. The mother of school aged twins, she began campaigning for tougher school bus laws after the death of a neighbourhood boy – killed while running to catch the bus. Not only does she want stop arms, flashing lights and illegal passing enforced, she’s also pushing for New Zealand’s 2,100-plus school buses to be equipped with seatbelts.

“They call me the Erin Brockovitch of school buses in Waimate”, she jokes in a strong American accent. But, she says, the issue is far from a laughing matter. “The laws need to be changed, children’s lives are at risk.”

The Land Transport Safety Authority does not agree. Because of New Zealand’s “generally good safety record of school buses”, there are no proposed changes to the current legislation. The argument for stop arms is not strong enough and, it says, the cost of mandatory installation and maintenance of flashing lights on all school buses unjustified. While the 20km/h speed limit could have been amended as part of the draft Land Transport Road User Rule signed on December 6th last year by the Minister of Transport Safety, it was not.

Seatbelts have been a source of debate in many countries in recent years and New Zealand is no different. Those in favour argue that

passengers are safer when restrained, especially in side impact and rollover crashes. Children, they say, are also better behaved when properly seated and thus less likely to cause driver distraction, which may in turn lead to less accidents.

Those against it, however, claim a myriad of tests show lap-belted occupants are at greater risk of serious head and neck injury than unbelted passengers in frontal collisions, the most common form of bus accident. Transport Canada believes lap and shoulder belt combinations are no safer because unless properly restrained, slackness causes injury. The New Hampshire School Transport Association says that because buses are higher off the road and therefore have a lower impact zone than most vehicles, wearing a seatbelt is ineffective in the more common school bus crash scenarios. In catastrophic accidents, wearing a seatbelt may even hinder the swift evacuation of passengers. And even if seatbelts were installed on all school buses, there is simply no way to ensure they will be used correctly, if at all.

Canada and Australia do not require the use of seat belts on school buses. Nor do most US states. All mini buses and coaches in the UK on the road since October 2001 must be outfitted with manufacturer installed seat belts. Buses that transport children to and from school are exempt.

In 2002, New Zealand introduced the Seatbelt Rule, making it mandatory for seatbelts to be fitted in all mini buses (Classes MD1 and MD2) manufactured after September 2003. “This will gradually flow into the school bus fleet”, says the LTSA. But the bottom line, no matter what country you look to, is money.

The New Zealand Bus and Coach Association (BCA) estimates the cost of outfitting seatbelts in buses to be at least NZ $22 Million. But while this figure may seem feasible in comparison to the approximate US $900 Million needed in America, there’s a catch. Unlike their overseas counterparts, not all Kiwi youngsters actually get to sit on the way to school. According to the BCA, one third of all passengers transported to school are carried as “standees”. Should the government enforce seat belts on all buses, it would only make sense that all those standees were required to sit – creating the demand for an extra 700 buses nationwide. And the price tag? $60 Million.

Restrained or not, taking the bus is the safest way to get to school in this country. In the ten years from 1993 to 2002, four children have been killed on the bus versus 23 in cars (between 7-9AM and 3-5PM).

In that same time period, just 40 have been hurt on the bus compared to the 1,106 children chauffeur-driven.

Walking to school is also more hazardous. The BCA reports children are 38 times more likely to be injured and nine times more likely killed as pedestrians than if they travelled by bus.

But that doesn’t mean all bus operators agree that we are doing all we can for our children. Even though, according to the BCA’s Mark Stockdale, the only legal requirement imposed on school bus operators “is that it must display a yellow fluorescent “SCHOOL” sign at the front and rear”, there are some who have gone the extra mile.

Ritchies Transport in Timaru, along with the Timaru District Council, is currently testing front and rear warnings on school buses which incorporate a “Children Walking” symbol with flashing lights activated when the bus driver opens the doors.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 69

I

n 2003, Ritchies Oamaru installed new signs on all its school buses encouraging motorist to slow down near stopped buses.

Manager Jill McIntyre, says the “20 past a stationary School Bus” notices have created quite a stir. But while the impact on rural roads has been huge, highway traffic “seems to have taken little, or no notice.”

And last year students at Wakatipu High School launched their own initiative, Project 20K, which saw 20 km/h reminder notices displayed on all Queenstown school buses. Why did they do it? Because, says 18 year old Student Council Chairperson Olivia Hill, the older students had noticed the law was not adhered to and were concerned for the safety of their younger classmates.

So, is the law ignored? It would seem so, according to the many police officers who habitually field complaints relating to vehicles speeding past stopped school buses. According to Sergeant Dave Ryan of the Oamaru Highway Patrol, “many motorists don’t realise the speed is 20 km/h – or that it applies to both directions.”

Do the signs work? “Speed has reduced by using the signs although some motorists are slow to learn”, says Ryan, “many police officers are also asking if 20 km/h is a feasible speed on a state highway.”

Kym Small certainly doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think any speed – on either highway or rural road – is feasible at all. And while every other initiative would come at considerable cost to the bus operators or New Zealand taxpayer, changing the law - making it illegal to pass a stationary bus loading or unloading children – appears to be the least expensive option to all concerned.

She cites similar legislation in the in the United States, implemented in the 1970’s, where vehicles in both directions must stop for a stationary school bus. Children then cross the road at the front while the bus waits. Once the children are safely on the other side, the bus may carry on its journey.

“School buses only run one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon for 40 weeks of the year”, says Small, “Is it so much to ask people to stop for their kids?”

70, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

The LTSA believes it is. “A lower limit, or requiring traffic to stop completely, would not significantly improve the nominal risk.”

“Evidence shows it wouldn’t reduce the risk of children being killed, and it would be very difficult to enforce” spokesperson Andy Knackstedt told the New Zealand Herald in 2001.

But, one would have to argue, so is the current limit. In the eight years to June 2005, only 92 infractions for excessive speed past a stopped bus were issued in the whole of New Zealand.

The rule applies for the length of the bus only, there is no safety margin either at the front or the rear of the bus. The offence takes place only if that bus is stopped “for the purpose” of embarking or discharging young passengers and the “‘difficulty for motorists is determining when this is not the case”, states Marie Hrstich at the LTSA. And because it takes place for such a short piece of road – that being the length of the bus – and over a small period of time – the two to three seconds it takes to pass - catching an offender in the act can be difficult.

“I would imagine it being easier to enforce a law if vehicles had to come to a stop”, says one senior police official, who did not wish to be identified.

Nevertheless, maintains the LTSA, “The 20km/h speed limit is consistent with protecting children.”

But when six year-old Aaron Jones ran to the front of the bus to cross the street and into the path of a truck in the Hawkes Bay in September 2001, it proved fatal. Police confirmed the driver was within the speed limit and crash reconstruction corroborate their findings. Yet the little boy still died.

Ask Richard if he thinks the 20 km/h speed limit is consistent with protecting children and he will tell you it’s not. He says that when Kristine was hit all those years ago, the vehicle that smashed into her was travelling well below 20 km/h – “a crawl’s pace” – and still, it was not able to stop in time.

Ask Kristine, now 44 years old, and she will show you the scars to prove it.

Many doctors also disagree, including Dr Philip Morreau, a paediatric surgeon at Starship Children’s Hospital. “There is no doubt that a car hitting a child at less than 20 km per hour can seriously injure it or kill it.”

“Surely the parent who backs over his own child in the driveway is not driving over 20 km an hour” says Richard, “and we know how fatal that can be.”

But the Minister for Transport Safety was not convinced. “The government has no proposals at this time to require other vehicles to come to a complete stop around a school bus” said Harry Duynhoven before signing the new Road User Rule in December 2004. Rule 61001, which re-instates the 20 km/h speed limit when passing a stopped school bus, came into force 27 February, 2005.

Requiring traffic to stop for stationary buses is not practical, say most New Zealand lawmakers and because we have such a good safety record, the legislation is not in need of change. Others are worried about the possibility of motorists, particularly in rural areas, getting stuck behind a slow schoolbus for its entire journey, unable to legally pass it while it is stopped and unable to practically pass it once it is moving again. But those fears could be dealt with by making it a requirement for drivers to wave traffic on once the bus doors had closed and the bus itself was preparing to move It may not seem like a lot. One child out of 120,000, killed by a passing vehicle either getting on or off the bus. But in the United States, the average number of children killed over the past ten years is six. Out of 23.5 Million – a student passenger population 196 times the size of New Zealand.

“Stopping for a school bus takes a few seconds ”, says Small, “it’s a shame some people think their lives so important that ten seconds of their time is more valuable than a child’s life”.

Guidelines for New Zealand school children: After getting off a bus, students must wait on the side of the road until the bus has moved at least two power poles away, so that they have a clear view of the road before crossing – Min of Education info According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Transportation, the most dangerous part of riding the school bus is the loading and unloading of passengers where 78% of all school bus related fatalities occur. Of that 78%, 53% of children are killed as result of being hit by a vehicle as they get on or off the bus. (Traffic Safety Facts, 1999, U.S. Department of Transportation).

In New Zealand, the only legal requirement to distinguish a school bus is that a school bus being used to carry children to or from school must display a yellow fluorescent “SCHOOL” sign front and rear, the rear sign being mounted at least 1.5m from the ground, in the centre or to the right. The sign must be 825mm wide by 300mm tall – Traffic Regulations 1976 The State of NY does allow standees on yellow school buses Most fatalities occur at the end of the day – in a recent Australian report, 19 of the 22 children fatality injured were killed as they got off the bus after school. In the US, 73% of pedestrian fatalities occurred after school, 41% between 3-4PM. (http:// www.atcouncil.gov.au/schoolbus.htm), www.nhtsa.dot.gov

i October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 71

LIFESTYLE

MONEY

A QUESTION OF MONEY Peter Hensley tracks the path of millionaires and ask how they did it

A

s many of you know, I author the question and option is virtually risk free, then the choice is glaringly answer money column for a large Sunday pa obvious, pay off debt.

