Investigate, October 2010

INSIDE: THE VITAMIN C DEBATE - A PROFESSOR SPEAKS OUT

INVESTIGATE October 2010:

AFTER THE SHOCK...

Earthquake Aftermath • New Age Gurus • Gardasil

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Profits Of The New Age

Are gurus taking the gullible for a ride?

Issue 117

‘Gardasil Wrecked My Life’

Kahlia was a 17 year old high achiever, until she got the jab ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: JUST WAR THEORY, and WHY METROSEXUALS CAN’T FIGHT

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C ONTENTS Volume 10, Issue 117, ISSN 1175-1290

F EATURES

28

After The Shock

Two men had their leadership reputations enhanced by the Christchurch quake aftermath, but as IAN WISHART writes, that leadership is likely to be sorely tested by the scale of the rebuild and the impact on people’s lives

Gardasil Wrecked My Life

Profits Of The New Age

Iraq: Just War Theory

The battle over vaccine safety continues to rage, with the story of KAHLIA a 17 year old Rotary Exchange student from the Manawatu, adding fuel to the fire

If you wear a business suit and ask for a gold coin tithe you are clearly a crook, but if you wear a saffron kaftan, eat mung beans and encourage people to spend thousands on self improvement courses, clearly you are an enlightened guru. BETHANY WRIGHT spent time with Sri Ravi Shankar

The case for invading Iraq can be justified, according to JEFF MCINTYRE as he argues in favour of “just war theory”

40

Health: Vitamin C Debate

46

Health authorities are still refusing to administer vitamin C, even though a terminal swine flu case was healed by it. Now, professor of medical ethics GRANT GILLETT has entered the debate

Cover: NZPA

56

EDITORIAL & OPINION

76

Focal Point Editorial

Vox-Populi The roar of the crowd

Chloe’s Patch Chloe Milne examines cheats

Mark Steyn

16

Metrosexual warriors?

Eyes Right

Richard Prosser on the quake

Line 1

L IFESTYLE

Chris Carter on shopping

Poetry

Matt Flannagan on Abraham’s dilemma

Money

Contra Mundum

96

Amy Brooke’s poem of the month Peter Hensley on investment

Education

Amy Brooke’s education column

Science

18

Peter Curson on queing

Technology Heidi me

Online

20

Food

Noodlest

The perils of internet scams

Pages

Chris Forster on Pakistan

Music

Cholesterol

Movies

Sport

Health

Alt.Health Vitamin C

Travel

Michael Morrissey’s spring reads Chris Philpott’s CD reviews Oscar contender

Cutting Room

Surfing Mexico

The Joaquin Phoenix hoax

Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart | Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart | NZ EDITION Advertising 09 373-3676, sales@investigatemagazine.com | Contributing Writers: Hal Colebatch, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Chris Carter, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom | Art Direction Heidi Wishart | Design & Layout Bozidar Jokanovic | Tel: +64 9 373 3676 | Fax: +64 9 373 3667 | Investigate Magazine, PO Box 188, Kaukapakapa, Auckland 0843, NEW ZEALAND | AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor Ian Wishart | Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com | Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 | SUBSCRIPTIONS – Online: www.investigatemagazine.com By Phone: Australia – 1-800 123 983, NZ – 09 373 3676 By Post: To the PO Box NZ Edition: $85; AU Edition: A$96 EMAIL: editorial@investigatemagazine.com, ian@investigatemagazine.com, australia@investigatemagazine.com, sales@investigatemagazine.com, helpdesk@investigatemagazine.tv 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.

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FOCAL POINT

Editorial

The ultimate cold case AS SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED, WE PUBLISHED

a book this month. It’s getting a lot more media attention than our books normally do, probably because it is a criminal whodunit, not a political thriller or an expose on global warming and its high priesthood.

The new book is, of course, Arthur Allan Thomas: The Inside Story.

Normally we’d publish an extract, make a bit of a song and a dance, but not this time.

It’s hard to know where to start, and nothing we do or say here can truly do this story justice. Keen readers of Investigate and TGIF Edition will know the Arthur Allan Thomas book seed was planted in a story we covered two years ago, when a man came forward with new information on the case.

Frustratingly, the deeper we dug the more explosive it became, and I took the rare step of actually pulling my punches, and suppressing publication of further details until I’d had a chance to really thoroughly investigate it. There was a story within the story, and I needed to reach it.

At the same time, Des Thomas and Ray Thomas – Arthur’s youngest and oldest brothers respectively – made contact as a result of that initial investigation two years ago offering information and assistance on the case.

Quietly, behind the scenes, I kept beavering away then, in May this year, Ray came forward with some documents and cartridge cases. The contents of those documents appear for the first time in the new book, and they are extremely significant.

But coincidentally, Ray’s approach was merely the beginning of a perfect storm of events that may well have solved the Crewe murders.

In June this year, North & South published their 40th anniversary coverage of the murders, repeating the suggestion that Len Demler killed the Crewes, and featuring an 6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

extensive interview with Vivien Harrison.

The Herald did their own matcher, and included an account of a meeting between Arthur Allan Thomas and his nemesis, retired cop Bruce Hutton, at Pukekohe.

I didn’t know it, but in a little Waikato farmhouse Arthur and his wife Jenny had been watching all this media mayhem with growing distress – their own self-inflicted silence for decades had left them without a voice in all this, and they had a story they wanted people to hear.

I know I’d left a number of messages on

ruled out as a suspect despite strange behaviour and possibly having access to a gun.

Instead, based on new information, I believe the murderer was police officer Len Johnston, and the case against him is built, brick by damning brick, in the new book.

Ultimately, the evidence is now laid out for the public to judge. Who do you say did the crime?

It is time for an official inquiry into the case, concentrating on the corrupt police investigation into the murders and the reasons for that corruption.

Frustratingly, the deeper we dug the more explosive it became, and I took the rare step of actually pulling my punches, and suppressing publication of further details until I’d had a chance to really thoroughly investigate it. There was a story within the story, and I needed to reach it the Thomas answerphone two years ago, none of which were returned at the time.

But they’d kept the number, and now, in June 2010, they wanted to talk.

The end result is we now have a book – a piece of work that not only tells Arthur’s complete story for the first time, but which also provides the strongest evidence yet about who killed the Crewes.

Everyone else thought it was Len Demler – Jeannette’s oddball father. But the more I looked into the evidence against Demler, the weaker it looked. I’m now certain he can be

Ian Wishart

Y

This Christmas, there’s one book everyone wants

Arthur Allan Thomas

Arthur Allan Thomas:

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CREWE MURDERS: NEW EVIDENCE

Jailed for a crime he didn’t commit, now for the first time in 40 years, he tells his incredible story as we name a new prime suspect

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Whitcoulls, Paperplus, Borders, The Warehouse, Take Note, Dymocks and all good bookstores INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 7

VOX POPULI

Communiques The roar of the crowd

Leaky homes

The letter in your July issue (P10) re leaky homes has now compelled me to write my thoughts. Firstly, I am a Design Engineer, now retired. I closed my business in New Zealand as I could not morally justify the extortionate charges made by councils and the problems that they set up.

First of all, the timber used in building.

The trees are cut, milled, kiln dried, laser treated and delivered to the building site in a matter of days. No consideration has been given to the shrinkage of the timbers.

Timber specifications from our office generally called for 95 x45 framing timbers. It takes between two to five years exposure for timbers to shrink to their approximate final size. In any batch of “95x45” timber delivered to a building site I would be surprised if any more than 10% measured up to that.

The physical dimensions vary considerably.

Architects specify the dimensions, generally to grid lines. This is fine as we need to know the general size of the structure.

Now we come to the fly in the ointment, the building inspectors. Most do not have tertiary qualifications and they make visits to building sites to insure “Compliance” with the building code. They cart around some little gadget to check if the timber is ‘dry’. No mention of its quality dryness.

The idiot building code, NZS 3604 and its assistants E2&3 specifies all the details that are required to build the structure. Given these documents, any 16 year old girl could build a house to compliance.

Now let us consider reality. The shrinkage between ‘wet’ or ‘green’ timber can be as much as 4%. With our 95x45 timbers this can reduce the size to 92mm over 5 years.

The building code requires plywood panels firmly secured across certain walls to make them ‘structurally’ sound. In other words, restricts their movement. An interior wall so 8 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

treated could quite easily pull the exterior walls in by as much as 6mm with the exterior wall timbers shrinking. Now, even a gap of 3mm will let in water. This small amount is hardly noticeable until the particle board floor panels turn to slush.

In the letter (July issue P10) you write saying that “Older homes before the building codes are still standing”. Of course, the builders of the day knew what and how to build. We live in a house that was completed in 1909. 4x2 studs at 2’ centres and bracings of 6x1 diagonally across the studs. 4x2 rafters and ‘crinkly tin’ (as they called it) on the roof. We have just had a BIG earthquake, probably not the first that this house has encountered, and some violent wind storms.

No cracks, no leaks, no building inspectors.

Apart from timber houses I have been designing steel structures in other countries around the world and also in New Zealand.

We used a structural design program to determine the steel member sizes. Steel frames can be fabricated to fine tolerances and are reasonably flexible. However, in New Zealand, our steel structure for a carport or small deck has to be inspected by a totally unqualified person to get a certificate of compliance.

To sum up; 1. timber supplied for the construction of houses is not adequately prepared.

2. the building codes are far too restrictive 3. the inspections are generally carried out by “unqualified” personnel.

4. there is no apprenticeship for builders (I may be in error here) 5. the fees charged by the local bodies are total extortion.

Name withheld by request, via email

Deep in the forest

I can’t let Ross Meurant’s article “Deep in the Forest” go unchallenged. He joined the Police 44 years ago and his last day of duty

some 23 years ago. He resides in Eastern Europe. It is difficult not to get the feeling that Meurant harbours a deep resentment towards his time in the Police.

He labels most Police as working class, bigoted and intolerant. The culture may have had aspects of that in his time but he asserts that we haven’t changed. In the 1840’s some Constables turned up to work drunk – but entry standards were a little different back then too!

I am a Constable in Auckland and joined about 4 years ago. On my intake there were many recruits with university degrees, and with different beliefs and backgrounds.

In justifying his views he describes senior officers discouraging him from attending university. He fails to mention the now compulsory legal paper Constables must complete and the Victoria Uni papers required to gain promotion.

I can say that during my time I haven’t experienced the depths of “the forest” that he speaks of. C.I.B members, referred to as “The heart of the Beast” have conveyed a real professionalism and integrity when I have worked with them.

The examples used to support his view weren’t too impressive either. Describing the Christchurch shooting incident as “a man shot wielding a hammer on cars” is misleading at best, and reveals his apparent bias.

The offender ran towards the Sergeant with a hammer above his head, witnesses believing he was about to strike the Sergeant- who fired from 1.5 metres away. The decision not to charge was reviewed by an independent judicial body (the IPCA). He needs to get the facts right. (http://www.ipca.govt.nz/ Site/media/2009/2009-Mar25-Stephen-Bellingham.aspx) His claim that the Courts are the proper place to test the validity of Police conduct beggars belief. Why should Police have fewer

rights than ordinary citizens or even criminals? Bring charges against an Officer who by all investigations appears to have been defending himself…Really? I doubt that would bolster “the public confidence and support” Meurant seeks.

He should also know that search warrants don’t get granted on subjective Police thought or supposition, rather objective fact and evidence. First, they are not authorised by Police but as he points out, judicial officers.

Any breaches are open to further scrutiny in any subsequent Court proceedings. It would appear he doesn’t trust the judicial officers to grant (or not) a search warrant either.

The Police have come a long way since Ross’s time. I feel proud to be part of the organisation, one that enjoys high levels of public support and perceived transparency.

I would suggest he is living in the past and can’t see the wood for the trees.

Ryan Singleton, via email

Pension robbers

I am nearing retirement age and all I seem to hear is, how are we going to pay for the baby boomer generation’s old age pension?

What I want to know is what the Government has done with the 12.5% Social Security tax that all employees have been paying on all the wages they have earned since they started work?

That money was supposed to pay for our retirement, it was stolen by misappropriation when Sir Robert Muldoon created the consolidated fund and emptied all the social security pension fund into it.

Compulsory Super? another tax on top of the Social Security tax we already pay.

As your Editorial mentioned, it was thirteen years ago that New Zealanders overwhelmingly rejected the compulsory superannuation scheme, Winston Peters could easily have pulled off creating a compulsory superannuation scheme, all he had to do was offer NZ citizens the same scheme as the one those parasitic MP’s created for themselves.

Bryan [illegible]

Super commentary

Congratulations on your discussion-inviting editorial “Compulsory super, yes or no?”.

There was no debate allowed on the takeit-or-leave-it compulsory savings proposal of 1997. According to my recollections, there was widespread support for compulsory savings the Singapore way in principle, but National was against it.

I suspect the unnecessarily complex, user

unfriendly and unamendable scheme for the referendum in 1997 (quite exposed to the abuses alleged in your editorial) – was the result of a deliberate effort by National to get it defeated.

The overwhelming support for the Cullen Fund only 4 years later affirms this suspicion, and it is to the credit of statesmanship

by Winston Peters to have backed the Cullen Fund under the condition that its introduction will not legally nor technically exclude its allocation to PAs – Personal Accounts – when called for.

So – since we already have a compulsory NZ Super commitment through PAYGO – Pay-As-You-Go – in our taxation system, the question is really – do we want to complement it with partial pre-funding through adding an S (Saving) component to our PAYGO? Unless the Govt. working group comes up with something unimaginably different, the current options are (cosmetic changes to) the status quo, or a choice between Compulsory KiwiSaving (CompKS) and amending the NZ Super Fund (NZSF) into a permanent institution of PAs – with contributions to it built into our already compulsory taxation system, abbreviated for identification as NZSF PAs. The socio-economic advantages of NZSF PAs in moving towards a Singaporean style economy based on relatively low wealth redistributive taxation rates and relatively high personal and national wealth ownership creative compulsory saving rates are nearly uncountable, and would be revealed in discussing and comparing CompKS and NZSF PAs – which has been evaded by commentators and the press so far.

To ease the concerns expressed in your editorial for a start, we have to be aware of the realities, that higher earning rates and security reserves on a sustainable basis are physically impossible without someone’s sacrifice of hand-to-mouth consumption (potential) for investment (saving), and that despite the inevitable proportion of genuinely or fraudulently failed investments, we have prospered satisfactorily so far, and that the Western World’s current problems are not due so much to economic corruption etc, as to our widespread (morally corrupted?) insistence on rights of consumption beyond our income and means, with apparently no awareness (or deliberate opposition?) of the need for an adequate savings rate to make it all possible in a sustainable way.

We can feel better about it when realising, that our NZSF Guardians have done

a very good job of investing our NZSF so far, and – without any temptations their way of personal speculative profit “commissions” (?) – they can be trusted to continue to do so within their mandate authorised by us as personal shareholders in the NZSF through our PAs. As NZSF PA owners we have more legal and political influence on the mandate over how much of the NZSF we prefer to be invested where – such as more of it at home especially at a time of high unemployment – and make it impossible for any Govt. to “nationalise” it into the Consolidated Fund.

Since all NZSF PAs are shareholdings in all investments of the NZSF– a wide spread of diversification impossible through independent personal (even KS) investments – aren’t they among the safest and least corruptible?

Jens Meder, Auckland

Gen X-terminated

For what it is worth to you, Generation X article, the quote that the English judge made as regards ‘the carnival of human misery’ has summed up why I have remained with my husband for 18 years and will continue to do so. Reading it has given me the energy and determination today and tomorrow (and with God’s grace) not to give up on a difficult marriage relationship, where I know others would have thrown the towel in years ago.

Perhaps the lives of my three sons will be the fruit, and spared the pain that Sir... has so succinctly written about – may they grow up to be fine, strong, good and valiant men.

Thanks. I always believe in saying thanks when I can.

Name withheld on request

More Gen-X

I just wanted to applaud you on publishing the article on abortion. I watched “The Silent Scream” as a teenager and have felt very strongly about this issue ever since.

Abortion is such a taboo subject, as no-one wants to offend those who may have had an abortion. But I believe abortion needs to be put under public scrutiny.

I find it very interesting that, you can have two women of the same age, one is planning to have a baby and the other is not.

However when both find they are pregnant, the mother of the planned pregnancy is told about the beautiful miracle that is living inside of her, and how wonderful this baby is, and how much the baby has developed already. However the unplanned pregnancy, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 9

the mother is told the thing inside of her is a blob, not developed and can feel no pain. I assume, to make her feel better about making the decision to terminate her pregnancy.

Seeing the abortion pictures in the Investigate article, of the aborted babies limbs, made me think about my beautiful 3 month old baby girl, and how it would be the same if someone came into her room while she slept, grabbed her by the limbs and ripped her apart. It made me physically sick to my stomach thinking about it. It makes me so mad that in this world we are more concerened on saving the trees, yet we kill our own children.

So it is great to see this issue being raised in the media, and I hope soon, we as a country will see the light and make this murderous act illegal!

Bailey Beddis, via email

Seabed & foreshore

Tell me it’s not all about retaining power.

The Government’s moves to take NZ’s foreshore and seabed out of Crown ownership will give them the power to negotiate its ownership directly with iwi. So when the minority government needs a few more votes, a few more areas of seabed (to at least 12, possibly more, nautical miles offshore) will be put under iwi control.

How is customary title proven to an MP anyway? A few dinners, a few votes changing hands and ‘we’ve got a deal’?

If I want to claim for a loss suffered, I’m obliged to prove my case in court. By removing the need for Maori to do this, National is legitimising both apartheid and corruption.

Fiona Mackenzie, Whangaparaoa

The Devil in the detail

I have not personally contacted you in the past but feel that this imminent piece of legislation is, together with the ETS Scheme, going to bring this country to its knees, continuing the path previously chartered by Helen Clark and would seek your guidance and direction in the matter.

The bill was presented last week and the Govt. expects to have it passed into law by Xmas.

During the first round the Maoris had a full year to plan their requirements and the balance of NZ was given two months to submit and when confronted with a large number of people requesting an extension for two months the answer was you’ve been allocated enough time. (Confirmed at a National Party meeting I was at a few

months ago in Tauranga, attended by the party President) It is evident that submissions made were ignored and the administration continues to plot a course in the opposite direction to the best interests of the country at large.

Shortly after that meeting the matter of mining arose, the bulk of the population were happy with a two month period for submissions but the Maoris asked for another two months which was immediately granted.

This division in our society is ever widening.

In addition to this we in Tauranga have just been confronted with a “ Mataitai “ around Mayor Island and upon discussion with Ag. & Fish find that the incidence of requests for these fishing reserves has lifted significantly since the new Govt. did their deal with the Maori Party. Currently I understand there are fifty -one applications on the books with fifteen already established.

This is a reliable indicator of things to come.

Can your organization help in any way to head this off?

Name and address supplied

PC education

As a retired primary teacher I concur with Amy Brooke’s assessment of our failing education system. I experienced it first hand when the Lange government came to power and when never ending P.C. nonsense replaced the direct teaching of knowledge and skills. In true East German fashion edicts arrived from Wellington and a Plain English curriculum was replaced by volumes of almost unreadable garbage.

In my Year 5 class the Maths textbooks which provided focused lessons were thrown out and were replaced with – nothing!

A teaching colleague of mine was criticised by a visiting ERO team for – horror of horrors – teaching his pupils some rules of grammar. When he protested he was told, “That’s not the way it’s done!”

I say what we have is a Ministry of Educational Obstruction and we would be better off closing it down and letting schools appoint their own advisers. Successive governments have had their chance to put matters right and have failed dismally. In short both the politicians and the bureaucrats can’t be trusted to do the best for our children.

So what to do now? I suggest parents appoint Board of Trustee members who are going to lay down the law on the direct teaching of knowledge and skills. Tough

10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

luck if this doesn’t suit the Ministry and the teacher unions.

My second suggestion is that we follow the example of some of our Australian cousins and elect independent Members of Parliament who can freely represent the wishes and concerns of the voters. Both major Parties have show an incredible deafness to reasoned argument on the various issues discussed in Investigate magazine. If they can’t truly represent us then they don’t deserve our political support.

A citizen alone railing at the stupidities of government does indeed feel alone and helpless. Only if we act in concert are we going to make our voices heard.

Denis McCarthy, via email

On America in space

Hal Colebatch’s article “Where is America Going in Space?” (September 2010 issue) raised some pertinent points about America’s current and future position in the world. I believe the outlook for this great nation is bleak as it loses its confidence and drive, not to mention its grip on technological and military supremacy. I grew up in the era of the Cold War and the US space programme when the United States was without doubt the most advanced and most prosperous nation on Earth. America was THE place to be if you wanted to be a part of history in the making. But things are changing, as Colebatch discussed in his article. America is in decline, as is the entire Western world.

I believe the period of the sixties and seventies was the last golden era of heroic achievement in the West. It was the last era of exploration on a grand scale where so much was at stake, so many risks were taken on a national and individual level to achieve the seemingly impossible goal of reaching the moon. Yet the American people were not fazed. The risks and difficulties merely spurred them on. In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy made his famous speech to Congress on the importance of space, the idea of landing a man on the moon and bringing him back safely was an impossible dream. Yet he said let’s do it anyway! The technology did not exist and no one knew how to do it, let alone what the risks and dangers were. The only things going for it were national pride and enthusiasm, and the political will to spend the money on an outrageous idea. Otherwise landing on the moon was an undertaking of astronomical proportions, well beyond the ability of every other nation on Earth. And maybe beyond

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the ability of the US. No one knew for sure.

But Colebatch’s article overlooked two problems that I believe have contributed more than anything else to America’s declining position and power in space exploration: the loss of political will to spend money on large projects for the sake of national pride, and the fear of taking risks. I have often argued that the United States couldn’t land a man on the moon now if they tried because the politicians would be too afraid to spend the money on the one hand and occupational health and safety issues would get in the way on the other. An employee would merely need to be injured by a paper cut and the whole project would be shut down pending an investigation. A safety hearing would be held to reduce “paper cut hazards” in the work place while the entire project was delayed pending the outcome. I jest of course, but that pretty well sums up the Western aversion for taking risks today. Yet for the Apollo moon project in the sixties and seventies, the hazards were part of the job. Yes, men died trying but they still got on with it anyway and achieved astonishing feats as a result.

Today, such risks are far too great for us.

We have become fainthearted. No one may be hurt or offended. The slightest risk of either is enough to give any undertaking pause.

No aspect of the project would be allowed to offend the cultural sensitivities of indigenous peoples or other religions. That now is the focus. President Obama went so far as to task NASA with improving relations with Islam. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission, as head of America’s space agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world! Anyone who thinks that is a grand heroic idea in typical NASA tradition should now read John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Address to Congress on going to the moon (available here: http://www.homeofheroes.com/presidents/speeches/kennedy_space.html).

Thus, a moon project today would have to be politically correct and completely riskfree before anyone even opened their toolbox. Going to the moon today may only proceed if there are no risks taken and no offence given to Muslims. Of course, this is not to say that all reasonable precautions should not be taken to avoid injury and to make work places safe and pleasant for everyone to work in. But such attitudes these days have gone to the extreme. We are wrapped in cotton wool from cradle to grave and protected by the State from all eventualities that may endanger our health

or state of mind. Even the imagined risk of manmade climate change is now too much for us to deal with. A temperature increase of 0.6C since the Industrial Revolution is considered by the IPCC to be dangerous for the entire planet! I shake my head at the stupidity of it. So I suspect returning to the moon would be out of the question.

Instead of heroic space exploration, instead of walking again on the moon or building the next supersonic Concorde, we will spend billions on averting the completely imagined, completely absurd and un-quantified “risk” of manmade climate change.

But going to the moon doesn’t really matter now anyway because it seems anyone born after the Apollo era believes the moon landings never even happened. They were supposedly staged in a large garage in the American outback. Why? Who knows? They don’t say. But that is what so many people believe now. It’s sad. A friend of mine, with whom I often discuss these sorts of issues, made a poignant observation on this: “The best we could achieve in the sixties” he said, “with the best technology available, was to land men on the moon. But the best we can do now, with the best technology, is to try to prove it never happened.” I understood what he meant. We both grew up in that heroic time and marveled, as we still do, at these astonishing achievements. It really was a golden era. Yet it seems a surprisingly common view among those growing up today that the moon landings never happened. How sad for them.

They are more preoccupied with tweeting inanities on the Internet and probably never even look up at the moon and wonder about it. But this loss of pride, this loss of national and cultural dignity and interest in what lies beyond the Internet and Justin Bieber’s hair do is exacerbated by the gradual decline of Western pride and belief in its own achievements and history anyway.

So China is now taking up the slack. And good luck to them!

Joe Fone, Christchurch

The Crusades

Philip G Hayward (September 2010) appears to believe the Crusades were simply a Christian counter-attack against Mohammedan conquests. There was more to them than that.

The crusading spirit was whipped up among the masses of the Roman Church’s faithful not only against Mohammedanism but also against those Christians and Jews who refused to yield to the power and authority of that Church. Hence the great

12 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

slaughter of the Albigenses by crusaders in 1198-1209; the crusaders’ sacking, slaughter of Christians and destruction of churches in Constantinople in 1204; and the indiscriminate slaughter of Jews, Christians and Mohammedans in the Holy Land.

The idea of one version of Christianity exercising mass-violence against the infidel and those Christians deemed to be heretics had no warranty in Scripture and was bound to fail.

The Church in the East, with its thousand years of endeavour and its great centres of learning, was tolerated and even valued by the Mohammedan conquerors and it definitely preferred them to the Romans.

The Crusades did incalculable damage to the Orthodox Church and to the Church in the East. Paul Johnson, in his authoritative History of Christianity concluded that “A crusade was in essence a mob of armed and fanatical Christians. Once its numbers rose above about 10,000 it could no longer be controlled, only guided.”

Bruce Farland, via email

POETRY

Is it poetry? Then send submissions to Poetry Editor Amy Brooke: amy@investigatemagazine.tv

Down there in the valley Down there in the valley, as long as I can remember while the hawk circles over the plover have cried a lament for each child.

It has always been so, the parents long sheltering know their reasons for fearing the sky, the young as they must, growing wild longing ever upwards, yearning for the freedom they do not see leads each day into an unknown well familiar to you and me farewelling our little ones, so soon grown…

And now, aware of another shadow circling, circling, we know that we, too, must soon take our leave differently free, while the plover cry still down there in the valley.

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CHLOE’S PATCH

Chloe Milne Tigers and cheaters

IT SEEMS THAT MEN ARE MORE STUPID THAN WE FIRST

thought. We all knew they were cheaters and liars but David Smail’s recent confession has really highlighted some issues in the male psyche. Getting some sexual release outside of marriage may be unwise but getting photographic evidence of your rendezvous is just brainless. Two thousand photos and a sex tape might seem like fun at the time but can become awkward when little Johnny goes on the Internet to Google Daddy. If you are a middle aged pro-golfer it’s highly likely that the ‘other woman’ is looking deep into your eyes and seeing a Mercedes and Gucci handbag not true love. Men if you’re low enough to cheat don’t be stupid as well. Protection goes beyond the obvious; do not let your lover take photos. Coming home with a souvenir in the form of Chlamydia is bad but worse is a sex tape scandal and the resulting loss of your reputation. Unless you’re as hot as Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton then sex tapes should be avoided, regardless of your relationship status.

What may not seem so obvious is that women are actually the real issue. I don’t mean the ‘other woman’; I am referring to the devoted wives who are letting it happen. Finally Elin has left Tiger, but there are many ladies out there who haven’t been so indomitable. He is out there getting it on with some bimbo 20 years your junior and as long as he sheds a few tears he’s back in the circle. Ladies you are letting your men get away with murder. Well actually everything but murder. Smail’s wife claimed that the important thing was that he hadn’t killed anyone. I didn’t realise the latest standards for dateable Kiwi men were low enough to include any sort of immoral activities up to murder. That leaves me with a few unanswered questions, if killing someone is the threshold, does this include manslaughter or does he have to intend it? Also where

do rapists, paedophiles and those who have caused serious injury fit?

So Sally I hear you’ve got a new boyfriend? “Yea he’s great, he’s hit me a few times, cheated on me, lies a lot, don’t think he likes children, spent the last four years in prison for aggravated robbery, he’s got a bit of a drug addiction, not very good in bed, I’m debating whether or not he could be gay oh and he isn’t very well endowed … but the important thing is he hasn’t killed anyone.

You woman are worth more. You have to realise men are a little bit like dogs. Not in

16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

Jun Tsukida/AFLO SPORT

the sense that they shit in the backyard but in the sense that if you keep them on a tight leash they will do whatever you want them to. If you have been cheated on its ok to cut up his ties, throw out his suits, burn his vintage pornography collection, smash up his beemar and set fire to his house … ok that may be too far but you get the idea. If your man is not absolutely devoted to you, then move on. There are plenty more out there with tighter abs and a better golf swing, I hear Tiger Woods is single.

Roger That.

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W W W. G U T H R I E S . C O . N Z INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 17

STRAIGHT TALK

Mark Steyn

Metrosexual men won’t fight to save themselves “I THINK IT IS KIDS’ PREFERENCE TO PAIR UP AND

have that one best friend. As adults – teachers and counsellors – we try to encourage them not to do that.”

Thus, Christine Laycob, “director of counselling” at Mary Institute and St Louis Country Day School in Missouri, speaking to The New York Times the other day about why “best friends” are a bad thing. “Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend. We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

By “we”, she means the expert opinion of “educators”. Granted that “educators” seem to have minimal interest in education, and that therefore it would be unreasonable to expect them to regard, say, American students’ under-performance in everything from math to music as a priority, one is still impressed by their ability to conjure hitherto unknown crises to obsess over. The tone of the Times piece is faintly creepy – not least in its acceptance of the totalitarian proposition that it’s appropriate for “experts” to re-engineer one of the most building blocks of our humanity: the right to choose our friends.

If the report reads like something out of The Stepford Kindergarten PTA, it is no more than the logical endpoint of the educational establishment’s preference for collectivized mediocrity over individual achievement: A child should no longer have best friends, and close friends, and people he’s happy to hang around with, and folks he doesn’t much care for. Instead, he should just be friends with the collective, with the commune, all the same.

We conservatives have been wasting our energy arguing the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

The statists have moved on, and are now demanding equality of basic human relationships, and starting in nursery school.

Oh, come on, you scoff. Why make a big deal about one itsy-bitsy New York Times education story?

Well, because much of the contemporary scene owes its origins to silly little fads among “educators” that seemed too laughable to credit only the day before yesterday.

I see the Times piece references those literary best friends of yore, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But Tom and Huck’s boyhood is all but incomprehensible to today’s children. Unlike its fellow Missouri educational establishment in St Louis, I don’t believe the grade school in St Petersburg had a “director of counselling”, because, if it had, she would have diagnosed Tom with ADHD, pumped him full of Ritalin, and the story would have been over before he’d been

“Did you think I would leave you crying When there’s room on my horse for two?

Climb up here, Jack, and don’t be crying I can go just as fast with two…”

Come the next verse, the horses are real, and they’re in the thick of battle. This time round, the other boy loses his mount, shot out from under him, and it’s Jack’s turn to say: “Did you think I would leave you dying When there’s room on my horse for two?

Climb up here, Joe, we’ll soon be flying…”

The lessons we learn in childhood stay with us. The Battle of Waterloo, they used to say (and with a straight face, too), was won on the playing fields of Eton. But in

Give me a boy till seven, said the Jesuits, and I will show you the man. Give me a boy till Seventh Grade, say today’s educators, and we can eliminate the man problem entirely told to whitewash the fence. The suppression of boyhood would have been thought absurd half-a-century back. Yet the “educators” pulled it off, effortlessly. Why not try something even more ambitious?