There is a school of thought that suggests that home per. The editors were unaware of the demand equity is being wasted if it not being utilised. Propofor such a column as their experience had shown that nents of this school believe that people should load up previous Q and A columns typically had a shelf life of on debt, buy as much property as possible and carefully less than six months before the questions dried up. The manage the cash flow. In certain circumstances and at column now has been running for almost four years certain stages of the investment cycle this strategy can with no shortage of questions in sight. It is embarrasswork, however this plan is loaded with risk. The biggest ing sometimes, in that it regularly takes up to two risk is that punters are putting their own home and months before a letter rises to the top of the pile. All lifestyle on the line. correspondents receive a personal reply with additional As a conservative adviser I do not belong to that information and many letters are not published. school and do not promote that risk heavy strategy. The The range of topics covered is amazing. The issue of strategy I adopt is one that works in all sorts of seasons how the Government treats international pensions is and does not depend on which part of the business particularly controversial. Current legislation says that if cycle that the economy is currently in. a NZ resident is entitled to a pension from a foreign STAGE ONE: People should aim to be living in country then under certain parameters that pension is their own home, owned free and clear of any debts and effectively confiscated by the Government and NZ Sumortgages.

In order for them to achieve this goal they perannuation is paid in its place. At first glance this apmust first learn to live within their means and spend pears fair and reasonable, however further investigation less than they earn. This strongly suggests that is a talent and skill which many immigrants are Spending less than one earns is not taught at school, being hard done by. yet it is one of the most These individuals apgives you the choice of what to do valuable lessons people pear to be at the mercy with the surplus income.

For most can ever learn in life. of an inflexible system There is example after and a bureaucracy that is people debt reduction is the preexample where people determined to deny ferred option on wages for their enthem a fair go. tire lifetime have ended Many contributors/ up becoming millionaires purely because of this one readers to the Q and A column have been attracted by ingrained habit.

Spending less than one earns gives you the conservative approach and no nonsense style that it the choice of what to do with the surplus income. For promotes. There is an old adage that states that those most people debt reduction is the preferred option. people who understand interest collect it and those who Once all debts are cleared then it is wise for people to do not, pay it. This means that debt should be treated treat themselves with some sort of reward for achieving a as the enemy and eliminated early on in life. People pay major goal in life.

It then gives them some time to idenmortgages with money that is left over after income tax has been deducted. This means that if an investor is tify and analyse the choices now available to them now given a choice of paying off their mortgage or investing that the debt monster has been removed from their lives.

STAGE TWO: They should build a cash reserve fund. elsewhere, the investment has to provide a more attracThis is a “just in case the wheels fall off ” fund and tive return. Considering that the mortgage reduction

“

”

72, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

WEALTHY PEOPLE BECOME WEALTHY SLOWLY. THEY FOLLOW TIME HONOURED, BASIC COMMONSENSE RULES. THEY DO NOT PLACE THEIR FUNDS AT RISK, HOWEVER THEY DO ACCEPT A FAIR REWARD FOR THE INVESTMENT RISK THEY ARE PREPARED TO TAKE

should be approximately six months’ wages. These funds should be invested in a readily accessible account and if necessary utilised as required. Many arrange for an automatic top up from their wages each pay day to go into this account and when it builds up to a level which exceeds their reserve minimum they move it out and invest it elsewhere for a better return.

Wise investors learn not to be confused by the hype and noise emitting from the investment markets as each different part of the investment cycle will produce flavour of the month type products which promise above average investment returns. All of these have a wide range of underlying costs which tend to favour the product promoters rather than the investors.

One of the scariest developments this century has been the promotion of CDO based products. CDO stands for Collaterised Debt Obligation. CDO’s is a very difficult concept to explain, it is kind of like an insurance policy, where an institution (for a fee) guarantees the interest payment of a debt issue. CDO’s make extensive use of derivatives and are best described as a synthetic (man made) debt instrument. Now derivatives were invented a long time ago and are a very good instrument for managing risk.

This concept has now been taken, stretched, sliced, diced, and manipulated into a public offering where the investing public have no concept of what they are invested in. It is almost like getting too much of a good thing. There are now funds of funds of cdo’s, cdo’s squared and even cdo’s cubed. Warren Buffet (the second richest man in the USA) once said that he would never invest in something that he could

THE TWINPACK SYSTEM is designed to ensure you don’t run out of gas. When one cylinder empties, it automatically changes across to the reserve cylinder. An easily readable indicator on the regulator changes colour from green to red indicat-

not understand. These are wise words and ones that investors should take serious counsel.

Wise investors also follow two other rules when it comes to adopting a conservative investment approach. They limit their investment exposure to any one institution to 10% or less of their total. In technical terms this is known as diversification, in conservative terms it is known as not putting all your eggs in one basket. The second concept they should understand is the power of compounding. It has been called the eighth wonder of the world. It does not matter what you call it, it works. It is also boring.

Wealthy people become wealthy slowly. They follow time honoured, basic commonsense rules. They do not place their funds at risk, however they do accept a fair reward for the investment risk they are prepared to take.

They utilise a varied mix of different investments that suit their age and stage in life. Some focus on shares, some on property, all of them look for positive cash flow which more often than not they compound.

If they choose finance company debentures they look at the stability and long term viability of the company, not just the interest rate. Many rely on our rating system (on the website) before investing their funds. It is interesting to note that the average New Zealand couple goes into retirement with a debt free home and less than $100,000 in investment.

Wealthy people have a wider number of choices available to them compared to those who are still in debt. They can elect to either compound their investment income or to spend it. The adage goes, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, rich is better.

ing that you now have one empty cylinder.

Getting your empty cylinder replaced couldn’t be easier says Ian Macefield, BOCs LPG Manager.Simply phone our Customer Service Centre, which operates 24-7 and a replacement TwinPak cylinder will be de-

livered to you on your designated day.

So if you’re thinking gas, the BOC gas experts will take the hassle out of getting you connected to TWINPACK. Simply call on 0800 800 753, or email customer_services@boc.com

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 73

LIFESTYLE

EDUCATION

KIDS BEHAVING BADLY John Rosemond argues that parents and liberal educators are to blame for children breaking boundaries

A

friend of mine happened to be looking in on In the final analysis, the problem is not teachers, their her Year 4 son’s class one day when he talked trainers, or their administrators; the problem is parents back to his teacher. She confined him to their who become apoplectic when their very own Immacuhouse for a week and made him write a one-page, sin- late Children are punished at school for anything at all. gle-spaced letter of apology. He actually had to write Once upon a not-so-long-ago time, when a child misthree, because Mum required that the letter sound sin- behaved in school, he faced the possibility of being puncere and contain no spelling or grammatical errors. Now, ished by four people on four separate occasions: first, his that’s my kind of mum! The teacher called to thank my teacher; then, the principal; then, his mother when he friend, but also happened to mention that the school arrived home; and finally, the most dread punishment of district disallows teachers from having children write all, his father’s. In those days, when a teacher called a letters of apology to other children they’ve wronged. parent and reported misbehavior, the parent accepted the Seems a child might feel “punished” and “humiliated” teacher’s version of the story pretty much without quesby having to write such an epistle. Furthermore, boys tion. In many cases, the child was not even allowed to don’t like to write, and the feeling is that using writing offer up a defense. I’m a member of that generation, and as a punishment will cause boys to hate it even more. if statistics are any indicator, this was anything but bad Funny, I’m a writer, for us. Since the midthink of writing as rec1960s, when the I think it’s time every parent wrote reation, yet on several parenting tide in their child’s teacher a note of apoloccasions when I was a America began to turn child, I was required to away from traditionalogy. That would, after all, be a fitting write a letter of apology ism toward psychologiway to begin this new school term to someone. cal correctness, every inIn The Conspiracy of dicator of positive menIgnorance: The Failure of American Public Schools (Harper tal health in children has declined, and significantly so.

Paperbacks, 2000, US$11.20 on Amazon.com), Martin As permissiveness took root and blossomed, parL. Gross points out that the typical teacher is trained, in ents became more concerned about their kids’ self-escollege and through later “in-service” seminars she must teem than their kids’ behavior. Supposedly “liberated” attend, in “dubious educational psychology.” mums went to work, came home feeling guilty, and The above anecdote is a prime example of such brain- began letting their kids walk all over them. Dads let washing. Even though “positive discipline” – i.e., themselves be brainwashed into believing that tradirewarding good behavior and all but ignoring bad tional fatherhood was bad and became “sensitive” dads behavior – has proven to be bankrupt, most public who substituted talk for discipline. People – otherwise schools still embrace it. But the problem is not just a rational adults – began thinking children had “rights.” problem of teacher training. Administrators who abso- Schools began purveying “therapeutic” education, which lutely know positive discipline doesn’t work require that means education that makes a child feel good even if he it be used to the exclusion of punishment for the sim- isn’t learning anything of value. And in no time at all, as ple reason it keeps parents off their backs and, by exten- my Mother would put it, “everything went to (a certain sion, lawyers out of their offices. So, even teachers who very hot, underground place) in a hand basket.” know that misbehavior is best dealt with by punishing Personally, I think it’s time every parent wrote their the culprit are prohibited from using punishment child’s teacher a note of apology. That would, after all, because of the outraged parent and/or litigation factor. be a fitting way to begin this new school term.