Speaking of best friends, in 1902 Theodore Morse and Edward Madden wrote the song “Two Little Boys”, in which the eponymous tykes are wont to play soldiers on wooden horses. (The great Aussie didgeridooist Rolf Harris revived the song in 1969, and it got to Number One: Mrs Thatcher named it one of her favorite records). “One little chap/Then had a mishap,” as the song says, and breaks his mount. So his friend offers to share his steed:

18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

British schools today competitive sports have been all but abolished. It was recently reported that in one children’s soccer league in Ottawa any team that racked up a fivegoal lead would be deemed to have lost, and the losing team declared the winners, to spare their feelings. By those standards, the hapless England footie team might have managed to “beat” Germany and get through to the next round of the World Cup (almost). What’s less clear is whether boys raised on such playing fields would be capable of winning another Waterloo, or even be prepared to fight it. Indeed, early setbacks in post-Saddam Iraq and current difficulties in

Afghanistan derive in part from that Ottawa soccer mindset – that it would be insensitive to open up a five-goal lead over the enemy.

In an essay on democracy for The New Criterion, Kenneth Minogue began by “observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much… The distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cul-

tural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.”

What to do? The state can, as Brecht advised, elect a new people – which the immigration policies of many western nations seem intended to accomplish. But you can also change the existing people, in profound ways and over a surprisingly short space of time.

Give me a boy till seven, said the Jesuits, and I will show you the man. Give me a boy till Seventh Grade, say today’s educators, and we can eliminate the man problem entirely.

Early setbacks in post-Saddam Iraq and current difficulties in Afghanistan derive in part from that Ottawa soccer mindset – that it would be insensitive to open up a five-goal lead over the enemy./ Jonathan S. Landay/MCT

© 2010 Mark Steyn INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 19

EYES RIGHT

Richard Prosser And the Earth shook

AND THE SEAS BOILED, AND THE SKY WAS RENT ASUN der; so says the prophecy, or something very

much like it. I’m too far from the coast to know whether or not the seas boiled, and it was dark so I can’t vouch for any possible rending of the sky either, but this writer can attest that the earth was indeed shaking the other morning.

The dogs had woken me about 20 minutes beforehand, so I was only really dozing when the quake hit. How did they know?

Maybe it was simply coincidence. It was the biggest shake I have ever experienced, that much is certain. As the house rocked I lay and listened to the sound of crashing and breaking, waited for it to stop, and then picked my way through the chaos of fallen books, pictures, and pot plants which had been the lounge and hallway, to reassure the aforementioned hounds. I had a torch, but I didn’t think to stop and put anything on my feet; the power was still on, at any rate, and the house appeared to be standing and relatively undamaged. My good lady and our daughter were still away overseas, and my initial concern that the bank upon which the Chez Moi is supported might be in danger of sliding into the creek, seemed not to be coming to fruition.

I played with the radio, couldn’t find any stations cutting into their pre-recorded allnight programming to announce the end of the world, shone the torch outside a bit, and, failing any better ideas, went back to bed.

I do remember thinking it was a particularly big one. I do recall pondering the possibility of a tsunami, but deciding that as I was 10 kilometres inland and 200 feet up, any tidal wave that wanted me was more than welcome to come and get me. I do distinctly remember telling myself that there would probably be something on the news in the morning. Ultimately, however, I was mostly asleep, and so I went back to bed

and slept, at least until the second particularly nasty aftershock persuaded me to get up again, properly this time, an hour or so later. My primary concern was not with my immediate survival, but with being annoyed that I had been denied my Saturday morning lie-in.

How prepared was I? Not particularly, in all reality. I mean I had a torch next to the bed. It even had batteries. You get into the habit of doing that when you live in the wops and the power goes off frequently enough for it to be a consideration. But I didn’t have any footwear handy, even my jandals live at the back door, and as for a survival kit, well, that seems to have gone the way of many a good

and the big tank has adopted a pronounced list. Another foot or so and it would have fallen, several tons of concrete plus water, onto the garage, and my truck which was parked in front.

I know exactly where to find the key to the gun cabinet, even in the dark, but I don’t own a battery-powered radio. No fish hooks, no waterproof matches, no water purification tablets, emergency blankets, no nothing, it would seem. How did this happen? I grew up with earthquake drills and survival kit lessons, just like everyone else in New Zealand. And yet I have become complacent, lulled into a false sense of security by the simple and irrelevant fact that nothing

I survived on luck, not preparation.

My natural disaster plan had kind of revolved around it happening to someone else, somewhere else intention. There’s tinned food in the pantry of course, but nothing assembled ready for a swift departure. There are sticking plasters in the bathroom and a few medicinals in the high cupboard above the fridge, but the only first aid kit that really counts was out in the truck. Bottled water? Nope, I’ve never kept a stock of it. There’s a week’s worth in the tank on the stand, and a few hundred litres in the header tank on the roof, so I haven’t ever regarded a bottled supply in the event of a natural disaster as being particularly necessary. Inspection in the cold hard light of day however has given me cause to reexamine this policy. The header tank has moved almost to the edge of its platform,

20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

disastrous had happened for a wee while.

Similar stories abounded on talkback radio and the internet. People finding themselves without transistor radios retreated to their cars to find out what the wireless was saying, using cellphones to light the darkness in lieu of non-existent torches. My boss picked his way around his darkened house by the light of his laptop. He at least had a generator, which is more than was available to most of the good citizenry of Christchurch who found themselves tipped rudely out of bed into the powerless dark of a pre-dawn winter’s morning.

I survived on luck, not preparation. My natural disaster plan had kind of revolved

around it happening to someone else, somewhere else; I mean I live on the east coast of the South Island, where we’re not supposed to be particularly earthquake prone. I distinctly recall reassuring my partner’s grandmother of this fact, while I was wrenching her favourite grand-daughter away from the seismically stable bosom of mother England.

Yet happen it did, and it’s still happening; aftershocks are continuing even as I sit and type. Those in the know have promised us a magnitude six finale, which is yet to eventuate.

The response from the authorities has been quick and effective, at least in Christchurch itself. Civil Defence were quick to cordon off the city, the Army hurried home to Burnham from maneuvers at Waiouru to help if needed, and the Police nipped in to impose a curfew and arrest a couple of opportunists who were busily looting a bottle store and a chemist. Power was back on to most areas by day’s end, clean drinking water was tankered in from out of town, and port-a-loos set up for those whose sewers had failed. Mayor Bob Parker was visibly in charge and appeared to provide capable leadership in a manner which may yet prove the saving of his job.

Beyond the Christchurch metropolitan area, however, things were and are a little different. During the Central Otago floods of 1995 and 1999 this writer learned first hand that the general way of things, by design or default, is that Civil Defence looks after the towns and the country looks after itself. This appears to hold true in Canterbury today.

Kaiapoi, just to the north of Christchurch and as badly hit if not worse, and Darfield, at the quake’s epicenter, along with much of the rural hinterland and smaller outlying towns, were left to rely on their own resources plus the efforts of their nearest local Volunteer Fire Brigade.

The US Military, as they always do, stepped up and offered to help. Damned decent of Uncle Sam, I have to say; wherever and whenever there is need, from the Indonesian tsunami to the Haiti earthquake to the Pakistan floods, it is all too often the Yanks who are the first and indeed the only international power or organisation to provide practical and effective assistance within a useful timeframe. They were surprised that we didn’t need it, and understandably so, because there are striking parallels between the Christchurch quake, in which two people were badly injured, and the Haiti quake, where 236,000 people died.

Both were magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale. Both were side-slip earthquakes, they were at comparable depth, and at a similar distance from a major city. In Haiti the quake struck at around five in the afternoon, whereas in Christchurch it was 4.30 in the morning, and had the time been 12 hours different the outcome might just have been considerably worse as well; but the other major distinction between Christchurch and Port au Prince was that in New Zealand we have realistic building codes which are effectively enforced. We expect these sorts of natural disasters, even here, and the unpreparedness of individual citizens aside, this writer included, we plan for them and respond accordingly. Christchurch’s buildings didn’t pancake and crumble, because they were made out of decent concrete by people who understood the ramifications of not doing the job properly and who cared about getting it right.

Which brings me to my question; why, when we can and do plan for Civil Defence emergencies that we know will happen, the only uncertainly about which is when and not if, do we not similarly prepare for military defence emergencies which are equally inevitable? We knew that one day there would be another big earthquake, and we know that the Really Big One is still coming.

We know, absolutely, that one day, one of our dormant or extinct volcanoes will do the big firework thing again. We know there will be more storms, more floods, more calamities visited upon us to threaten our survival and test our resolve. We know this and we plan for it because to pretend that there

will never be another disaster, just because there hasn’t been one for a few years, would be naïve and stupid beyond description. So why do we pretend that there will never be another war? Human nature and the behaviour of nations is a natural law which is every bit as predictable and undeniable as plate tectonics. It does not change, and will not change, however much the previous Prime Minister never grew up and left her university debating society days behind, or however much the current one thinks he knows better than 10,000 years of human history.

Conflict will come again, and when it does, our military will need to be prepared for it. A combat Air Force, a blue water Navy, and a trained and mobilized population are essential elements which must all go into our survival kit – now, not in a few years’ time, after conflict has struck without warning in the middle of the night, because by then it may well be too late. We need to be our own Fire Brigade, because out here, on the periphery of civilisation, we are all country folk, and we may not be able to rely on some generous offer of assistance at the whim of a United States who, for all her benevolence, may be occupied with the survival of her own cities.

Next time the earth shakes it might well be by the hand of man himself, to which our only current response can be a Defence Force which is woefully under-resourced, under equipped, and unprepared. We can do better than this and we must, because our very survival might depend on it – and to pretend otherwise, as above, is naïve and stupid beyond description. © 2010 Richard Prosser

Kyodo

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 21

LINE ONE

Chris Carter Shop smarter, New Zealand I’M NOT SURE HOW MANY OF US HAVE, BY NOW, BEEN

driven almost to distraction by a feller hawking the wares of a big Aussie supermarket chain on nationwide TV. His catch line, however, “Shop Smarter New Zealand”, is probably one of the best pieces of advice around as opposed to the nanny state propaganda nonsense that we’re now bombarded with by the Government.

For so many decades we Kiwis have been such cringing, compliant victims of commercial robbery that it would not surprise me to learn that the very word “Victim” was first coined here in New Zealand. Picking the pockets of largely innocent if somewhat naive working Kiwis has enabled many a genetically predisposed practitioner of highway robbery to join our so called wealthy “upper class”, even if a high proportion of our social glitterati instead of continually gracing the social registers should be better displayed in an aviary alongside all their fellow vultures.

Because let’s face it, whichever way we consumers turn we are likely to be robbed blind by the legions of companies small and large that, using every ploy taken from their semi – religious cult belief that “greed is Good”, have even managed to persuade their victims that paying wild excesses for their various goods and services is not only right and proper but even a Kiwi duty.

We have become a pathetic nation of fiscal victims, which has even had a dire effect on the wealthy, those who have made a bundle of money by not being greedy but by being smart traders, and simply giving consumers a fair go. Now, sadly, they are lumped together with the robber barons, and of course they too are quite wrongly and mindlessly abused by our moronic left wingers as being ,“rich pricks”. A good education or even a modicum of common sense never having been a major attribute of the chanting non achievers of the far left!

But let us dispose of the usual rich versus poor debate and check out how and why we should all indeed be a lot smarter shoppers than we quite plainly are. And here we can really learn, (as a lot of us have recently to our great advantage) from our Asian immigrant friends and neighbours: Question charges, argue down the prices asked, check around other companies; you’ll be surprised at the wide variance of service charges, even for things like spare parts for your car/appliances etc for instance.

Even buying big ticket items that are allegedly on sale doesn’t by any means suggest the retailer can’t do better. Walked into a big chain store a couple of days back to buy

money, so make the trader work for it. Make him persuade you to deal with him, rather than someone else, by giving you a great deal. Same with dealing with car dealers or service outfits, they are going to charge the most they think that they can get away with.

Our job is to pay the least, and a bit of solid haggling usually works out to things ending being about the fair and proper price. I think that the problem with us kiwis is that we don’t like to run the risk of offending people, and would far rather just pay up, and maybe not deal with that company again if we paid too much. But the fact is that right at the beginning of any deal, as the would be purchaser, you hold the whip handle because

Something we all tend to forget: buying anything – goods or services, your money is in your pocket and the trader wants that money, so make the trader work for it a small TV, having already looked around to see who appeared to have the best deal.

Pointed out the TV that I was looking at and simply said “what’s your best price on that mate for me to take it away now”? The shop assistant checked with his manager and came back with a price well under the ticketed price and apart from trying on the old scam of would I like an extended warranty – which with the Consumer Guarantees Act in place I sure didn’t – the deal was done.

I saved enough to pay for the family’s grocery bill for a week and everyone was happy.

Something we all tend to forget: buying anything – goods or services, your money is in your pocket and the trader wants that

22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

you have the money in your pocket, so don’t be a prize mug and give it away so easily and especially for no good reason.

Matter of fact being a tough purchaser is a heap of fun. Be a bit cheeky, start out by offering the seller way under what he’s suggested he wants. He can always say no, but you’ll be happily surprised at the number of times his price will drop significantly, and after all if you cause some offence, tough – shop with someone else! Same with service companies. Most people these days ask what the travelling fee is, but the forget that the financial knife gets stuck in when it comes to parts and labour while actually on the job. So check with the service guy when he’s had a

chance to figure out what’s causing the problem with the fridge, washing machine whatever and get a quote at that point. If it’s going to cost a bundle and the unit in question is say under five or six years old, phone the retailer where you got it and tell him that under the Consumer Guarantees Act it’s going to all be on him. They’ll say things like the manufacturer’s warranty, was for two years, you reply that any reasonable person would expect an expensive fridge etc to last for at least ten years and that you will be phoning (a) the consumers affairs people (b) the Small Claims Court.

I’ve done this with an auto dishwasher that ended up with many repeated service calls for seven years, all at no charge. Then a wide screen TV, three and a half years old, that really blew up, creating an initially suggested bill of over three grand. It was subsequently covered, after a wee bit of a set to, at no charge by the manufacturer. So just by being a bit

of a bastard and doing some serious jumping up and down just on two major appliances I probably saved myself the best part of five or six thousand dollars. Now tell me, is being a little dormouse and being too frightened to have a go, worth throwing thousands of bucks down the drain?

Truth of the matter is just about everyone knows that being an absolute Noddy and getting stitched up is really easy to do,

so why do so many of us keep doing this?

Look at our most popular TV show “Fair Go”. It only exists at all simply because so many people don’t have the guts to simply stand up and have a go. If you really do enjoy being a victim, have the word tattooed on your forehead, make it easier for everyone!

Meantime, shop smarter New Zealand.

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

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 23

CONTRA MUNDUM

Matthew Flannagan Abraham and Isaac and the killing of innocents SINCE 9/11 A CHOIR OF COMMENTATORS HAVE claimed that the willingness to murder inno-

cent people in the name of God stems from the progenator of the Abrahamic faiths.

Abraham, the father of Christianity, Judaism and Islam is commended for attempting to kill his own son.

The account of this episode is arguably the most infamous passage in the Hebrew Scriptures: Then God said, [to Abraham] “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” (Genesis 22:2) Now, as anyone who has read the story knows, God intervened and prevented Abraham from killing Isaac. In the Mosaic laws that follow this story, the Prophets, Psalms and the historical books, human sacrifice is unequivocally condemned.

Notwithstanding these prohibitions, it appears inescapable that Abraham was acting on God’s commands. For this reason, it is not surprising that this story looms large in the criticisms of theological morality.

The passage appears to show that God commanded someone to do something clearly and obviously immoral.

Appearances can be deceiving. There are two issues here: the first is whether the text teaches that God commanded the killing of an innocent child, the second is whether commanding the killing of an innocent child is always immoral. For this objection to have force both these contentions must hold, I will examine each one in turn.

Turning to the first, did God command the killing of an innocent child? I think the answer is yes, but in a specific context. Let me elaborate. In Gen 12:1-2, Abraham is told, by God, that he will be the father of an entire nation, one that will have its own country. An obvious implication of this is that

Abraham believed he would have descendants, he would have a son who would live long enough to have children of his own. The text implicitly teaches here that Abraham knew, on the basis of a reliable source, that his son would live to adulthood.

This point is reiterated in several other encounters between God and Abraham. In Gen 15 “the word of the LORD” came to Abraham “in a vision.” Abraham’s response was, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

God’s answer was emphatic, “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” Abraham was told and hence knew, that his heir would

resulted in her giving birth to Ishmael.

This lead to various domestic problems including rivalry between Hagar, Ishmael and Abraham’s wife Sarah. Abraham then had another encounter with God (Gen 17:2-14) and here again God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be numerous, again implying, very clearly, that Abraham’s son would live to adulthood. This promise was signified by a covenant marked by circumcision and it was reiterated by God changing his name from Abram (exalted father) as he was called at that point in the text to Abraham (father of many). God again promised and assured Abraham that his son would grow to adulthood.

The text teaches that God commanded Abraham to kill his son in a context where Abraham knew that his son would not die but would live on after the incident be a son from his own body, a biological descendant.

The text continues, “He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’

Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” Again, the narrative implies that Abraham knew that he would both, have a biological son and that this son would live at least long enough to have children. Moreover, the passage continues with God promising, as part of a covenant, that these things will be so. Abraham clearly had assurance that God would see that his son lived into adulthood.

After this incident, Abraham made the mistake of sleeping with Hagar, which

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More specifics can be found, Gen 17:15-19 makes it crystal-clear that the promise of future descendants came through the line of Isaac who would be born of Sarah. This seemed impossible to Abraham due to the fact that his wife was barren. God, however, was emphatic and changed his wife’s name from Sarai (my princess) to Sarah (mother of nations). So Abraham was again reassured that Isaac would be born and would live at least long enough to have children of his own. This promise is to be confirmed by a seemingly impossible event, a barren woman bearing a child.

In chapter 18 the promise is again reiterated. Abraham is visited by three men who appear to represent God himself. The text

records in verse 10, “Then the LORD said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Sarah will have Abraham’s child, this is the child that will live on to adulthood to have children of his own.

If the point has not yet been be-laboured enough, when Isaac is born (Gen 21) God again makes it clear to Abraham on the day Isaac is weaned. Abraham is told in verse 12 “it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Again Abraham is reassured that Isaac will live to adulthood and have children of his own.

This narrative of several chapters is the backdrop to the events described in Gen 22.

To the astute reader reading the whole story as one block of text (note that chapter and verse divisions were not present in the original text, these were added centuries later) by the time we to get to Gen 22 both Abraham and the reader should know that Isaac is not going to die, both the reader and Abraham know that Isaac will live beyond this day to rear children of his own. The text reminds us in verse 5, just before Abraham goes up the mountain to sacrifice Isaac Abraham states to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Abraham expected Isaac to return alive.

Further, the New Testament teaches that this is the correct way to understand this passage, By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. (Hebrews 11:17-19) This is significant because Christians, at least, do not accept any and all interpretations of the Old Testament. Christians accept as authoritative the Old Testament as interpreted by the New Testament. If one attacks a different interpretation of the passage, one is attacking an interpretation Christians (should) reject and hence, one is not attacking anything Christians (should) believe or are committed to believing.

The text teaches that God commanded Abraham to kill his son in a context where Abraham knew that his son would not die but would live on after the incident. God commanding killing, in this context, needs to be shown as immoral for the objection to gain traction.

The brings us to the second question, is commanding the killing of an innocent always immoral? Here I think the answer is yes, provided a certain context is assumed.

The applicability of many moral prohibitions depend in part on certain facts about the world. Hitting someone in the head is wrong because doing so causes pain and risks harming another. However, if the physical structure of the world was different, if hitting someone in the head did not harm people but instead advanced their health and improved their quality of life then it may be permissible to hit someone in the head.

Of course, this does not show us that hitting people in the actual world is permissible because in the real world hitting people does cause harm but it does show that prohibitions rely on certain background assumptions about the effects of hitting. If these assumptions are not true then the prohibition will not hold.

Yale Philosopher John Hare develops this point in an interesting way. Hare asks us to imagine a world in which when people of a certain age are killed they immediately come back to life suffering no injury. He opines, quite plausibly, that if this were to be the case then killing people at this age would not be wrong or at least, not seriously wrong. One of the reasons that killing people is wrong in the world we live in is because people stay dead. If they were only unconscious for a split second and came back to life in full health then arguably killing a person would

not be the serious wrong we believe it is. The answer to the question, is it wrong to kill an innocent then is yes, provided a certain context is assumed.

The context where it is plausible to state that killing innocent people is seriously wrong is the very context in which the narrative shows that Abraham knew did not apply to Isaac. God commanded Abraham to kill his son in the highly unusual context where Abraham knew that he would not be deprived of an earthly life but would come down the mountain afterwards and live on to adulthood to father children of his own.

At this stage I am sure some readers will scoff, they will contend that they do not believe these stories could be literally true, they do not think God appeared to Abraham and told him any of this or that he could not know these things for certain.

This complaint is beside the point. Whether one believes the story or not, this is what the story says. If one seeks to argue that the text teaches something immoral or portrays God in a certain way then one needs to accurately portray what the text actually says.

Misrepresenting what it says and using that distortion as the basis of an argument to a conclusion is not a valid criticism of the text or the faiths that hold to those texts.

Dr Matthew Flannagan is an Auckland based philosopher/theologian who researches and publishes in the area of Philosophy of Religion, Theology and Ethics. He blogs at www.mandm.org.nz.

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A CITY R EBUILDS C H R I S T C H U R C H : T H E A F T E R M AT H

As Christchurch moves into recovery mode, the disaster has highlighted the importance of leadership and good morale in getting a swift return to normality.

IAN WISHART was in Christchurch to see the mood on the streets for himself

K

nock-knock-knockin’ on Heaven’s door...” the mellow refrain of a lone busker with a guitar greets me in central Christchurch.

For a city that’s experienced a Haiti-sized convulsion of the earth beneath 160,000 homes, it remains miraculous that no one directly knocked on Heaven’s door as a result of an earthly door falling on them.

That’s not to say there weren’t near misses.

Everywhere you turn in the garden city, there are tales of people dodging tonnes of bricks and flying heavy and sharp objects by mere 28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 29

nano-seconds. For everyone who leapt out of bed only to see the chimney crush their sleeping quarters, there are others who cowered under their pillows only to see chimneys take out the doorways they might have sheltered beneath. If the violence was random, so were the escapes.

“Everything,” Prime Minister John Key tells me during a break in the aftershaking, “from that kid who rolled out of the two storey building in Hororata right through to one of our MPs whose child had a flying fish tank miss the child’s head by about six inches. They are all remarkable stories and any one of them could have claimed a life.”

“How did anyone handle the earthquake?” ventures Leanne, a mother of two whose property was rocked and silted as sand volcanoes erupted underneath it. “Running around, running all through the house, ‘is everybody OK?’ and we couldn’t find our youngest son because he very cleverly got under his slat bed. We were feeling around trying to find him and this little voice goes, ‘I’m under my bed!’. What a good boy!”

“I got a 32 inch TV on Friday, so that was the second thing I thought about after myself,” says Leanne’s 15 year old son, Daniel. The TV survived.

“That’s the priority for a 15 year old,” nods his mum. “He saved a lot of money, worked very hard for that. But with the power out he couldn’t use it. They got the Lego out for the first time in years. I was so impressed. All we lost inside were two picture frames, but our house is now on a very interesting lean.”

“It leans towards one corner of the house,” says 10 year old Michael, “and if you put a ping pong ball on the floor it rolls toward it.”

It’s Saturday morning, exactly a week since the big one struck, and Prime Minister John Key and Christchurch mayor Bob Parker are hitting the traps together in tandem for the first major look-see in seven days. Flying into Christchurch, there’s no visible sign of the construction carnage – the houses and buildings in the airport flightpath look absolutely normal from the air. Backyard swimming pools glisten invitingly as cars traverse the streets outside. The entire plane is silent, with noses pressed to windows, as we all seek evidence of devastation that just doesn’t seem to be there.

“It was very hard from the air,” agrees John Key, “to get a sense of the destruction that’s taken place. But as soon as you got on the ground you got a greater sense of the magnitude, and an appreciation of what people had gone through.”

“Running around, running all through the house, ‘is everybody OK?’ and we couldn’t find our youngest son because he very cleverly got under his slat bed. We were feeling around trying to find him and this little voice goes, ‘I’m under my bed!’. What a good boy!”

Indeed, as the rental car gets closer to town that you notice tarpaulins where chimneys used to be. In one beautiful, leafy mansion that wouldn’t look out of place in Remuera’s Victoria Ave, it looks more like a victim of the London Blitz with a massive bomb crater in its lower roof, maybe three metres wide, where a tonne of bricks evidently crashed through.

For Key, it’s a week that began with an expletive-laden text message from his Christchurch-based sister, just a couple of minutes after the quake struck at 4.35am on Saturday September 4. In this first week

30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

of the quake, the Prime Minister has found himself cast as both Commander-in-Chief and Nurturer-in-Chief.

“The psychological effects of the earthquake are still very real for many. They’ve had over 300 aftershocks above 3 on the Richter scale in just the first few days,” explains Key. “They’re just people who are terrified about going to bed, they can’t get enough sleep, families are sleeping together in one room, they’re fearful that their home environment is damaged anyway. When you put all that together it’s a recipe for a lot

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 31

of anxiety, and that’s something I probably hadn’t thought through: it’s one thing having an earthquake, it’s another thing living with all these constant aftershocks.”

The Prime Minister’s first official duty this spring morning is a tour of the Christchurch sewage plant. There to greet him, amid a throng of waiting news media, is the face of the Civil Defence preparedness campaign on TV, Peter Elliott who, like everyone else, is stunned at the damage. But inside the plant, there’s a chance to laugh as well, when Mayor Bob Parker announces plans for a morale-boosting relief concert.

“We could get members of the cabinet on guitar or drums,” jokes Parker.

“You’ve obviously never seen my musical ability,” quips Key. “Gerry’s the man you want,” he adds, looking across to Emergency Minister Gerry Brownlee.

“John’s a great dancer, you’ve gotta see him,” fires back Brownlee, “and if you think he’s smart in politics you should see him on stage. He must be deeply upset they’ve stopped Dancing With The Stars.”

32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

“Yeah,” grins Key, “I’m proof that white men can’t dance.”

“Move over Rodney!”

As the room erupts in more cackling, Parker brings it back to focus: “So we’re going to celebrate. The miraculous fact is we got through this thing. Nobody perished as a direct result of the sort of things that happen in earthquakes, and we think that’s something worth celebrating.”

As John Key admits after seeing how quickly Christchurch services have come back online, it’s a tribute to the human spirit.

“Civil Defence has worked extremely well.

In the first instance it’s personal responsibility and people knowing what to do, and for the most part Kiwis have an appreciation of earthquakes and are sensible enough to get themselves into a place where they can provide themselves with the most protection, but from there it’s kicked in really well, whether it’s the emergency services,

civil defence protocols, and you’ve got to say Bob Parker’s really stood up and shown his leadership.”

You’ve got to hand it to Bob. Twenty points behind Jim Anderton in the opinion polls for the Christchurch mayoralty before the earth moved, you get the sense Parker truly appreciates the significance of the comment when he calls the earthquake “a miracle”.

“There’s a joke doing the rounds of Christchurch at the moment,” grins one voter, “that old Bob had been storing up and burying C4 plastic explosive at key points around the city and that he caused the quake! But seriously, he deserves another three years. Sure, the Ellerslie Flower Show purchase was a fiasco, and sure, there are big questions about the council’s bailout of [entrepreneur] David Henderson, but they pale into insignificance compared to what this rebuild is going to cost and what the city INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 33

needs. Parker has stepped up, and I think voters will acknowledge that.”

On this sunny Saturday morning, on a silt-laden Bexley street, the mayor patiently listens to residents’ complaints, takes on some of their points, and pays homage to their stoicism.

“Listen everybody, we just want to say that we actually think you guys are heroes. We know what you’ve been through. We know how tough it’s been. And you are absolutely remarkable people. You just need to know that although it’s been a terrible place for you to be, you’ve inspired a hell of a lot of people with your Canterbury spirit. We’re trying to get everything back to normal for you.”

“You’re doing a great job, Bob!” says mother of two, Leanne. Parker just smiles.

“Well, you guys are just remarkable.”

The mayor has barely slept in seven days, and at times you can see the cogs in his brain whirring as they struggle to engage.

The job is as much cheerleading a worried populace as it is restoring services. The swift response of Civil Defence, Christchurch City Council, the Government and aid agencies ensured public panic was, for the most part short-lived. The only fly in that ointment has been the aftershocks.

Overall, both Parker and John Key are pleased at the response of both officials, and the public.

“Sometimes the media forget that the first port of call has to be with individuals themselves,” says Key,” because, quite frankly, [Civil Defence director] John Hamilton can only live in one location at the one time. The Civil Defence minister was actually up in Northland when he got a phone call about 5am, and he was smart enough to get himself on a plane down to Wellington pretty rapidly. So it does take a little bit of time, but I think they have improved.”

With so many heritage buildings damaged and water and sewage pipes harmed, Christchurch has, to some extent, had its heart ripped out. But Key doesn’t see recovery as “overly daunting”.

“Yeah, it’s substantial but not beyond our means and not overly daunting. I think we’ve got it within our capability to get Canterbury back up on its feet relatively quickly. The first issue is core infrastructure which is quite rigid in nature – if you think about electricity, water and waste water they are connected in a rigid set of pipes and wires so when you get a big seismic move like this they just break apart.

“For wastewater we might, potentially,

“Yeah, it’s substantial but not beyond our means and not overly daunting. I think we’ve got it within our capability to get Canterbury back up on its feet relatively quickly” – John Key have to put piping above the ground while we repair underground, just to maintain capability, but putting that to one side, once you have that re-established you can put yourself in position to start recovery and start rebuilding.

“The next step is going to have to be decisions about our desire to rebuild on some of the sites. Liquefaction is not a new concept and under the right conditions it can harden the ground and create a better environment

34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

than when it started, so there’s some talk of whole suburbs being evacuated but I’m not convinced that’s right.

“ECAN’s been putting liquefaction on all the LIM reports for the last six or seven years as I understand it, but no one has taken any notice. That’s one of the challenges going forward – how much attention are people going to pay?”

Driving around the city on this first Saturday after the quake, you get the impres-

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 35

sion people are paying quite a bit of attention at present. Every street virtually has removal trucks parked, being loaded up as householders evacuate prized possessions and memories from hazardous structures.

L

eanne’s house has shifted, and been siltbombed, but at this stage she and her family are staying.

“It’s on piles, and it has kind of all moved as one unit. There’s a few cracks in the masonry so hopefully they’ll be able to lift it. Because it won’t be good for resale if they don’t! Who’s going to buy a house like this?

“We stayed in it all the way through. We had many offers from family and friends to come and stay with them but we really wanted to be at home. We managed because we had family and a place that had water and power, so we were going over there to fill water bottles, do a load of washing, have a shower, then coming home. We appreciate the things like power and water now.”

“I think we’ve come through it much better than some others,” says the youngest, “other people, their house is completely ruined, they can’t go back into it and it has to be demolished. We’ve got a couple of cracks and our house is on a lean. Apparently sales of anxiety pills and alcohol have gone way up.”

“We’re very grateful, very grateful,” agrees Leanne. “It’s just like camping. Glass of wine the other night helped me sleep for longer than four hours.”

Some homeowners, anecdotally, are reporting difficulties with insurance assessors. One couple I speak to explain how their house shifted, but the insurance company is refusing to cover the foundational damage “because it claims the piles were bad”. The house is a century old, its piles are not easily accessible. The insurance policy is fully paid up, but if they can’t get an insurance payout they won’t qualify for the $100,000 EQC payout either.

Prime Minister Key says the insurance problem is highlighting a number of issues.

“I think there are some wider questions that will need to be asked and answered around insurance generally. You can already see a number of editorials suggesting the EQC levy should not be voluntary – that would be a pretty big call to move to a compulsory levy but it’s natural that people are now raising that issue.

“Having said that, 95 % of homes are insured. Secondly, we’ll need to look at individual cases if insurance companies are refus-

36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

ing to pay out, and sort of kick the tyres to find out why that is. I would be very concerned if someone has a genuine insurance policy but is not being paid out. We’d need to go and push a bit harder on that – it sounds awfully harsh to me.”