“

”

Investigate welcomes submissions from readers for our Education column. Email contributions to editorial@investigatemagazine.com, and ensure they are no more than 1400 words

74, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

SUBSCRIBE&SAVE

INVESTIGATE

New Zealand best current affairs magazine For

25% OFF the cover price

12 ISSUES delivered to your door for $72, when you subscribe.

Pay only $6.00 a copy, save $1.95 an issue

Or buy TWO SUBSCRIPTIONS for the PRICE OF ONE Photocopy or clip out this coupon and post to Investigate, PO Box 302-188, North Harbour, Auckland 1310 or order online at www.investigatemagazine.com, or fax 09 3733 667

Name Address

OPTIONS

Yes, send me 12 issues for only $72 Yes, I want a gift subscription for a friend and one

Phone E-mail Credit card number Expires Amex Diners Visa Bankcard Mastercard Cheque is enclosed

for myself for a total of $130. My friend’s name and address is:

Yes, I’d like to take out a two year subscription for just $130

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 75

LIFESTYLE

TECHNOLOGY

WHAT’S MY ADDRESS? A new internet numbering system could computerize everything, reports Brian Kladko

T

he Internet is running out of real estate. Just like mobile computing and Internet telephony. Both techa city, the Internet’s virtual space is divvied up nologies depend on the ability of two computers to into addresses – not e-mail addresses, but communicate directly with each other. Every mobile Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Each numerical device, for example, will need its own IP address to tap address represents a piece of the Internet, and you can’t into the Internet with a broadband connection. connect to the Internet without one.

The U.S. Department of Defense has realized the The current version of the Internet has more than possibilities. It’s converting all of its computerized sysfour billion IP addresses. But soon, that might not tems to IPv6 by 2008, so that it can create a “Global be enough.

Information Grid” – a military network that would proFortunately, there is a solution: a new system that will vide commanders in the Pentagon and front-line solnot only provide an address for every person on earth, diers a wealth of information about battle conditions. but every animal, every electronic device, every mechanical But drumming up interest among private compapart. Everything, not just everyone, could be connected. nies, and their customers, is more difficult. So propo“Because you have the ability to link everything to nents are dangling the prospect of an automated, reeverything else, you could conceivably have your cell mote-controlled future: one that will be made possible phone control up to 250 different electronic appliances by giving an address to every device, not just computers. in your home”, explains IPv6, for example, Alex Lightman, an invencould make it easier to The Internet won’t just be tor, writer, entrepreneur get a taxi when you’re and one of the most argetting drenched. In Jaabout sitting in front of a compudent boosters of the new pan, sensors with their ter, reading Web sites or tapping system, called Internet own IP addresses have out messages. It will be about conProtocol version 6. been attached to taxis’ IPv6, as it’s known, is windshield wipers. trolling the minutiae of our lives a set of international When the wipers start standards, or protocols, moving in response to that allow computers to understand each other. It will rain, that information is collected through the Internet. replace IPv4, the standard that has enabled the Internet Taxi companies use the information to redirect their to function since its creation 35 years ago. fleets to rain-soaked locations.

IPv4 worked fine when the Internet was used by a If ordinary household devices can go online, manubunch of computer scientists. Now that everyone wants facturers could monitor them to make sure they’re worka piece of it, IPv4 is seen as increasingly obsolete. ing right, or diagnose a problem when they’re not.

Most people aren’t even aware of their IP addresses, If a digital video recorder has its own address, the because most people don’t own one: the addresses owner could tap into it from another city and download belong to government agencies, universities and com- a show it had previously recorded. panies. When someone logs on from home, they borIn other words, the Internet won’t just be about sitrow an address from a pool of addresses owned by ting in front of a computer, reading Web sites or taptheir Internet provider. ping out messages. It will be about controlling the miAlthough there are still 1.3 billion addresses yet to be nutiae of our lives, down to the most mundane details. assigned, that’s not enough to accommodate two of “Your refrigerator could call the store when it needed the most exciting trends of the Internet – high-speed to and order more milk because it would know you

“

”

76, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

were out of it”, explains Doug Barton, general manager of the international organization that distributes addresses. “There are some pretty grandiose ideas behind some of these things.”

When addresses were first doled out, the United States – which invented the Internet – got most of them, even though many are going unused to this day. But when Asian countries finally got on board, they couldn’t get nearly as many, which is another factor that is pushing many to advocate for IPv6. At one point, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had more addresses than China.

“There is a real sense of injustice about how the addresses have been provided over the years”, said Jim Bound, a Hewlett Packard computer engineer who heads a group promoting IPv6 in North America.

Thanks to a reform of the way addresses are assigned, as well as a technological workaround that allows many network users to share one address, the depletion of addresses that some people had predicted just a few years ago has still not come to pass.

But Chinese officials continue to complain about a disparity.

Countries throughout East Asia see IPv6 as a remedy to past wrongs, as well as their best hope of catching up to, or surpassing, the United States.

IPv6 conferences in Japan and China attract thousands, and Japanese prime ministers even mention it in speeches.

Some IPv6 missionaries, such as Lightman, say the United States will pay for its complacency. As the rest of the world moves to a different standard and starts slapping addresses on everything with a circuit, the United States will lose its technological edge.

“We’re a bunch of rubes with respect to the new Internet”, Lightman says.

But even some IPv6 boosters, such as Bound, say it’s only a matter of time before companies realize its potential.

“We are not the overweight, sloppy ex-heavyweight champion”, says Bound, who helped select the IPv6 standard. “What we are is someone who’s ahead. And therefore, for new technology, we have the luxury of operating at a slower pace. We’ll get there when we need to get there.”

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 77

LIFESTYLE

TOYBOX

LOOK AND LISTEN Never get lost or never leave home

S

teinman Audio Laboratory engineers are traditionalists at heart, this shows in the design of their quality loudspeakers. Based on the ideal that the quality of every component used within the loudspeaker will have bearing on the overall listening experience, the HS 102 speaker line was conceived and remains the flagship of the Steinman range.

Remarkable audio performance has been achieved for both Music connoisseurs and Home Theatre enthusiasts alike.

Steinman HS 102s offer unrivalled performance and build quality at a price point that will bring music to your ears and your wallet. Offered directly from the Australian distributors www.aussiehifi.com.au at $1499.00 for the complete Home theatre pack or at $1199.00 for the main tower pair

78, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

F

eaturing a 80GB built-in Hard Disc Drive (HDD), the Pioneer DVR530H DVD recorder will allow you to record all your favorite television programs and home movies, as well as being able to copy all your digital camera images and favorite CD’s on the HDD. No more clunky VHS tapes are required. Consumers have the option of recording directly onto the Pioneer Hard Disc Drive and then making a copy directly to DVD. In addition to this, consumers can record video footage directly onto a DVD using their DVR530H and then make another copy onto the Hard Disc Drive. The Pioneer DVR530H holds up to 227 hours, allowing consumers to keep several seasons of their favourite programs at their finger tips.

What’s more, the Pioneer DVR530H is the world’s first 24-hour capacity Dual-Layer DVD-R recorders. A Dual-Layer DVD-R disc can hold up to 24 hours of programming in standard high resolution mode. Collect a whole mini-series on one disc.

For detailed specifications and FAQs, visit www.pioneeraus.com.au

A

rguably one of the best laptop computers in the world, the latest incarnation of the Sony Vaio, the S Series VGNS48GP, hits the market in NZ this month. Weighing less than 2kg, Sony is continuing to aim its guns at users who need mobility, ease of use and functionality at the touch of a button. The Vaio now has a 2Ghz Pentium M processor, 512MB of RAM is standard, and as you’d expect it has inbuilt 802.11g wireless capability and Bluetooth. Adobe Premiere is loaded on the copious 60GB hard drive, as is XP-Pro (thank heavens for a company that realises most notebook users need Pro).

Sony is making much of the new Vaio’s AV capabilities, with video editing and DVD creation – you could be your own mobile internet TV station with the goodies packed into this machine. An NVIDIA GeFOrce Go 6200 graphics card with Turbo Cache rounds off the system, and Sony is claiming a battery life of 3.5 hours. $3699.95

O

lympus camera distributor H E Perry Ltd is firing a new range of shots in the digital photography wars, this time with the introduction of what they say are some of the gruntiest rechargeable battery systems in the world. As anyone with a digital device knows, they suck power like there’s no tomorrow – even the toughest Energiser Titanium droops in comparison to the longevity of Ni-MH rechargeables. And because people persist in using the wrong batteries in their devices, their cameras and other toys don’t perform and they go squealing back to retailers complaining. So H E Perry Ltd has launched a public education campaign on its Uniross range of rechargeable batteries and chargers. The little beauty featured here will charge up four Uniross high power AA batteries in only 15 minutes, meaning you are always with power, when you need it.

Read the pamphlet in this magazine for more information.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 79

LIFESTYLE

FOOD & DRINK

NOODLING AROUND Want a fun challenge in the kitchen?

Make your own pasta, says Eli Jameson

A

h, the pasta aisle of the supermarket. Fettu- keep certain ideas and techniques just vague and complicini, cavatelli, oricchiette, rigatoni, penne cated enough so that the average punter remains mystirigate...just reading off the names on the differ- fied and unable to fully recreate certain end-products – ent boxes and bags is enough to make one feel Italian. or at least not regularly enough to become adept at them.