K

ey’s visit coincides with a brief burst of publicity about the possibility of inviting public investment in “infrastructure bonds” as a way of funding major construction and infrastructure projects in this country.

“They are definitely a possibility,” admits Key, “if not for Christchurch then certainly for wider infrastructure projects, because we want New Zealanders to save more and we’re certainly encouraging them to widen out their portfolio from just property, and if that’s the case we’ve got to give them alternatives. I would have thought, given the government’s support behind infrastructure bonds, they’d present a real opportunity for us. Whether they’ll work in Christchurch I’m not sure, we’ll have to look at that, but on the wider basis I think they should be made available.”

I look at the damage Christchurch has sustained in a mostly flat environment, and then speak out the obvious question: What if a bang this big hits a city perched on hills and cliffs like Wellington? Are there some urgent lessons to be taken from Christchurch?

“I think that’s a very good question. We always undertake a full debrief and review when there’s a major civil defence emergency, and we’ll certainly do that In Christchurch.

My helicopter analysis at the moment is that things have worked very well but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons we can learn.

“The second thing is it shows you the strength of the building code and the quality of workmanship in New Zealand – an earthquake the same size as the quake in Haiti and claimed 230,000 lives there, and no one was killed in NZ. Now it’s a blessing that this was the case in NZ, and slightly fortuitous given the time that the quake occurred, but even so it shows you that we have much better quality buildings. But even so, we’ll need to go away and have a look at new buildings that were damaged and ask good questions about why that was the case.”

Derek and Lisa Hartley-Saunders, like many Christchurch residents, appreciate the fact they and children Grace, Noah and Oscar, survived unscathed, although in this first week they’ve all been confined to the one INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 37

bedroom. Cracks appeared in the chimney backing onto Grace’s bed – the old flue for the kitchen coal range. Grace is not keen on returning to her room.

Theirs, like many homes, appears outwardly unscathed. Indeed you can drive down entire leafy Christchurch streets with no sign there’s ever been an earthquake, but when you get up close the damage is unmistakable.

“The porch is on a lean there,” indicates Derek with a wave towards the skewed pillars holding up the roof over the main entrance.

Inside the house the old ping-pong ball trick shows the slope, although you can feel it as you walk in – like the sloping deck of a ship.

Their house has warped, and the ground under the driveway rose 8 inches, slamming into the base of a boundary fence that once had a gap big enough for cats to sneak under.

Not any more. Saunders counts his blessings that his home is on rockier soil than in other parts of the city.

“Isn’t there something in the Bible about the dangers of building a house on sand?” he recalls. “This city is built on the stuff.”

O

ut in the suburbs, where Key and Parker are glad-handing stressed locals, it’s the little things that are flustering people.

“I missed the water truck about five times, because I couldn’t see it,” complains one resident, who says the council needs a loudhailer or siren to attract residents’ attention.

“We might need a Mr Whippy thing on the top”, suggests the mayor.

Emergency Minister Gerry Brownlee is deep in conversation with a group wanting to know if their sections are still safe to rebuild on.

“Once they’ve worked out what the geotech stuff is, then the insurers can step in.

I know it’s disconcerting,” says Brownlee.

“Well we can’t say that we weren’t warned,” agrees his questioner. “Because we’ve known about the risk of liquefaction here for 20 or 30 years. We’ve put it aside in the too hard basket. We’ve been aware of it but we hoped this day would never come.”

Brownlee nods in agreement: “I’ll tell you, most of Christchurch you’ll find on the property information memorandum that we’re subject to liquefaction, and for years we’ve all looked at it and thought, ‘oh well, this is Christchurch’.”

A woman from next door interrupts, hoping the Minister can enlighten her.

“We haven’t been told whether we’re

allowed to use our dishwashers, use our showers and stuff, nobody has said. We’ve got water back on but nobody has said anything about it. If everybody starts using baths and showers, what’s going to happen to us? There needs to be a loudspeaker coming through.”

“I’ll get that looked at,” assures Brownlee.

“It’s been a very interesting week. To say the least. It’s been a shocker! But even though it may not feel like it, we’re in a lot better shape than we could be.”

Another neighbour interjects: “Speaking as someone with a sewer line running up my driveway, we’re very concerned that if everyone starts flushing their toilets we’re going

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to be swimming in poo. The fact that we have portaloos in our street is probably an indication they don’t want us to.”

“We’ve already had a broken pipe in the front of our house – we had a swimming pool there the other day,” exclaims another.

“Well you can call it a waterfront property and increase the value!” jokes one of the neighbours.

For John Key, the gallows humour and stoic bonhomie mask the deeper problem: what happens when the adrenalin runs out?

“We need to make sure we provide the right support services to Canterbury to deal with that issue, because this is not a quick fix. Once the aftershocks stop, for a lot of

Cantabrians normality will resume, but for a huge number their home is damaged, sometimes beyond repair, there will be a big rebuilding project for infrastructure assets, and people will be engaged in this project for years, not months. So we need to make sure that we give people a chance to regroup and to make sensible decisions – that we don’t rush into things. I think that’s really important when you think about things like liquefaction risk, that we don’t make a silly decision based on the back of emotion when everybody is tired.

“At the very worst of times you see the very best of New Zealand. This has been a good example of that.” q INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 39

Gardasil:

IT’S WRECKED MY LIFE One teenager’s story Seventeen year old Kahlia was a Rotary Exchange student, on top of the world, until she got the Gardasil jab in the Manawatu last year.

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2

009 was a year I thought I could only ever dream of but it all became true when I set out and accomplished a Rotary Youth Exchange Year in America. I returned home at the start of this year ready to complete my seventh form year at Feilding High School, certain of what I wanted to do with my future. At the end of January I went to have a check up with my doctor. It was discussed that while I was away I missed getting the HPV/Cervical Cancer Vaccine and after reading the pamphlet I agreed to having it been done. Straight away I had my first of three shots, thinking nothing of it, after all it sounded like it was just another vaccine with maybe a sore arm or headache as a side effect.

A couple of hours after slight changes started taking place. I was suffering from headaches, nausea and dizziness and over the next month more symptoms progressed including fainting, moodiness, fatigue and loss of concentration. One Saturday morning, nearly an exact month after the vaccine I woke up feeling “not normal” and the whole day I was lethargic and uncomfortable. That night I started suffering severe chest pains, loss of breath and a tingling and numb feeling in my left arm, leg and the left side of my face. After spending hours waiting in A&E the doctors ran blood tests and x-rays to see what was happening. When they came back all clear the doctors wanted to send me home, ignoring my mother telling them that I had a reaction once before to the Oral Contraceptive Pill like this one without the tingling and numb feeling. So I went home early Sunday morning.

Monday morning I woke up with a purple left leg, unable to bear any weight on that side, unable to even bend my knee. As both my parents were at work I struggled to get around the house, spending the whole day

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 41

”I was seventeen years old and I used to take walking, dressing myself and showering for granted and now I was unable to do this” resting up on the couch. My mother was worrying as my condition was worsening by the minute so took me to see a local doctor as my GP was unavailable. I hopped into his practice with my now swollen left leg. My mum had to lift my left leg up as I couldn’t myself, causing me to cry in pain as the doctor measured my leg. It was three centimetres in circumference bigger than the other.

An ambulance was called to get me quickly to the hospital as the doctor suspected I had a blood clot in my leg.

Once at A&E again I was put into a room and forgotten about, not seeing a doctor for a couple of hours. I was again lethargic, unable to get comfortable and slowly losing the ability to walk. Blood tests and x-rays again came back clear so the doctors wanted me to be sent home however my mother stood up for me seeing as the doctors weren’t and I couldn’t. I was then transferred upstairs into a ward which I thought would only be for a day or two. This soon grew to a couple of weeks.

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I was put in a room with three men. Their conditions were all visible and the doctor knew somewhat of what was happening with them. I however suffered the unknown which was the scariest part and I was the youngest in the room also the only one who had to be wheeled to wherever I wanted to go, assisted to be showered and dressed.

This really got me down as I was seventeen years old and I used to take walking, dressing myself and showering for granted and now I was unable to do this. After a couple of days and loads of tests, a physiotherapist was sent to assess me. The physio got me using a zimmerframe to gain a little bit of my independence back; I now could use my right arm to support me on the frame and right leg to push the frame along to get to and from the bathroom. The three men

in the room with me really supported me and kept me focussed to help me get better.

When I had a bad day they never asked me about it they just carried on, keeping my spirits high. We had bets on who would be the first to get out and leave and who would be the last. I really thought I would be the first but turns out I was by far the last.

All up I spent about a month in hospital, some of this spent in the rehabilitation ward to get me walking again. I had every test possible and a lot of the doctors confused.

The doctors started questioning my mental health which really hurt. They thought that I was putting it all on which I couldn’t understand because if I was making this up, why was my leg purple and not to mention freezing cold to touch?

In hospital I feel I was treated with disrespect from the doctors especially when I mentioned an adverse reaction to the vaccine, it was like I was some sort of nutcase.

It is hard enough dealing, accepting and going through everything I go through on a daily basis but it’s even harder when no one believes you. They say there are a small percentage of people who can react, so why couldn’t they accept I am in that small percentile.

get my own drink and venture out for a run or something. It was like I was locked up in a world against me, everything I wanted to do I couldn’t.

I tried alternative therapy and found that Auric Magnetic Healing seemed to have worked wonders the first time I went, it was more than what the doctors had done.

I was able to walk a lot better so after that I decided to try and go back to school. My teachers, deans and peers were all very supportive however I struggled immensely.

Normally at school I didn’t seem to struggle much and concentration was as easy as

breathing now I had trouble to concentrate and remember things. There are days that I would see one of my friends and totally forget their names. It wasn’t a ‘senior moment’ as some people would classify it because of two things; one, I’m nowhere near becoming a ‘senior’ member of society even though I relied on a zimmerframe for quite some time and two, it wasn’t only momentarily, it wouldn’t come to me after a couple of minutes, I would spend the whole day trying to remember or listening to see if anyone else would say it to help me remember. So after a week and a half of trying I decided it wasn’t

“It was like I was locked up in a world against me, everything I wanted to do I couldn’t”

A

fter a month of fighting with the doctors and been cooped up in what I now called ‘the prison’ I demanded to be discharged and the doctors agreed. I felt no need to be in hospital anymore as really they weren’t doing anything for me, they had kind of just given up. My physio appointed through-out my stay in hospital really helped me get through everything, someone who was more neutral to talk to and supported and encouraged me no matter what. I continued physio for approximately a month after and found that even though I found pain in doing some of the exercises, it got me moving a lot more which meant I advanced to crutches and then walking alone which again was not normal, I now have to think about it each time I take a step.

Being at home after being in hospital for so long was weird. From being able to freely get around my house probably even with my eyes closed once before was something I also took for granted, I always thought that my home was somewhere limits were set where me or my parents set them, not where or where not it was possible to get. I was no longer able to shower standing, needing assistance to get in and out of the shower for some time, unable to drive myself, carry/ INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 43

for me to go back to school even though one of my dreams was to go to university.

I was the sort of girl that was highly organised and I had an exact plan for my life, I knew what I wanted but that all changed when I got the vaccine. As I lost the ability to walk and concentrate I watched my dreams crumble around my feet. I’m no longer a fun person to be around; every ad I see or hear about the Gardasil vaccine it cuts another little piece of my heart out, causing me to be a dull, hatred-filled person, someone I despise. I guess I have realised you can dream about what you want and plan out the perfect future for yourself but life is full of obstacles and some of them may include a better path for yourself, just taking a harder course to get there. Saying this I hope that this will bring something good to my life, hopefully I can inspire other people of what I’ve gotten through. It’s easy for me to say this but much harder to actually accept this when my health is forever still giving me grief. To this day I continue taking all my pain medication, the same stuff I have been on for the last seven months. I still suffer from the same pain in my left side; I cannot feel the underside of my left foot, chest pains and much more. I believe my immune system has been attacked as now I seem to pick up any little infection, visiting my doctor at least once a week.

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s an eighteen year old girl I’m not speaking out about this for sympathy or attention but because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. No one deserves what not only me and many other girls but also our families, have gone through. I’m normally a bubbly, positive, outgoing teenager but now that has all changed affecting my family as well. I don’t like being in public places in anything other than pants that fully cover my sometimes purple leg which still gives me trouble while I’m walking. I fear the questions, the looks and thoughts from others. My first outing from hospital I experienced all of this and now it has completely stripped me of my personality and all the confidence I once obtained. Not only did I see it affect me but my sister who was shocked to see how obnoxious people are towards others who may slightly be walking different or something. The reactions I got tore at my sister’s heart as she knew it was ripping up mine.

No matter what the doctors may say I fully believe what I have is an adverse reaction to the vaccine. They say that there is no way

“I’m normally a bubbly, positive, outgoing teenager but now that has all changed affecting my family as well” to prove that it was that that caused all this but there is also no way to prove it wasn’t the vaccine and isn’t it enough; my vaccine site is still tender, everything that seemed to happen happened on the left side of my body, the same side as the arm the vaccine

44 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

was injected into and if you go on the government health website (www.medsafe.govt. nz), a lot of what I suffered is listed on their possible side effects list. Why this is not also stated on their pamphlet is a mystery to me but I think everyone should know that this vaccine is not all what is cracked up to be.

I don’t blame my doctor for suggesting the vaccine and I don’t blame the nurse who gave me the vaccine because they were just doing what they have been told is right. I do however blame myself a lot alongside the New Zealand government who let this vaccine come into our country even though it hasn’t been properly tested. The New Zealand government were advised to wait a couple of years to see what the vaccine was actually like and the affects it would have on

other girls around the world but they rushed into it, not really doing their homework. I should have looked into the vaccine more myself before getting it to research the risks but I guess when we are told something is going to help you by people we trust, like our own government, we don’t second guess them and we listen and now I am angry at myself for putting my health in the hands of people who don’t seem to actually care.

There are many, many more cases like mine not only in New Zealand but all over the world. India has banned the vaccine in their country because of the risks where as the British Health System were rewarding girls with shopping vouchers if they get the vaccine.

Now if this doesn’t ring warning bells I have no idea what does. It’s like the government

has a deal with the drug company to encourage this dangerous vaccine that isn’t actually proven to reduce the world’s population or something because to see how this is effecting so many girls you would think the government would care and stop this. Even though I’m still suffering loads of side effects and living a life that I would have never planned and still trying to come to terms with, I’m going to say that I’m one of the lucky ones. I came so close to death but obviously it wasn’t my time to go. I feel sorry for the families who actually lost girls to the vaccine so as I continue fighting my health battles daily I hope more people out there become aware of what this vaccine is actually like and help me and many others, fight the battle of having it stopped.

q

“I don’t like being in public places in anything other than pants that fully cover my sometimes purple leg which still gives me trouble while I’m walking”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 45

PROFITS OF THE NEW AGE

A STORY ABOUT A QUESTIONABLE CHARITY, AND THEIR CHARISMATIC GURU

Barely a month goes by without a media report somewhere complaining about tithing in Christian churches, yet there’s virtually never mention of the multi-hundred dollar fees being charged by New Age speakers, Eastern yogis and various others who tour the world preaching to the public and corporate retreats. BETHANY WRIGHT spent time inside the world of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

H

e’s the enigmatic, bearded, diminutive leader of one of the world’s biggest Non Government Organisations, the Art of Living Foundation.

Born into a business family in Bangalore, South India, the son of a medical astrologer, Ravi Shankar, or His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as he now likes to be known, is a guru to millions. He is the fifth most powerful man in India according to Forbes power list for 2009, whose pronouncements regularly make their way into Indian newspapers. He is regularly invited to address the United Nations, and has met with President Bush in the White House.

When he’s not flying around the world visiting his followers and teaching courses he resides as a kind of spiritual lord over a sprawling 24 hectare ashram near Bangalore, the main meditation hall of which is in the shape of a multi level wedding cake. He recently visited Auckland in April, as a guest of the local branch of his organisation “The

Art of Living Foundation” an international charity which has had a presence on these shores for about 12 years.

Shankar, or Guruji as he’s fondly referred to by followers, has been called the subcontinent’s “hottest New Age Guru”. The organisation of which he is founder, the Art of Living Foundation, has a presence in 151 countries (according to Shankar in interview with Tribune newspaper, 2nd March 2010), with large ashrams or centres in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Texas, California, and all over India. Smaller ashrams exist also in Poland, Russia, Argentina, Brazil, and Israel. The New Zealand chapter of AOL, a charitable trust, has plans to create a large centre somewhere in Auckland in the near future. It regularly holds courses to teach Mr. Shankar’s trademarked yogic breathing technique, the Sudarshana Kriya, as well as other types of personal development courses, and members regularly gather for “satsangs” in all of New Zealand’s main cities to sing songs of praise to their master.

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To many of his supporters Shankar is practically God himself. Many believe that by becoming his devotee their fortunes will change for the better, bad karma will be burned up, problems solved, and they will be transformed. His teachings are heavily influenced by Hinduism, and he has claimed at various times to be the reincarnation of Krishna, Shiva, Adi Shankar, Jesus Christ,

and the Buddha. The AOL has grown rapidly in the last 20 years, winning UN affiliation in 1996. Shankar was invited to address the UN on its 50th Birthday. However Shankar and his organisations are not free of criticism.

One ex-insider, calling himself “Klim”, a former AOL teacher in the USA, has set up a website (ArtofLivingFree blogspot) for

“To many of his supporters Shankar is practically God himself. Many believe that by becoming his devotee their fortunes will change for the better, bad karma will be burned up, problems solved, and they will be transformed” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 47

ex-AOL devotees and teachers to share their experiences. This blog and web forum has become a focal point for the escalating numbers of ex-devotees who are highly critical of the AOL, has become a serious thorn in the side of this hybrid sect – charity. It contains stories alleging financial corruption, bullying, hypocrisy, and cult-like behaviour.

The US branch of AOL has felt the need to set up another website to counter it, called Artoflivingfreefree.

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evertheless, with its powerful free speech laws, there is little Mr Shankar and the AOL can do to stop Artoflivingfree.org. Many different ex-teachers are revealing their disquiet about the AOL. Klim, for instance, recounts how as a AOL teacher he took part in a type of course called DSN in which course participants at one stage are asked to sit in what is called “the hot chair”, in which they must stoically endure being criticised by other participants and the teacher as a way of learning to take things less personally. Klim felt there was some valid wisdom in this if the criticism was constructive, but in his experience the criticism often degenerated into outright abuse eg.

I remember a woman being yelled horrible words, including “slut!!! bitch!!!” just because she has big breasts. A gay man was called, “Fagget!” and many other demeaning things related to his sexuality. Another, who confessed she had been beaten up by her husband and had an abortion, which she still, 20 years later, felt guilty about, was yelled, “You deserved to be beaten up! Look at you! Who would want to be born to you! You deserved it! You bitch!”

Can someone please explain how this can help anyone in a positive way?” –Klim One of the common themes is the grandiosity of Mr Shankar. Klim recalls Sri Sri yelling once at him, “I am nature! It flows through me! Nature does what I tell it to do!

Don’t you understand?” A common story told by many AOL teachers is that Sri Sri makes it rain on the last day of a course. I personally think it is great to be confident, but if someone really could do such a thing as control the weather, surely they wouldn’t feel the need to tell people about it?

Another big criticism is over what happens with the money from courses. Critics say that his charitable organisations, with their tax exemption statuses, Vyakti Vikas Kendra in India, the international Art of Living Foundation, and its sister organisation, the International Association for Human Values,

are not charities but really businesses. They claim most of the money donated towards charitable causes promoted by AOL and Mr Shankar, and most of the money earned through charging fees for their various manifold teaching courses, is pumped into the bank accounts of the Shankar family, or used for AOL business ventures, land grabs around the Bangalore Ashram, land purchases in the USA for various Shankar family members, and 5 star hotel stays for Mr Shankar as he jets first class around the world. They also contend that the AOL has all the hallmarks of a slick cult.

So who is right? According to his followers Mr Shankar is a “world renowned spiri-

“There can be no doubt that Mr Shankar is almost astonishingly articulate. You only get the true flavour and power of his talks if you read or hear them in full… he seems to speak to your soul as he addresses your secret innermost worries, confusions, and desires” tual master and humanitarian”. His AOL Foundation is UN affiliated since 1996, which gives it an air of credence as a respectable charity. Many a follower will attest to their lives having been turned around, their health restored, through doing the AOL’s 16 hour basic course which teaches Shankar’s special breathing technique, the Sudarshana Kriya. The claim is often made by the AOL that serious diseases like diabetes, heart disease, back problems, and asthma can be helped by performing sudarshana kriya for 30 minutes every day, 20 minutes of which consists of preparatory breathing exercises (pranayama), and 10 minutes the actual kriya. A longer more powerful version of

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this kriya, lasting 30 minutes, only to be done in the presence of a specially trained teacher using taped instructions from the guru himself, is recommended to be done weekly to gain full benefits.

Other courses such as the 3 day residential “Advanced course” which teaches a blend of yogic meditations, mudras, and wisdom, or the DSN course designed to spiritualise and strengthen participants personalities, are mystically regarded by members of the AOL community as being even more transformative. The pinnacle of achievement is to fly to Bangalore [yogic or jet? – Ed.] to be trained as a teacher (at a cost of several thousand dollars), or to attend an Advanced course personally taught by the master himself (in Europe, the USA, India and Bali). All of these courses cost a lot of money: the basic course in NZ costs $250 (in the US between $200 and $400); an advanced course approximately $450, while to attend one of the periodic Balinese Advanced courses with Guruji, costs US$800, excluding airfares.

Participants don’t seem to begrudge paying such fees, especially as it is implied by AOL teachers, local chapter trustees and committee members that most of the money is used in the relief of poverty and trauma.

Short promotional films about the AOL, periodically shown at meetings, always talk about the philanthropic works AOL money goes towards, with shots of earthquake victims learning sudarshana kriya, or food being handed out to poor children.

Mention is always made of AOLs UN affiliation which would seem to authenticate their trustworthiness.

Then there is all the spiritual knowledge.

Like another famous international guru, Osho, Mr Shankar is highly intelligent, articulate, and witty. His talks, available on CDs, DVDs, and in books, attest to a man who is sophisticated and seemingly knows about the deep truths of life, eg. “Love is beyond definition. You can say that it is your natural self when you are free of tension, when you feel at home. There is no way you can be made to know what love is other than through your Self. Love is not just an emotion, it is your existence, it is what you are made up of. To know this you have to drop all the tensions and feel really free.” (from the book, Wisdom for the New Millennium). “With silence inside, you can hear the birds and the rhythm between their voices, the timing between their singing.

It is so perfect, so melodious. It is such a wonderful phenomenon in creation! A bird sings in rhythm, have you ever observed?” (from

his book, God Loves Fun). One of his most famous statements is, “Unless we have a stressfree mind and a violence free society, we cannot achieve world peace.”

There can be no doubt that Mr Shankar is almost astonishingly articulate. You only get the true flavour and power of his talks if you read or hear them in full. Like other great orators, such as Osho, Churchill, and Presidents Roosevelt and Obama, he seems to speak to your soul as he addresses your secret innermost worries, confusions, and desires. His words are seemingly simple, yet he weaves complex ideas out of them as he touches your heart, and dazzles you with the beauty of his sentiments. He tells you to doubt words, “Words are very shallow. The day we realize words are incompetent, that they are shallow, we have gained some depth in life.”, and yet it is through words that he enchants you.

Shankar comes across as a saintly figure, with his long hair and beard, and flowing white garments. Indeed there are subliminal reminders of Jesus in many of his publicity shots which are surely calculated to appeal to Western subconsciouses. For example, on the cover of his most famous book Celebrating Silence there is the photo of Mr Shankar with his back turned as he walks away alongside a large lake or inland sea girded by bare hills. Wearing flowing white and pale yellow robes Mr Shankar is reminiscent of Jesus in the scriptures, walking beside the sea of Gallilee. His face with its Tamil features cannot be seen. It doesn’t occur to you at first that this photo is a powerful piece of marketing.

The Art of Living purports to be helping people lead better lives, and markets a breathing technique which may sometimes be exaggerated in some of its claimed benefits, yet still may be beneficial in some people’s lives. I myself feel that after doing it regularly over a long period my lungs became stronger and healthier, although it did nothing for me at one stage when I went through a period of deep unhappiness.

Another friend of mine said she noticed no effect at all over a period of many weeks.

The teachings of His Holiness it could be argued are just the teachings of the Vedic scriptures and other gurus like Osho, cleverly and pithily repackaged in everyday language, but it could be argued they are doing more good than harm, even if they are not divinely inspired. In sugared words Mr Shankar and his teachers exhort often alienated spiritually lost people to be more

loving, forgiving, to be more joyful, to find a deeper purpose in life beyond materialism – and that is harmless and on the good side of the ledger isn’t it?

Maybe. Maybe not. There are some reasons for concern, critics say, as to why Shankar and his organisations need to come under greater scrutiny and why potential participants to courses ought to be cautious of them. The US False Guru watching website “Guruphiliac” has a multitude of blog entries critiquing Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the AOL. Its colourful founder, Jody Radzik, is apt to joke that the AOL juggernaut is full of followers who have metaphorically swallowed SriSri’s “Kool aid” and become mindcontrolled zombies, who unquestioningly obey the partyline. He alleges the AOL has many shady features.

What are some of these questionable features? First of all there are serious allegations

“Shankar comes across as a saintly figure, with his long hair and beard, and flowing white garments. Indeed there are subliminal reminders of Jesus in many of his publicity shots”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 49

of false advertising. Are his organisations really charities? Critics contend it is more accurate to describe them as businesses masquerading as charities. Mr Shankar is promoted as a “world renowned spiritual leader and humanitarian” in AOL advertising and so one would expect his charities and himself as founder to be acting to the highest of standards; ie. Rigorous independent audits, documents being provided to the public to show where donations and profits from courses go, evidence that beyond photo opportunities, Mr Shankar is involved in overseeing the implementation of many of the vaunted charitable works his organisations supposedly do and for which he gets so much credit, annual financial reports, etc. Unfortunately few of these things seem to be happening.

Second of all, there are now, world-wide, many ex-longterm AOL teachers and insiders who are alleging that after years of selfless, largely unpaid or lowly paid work for the AOL, they have left very disillusioned, feeling ripped off and spiritually empty.

Some ex- teachers have even spoken of feeling “spiritually raped” due to cultic aspects of mind control that operate most strongly at the core. They have had to go through

a period of deprogramming and counselling to get out of the mental confusion and spiritual malaise they were in. Some speak of feeling depressed for a long time in the last years of their membership: “In the years before leaving, I had gradually ”lost faith”. A clinical depression, lasting several years, had not lifted, despite SSRS’s claim that “I was in a difficult astrological phase, and it would get better next year”. A trip to India, personally invited by SSRS to travel with him, left me feeling empty and even more depressed than before. There were no answers to be found in the Holy Land. Personal time with the Master turned out to be... well, boring. And the hysteria, the manipulation of devotees and the general bad craziness was worse than ever before.

“One day, sitting in the throes of deep depression, with suicidal thoughts, I suddenly realized: He won’t be able to save me. In fact, no-one will come to save me. I am alone, and I have to face up to that reality. In that very moment, my three-year long depression lifted, just like that. I also lost the last shreds of faith in the Guru as a person of supernatural power, able to communicate with and influence people through metaphysical means.” – Nick

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Thirdly there is the idea within the AOL that Mr. Shankar is an incarnation of the Divine, whereas it could be argued there are signs he has encouraged an unhealthy cult of personality within his groups, and rather humanly tries to self aggrandize himself.

Let’s look at each of these points in more detail.

1) Sham Charities

Officially, in its own words the Art of Living Foundation is “an international, non-profit educational organisation”. In the words of one of its representatives, “You cannot do charity out of an empty bowl. We do programs, we earn money and we spend it on charity.” I have been a participant in some of the various courses they teach here in New Zealand, which are taught to the same formula worldwide, and you are definitely led to believe most of the money paid for the courses is going towards charity – charitable works in NZ, schooling for poor children in India, digging wells for poor Indian farmers etc.

Course teachers take only a 10% stipend, and the AOL pays no taxes, so profits are high.

Sadly there appears to be little documentation to back this up. The AOL NZ chapter is

registered with the Charities Commission as a charitable trust, to enable it to be tax exempt as required by NZ law. On the CC website it lists the sectors where it performs charity as being health, education, community development, social services, international activities (?), fund-raising, and promotion of volunteering (whatever that means!).

According to its Application Record to the CC it lists its main activity as being “yoga, meditation & spirituality”, and that it offers no grants to individuals or organisations, no services, no advocacy or information etc. It says its main charitable activity is providing human resources (ie. Volunteers), and the main beneficiary is the general public.

You have to ask then, if its main charitable activity is teaching yoga and providing volunteers why is it charging handsomely for all of its courses, and why is there so little evidence of any volunteer work? And why do the organisers of its courses keep telling participants that the money they pay

involves no expenditure by the AOL. The trees and equipment are entirely provided by the council, the volunteers are not even paid costs. There is some evidence that a few AOL members also occasionally entertain elderly people in rest homes; once again this involves no cost to the actual organisation. When I was an active member you only very occasionally heard about this Rest home activity which it did half heartedly in conjunction with the main organiser the Sai Baba Service Organisation, along with sometimes contributing to another longterm SBSO project, regular blood donations. Once again it is to be noted that these activities involved no expenditure on the part of AOLF which fits with its statements in the Application Record to the Charities Commission (it’s main charitable activity is providing “human resources”), though not with what the AOL keeps telling or at least inferring to course participants (money from course fees is used to relieve poverty

it supposedly involves the organising of an annual “lunch-time” rally in the downtowns of Auckland ,Wellington, and Christchurch, with some music, handing out a few promotional materials, and organising some VIP speakers on the issue of poverty. My inside sources tell me that the directive came from the Bangalore Ashram – in other words Sri Sri – that core funds not be used, but must be fundraised separately via donations and sponsorships. Anyway, the Auckland rally’s cost for 2007 was in the vicinity of $5,000, in my view a miserly amount to justify their charitable status even if this was taken (against orders) from course takings (core funds). Put it this way: according to its own records there was a total gross income of $162,761 for the financial year ended 31 March 2009. If they are taking in 160 grand p.a. or so, and spend a pittance or nothing of that on charity, can it really be said they are a charity? The ASB and Westpac Banks, hard headed businesses whose bottom line

“So where does AOL NZ put all the money it collects in the name of charity? Are any of its officers or teachers benefiting financially from their activities? Does it provide any charitable benefit, apart from some scanty volunteering, to the public of New Zealand in order to justify tax exemption for its course fees?” is going to be used for charitable purposes, when it is clear from the AOL’s own legal documents on the Charities Commission website that it spends no money on charitable acts? Everything it offers it charges for, apart from some intermittent volunteering.

According to its most recently published financial accounts up on the CC website (1 April ‘08 – 31 March’09) it teaches a few of its educational courses in Christchurch prisons (and has in the past taught them in Auckland) – but it receives around $800 for each course according to my research.

All up for that financial year this charity was granted $6,586 from the tax purse for its prison programmes. Members have told me how in Auckland it has adopted a section of a Henderson stream and volunteers periodically go and plant native trees there as part of a Waitakere City Council project to restore the stream back to health. In the past couple of years this only happens annually. Mark you this also: it is a project that

and trauma), who I believe are being systematically misled.

So where does AOL NZ put all the money it collects in the name of charity? Are any of its officers or teachers benefiting financially from their activities? Does it provide any charitable benefit, apart from some scanty volunteering, to the public of New Zealand in order to justify tax exemption for its course fees? Perhaps some of the officers or trustees of the AOLF (NZ) could provide us with documented evidence to prove they are doing some things I haven’t heard about, but after talking to some long term members, and through my own observations and researches, the only activity I could come up with was it’s involvement in promoting the UN’s “Millennium Goals” for the world wide elimination of extreme poverty, with it’s “Stand Up against Poverty” campaign. This involvement or “partnership” with the UN began in 2007, and was initiated by Sri Sri himself. In New Zealand

is profits, would spend a higher percentage of their turnover on philanthropy in New Zealand than this. As it happens, the rallies in subsequent years have all but petered out.