And so many of these shapes have names that sound I have a fantastic cookbook by the American chef Charlie cool even in English: Does a plate of priest’s caps Palmer which is almost like a detective hunt: every pho(agnolotti) appeal? No? Well, perhaps a steaming bowl of tograph of a finished dish has some extra touch or strozzapretti – or ‘priest stranglers’ – will sate your appe- flourish not included in the printed recipe, and the reader tite as well as your anti-clerical urges. has to study it closely to discern the hidden item. Call it But almost every packet of pasta for sale in the super- The DaVinci Cookbook school of food writing. The end market has one thing in common, regardless of shape: result is it convinces ordinary home chefs that fresh pasta it is dried. Which means that it is made by combining can only be made with two kinds of imported artisinal water and hard semolina flour and extruded in factories flour and lots of kneading, followed by ample time for through various shaped dies. Some of these pastas are both chef and dough to have a good rest. very good, and indeed gourmet dried pastas are showThis is, of course, completely untrue, and there is no ing up on the shelves of more and more suburban reason why fresh homemade pasta can’t become part of markets (tip: look for noodles that have a particularly any home chef ’s regular – i.e., at least weekly – routine. rough sauce-holding surface The advantages are numeras a sure tip-off of quality), ous: though it takes a little Perhaps a steaming bowl but they lack a certain somelonger to prepare on the front thing. Now, I keep a five kiloend (and we’re only talking of ‘priest stranglers’ will sate gram sack of penne rigate in the about twenty minutes, with a your anti-clerical urges cabinet because it’s an incredlittle practice), it takes only moibly economical and convenments to cook. One need only ient base for a huge number of dinners. But there are be up from the table for five minutes, tops, to knock up times that some occasions, and some recipes, that call for a pasta course before rejoining the rest of the party. more than just a couple of scoops of Barilla tossed into Furthermore, the texture is night-and-day to that of boiling water. dried pasta. It holds sauce much more effectively – one That alternative is, of course, fresh pasta. Contrary to might even say intimately – and as a result, one needs what one might think, fresh pasta is not simply the pre- less to coat it. This is where the old adage that pasta is dried version of what comes in a rectangular blue box not about the sauce but the pasta comes from, and it’s with instructions to ‘cottura 11 minuti’. Instead it is impossible to understand unless one has experienced made from eggs and flour – which is why the stuff has the difference. Fresh pasta absorbs sauce in a way dried a pretty firm use-by date – and unlike dried, only takes a simply can’t. few minutes to cook.

To make fresh pasta, one really only needs to get a So where to get the stuff ? Some fresh pasta is avail- hand-cranked pasta machine, costing between $60 and able from gourmet Italian delis and even supermarkets, $90, depending on brand, at decent homewares stores. but it is ridiculously expensive considering what goes in Word to the wise: spend the money on the more expento it. Instead, I say, make your own. sive Italian model if you can. The cheaper look-alike made I sometimes think that there is a conspiracy out there in Korea will do the job just as well, but doesn’t stand up in the world of TV chefs and cookbook authors to to regular use over the years, and will need to be replaced

“

”

80, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

far sooner. Beyond that, the only ingredients are flour (I prefer Italian strong, or ‘00’ flour, but the basic house-brand stuff will do just as well) and eggs (see last month’s column on the virtues of fresh eggs – they make a difference here as well). Ready? Let’s begin.

To make a simple pasta like, say, fettucini for two, just place two cups of flour in a bowl, make a well in the middle, and crack the eggs into it. (Rule of thumb: one plate = one egg = one cup of flour). With a fork, begin to combine the eggs with the flour until you have a mass of dough. On a well-floured work surface, knead this well until it becomes a ball, and it starts to get stretchy when worked with the meat of your hand.

Now comes the fun part. Take about a third of the dough, flatten it, and run it through the machine on its widest setting (1). It may take a few goes at this stage to get it fully formed and looking like a square of pasta, but once that is achieved, keep running it through until you reach the second-thinnest setting (generally number 8). Give this sheet a dusting of flour, and repeat with the remaining dough. And when it’s all done, run it through the wide noodle cutters that come with the machine. Presto! You’ve just made fettucini!

So what now? Well, for one thing, it should be lightly dusted with

flour and laid out on a sheet so that it doesn’t stick together, and allowed to dry out a bit. One can also make this at lunchtime for an evening’s dinner party without worrying a bit. When cooking time comes, plunge it into a pot of boiling, well-salted water, and let cook for just 2-3 minutes before tossing it into a pan of sauce. Make an alfredo by frying off some finely-diced onion in a large whack (100 grams) of butter, and adding a good slug of cream, a handful of parma cheese, salt, pepper and nutmeg. (Healthy it up with some greens, asparagus, or mushrooms if you like).

Or make a ravioli – those same sheets can be cut into circles and pressed together around a filling of your own invention, sealed by an egg wash. Use the flat edge of your chefs knife to press them shut so they don’t pop in the water. A favourite stuffing in our house is beetroot, sage, and goat cheese, served in a brown butter sauce jazzed up with beetroot greens.

Whatever you do, don’t be intimidated, and don’t let yourself be constrained by your imagination. Once you’ve got the technique down, you can knock up sheets of the stuff in all of twenty minutes. Your guests – and your palate – will thank you.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 81

LIFESTYLE

HEALTH

D.I.Y. DOCTORING If a stranger – or loved one – collapsed before your very eyes, would you know what to do?

T Claire Morrow

here I was in the basement fruit-and-veg empo- incomplete or incorrect. Please check the number and rium hidden off a car park in the bowels of a book the carpet cleaners’.) local shopping complex. I was in my own little So what is first aid? First aid is what you – the citizen world, gamely explaining to a three-year-old that were – do until they – the professionals – show up. I believe we to even try to purchase blueberries at this time of that the most important knowledge in any sudden year, then we would not be able to afford anything else. medical situation is the same, and this applies whether I did not hear a crash or a cry, nor did I see a sudden rush you are a first aid cadet, a mum, or a specialist doctor. of fruiterers. But when I turned the corner into the next You need just enough awareness of what is happening aisle I found an elderly yet athletic-looking woman lying to know the difference between normal, sick-but-OK, on the floor, apparently trying to have a nap in a puddle and seriously messed up. Disasters tend to ensue if you of blood. Squatting next to her was a flustered man guess wrong. Sometimes you have to err on the side of who was earnestly trying to stop her nose bleeding. And caution – while also bearing in mind that you can stop around him stood a collection of nervous onlookers a heart that is beating by trying to perform CPR on it. paralyzed in a state of uncertainty as to whether they First aid is the catch all term that describes the kind of could – or should – try and help. I would have shaken a simple, common-sense actions ordinary folk should couple of them (just to set an example of what not to carry out when confronted with someone who is in a do in this situation) and explained to them the value of bit – or a lot – of medical strife. Obviously, in a remote first aid courses, except area, one might need to that someone who know a little more The most important knowledge in actually had first aid about the finer points qualifications, namely of bracing and splinting any sudden medical situation is the myself, needed to assess legs with different sorts same, and this applies whether you the unconscious lady of fractures so one can on the floor. get to a highway and a are a first aid cadet, a mum, or a When confronted hospital, but for those specialist doctor with a medical emerof us who live urban gency, the first thing to and suburban areas, the know – and for every person who is surprised that such biggest part of first aid lies in assessment. One common a thing needs to be said, there is a cautionary tale of why way of teaching this is through the St John’s Action it does – is the number to call for an ambulance. It is not Plan, more commonly known by the mnemonic Dr 911. If you need an ambulance in New Zealand, press ABC (or check for Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, 111. In Australia, 000. If this seems like an obvious Circulation, in that order). statement, note that I was in labour with our second Until you can get yourself to a first aid course, here’s a child before I realized that the topic of the emergency summary. Checking for Danger means, Don’t get yourself services number had never come up before in our killed trying to help someone else. Response means, Is household – though knowing it myself, I was able to this person awake, are they alert, are they a little bit bark it at my husband, who comes from the land that unconscious or a lot? And no, shaking or smacking an gives us all those television dramas with ‘911’ in their unconscious person is not a good way to assess their names. (Of course, had he pressed the wrong buttons, response, or get them to come around. the baby would have been delivered on the floor to the Having established that your patient is unconscious dulcet tones of, ‘The number you have dialed is you would like their Airway to be clear. Had only

“

”

82, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

TRY TO GET SOMEONE TO GO WITH YOU BECAUSE THIS WILL BE TERRIFIC MORAL SUPPORT IF YOU WIND UP IN A COURSE WITH A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO WORK TOGETHER someone told all those celebrity overdose deaths, ‘lie on your side, a gullet full of vomit is no way to go on living.’ Don’t worry about how you will clear it: if you find an overdosed rock star passed out in the supermarket, just roll them on their side, tilt their head back, and do it.

Finally: Is the patient Breathing? And do they have Circulation – i.e., a pulse? If not, getting these going again will be your job. Mouth-tomouth as Expired Air Resuscitation (EAR) usually does not – obvious when you think about it – make a patient breathe. It just keeps them oxygenated until a better solution comes up; in the meantime, you breathe for them. Similarly CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) does not start hearts. It forces the patient’s heart to push blood around the body, because you are bashing on it. This keeps him or her alive for as long as you do it, until such time as the body comes to its senses and takes the wheel again or the experts arrive. I can’t stress enough the fact that CPR is not learnt from watching E.R. or Gray’s Anatomy. You will need to go to a first aid course, and you will do it on a dummy, and then you will know what to do. You will not be good at it, in the sense that emergency department staff are, but if someone has a heart attack in front of you, you’ll be good enough, at least, to try and do something until the experts arrive.

Also: if someone is bleeding, raise the wound above the level of the heart and put pressure on it. If it bleeds a lot, put a lot of pressure. If

it looks distorted and swollen, or you think it’s broken, offer sympathy, keep the patient awake and wait. In case of choking, whack hard on the back between the shoulder blades. (Avoid the Heimlich Manouver – it cracks ribs and generally causes more damage than it aims to prevent.)

The first aid situation is one of the few cases that rifling through bags and wallets is acceptable, as is checking wrists and necks for medic-alert bracelets. You’re looking for lollies (if I ever pass out, they’ll think I’m diabetic), medicines, scripts etc. If the person isn’t breathing well, and has a Ventolin puffer, give them the thing.

This column is not a first aid course. Pick an appropriate course and feel free to scout around to see if you can find a subsidized one (sometimes your work will pay, or the preschool might get a group discount – it never hurts to ask). Although you can do it by correspondence, this is only a sensible option if you already know what you’re doing and need to have your certificate renewed in a hurry.

Try to get someone to go with you because this will be terrific moral support if you wind up in a course with a whole bunch of people who work together. You will probably fork over about $100, but you may well also save a life. Even if you only encounter someone who needs a little bit of help, there is – after all – a decent chance of recouping the cost in free produce from grateful shop managers, as I did.

The lady who fell was fine, by the way.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 83

LIFESTYLE

SCIENCE

A CASE OF THE SHAKES New research says that earthquakes may be contagious, reports Sandi Doughton

G

eologists used to answer with an emphatic masses, reflecting changes in the amount of stress at the “No” when asked if mega-earthquakes like the Cascadia subduction zone – a 900-kilometre-long offone that hit Southeast Asia last December can shore region where the ocean floor is diving under the trigger temblors on the other side of the globe. Today, continental plate. some experts are not so sure.

The measurements show no troublesome blips as a Evidence is mounting that large earthquakes can rattle result of the Sumatran quake, Dragert says. geologic formations thousands of kilometres away – “If we suddenly had a very large earthquake in Alaska, and perhaps even set off volcanic eruptions days, which is much closer, and I saw displacement in my months or years later.

GPS instruments, then I would begin to worry.”

There’s also an intriguing hint that major earthquakes However, there could be ample cause for concern might occur in clusters: Nearly a third of the biggest around Indonesia. When the undersea plates there quakes of the past century struck during a 20-year span snapped apart, triggering the earthquake, the dislocabetween 1950 and 1970. tion almost certainly increased stress and strain on adjaAfter three decades of relative quiet, two massive cent geologic faults and plate boundaries. Geologists quakes came in quick succession late last year: the magni- call the phenomenon “contagion” because it raises the tude 9 in Sumatra and a little-noticed magnitude 8.1 off odds of subsequent earthquakes like an influx of germs the coast of New Zealand three days earlier. raises the risk of infection.

Do monster earth“It’s very expected and quakes beget more monquite dangerous”, exWhen the undersea plates there plains Brian Atwater, a ster earthquakes? Could the two recent events sigU.S. Geological Survey snapped apart, triggering the nal the start of a new researcher stationed at the earthquake, the dislocation almost destructive cycle? And is University of Washingcertainly increased stress and it possible the Sumatran ton. “It gives a certain quake jolted other geologsense of urgency to efstrain on adjacent geologic faults ic plates enough to hasforts to get a warning sysand plate boundaries. ten the day when they let tem going around the loose, unleashing what Indian Ocean.” geologists predict will be comparable catastrophes? No Scientists have long known about the contagion one knows the answers to the first two questions, which effect, which can extend for 100 miles or so from the are hot topics of research and scholarly debate. epicenter of a major quake. It’s the phenomenon that’s But scientists are fairly certain people don’t have any responsible for the aftershocks that follow many major more to worry about now than they did six months ago. quakes.

“I would venture to say there’s a minimal effect, if But most experts were stunned in 1992 when a magany at all, on our region from the Sumatra earthquake”, nitude-7.2 quake struck the Mojave Desert in Southern comments Herb Dragert, a research scientist for the California and was almost immediately followed by more Geological Survey of Canada, surveying the seismic risks than a dozen quakes as far away as Wyoming. on his side of the Pacific.

A similar thing happened in 2002, when a magniDragert and his American counterparts operate a net- tude-7.9 earthquake in Denali, Alaska, triggered earthwork of GPS sensors throughout the region. The quakes and rearranged the plumbing of geyser fields in instruments can detect even slight movements of land Yellowstone National Park – 3,000 kilometres away. The

“

”

84, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

ZUMA same event spawned a couple of small earthquakes under Mount Rainier and set up sloshing waves that swamped houseboats on Lake Union in Seattle and Lake Pontcha- rtrain in Louisiana.

“As people around the world look more carefully, they’re seeing more examples of this kind of (long-distance) effect”, says David Hill, a USGS geophysicist stationed at Menlo Park, California. “At this point there’s really no doubt that it happens.”

Generally, the triggered earthquakes are smaller than the original, though there’s no reason to believe that larger earthquakes couldn’t be kicked off this way as well, says Hiroo Kanamori, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.

The effect seems to be caused by seismic waves that radiate out from the epicenter of an earthquake, along the surface of the ground. Imperceptible to people, these waves cover a lot of distance.

“The Earth ends up ringing like a bell”, Dragert explains. “You have a surface wave that travels around the globe for hours after the event, and if it passes through an area that is already critically stressed, it can, indeed, trigger an earthquake.”

That is, a fault or plate boundary must already be on the verge of slipping or breaking for the surface waves to push it over the edge.

There’s still no detailed explanation for the way that happens, though, Hill says.

“In a way, it’s frustrating to be doing research on this,” he adds, “because we can’t do it in the lab and repeat the experiment. We’ve got to wait for the Earth to do it, and then have good recording networks in the field.”

There’s even less concrete data to show that distant earthquakes can trigger volcanic eruptions, though the circumstantial evidence is growing, Hill says. One analysis found a high number of volcanic eruptions within a day or two of large earthquakes. Several volcanoes around the world, including Pinatubo in the Philippines, have erupted within weeks or months of major earthquakes.

Indonesia has many volcanoes, none of which has yet erupted in the

aftermath of the earthquake – but scientists will be watching closely.

After the Boxing Day tsunami, the Washington Post reported lava was spewing from a volcano on an island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian archipelago off the coasts of Myanmar (formerly called Burma) and Indonesia. Previously, the crater had emitted only gas.

Theories linking distant earthquakes to eruptions and other earthquakes remain controversial. It’s almost impossible to prove what triggered an earthquake or eruption, Kanamori points out.

Researchers look mainly at the timing of events, then do statistical analyses to show that they’re probably linked, not just random coincidences.

Hill does collect some hard data from strain meters buried in 600foot boreholes in California’s Long Valley Caldera near Mono Lake.

The sensitive devices detect changes in the pressures pushing and pulling on the rock, and have clearly shown effects from distant earthquakes, he says.

The statistical jury remains out on the question of whether the apparent cluster of major earthquakes in the middle of the century is significant or simply a phantom.

It certainly looks compelling, Atwater says. Most of the events are clustered around the Pacific Rim, from Alaska to Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula to Chile.

However, the Cascadia subduction zone off the Northwest coast of the United States was not triggered during that period, he pointed out.

The last earthquake there was a magnitude 9 in 1700.

Garry Rogers, a seismologist at the Geological Survey of Canada in British Columbia, says major earthquakes are far too rare and the historical record far too short to be able to draw any conclusion about clusters or large-scale connections.

“In any random process, you will get clusters”, he says.

Hill believes that more data will eventually solve the mystery – and will probably reveal patterns and links no one understands today.

“My own hunch is that there are lots of instances of clusters that are, in fact, related physically. We just don’t know yet what the details might be.”

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 85

LIFESTYLE

TRAVEL

WHERE TRADITION RULES Once a closed state, Carol Pucci discovers Laos is an unspoiled treat

L

Laos became the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in UANG PRABANG, Laos – At first it sounds like thunder. Then I recognize the beat of a drum 1975 and reopened in the late 1980s to outsiders after and the hollow ring of a gong. It’s 4 a.m. and the years of isolation. With its temples and collection of neighbours across the street, the Buddhist monks of French-style mansions and shop houses, Luang Prabang was declared a World Heritage site in 1995, and began Wat Sene, are starting their day.

Two hours later, I step around the desk clerk asleep attracting Western travelers drawn to the absence of cars on the floor in the lobby of the Senesouk Guest House and crime and easy, slow pace.

Small enough to walk around in a few hours, this is a and walk outside. Lined up next to the red and gold pavilions inside the temple gate are dozens of orange- town that so far seems to have found its way onto the robed monks about to begin their daily ritual of collect- Southeast Asia tourist route without compromising its culture. ing alms.

Along Thanon Xieng Thong, the sleepy main street Barefoot young novices, some just school-age boys, follow the lead of the older monks as they walk in a lined with temples glittering with mirrored mosaic tiles, single-file procession, tipping their lacquered bowls women wearing long, slim silk skirts amble by on bicytoward women kneeling along the roadside offering dol- cles or motorbikes, shading themselves with parasols.

Banana and palm trees shade alleyways leading to the lops of sticky rice.

One young monk yawns; another smiles when a misty Mekong. Pots boil over charcoal and wood fires at woman substitutes a candy bar instead of rice. No one open-air breakfast restaurants. At the morning market, women crouch on low speaks. stools as they split sugar The scene repeats itLao boys become monks for a day, a cane with machetes. self every morning on It’s possible to buy a week, months or years, often as a way nearly every street, councheeseburger, a latte or try road and back alley of gaining merit for their parents or get a foot massage at in Luang Prabang, the a relative a string of businesses ancient former royal catering to Western capital of Laos. Thirtytwo Buddhist temples housing more than 500 monks travelers. But there are no McDonald’s or Starbucks or are part of a cache of historical treasures that led high-rise hotels, and the World Heritage status is likely UNESCO to declare this the best-preserved traditional to quash any wholesale moves toward gentrification.