As a further illustration of the Art of Living Foundation’s lop-sided values Mr Shankar’s recent 2 day 2010 visit to New Zealand, when he was driven around in a limousine, had one, possibly two hired security guards, and according to Michelle Hewitson in the NZ Herald newspaper had a PR company hired to promote him (April 10 2010: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10637380), was rumoured to have cost over $50,000 (though it is quite possible some of that was earned back through ticket sales to his talk, sponsorships etc). This pretty well shows where the priorities are of the Art of Living – it’s certainly not charity.

Furthermore there was very possibly an ulterior motive in the AOL-UN partnership: it fits in with Mr Shankar’s pattern of ingrati-

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 51

ating himself with the UN, which some would say serves his long-term strategy of winning the Nobel Peace Prize and also helping give himself and the AOL a respectable front.

There is no documentation made public showing how any of the money raised in NZ is sent overseas to India or given to the AOL’s sister organisation the “International Association for Human Values” (IAHV) which is supposed to implement humanitarian service projects. I have been informed however that money from some courses is sent to the Bangalore Ashram – not that there is any evidence it is put to any better use by the head office.

In India, with its extremes of inequality which have acted as a catalyst for widespread corruption, accounting practices are reputedly even murkier, although recent law changes are starting to address this national issue. As far as I am aware there is no way you can find out (and I openly invite the AOL to provide documentation proving

otherwise) what percentage of funds raised go to administrative costs, what goes on Ashram building projects, what to charitable purposes, what to real estate investments, what to personal bank accounts. An ex-teacher of AOL (USA) “Klim” says, “The AOL and the IAHV are the only two non profits I know that don’t openly provide an annual financial report. Not even upon request.”

What we do know for sure is that Mr Shankar’s charity/business is full of nepotism. His brother-in-law Mr Narsimham and his younger sister Bhanu are on the Bangalore Ashram’s trust board, and are the signatories on bank accounts and money movements; neither have any other work.

One of their two sons lives a lavish life in the USA. Some Indian critics allege that many members of the Shankar family have become multi-millionaires.

We also know that the Bangalore Ashram of Mr Shankar’s is busy buying up much of the land surrounding it, often asking

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wealthy admirers to donate the money; the land is often openly used for business purposes. One of their own real estate firms, Sumeru Real Estate, has a website promoting “Soudhami” a 7 acre “secure gated campus within walking distance from the Ashram” with “280 premium apartments” on offer, to be bought in instalment plans by “AOL devotees”. The ad boasted of the community being self-sufficient with all essential services being available, “from groceries to laundry”, its own Sri Sri Ayurvedic hospital nearby. Interestingly one of the promotional blurbs on their website referred to future residents as “inmates”!

2) Is the AOL a Cult?

This brings us nicely to cult allegations.

Many critics allege the AOL ticks many of the boxes for being a cult. Some major boxes or aspects are: 1. The leader knows how miserable you are and can change all this.

2. People fighting for the favour of the leader, each trying to be closer.

3. Free exploitative labour in the name of service.

4. Using exhaustion, group processes and videos that numb critical thinking, and force focus on leader and sect.

5. Rewards for how well you recruit. The numbers game is important.

6. Leader to be thanked for everything.

7. The organisation is based on progressive indoctrination and does not ask for big commitments upfront. It has a respectable front. It would be very easy to miss any cultic aspects if you only did a basic course to learn Sudarshana Kriya. The photo of “the master” is only placed on the chair at the front next to the teacher in subsequent courses the basic course is an entrée to. The most indoctrinated members are usually the teachers.

8. Free to leave anytime you like, but you are doomed if you do. On his website Klim claims that as a senior teacher, when he came to leave, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was extremely angry and used emotional blackmail. “He cursed me, warning me I would be utterly miserable in the world and would not be able to do anything in life. Everything I ever had was due to him. Without him I was nothing. He warned me of never speaking ill of him, otherwise, whatever I’d say would come back 10 fold to me.” (from the essay “He Blesses, He curses, He threatens.”)

9. Taboo topics. According to US psychologist Daniel Goleman this is a key one.

By all accounts if you were to ask “Where does all the money go?” the AOL hierarchy will not be pleased. Many members can attest to this: there is little transparency. Many New Zealand members, as I did, have become disturbed by the lack of transparency and this contributed to some leaving.

10.Utopianism. Like many cults the AOL often talks as though its teachings, if followed widely enough, will lead to a Golden Age on earth. To my mind this is a subtle form of manipulation; it plays on many people’s hopes. Genuine teachers in the Hindu tradition say this world is “maya” or illusion and therefore not perfectable.

3) Personality Cult

This is the “sine qua non” of the AOL and VVK. These organisations and flagships of Sri Sri would not exist but for the wide-

Donatella Giagnori/EIDON/EIDON/MAXPPP/NEWSCOM

spread idea of his spiritual greatness and divinity. He appeals to an Indian generation, the new urban middle classes, who have become alienated from their culturalspiritual roots by India’s adoption of materialist scientism and capitalism. He is also attracting many Westerners in similar circumstances. Human beings are group orientated beings seemingly with a deep need to admire, and a common corollary of this is that a herd instinct starts to operate, leading many to turn off their critical faculties and ignore obvious red flags, ie. “Where does all the money go?”

Integral to this is the prevailing idea amongst members that Mr Shankar has divine powers. Sri Sri doesn’t even have to publicly declare his “divinity”. Divine rumours, tales of miracles, are started, often by members of the innermost circle, and they flow down to all the lower members in the various countries. Stories of miraculous events are common and of course are hard to verify.

However I know of several people in NZ who said they were glanced at by Mr Shankar and were filled with a sense of joy afterwards, followed later by lots of tears, which they said felt very spiritual. There is no reason to dis-

believe them. “Siddhis” or special spiritual powers are by no means the sole preserve of those on the right hand path, and those of us who believe in the occult are aware of stories of even quite depraved people on the left hand path gaining powers via esoteric knowledge and “tapas” (austerities). The legends of India refer to these people, such as the sorcerer Ravana in the “Ramayana”, who was so powerful that only the semi Divine warriorking Rama could kill him. Christianity has a history of fighting black magicians, although it oftentimes in its long history was too severe and condemned many innocent heretics ie.

The Inquisition.

I myself experienced some profound meditations on AOL courses which led to a lot of peace and lasted for days after. This seemed to be the result not so much of the technique but of the taped voice of Mr Shankar guiding the meditations. In my opinion that doesn’t prove he is “enlightened”, even if some kind of “magnetism from the Master” did occur. As an American Christian once said, “Many teachers are charismatic and exciting. Many can do various kinds of healing, various kinds of magic. Universal power is, after all neutral. In the short run, the students

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of many teachers feel expanded and liberated.

But it can be useful to look at the students and ask yourselves if the students are, over time, becoming more or less empowered in themselves? Is the relationship leading to more or less spiritual and practical maturity? Are the students becoming more or less independent in their thinking? Is everybody being energetically fed by the relationship or is the teacher feeding off the students?”

I

f the comments from ex-AOL teachers and insiders on Artoflivingfree and Guruphiliac’s blogs are anything to go by there is a lot of disempowerment occurring in the long-term: all over the world many of them feel that during their time with the AOL they were slowly sinking into misery, confusion and even moral turpitude; or more mind domination by Mr Shankar. The overall consensus was that once they left, and recovered emotionally, they felt “liberated” and much happier. “Liberated” is the word most of them use. On the other hand, confusingly, I do know some lovely devotees who have grown spiritually, and become better people they would argue, because of the Art of Living. One Indian-NZ man told me of some very profound spiritual experiences he had as a result of coming into contact with Sri Sri; he swears it was life-changing in the most positive way imaginable. As I knew him well, I believed him. I guess I could say myself, that despite my doubts about Sri Sri, I did experience some positive things while in the AOL, and had some positive insights from the teachings. It was certainly not all a waste of time and that is why Sri Sri is so enigmatic and confusing.

What is clear is that many members seem to worship his photo, and feel that any good luck that happens to them is due to his “divine grace”. I have seen people break down in tears in front of him in public, thanking him profusely for changing their lives for the better. Many however seem to forget that guru lineage is regarded as very important in Indian spirituality. Sri Sri’s own Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, famous for hosting the Beatles in 1968, disowned him, and said he was “sugar-coated poison”. Many cult watchers believe MMY himself ran a cult. It’s unlikely they know of the allegations by many ex- teachers that Mr Shankar avidly hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and that internal directives have been sent out by e-mail in recent years, from the Bangalore Ashram, urging them to approach politicians and VIPs in their countries, and

ask them to suggest to the Nobel committee Mr Shankar’s nomination. They say they were even told not to let on they were AOL members! Apart from the glory, the Nobel Prize would no doubt confer on SSRS a huge amount of fame and respectability in the West that money just couldn’t buy. This would translate into a potential tidal wave of recruitments and donations.

Many will say all this is hearsay of course (however the ex-teachers do say they have the evidence of their e-mails). There does seem to be though a cult of personality operating within the AOL juggernaut. His photos are everywhere. In his poem “I Promise” Mr Shankar wrote seductively, “If you are

“What is clear is that many members seem to worship his photo, and feel that any good luck that happens to them is due to his “divine grace”.

I have seen people break down in tears in front of him in public, thanking him profusely for changing their lives for the better” willing to walk into my arms, If you are willing to live in my heart, You will find the one you have waited forever”. In 2006 the AOLF and VVK put on a massive Jubilee celebration of 25 years of existence. They staged it at a Bangalore airport in South India, and hundreds of dignatories, and representatives of various world religions, were invited to speak in honour of its founder, who sat silently on a throne in the centre of the huge bare stage, smiling benignly. Members from all around the world flew in to take part, including many people from New Zealand. Initial reports said quarter of a million attended, but the AOL insists it was 2.5 million.

Apart from all these alleged cultic aspects

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surrounding the AOL’s founder and suffused through his organisations, the organisation uses a lot of advertising, big staged events, clever marketing, with use of celebrity endorsements. They appear to be quite business savvy. A super large basic course was put on in the Auckland CBD at the Aotea Centre in 2008, and SSRS sent out two well known Bollywood actors and a former Miss India and Miss Universe, Lara Dutta, to help stage it and attract publicity to the heavily advertised event. The whole idea was to make as big a publicity splash as possible for the AOL, and recruit as many new members as possible. Unfortunately for them they didn’t get the numbers they hoped for.

The point though is this: that kind of guru glamouring and hardsell of spirituality is surely far removed from authentic spiritual tradition. It’s ethically questionable. It seems to me that the truly great gurus and saints usually keep a low profile, like “flowers that blush unseen.” Gurus like Swami Sivananda would greet a first time approach by a prospective disciple with a gruff question like, “What do you want?” Swami Sivananda, Sri Yukteswar, Ramakrishna – who were surely great and genuine Gurus, always said they were only instruments of the Divine – if they healed someone it was via God’s grace, and wasn’t their own actions. I couldn’t imagine them using a curvy beauty queen to promote themselves. Ostentatious Jubilee celebrations in front of 250,000 people, mass demonstrations of a spiritual practice in football stadiums such as Sri Sri’s AOL has put on would’ve been anathema to them, I have little doubt.

The renowned South Indian guru Ramana Maharshi, was once asked what are the true marks of a real Guru. One mark he said was “unshakeable courage at all times, in all places and circumstances.” Mr Shankar would seem to fail this test too. He often is seen on his ashram with armed guards following him around, due, he has said when asked, to threats against his life. Indeed in early June 2010 there was an attempted assassination in his ashram.

In the end it looks very much like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is another in a long line of charming, complicated, flawed, well intentioned, and covetous gurus exported from India. Gurus, for example, like Osho, a powerful personality, who certainly was the catalyst for some very positive changes in many of his followers, as well as some very negative. His close devotee Hugh Milne in

Bhagawan; the god that failed makes that clear. He preached against materialism while being justifiably known as the “guru to the rich”. He always favoured wealthy devotees and in his last years before his death in 1990 he owned 97 Rolls Royces.

Notwithstanding this, Milne says his close association led to a flowering of spirituality in himself, and even when it turned sour in the last years he still had some admiration for Osho. Or as another example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with his highly commercialised Transcendental Meditation movement.

Shankar himself has said his guru often governed through fear and not love. Swami Nityananda who was raking in millions in the USA and India until recently when he had a massive fall from grace. He was set up by some renegade disciples who managed to video him in his bedroom cavorting with a Bollywood actress in one of his temples, subsequently publishing it onto the world wide web. He was arrested in India for tax evasion.

All of these Godmen were or are clever speakers and had or have extensive spiritual knowledge. Some swear they have “powers”. In Sri Sri’s case he can’t match the sheer knowledge of Sai Baba, but in my opinion he outdoes Osho as a wordsmith. I now no longer believe he is a direct mouthpiece of the Most High and can sometimes see the flaws in his statements. I read truth in his writings, and sometimes I detect and fear that, very humanly, his idealism is not backed up with his own truth, “The spirit of sports is destroyed by business getting involved.

Sports should simply bring lightness, laughter and entertainment. When business enters it, its very soul is destroyed. Unfortunately so much dirt has corrupted sports. It needs cleaning up more than the Yamuna (river).” (Sacred Space magazine, April 2010). I wonder about the soul of the AOL. I hope I am wrong and that they are a real charity but the evidence backing this up is rather patchy.

In another instance, on the cause and solution of Indian poverty he opines, “Poverty can be removed by changing the lifestyle of an individual. It can be eradicated only by abstaining from alcohol and drugs. A labourer earns more than a white-collared employee but spends 60 per cent of the amount in alcohol thus remaining in the vicious circle of poverty.” ( Shankar, 2 March 2010 Tribune newspaper). This seems to me to be a half truth. Poverty has been around in India for centuries and to the best of my knowledge it was just as dire and prevalent in the not so recent past when India had severe liquor restrictions. To ignore such impor-

tant contributing factors as the caste system, illiteracy, widespread state corruption, over population, gender discrimination etc. and make it sound like it is only moral weakness on the part of the Indian poor, some of the poorest people on earth, is surely misleading.

It makes me wonder if Mr Shankar’s strong support for the former governing party, the Hindu nationalist Party the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party or Indian People’s Party ) might be behind this to some extent. They are a right wing party which likes to scapegoat the Islamic minority, and play on prejudices against the rise of evangelical Christianity in India, deflecting attention from major systemic problems of Indian society like corruption, which allegedly it took a great part in when it was in power.

It has been some time since I left the Art of Living. One of my lasting impressions of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a man whom I for some years used to think of as an incarnation of the Divine, and my Guru, is of the soft focus photo of him walking along side the lake on the book cover of Celebrating Silence. It looks so spiritual, a man wrapped in shimmering clothes walking beside a lake mirroring the

misty blue sky and clouds. But he is walking away from the viewer, and you can’t see his face or eyes. This man who can talk so well about the loftiest of ideals and emotions has no doubt helped many people around the world become more spiritual, to be happier.

But many attest he also led them to become miserable, and they feel they were used. Even I can say that I feel I have grown, have gone forward spiritually to some extent through my involvement with AOL, although I wonder if my energies would’ve been better spent on other paths. Sri Sri can light you up, yet he definitely seems to have a mysterious darker side. It seems to me we are all sinners to a large extent, and have blind spots in our consciences. I am far myself from living up to the high standards I sometimes glibly speak of, and wish I was more often ashamed. Maybe people who get drawn into such organisations are getting exactly the sort of lessons they need at the time. But I guess I’ll never know. As it says in the Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:5 – “As you do not know what is the way of the wind, Or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, So you do not know the works of God who makes everything.” q

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ESSAY

A JUST WAR? The Case For Invading Iraq

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The decision by the US to invade Iraq in pursuit of feared weapons of mass destruction will be debated by historians for decades to come.