Laws ban construction of modern hotels in the histown in Southeast Asia.

Set 2,300 feet above sea level on a peninsula at the toric center. Instead, local officials encourage developers junction of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers in north- to renovate stylish old mansions, built when Laos was a ern Laos, the town of Luang Prabang, part of a jungle French colony and European architecture thrived.

“The question is, how far do we want to go?” says province surrounded by teak forests and limestone mountains, has always been a special place among the Tara Gujadhur, an American hired by a Dutch organization to help local officials develop ecotourism. spiritual.

The number of tourists visiting Luang Prabang grew The first kingdom of Laos was established here in the 14th century. The last king to rule the country – from 67,000 in 1997 to 170,000 in 2002.

“Our goal is not to become another Chiang Mai (a town Sisavang Vatthana – lived in the Royal Palace, now a museum, until shortly after a communist takeover fol- in Northern Thailand that’s lost much of its charm to an influx of Western tourists) or to follow Thailand’s lead.” lowing the Vietnam War.

“

”

86, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

ZUMA

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 87

Best advice: Get here soon.

Rise early. Chat with a monk. Cruise the Mekong in a longtail boat.

Wave at the sweet-potato and peanut farmers working the terraced hillsides.

Sit back. Sip an ice coffee at a riverside cafe at sunset.

For now at least, Luang Prabang is much like what most of Southeast Asia used to be – a slice of the world made for slowing down.

It didn’t take long for me to become a regular at the Sack Restaurant next door to my guesthouse where the bill for a banana pancake with a thin coat of honey, and a coconut shake, came to about $2.

One morning, the young owner split open a coconut for my shake, then while the pancake was cooking, took off on his motorcycle, and returned a few minutes later with his own breakfast.

“This is what Lao people eat,” he laughed, opening a packet of liver steamed in a banana leaf.

Most people speak French as well as Lao and almost everyone is anxious to practice their English.

I wandered into the temple grounds at Wat Sene one afternoon with hopes of putting a name and a face to the sea of orange robes filing by in the morning procession.

A young man standing outside near a giant standing Buddha figure wrapped in a silk sash introduced himself as Monk Chantha, age 20.

He dreams of one day teaching or working in computers. In the meantime, as a novice, he studies, prays and observes the many rules of Theravada Buddhism.

“No driving, no killing animals, no drinking, no eating after noon.

88, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

And no swimming,” he smiles as we stand talking in the midday heat.

“Only showers.”

Lao boys become monks for a day, a week, months or years, often as a way of gaining merit for their parents or a relative. Chantha, like many short-term monks, entered the temple in exchange for an education his family could not otherwise afford.

We exchanged e-mail addresses, but he warned that I might not hear from him often. “For us, it’s very expensive,” he says. I checked later at an Internet cafe. The price was about $1.50 per hour.

Westerners can travel like kings all over Southeast Asia, but Laos offers exceptional value. The currency is the kip, and with a 1,000-kip note worth about 20 cents, change for a $20 adds up to a thick wad of colorful bills.

An air-conditioned room in the eight-room Senesouk Guesthouse, with polished teak floors and modern bathrooms, costs $40; It’s possible to eat well at any of the riverside restaurants for $5-$6 a person including a large bottle of Beer Lao. There’s also a handful of upscale European-style guesthouses and bistros that cater to Western wallets, and a few are worth a splurge.

A bargain at $100 a night is a deluxe room in the Villa Santi, an elegant and graceful hotel in a mansion owned by the family of a former royal princess. Around the corner, at the French-owned L’Elephant bistro, friends and I sampled a menu of Laotian specialties for $15 each that included betel leaf soup, marinated pork and banana flower salad, marinated buffalo, and tropical fruits seasoned with pepper and lemon grass syrup.

Tourism has brightened the economic prospects for many in a country where the per capita income is $500 a year.

Longtail boats once carried only fishermen. Now they ferry tourists along the twisting Mekong. Twenty-five dollars buys a trip to the Pak Ou caves two hours upstream where grottoes carved into limestone cliffs house hundreds of Buddha statues. On the way back, the boats stop at a village where the locals make whiskey from rice and another that specializes in paper making and silk weaving.

Lim Somsy, a villager who sells paper lamps he makes from the bark of mulberry trees, explains that until five years ago, most of the 200 families living in the Mekong village of Xang Khone only farmed rice.

Then tourism took off and the “whole village benefited.”

Perhaps it has to do with living under a Soviet-style government, but locals have adopted an entrepreneurial spirit that’s endearing in contrast with high-energy cities like Bangkok or Saigon, where travelers are sometimes hassled by annoying touts and scam artists.

“Lucky, lucky,” a young woman squatting on a straw mat piled with rows of silk scarves calls out as I walked by her stall at the night market.

“You buy from me please.”

She was among dozens of women who come in from the villages each night carrying bags filled with hand-sewn and woven textiles.

“How much do you want to pay?” she asks, unfolding two or three scarves in colors that caught my eye.

In the village of Ban Aen, about a half-hour’s drive from Luang Prabang, brick and tile have replaced dried palm and thatched bamboo on some of the houses, signs of the new prosperity.

Bouncing around in the back of a tuk-tuk, an open-air truck with bench seats and a canopy, I came here to catch a boat for a 10-minute trip along the Nam Khan to the jungle waterfalls of Taat Sae. As the driver turned into the village, I noticed two women standing on either side of the road holding a piece of string with plastic bags attached to it. As we approached, they grinned shyly and raised the string.

“The village entrance,” the driver laughs when I ask what was going on. He leaned out the window and handed one of the women two 1000 kip notes, worth 25 cents. Then they lowered the string and thanked us with big smiles and waves as we drove inside.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 89

LIFESTYLE

BOOKCASE

BUNTER’S LAST WORDS Michael Morrissey on the wit of David Lange and the truth about Mao

DAVID LANGE: My life

By David Lange, Viking, $49.95

Michael Morrissey

More years ago than I care to admit I was at university with a number of law students who were destined to become the top politicians of New Zealand – Winston Peters, Richard Prebble, Jim Mclay, Doug Graham, Paul East, Simon Upton, Peter Wilkinson, Barry Brill and of course David Lange – all of whom were taught by the redoubtable Bernard Brown who is given due tribute in Lange’s biography.

I first saw David from behind. Two spinnakers of loosely-tailored grey cloth billowed around a vast form that seemed to fill a doorway both vertically and horizontally. From the front, the perception was of a dead ringer for Billy Bunter complete to tubby head, hornrimmed glasses and lank black hair. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, however implausibly it may have seemed, this was New Zealand’s future prime minister, an articulate, superbly witty man who carved out a large niche in New Zealand’s history and arguably a small one in world history.

It seemed Lange never wanted for ambition or confidence. When aged only twelve, he had already decided he was going to be prime minister. About ten years before he himself triumphally became PM he looked at Bill Rowling’s lacklustre performance on television and commented with extraordinary prescience, “I’ll be doing that in 1984". His powers of oratory were appreciated on both sides of the house – even by Muldoon, towards whom, unlike his colleagues, he felt no fear.

By 1984, after the most successful makeover in history, Lange was a fighting fit nineteen stone (down from nearly 28 stone) and mandated to lead the fourth Labour government. Gone were the nerdy black glasses, lank black

90, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

comb over and double chin to be replaced by a commanding but benign, even handsome, countenance, styled hair and designer glasses. The always rapier wit, which acquired its sharpness at Muldoon’s expense (“After a very long year we’ve got a very short knight.”), was to become a Toledo blade, cutting not only by virtue of its humour but also by its accuracy and acumen. On my desk is a book entitled The Wit of David Lange and I defy anyone to read it and not laugh. Imagine an assortment of companion books entitled The Wit of (variously) Bill Rowling, Jim Bolger – or indeed, Roger Douglas – and one would be looking at a tome of blank pages. I’ll go out on a limb with scant danger of falling off and declare David Lange the wittiest politician in history.

Long in the writing, Lange’s biography was published just weeks before his death. Personally I did not find anything shocking or startling in its contents but then I am not someone who follows politics much beyond newspaper headlines. Lange freely admits that the scandal around Mangere MP Colin Moyle (accused of being homosexual) and the ill-timed calling of an election by Robert Muldoon were hugely lucky breaks for him. He became the right man in the right place at the right time.

By the standards of world politics, Lange carried an unusually righteous burden – a code of morality inherited jointly from the selfless community-oriented service rendered by his GP father and his stern mother – as well his religion, Methodism. Though Michael Basset complained with some degree of bitterness about Lange’s betrayal over the Roger Douglas 1987 budget, I believe Lange was following his conscience. He simply couldn’t stand such deviance from traditional Labour values. To put your personal convictions above party unity is of course bad politics and Lange paid the price.

Lange must be the only lawyer in parliament whose salary doubled when he took a seat in the house. As regards his finest moment in the political sun, the debate at the Oxford Union and his enshrined-in-history remark about the young man with uranium on his breath, these events have a golden glow that time will polish rather than tarnish. In a recent (though pre-death)

documentary on Lange compiled by Tom Scott, Richard Prebble maintains that Lange had to be convinced of the anti-nuclear policy.

Unsurprisingly, Lange denies this in his book.

Undoubtedly, in the next short while an objective Lange biography will be published and we shall be able to make further re-evaluation of this remarkable man, one of our few statesmen. What a pity Michael King is not still around to write it.

MAO: The Unknown Story

By Jung Chang and Jon Holliday, Jonathan Cape, $65 This is how this large and extraordinarily wellresearched book begins: “Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader.” Apart from the bogglingly high total of deaths, the other shocking word is “peacetime”. Surely only a world war like that started by Adolph Hitler is needed to kill so many? Not so, it seems. And how is it possible – and what is the point – of killing or causing so many to perish?

The answer, which unsurprisingly isn’t at all rational, was given by Mao himself in Moscow in 1957: “We are prepared to sacrifice 300 million Chinese for the victory of world revolution”. He repeated much the same statement in 1958. Of course the “we” is Mao himself.

“Deaths have benefits,” Mao once callously declared. “They can fertilise the ground.”

Hence crops were ordered to be planted over burial grounds which caused “intense anguish”. Naturally, Mao suffered from no such qualms.

While his cohorts were Communists with similar aims, some of the minions were slightly more “reasonable”. As the authors put it, “Whereas Mao had been using terror for personal power, Chou En-lai employed it to bolster Communist rule”. Liu Shao-chi, Mao’s No. 2, was like his master, interested in industrialisation and superpower status but wanted these goals “at a more gradual tempo” by “building a stronger economic foundation and raising living standards first”.

Mao seemed to take sadistic pleasure in making the populace suffer.

His early predilection for public torture and execution to create public ter-

ror, as well as his own enjoyment of it, is grimly detailed. Even Stalin and Hitler tended to have their terror performed offstage as it were (Siberia, Auschwitz).

While the folly of Mao’s Great Leap Forward to make more steel at any cost (burning homes for fuel, melting down farm tools and cooking utensils) is well known, less well known is that all the while China was exporting grain and soybean on a huge scale to east European countries and to Russia either in exchange for arms or sometimes as a donation.

Indeed, the percentage of foreign aid reached a staggering 6.92 per cent of the GNP, proportionately 70 times that of the United States.

The result was in the peak year of famine (1960), 22 million died. In all, 38 million died from hunger in 1958-1961 and yet so tight was Mao’s control, he was able to convince both the CIA and Francois Mitterrand and many other gullible western observers that there was no famine. All in the name of Mao trying to convert China into a world superpower in a few years. The supreme irony is that today China is headed for economic superpower status but not by following Mao’s policies.

What this monumental biography makes stunningly clear is that though China seemed isolationist, Mao was constantly badgering the Soviet to supply him with nuclear technology and missiles and made a surprising number of aggressive overtures towards other countries – three million troops were sent to Vietnam. Developing the Bomb which he had earlier hypocritically described as a paper tiger cost a staggering $4.1 billion – at 1957 prices!

In the authors’ view, China’s nuclear bomb cost more than 100 times the deaths caused by the two American bombs used on Japan.

In early pre-communist dominant times he was never keen to fully engage with Japan as Stalin wanted. Mao wanted the Japanese to destroy Chiang Kai-shek so Stalin could then carve up China with Mao as ruler of the remainder. Nor, as is commonly supposed, was Mao even fully engaged with the Nationalists until much later on – when his sleeper-spy generals betrayed them. In fact, it suited Chiang Kai-shek’s strategy to allow the Communists raggle-taggle army to pass through relatively unopposed.

Also his son was being held to ransom by Moscow. Even the notion of Mao’s personal courage during the Long March turns out to a myth – he was carried in a sedan chair.

Alongside the other mental disorders that have been identified there should be one called Dictator Disorder – the most deadly of all.

Those who suffer from it torture, kill and murder their enemies (including family and friends), waste the economy on vainglorious

schemes, try to destroy the past (Mao hated Chinese architecture) and while making sure that the populace suffers, enjoy as much food, luxury and sex as they can. While Hitler is often described as “mad” and psychiatrists have tried to diagnose Hitler and Stain as manicdepressives, no one seems to have done the same exercise with Mao. He was horribly sane and unrelentingly evil. At one point, he even considered the ultimate de-humanising strategy of removing people’s names and giving them numbers. Mao’s perverse code: “Do to others precisely what I don’t want done to myself ”.

Taken as a whole, I found this book with its long catalogue of crimes against humanity a depressing read. However, the authors have done an astonishingly thorough job. They interviewed people who knew Mao in 38 countries. Corpses and all, this will be the definitive biography of Mao.

BLINDING LIGHT

By Paul Theroux, Hamish Hamilton, $35 One – though not the only – disconcerting thing about Theroux is his prolificity. Seemingly after a few short months, he pops out yet another book. Justly renown as a leading travel writer, he’s a captivating novelist as well and I was surprised (well not really) to note that this is his 27th novel.

Blinding Light’s central character is a highly successful travel writer (like Theroux) who is suffering from that weird American condition called “writers’ block” (very unlike Theroux).

I say weird because if there is such a thing as writer’s block why haven’t we heard of painter’s block, architect’s block and composer’s block? On closer examination, writers who are “blocked” are usually suffering from depression, alcoholism or disconcertingly find that their talent has run dry.

Slade Steadman is a one book wonder with good reason – his first and only book was about a guy (himself) who crossed countries without a passport and without luggage – ever since then he has lived off the lucrative spin offs: leather jackets, sunglasses, pens, knives. It’s such a good idea I’m thinking of trying it myself and hope that the customs officials of the world’s 227 or so countries will cooperate.

As the book opens, Steadman is on his way to South America in quest of a chemiOctober 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 91

cal cure – a psychoactive plant that will extend his mental horizons and clear his creative blockage. He tries first ayahu- asca and then a more deadly concoction, datura. The insights that the plant’s ingestion brings comes at a high price – Steadman first experiences a kind of “darkness visible” plus insights into his oafish fellow travellers but eventually the controlled blindness becomes permanent.

There is much heavy though successful symbolic play and irony by Theroux on the various meanings and types of blindness – and the punning title resonates throughout the text.

Steadman’s desire to write fiction – in particular, a recapitulation of a richly erotic life is excuse enough for Theroux to saturate the book’s middle section with much ingenious and at times perverse sexuality. It has to be said Theroux has a gift for this kind of writing though it may seem an excuse for self indulgence to some readers. By contrast, he is even more gifted in writing about relationships that persist in a savage limbo-like aftermath – yet can still mysteriously rekindle – such is the perversity of human attraction. In the end, Steadman is a tragic and doomed figure. Presumably, it is Theroux’s successful deeper intention to show us that salvation by dark means leads to a dark end.

SINATRA: The Life

By Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan, Doubleday, $65 Sinatra was one of those perennial entertainers who seemed indestructible so it is almost a surprise to be reminded that he is no longer with us in person – though very much so in records and films and from time to time on the radio.

Ambition and achievement are close to alignment. Sinatra said, “I’m going to be the best singer in the world, the best singer that ever was”. The authors more or less concur : “... the most celebrated popular singer in history”.

Today, the early crooning Sinatra who sounded a bit like Bing Crosby – the singer Sinatra set himself to surpass – has been overtaken by the later Sinatra with that street-wise sounding nightclubby voice that makes the Sinatra timbre instantly recognizable.

For a guy who boozed so heavily, it is astonishing that his singing voice lasted as well as it did but then Sinatra was often described as a man of astonishing energy and sta92, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

mina. His lineup of performances would make some younger fry quail – in 1946 he was on stage 45 times a week singing one hundred songs per day plus 36 recording sessions, 160 radio shows.

Sinatra was no angel – he punched out bothersome photographers and in later years was always accompanied by heavies who would beat up people at Sinatra’s signal. On the good side of the ledger, he was a generous man – he gave away 300 gold cigarette lighters and helped pay medical bills for poorer entertainers, and hated racial prejudice of any kind.

Rumour, apparently supported by fact, has it that Sinatra was buddies with many of the powerful gangsters of the day such as Lucky Luciano and Sam Giancana. The authors inform us that Sinatra’s grandparents came from the same small Sicilian town as Luciano; that Sinatra acted as courier in taking a satchel with a million dollars from Giancana to Joe Kennedy on behalf of Jack Kennedy’s presidential campaign; that Harry Cohn was threatened with death unless he gave Sinatra lead role in the film From Here to Eternity. All these statements are encyclopaedically footnoted and so they may well all be true. My only reservation is that Summers was one of the main protagonists for the widely held belief that Marilyn Monroe and Jack Kennedy had an affair – a connection that been seriously challenged by some biographers.

What is indisputably true is that Sinatra had affairs (or marriages) to some of the most beautiful women in America including Ava Gardner (his most lasting but doomed love), Mia Farrow, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Juliet Prowse plus many others less known though some of them – judging by photos – were even more beautiful than the better known names.

The much publicised adoration of bobbysoxers was according to George Evans, Sinatra’s press agent, 98% synthetic.

Faults and all, Sinatra was a guy who is hard to dislike – at least from a distance. His lasting achievement was to turn pop music into an art form. As for the now much vaunted “I Did it My Way” as a biographical theme statement – hotly denied by Sinatra himself – his own son said it summed up his father exactly.

SLOW MAN

By J.M. Coetzee, Secker& Warburg, $49.95 Coetzee, a South African-born author now living in Australia, is a distinguished figure in the world of letters. Recently awarded the Nobel prize, he has also won the Booker Prize twice.

Slow Man is his first post-Nobel novel. While it is a polished work that absorbs, it is hardly Nobel-prize calibre. However, as this is the first Coetzee I have read, I shall reserve judg-

ment until I have sampled some of his previous publications.

Slow Man begins in with what has been called in cinematic nomenclature, the inciting incident – an old man is knocked off his bicycle and comes to consciousness in pain and confusion to be informed his leg must be amputated above the knee. His life is drastically transformed thereafter – from one of activity to one of slow motion, stumbling on a Zimmer frame and stubbornly refusing to get a prosthesis. He prefers crutches.

Paul Rayment, we might say, is a difficult patient. He does not like any of his nurses, will not wear a prosthesis, he is grumpy, full of self pity – characteristics skilfully delineated by Coetzee which do not however alienate us from Rayment, Indeed, I felt sympathy or empathy (I always get these two confused) for his plight.

Enter Marijana (difficult not to read as marijuana) Jokic, a Croatian nurse who nurses him and wins his heart. Though at first described as tallow-faced, middle-aged and thick-waisted later she seems to grow in physical attractiveness – or have Rayment’s perceptions shifted?

In any event, he falls in love with her – though she not with him.

Soon after meeting Marijana, a mysterious woman called Elizabeth Costello enters his life unbidden. While ostensibly real, there is something about her visitation that is not quite real – at times she seems like a guardian angel, though one with barbed message. She lectures him presumptuously but accurately about his condition of mind and body. Above all she perceives that Rayment’s generous offer of being godfather, of financing Marijana’s son through his education are all ways to try and find a place in her life despite her having a husband. In the end, the “objective” Costello seems to have her own agenda and some surprising designs on Rayment.

Coetzee expertly twists the plot with a tight moral focus in a manner reminiscent of the early novels of Bernard Malamud. His psychology is acute but the speeches of Ms Costello and Rayment have a tendency to sound too written, too much like formal declaration. Costello’s presence in his life seems at once an hallucination (almost), carping conscience and all but tyrannical persuader – no surprise, perhaps, that Cotzee’s doctoral thesis examined the novels of Samuel Beckett. His work, however, lacks the humour of the great Irish writer.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 93

LIFESTYLE

MOVIES & DVDs

“DOGS” NO BOWSER Also: Buffy director’s ‘space western’ works, and Mad Hot Ballroom delivers the goods

Shelly Horton

Must Love Dogs

Serenity

Release: October, 2005 Rated: M

Release: September, 2005 Rated: M

✯✯✯✯

✯✯✯✯

O

’m a huge Joss Whedon fan. Buffy the Vampire Slayer still ranks in my top-ten TV shows of all time. But would his wit and drama translate to the big screen? I wasn’t sure. And Serenity is based on a failed TV series called Firefly. So if it didn’t work on telly why make a movie out of it? It was with nervous excitement that I watched his sci-fi blockbuster directorial debut.

How dare I doubt him! Serenity is incredible.

The thing about Joss Whedon is he’s a gifted storyteller. So even if you’re not a sci-fi fan the characters draw you in to their lives. In this case, those characters just happen to be 500 years in the future, flying around on a hunk-o-junk spaceship called Serenity.

It’s what might be called a ‘space western’ and features a motley crew of misfits in the middle of an inter-galactic war. Captain Mal Reynolds (played in a very Indiana Jones-esque manner by Nathan Fillion) is disheartened by the war and now makes a living stealing from government institutions. He rescues a psychic called River (spookily played by Summer Glau) who’s wanted by the baddies and one hell of a chase takes place. It has some of the most impressive action/fight scenes I’ve ever scene.

But balancing out the action is some very sarcastic and hilarious banter between the crewmembers. And interestingly they use a language style created by Whedon. It’s a mixture of olde-worldly 17th Century patter with a modern twang. There’s “twixting of nethers”, “She is starting to damage my calm”, along with, “I aim to misbehave, y’all.” It’s all very effective and enchanting.

Serenity is all action, humour and drama…and far from serene.

kay, Must Love Dogs is a soppy romantic comedy. But I just lurve soppy romantic comedies.

It starts off with tips from desperate 30somethings on how to get a date. One woman swears by going in to hardware stores and asking a guy, “Any idea where I can get nailed… I mean nails?” My single girlfriends are actually going to try this line.

Sarah (Diane Lane) is a kindergarten teacher who’s also a (gasp!) 40-something divorcee. Her marriage finished eight months ago and her well-meaning family and friends have decided it’s time for her to start dating again. Her sister Carol (Elizabeth Perkins) poses as Sarah online and hooks her up to an internet dating service.

As one might imagine, a hitting a cyber-bar dates is bound to result I some horrible failures. But there is one glimpse of hope – a clumsy but interesting date with Jake (John Cusak) a man who handcrafts wooden racing boats. “They may not win”, Jake admits, “but they lose beautifully.”

Add the romantic complication of Bob (Dermot Mulroney), the divorced dad of one of Sarah’s students.

While Sarah worries about the effect of a relationship with Bob on his kid, Carol retorts, “He has a Ph.D. and a great ass; let’s not get dragged down by ethics.”

Diane Lane is perfect as the fragile yet sexy divorcee.

Jonh Cusak has perfected the intelligent ramblings of a heartbroken man (you just want to kiss him better – or is that just me?). Stockard Channing even makes a delicious appearance as one of Sarah’s father’s ageing hippy girlfriends. The only dud is Dermot Mulroney. I swear that guy may be cute but hasn’t anyone else noticed he can’t act?

Some lines are a little forced but in the end it’s fun, corny and funny. Everything a girl asks for in a romantic comedy.

I

Shelly Horton can be seen on the Today show, Prime, Tuesdays at 9.40am NZ time 94, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

Mad Hot Ballroom Release: September, 2005 Rated: PG

✯✯✯✯✯

M

ad Hot Ballroom made my heart want to explode with joy. It is an exceptional documentary combining the drama of Spellbound and the razzle-dazzle of Strictly Ballroom. It follows 11-year-old students from different New York schools as they prepare for and perform in a state school ballroom dancing competition.

The fifth graders are tremendously entertaining and, as with all Americans over the age of two, not short of an opinion. They are “kidults” – a precarious combination of kids and adults. Throughout the film you watch them get over their “boy germs” stage to throwing themselves into practice then slowly gaining true confidence. It also

shows a full range of family income levels and how that affects their day-to-day life as well as their dreams. One girl wisely says, “I’d like to marry a man who doesn’t deal drugs.”

The dance teachers are a weird mob. But even though they push the kids with the crazy-eyed frenzy of a stage mother, you also see what a difference they make to these children’s lives.

I found myself clapping in my seat, urging the kids on and feeling every step as their hopes are dashed or raised.

Mad Hot Ballroom made me want to dance; it made me want to live In New York; hell, it even made me want to have kids. (Sorry, Mum, that last one wore off as soon as I left the cinema).

Forget the lame reality TV shows like Dancing with the Stars and Strictly Dancing. Run to the cinema to see this film and I guarantee you’ll be cha-cha-cha-ing in the aisles.

October 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 95

DVDs

THEY ARE COCKROACHES. THEY ARE MURDERERS. RWANDA IS OUR HUTU LAND. WE ARE THE MAJORITY. THEY ARE A MINORITY OF TRAITORS AND INVADERS. WE WILL SQUASH THE INFESTATION. WE WILL WIPE OUT THE RPF REBELS. THIS IS RTLM, HUTU POWER RADIO. STAY ALERT. WATCH YOUR NEIGHBOURS

HOTEL RWANDA M, 117 mins

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE PG, 107 mins

Hard to believe it was only 11 years ago that the world stood idly by while one million people were slaughtered with machetes and pitchforks in one of the bloodiest cases of genocide since WW2.

The place was Rwanda, a country most westerners had never heard of. The scenario was simple: majority Hutu tribal affiliates decided to murder the people they called “cockroaches” – members of the Tutsi tribe. It was suitably primal, the kind of racial conflict the west, for some reason, tolerates around the world under the guise of cultural cringe.

Except Rwanda was different. Although the world saw it as a primitive African backwater – a former Belgian colony – Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda shatters some popular myths about what happened. For example, is there any racial difference between the groups? Apparently not. Were the people knuckle-dragging fools? No, they were just like you and I, but suffering from economic hardships caused by a radical rebellion in some parts of the country.

The biggest scandal of all was Bill Clinton’s refusal to intervene to stop the carnage – or even directly call it genocide. Nor did UN secretary general Kofi Annan come through it smelling of roses.

Hotel Rwanda tells the story of the massacre through the eyes of Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a major hotel in Rwanda’s capital who saved the lives of 1268 people – putting his own life on the line in a bid to keep the wolves from breaking down the hotel’s doors.

This is an exceptional movie, based on a true story.

Don Cheadle (Ocean’s Twelve) is superb in the lead role, and his supporting cast capture the essence of the country and the tragic event that redefined it.

Special features include commentaries from Rusesabagina, and behind the scenes on the making of the movie.

Bollywood meets former Shortland Street heartthrob Martin Henderson in a light romantic comedy from the makers of Bend It Like Beckham.

Henderson plays the part of an American hotel heir who finds himself immersed in Indian culture courtesy of a friend’s return to the home country in search of a bride to please his parents.

Co-star Aishwarya Rai, recently voted the most beautiful woman in the world, is the savvy, sexy Indian sticking up for her culture in the face of implied diffidence from Henderson.

The soundtrack positively thumps along in a fusion of East-meets-West Bollypop, the tunes of which are so catchy they’ll dance irritatingly through your head all night.

As the name implies, the movie is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The dvd is packed with special features.

96, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2005

MILLION DOLLAR BABY M, 127 mins Clint Eastwood directs and stars with Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, in this heartbreakingly great movie about a diner waitress determined to be a prizefighter. The time-honored conventions of the boxing movie are served up with absolute finesse, but then the pic goes deep into themes that strike at the core of human experience. Bonus features include a documentary on female boxing, and interviews with Eastwood, Freeman and Swank.

Contains violence, adult themes.