But JEFF MCINTYRE argues it was a reasonable, and even necessary decision, in this speech delivered in the South Island recently

O

ne of the most interesting books to ever be published about the war in Iraq was written by George W Bush Administration UnderSecretary of State Douglas Feith and is called “War and Decision”.

Unlike many accounts written by journalists or political opponents of the war, Feith was inside all the decisions and thinking of the Administration at the highest levels from the inception of the Administration. He was able to draw on personal dairy notes and recollections from the meetings of the key Administration officials beginning with 9/11.

Feith recalls the very first assessments done about America’s role in a post 9/11 world – with senior Administration officials as they returned to the US on a military plane from Russia to get around the global civilian airline grounding. Part and parcel of that process were a series of thorough and frank assessments about the existential threats posed to the US and its interests. An integral part of that assessment was of the threats posed by Iraq.

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Feith posits that the containment policy through 1990’s to constrain Saddam Hussein had not been successful, that Saddam Hussein had both used and coveted Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), supported terrorists and had a singular history of aggression. In the post 9/11 world, the possibility of terrorism on a massive scale greatly sharpened the administration’s thinking.1 Let’s examine a number of issues here:

[A] Iraq threat assessment 1. Regional aggression (there have been 5 main incidents) a) Iran – Iraq War 1980 to 1987 This was a brutal 7 year long war started by an Iraqi invasion of Iran and ended up costing 1 million Iranian and 500,000 Iraqi casualties. Iraq used chemical weapons on Iran and the total cost of the war was estimated at a staggering $1.2 trillion. b) Attacks on Kurds 1988 Saddam’s troop’s brutal suppression after a Kurdish uprising ended up with 2,000 villages being razed to the ground, the Iraqis expelling 150,000 people and 1.5 million Kurds fleeing mostly north to Turkey. Some 50,000 to 100,000 of these refugees die as a consequence of the expulsion and chemical weapons were also used. c) Invasion of Kuwait 1990 After the invasion of Kuwait the Iraqis looted treasures, terrorized the population such that 50% of Kuwait’s population flees (400,000) and 600 arrested Kuwaitis never returned from Iraq. As they retreated, the Iraqis set thousands of oil wells set alight and 6 million barrels of oil were released into the Arabian Gulf leading to an unprecedented ecological disaster. It cost the Kuwaitis $1.5 billion just to put out fires. The total cost of the first Gulf War needed to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was $60 billion. d) Rocket attacks on neighbouring countries during 1st Gulf War 1991 Iraq fired 42 SCUD missiles into Israel, 44 into Saudi Arabia and 1 each at Bahrain and Qatar resulting in 3 civilian deaths and 295 injuries as they deliberately targeted military AND civilian targets. e) Marsh Arabs – 1991 Saddam Hussein responded to an uprising

by Shi’ite Arabs comprising many of the so-

called Marsh Arabs in the south by draining the swamps thus destroying their centuries old habitat and wreaking major ecological damage. He expelled Marsh Arabs from their homelands leading 80,000 to 100,000 of them to flee to refugee camps in Iran. Shi’ite villages were then attacked and burned and their water sources poisoned.

2. Human rights abuses

Saddam Hussein’s corrupt Baath Party had dominated the political landscape of Iraq from 1968 – all other parties were progressively controlled or banned. The regime was characterized by frequent and extensive Government sanctioned executions, torture and rape. After the invasion, coalition forces uncovered dozens of mass graves and Human Rights Watch estimated that 800,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed by the regime from 1979 to 2003. There were travel restrictions on Iraqi citizens and there was constant spying on Iraqi nationals overseas and, as is common with most dictatorships, there was ruthless suppression of internal dissent via a well funded internal intelligence service. There was also an enormous concentration of power within Saddam Hussein’s extended family.

$10 billion investment for a secret, much larger underground program to make bomb material by enriching uranium. We dropped the reactor out totally, which was the plutonium for making nuclear weapons, and went directly into enriching uranium… …. But the program we built later in secret would make six bombs a year”2 The Iraqi regime’s attempt to obtain yellow cake uranium from Niger, made controversial because it was mentioned in Bush’s 2003 State Of The Union speech and former Ambassador Joe Wilson’s claims that led to the subsequent libel trial of Scooter Libby (Vice President Cheney’s Chief Of Staff).

This claim was never rejected by the British SIS even after an extensive Parliamentary investigation.3

3. Prior use of weapons of mass destruction (3 documented instances) a) Iran The Iraqi regime engaged in numerous mustard gas attacks on their Iranian foes during the Iran Iraq War which led to 20,000 Iranian soldiers dying and 90,000 injured. Missiles with chemical warheads were fired into civilian populations with unspecified thousands of casualties. 5,000 victims are said to be still suffering adverse side effects 20 years later. b) Nuclear programme In the late 1970’s France agreed to sell Iraq a gas-graphite plutonium producing reactor at Osirak, Iraq – a facility only really useful for weaponised use of nuclear fuel versus the claimed power generation purpose.

The facility was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in June of 1981. The IAEA reported that during the first Gulf War, Iraq had a plan to divert highly enriched uranium research reactor fuel stored at the Tuwaitha facility for use in the production of a nuclear weapon. Iraqi scientists Khidir Hamza and Imad Khadduri said: “What happened is that Saddam ordered us – we were 400… scientists and technologists running the program When they bombed it out we became 7,000 with a

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“As they retreated, the Iraqis set thousands of oil wells set alight and 6 million barrels of oil were released into the Arabian Gulf leading to an unprecedented ecological disaster.

It cost the Kuwaitis $1.5 billion just to put out fires. The total cost of the first Gulf War needed to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was $60 billion”

c) Kurds In March 1988, Saddam Hussein hit Halabja in the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq with mustard, sarin, tabun and VX gases killing 5,000 alone in the town of Anfal and injuring 10,000.

4. Harbouring of terrorists

The following list of terrorists comes from records unearthed at the HQ of the Iraqi internal security service after liberation in 20034 ••Abu Nidal the Palestinian terrorist most famous for bombing the ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports.

••Abu Abbas – Achille Lauro cruiseliner hijacker and killer of US retiree Leon Klinghoffer.

••Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – leader of al Qaida in Iraq.

••Leaders of the PKK, Palestine Liberation Front, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Arab Liberation.

5. Circumvention of sanctions

Saddam Hussein diverted upwards of $500 million from illegal oil sales obtained through the Oil For Food (OFF) programme (designed to alleviate the negative effects of the sanctions on the Iraqi people) to bribe mostly French, Russian and Chinese officials to gain their support in lifting sanctions and also to support him and his regime’s extravagant lifestyles.

The Iraq Survey Group report sums up the effect of the regime’s systematic efforts

to undermine the sanctions regime: “Over time sanctions have steadily weakened to the point where Iraq in 2000-2001 was confidently designing missiles around components that could only be obtained outside sanctions.

Moreover illicit revenues grew to quite substantial levels during the same period …..the Regime quickly came to see the OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to undermine the sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD related development. By 2000 – 20001 Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of the sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo by the end of 1999.” 5

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, was killed after an American air strike destroyed a safe house north of Baghdad on June 7, 2006. / UPI Photo/FILES

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breached by the Iraqi regime.

Chief UN Weapons Inspector Blix addressed the UN Security Council on January 27, 2003: “During the period 19911998, Iraq submitted many declarations called full, final and complete. Regrettably, much in these declarations proved inaccurate or incomplete or was unsupported or contradicted by evidence. In such cases, no confidence can arise that proscribed programmes or items have been eliminated….Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance – not even today – of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace…. the Iraqi regime had allegedly misplaced 1,000 tonnes of VX nerve agent – one of the most toxic ever developed” 6 A repeated refrain from the UNSCOM weapons inspectors was the fact that all of Saddam Hussein’s vast palaces were off limits from the weapons inspectors. Saddam Hussein was uninterested in abiding by any of the sanctions or requirements levied on him by the UN. Ron Sachs / CNP

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program” – Bill Clinton Saddam Hussein reduced the UN Security Council sanctions to meaningless, toothless and ineffectual words despite their being passed after many complex and delicate negotiations between diplomats by ignoring and undermining them.

6. UN Security Council Resolutions •• Res 660 2 Aug 1990 – Demanded that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait •• Res 661 6 Aug 1990 – Established the first sanctions regime •• Res 678 & 9 29 Nov 1990 – Last chance to leave Kuwait before war •• Res 686 2 Mar 1991 – Cease provocative actions •• Res 687 3 Apr 1991 – Destroy all biological & chemical weapons + restitution •• Res 688 5 Apr 1991 – Established the No Fly Zones

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•• Res 707 15 Aug 1991 – Demanded full disclosure of WMD •• Res 715 11 Oct 1991 – Established weapons monitoring programme (UNSCOM) •• Res 986 14 Apr 1995 – Established Oil for Food •• Res 1284 17 Dec 1999 – Re-established weapons inspections (UNMOVIC) •• Res 1373 13 Sep 2001 – Tightened international laws concerning terrorism •• Res 1441 Nov 8 2002 – “False statements or omissions in the declarations submitted

by Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations “ (Unanimous 15 – 0 even wider support that 1st Gulf War) Every single one of these resolutions was

[B] Bi-Partisan desire for regime change In the midst of the bitter and partisan battles on Capitol Hill in the 2nd term of the Bush Administration, it is easy and convenient for opponents of the war in Iraq to overlook and forget the extensive bipartisan consensus that existed pre-2004 regarding the Iraqi regime. This is most clearly illustrated by the following:

1. 1998 Iraq Liberation Act

Removing Saddam Hussein had been official US Government policy since the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act in October 1998; enacted by the Clinton Administration after the expulsion of the UN weapons inspectors. The Act set up a $90m fund to fund opposition activities and passed the House 360 to 38 (84% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans voting in favour) and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The following are some quotes on the subject of Saddam Hussein from a series of prominent Democrats almost all who changed their views on the war when it became politically expedient to do so.

2. President Bill Clinton

“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.

That is our bottom line.”(Feb. 4, 1998).7 “If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.” (Feb. 17, 1998).8

3. Madeline Albright: Clinton’s Secretary of State

“Iraq is a long way from here, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.” (Feb 18, 1998).9

4. Sandy Berger: Clinton’s National Security Adviser “He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.” (Feb, 18, 1998).10

5. Senators Levin (D-MI), Daschle (D-SD) and Kerry (D-MA)

presence of WMD and Saddam’s propensity to use them.

••Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – United States ••Security Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) – United Kingdom ••Mossad – Israel ••Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) – Germany ••Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) – France ••Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVK) – Russia

1. BND Intelligence Summary

••“Iraq has resumed its nuclear program and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years; ••Iraq is developing its Al Samoud and Ababil 100/Al Fatah short-range rockets, which can deliver a 300kg payload 150km.

Medium-range rockets capable of carrying a warhead 3,000km could be built by 2005 – far enough to reach Europe; ••Iraq is capable of manufacturing solid rocket fuel;

••A Delhi-based company, has acted as a buyer on Iraq’s behalf. Deliveries have been made via Malaysia and Dubai. Indian companies have copied German machine tools down to the smallest detail and such equipment has been installed in numerous chemicals projects.

••Since the departure of the UN inspectors, the number of Iraqi sites involved in chemicals production has increased from 20 to 80.

Of that total, a quarter could be involved in weapons production.”13

2. British Investigations into prewar intelligence

After it became apparent that there were no discoverable WMDs in Iraq, the British House of Commons Intelligence Services Committee (ISC) conducted a thorough investigation into the failures of British intelligence to accurately predict the true state of Iraq’s situation. It is significant that this Committee AND the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee concluded, along with Lord Hutton’s independent inquiry, that no undue or inappropriate

In a letter to Pres Clinton Oct. 9, 1998: “We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”11

6. Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 8) now House Speaker

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” Dec. 16, 199812

[C] Pre war intelligence consensus The pre-war intelligence consensus concerning Iraqi WMD extended beyond both sides of political divide in Congress, it extended to the external intelligence agencies of the world’s six major or regional powers. All of these agencies had come to similar and mostly independent conclusions about the

UPI Photo/Kevin Dietsch

“For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face” – Madeline Albright INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 61

pressure was brought to bear upon the Joint Intelligence Chiefs (JIC) to shape its assessments to a particular, pre-existing policy construct contrary to persist media reports and the repeated claims of opponents of Blair’s position.

This is a key quote from the September 2003 House of Commons ISC report on its investigation into the JIC’s Iraq Assessment: “It was clear to all that Saddam Hussein was defying the international community, ignoring UNSCRs, breaking embargoes and engaging in an extensive programme of concealment. Based on the intelligence and the JIC assessments that we have seen, we accept that there was convincing intelligence that Iraq had active chemical, biological and nuclear programmes and the capability to produce chemical and biological weapons. Iraq was also continuing to develop ballistic missiles. All these activities were prohibited under UNSCRs.” 14

undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

••Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN. ••Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km – well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

••Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles – probably the No Dong, 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

••Work on camel pox a precursor to smallpox that was never satisfactory explained.

••After 1991 Saddam expressed his intent to retain the intellectual capital developed during the previous nuclear programme.

Senior Iraqis from the inner circle told the ISG that they assumed Saddam Hussein would restart a nuclear programme once the sanctions were lifted.

[D] What the Iraq Survey Group actually found ••A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research designed to thwart inspection.

••A prison laboratory complex possibly used in human testing of Biological Weapons agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN. ••Reference made to strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

••New research on Biological Weapons applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin none of which were declared to the UN. ••Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists’ homes that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.

••A line of UAVs not fully declared at an

[E] Conclusion – Iraq war observations All wars are terrible and, contrary to popular belief, the leaders of democratic nations go to great lengths to avoid them due to the huge material and human cost. Natan Sharansky (the third most prominent Soviet Jewish dissident finally released from years in the Soviet Gulags in the early 1980s) echoed Kant in his classic book “The Case For Democracy” in asserting that no democracy has waged war against another true democracy in the modern era because the price of war in blood and treasure is too great and that the leaders of democracies must justify war to their electorate (as Bush and Blair had to in 2004 and 2005 respectively).

Sharansky rightly noted that almost all wars

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are waged by or against totalitarian regimes or insurgencies.

Wars until recently were fought sovereign nation against sovereign nation with an easily definable end of the war (such as the unconditional surrenders in World War 2 or the armistices of World War 1 and the Korea War). That is when hostilities end, prisoners are exchanged and armies demobilized. The war in Iraq devolved into an urban insurgency waged by religious extremists who still publicly proclaim their goal to end Western civilization and their opposition to our core values such as freedom of speech and religion, equal rights for woman and gays, freedom for political parties to form and operate, a free press, freedom of association with trade unions and regular uncorrupted elections AND who have said that they will never surrender. When does war with such an enemy end?

Wars in the modern era sadly involve sometimes substantial civilian casualties. In World War 2 estimates range from 40-50 million (or 85%+ of all war related deaths).

A generation earlier in World War 1 the ratio of military to civilian deaths was 95:5.

2.5m civilians were killed in the three years of the Korean War. The most reliable and widely accepted estimates of civilian casualties in the Iraq war estimate deaths at 100 to 150,000 with a good percentage due to sectarian violence rather than the specific war related campaigns waged by coalition forces. Each war involved the removal/surrender of, or resistance to the invasion of, totalitarian regimes that had wrought horror upon their people. Dictators do not respond to diplomacy or sanctions, counting on the reluctance of democracies to engage in direct military action against them.

Modern weapons and extensive live 24/7 media coverage have led the public in western democracies today to demand small footprint wars with light casualties and for the war to all be over in the minimum possible time versus the more drawn out total war waged (including the deliberate targeting of civilians) in World War 2. Roosevelt and Churchill were not interested in a negotiated truce or mere cessation of hostilities with Germany and Japan. They wanted unconditional surrender AND to destroy the enemy in such a way to prevent them from ever waging war against the Allies again – this led for example to the indiscriminate bombing of German and Japanese cities often for no other ostensible military purpose other than to break the will of the German and Japanese people.

Previous wars are littered with blatant failures of intelligence: the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, the 1941 German invasion of Stalin’s USSR, the 1964 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Rhodesia, the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, the 1981 Falkland Islands invasion by Argentina and or course September 11, 2001.

All 6 of the world’s major external intelligence agencies AND prominent politicians and senior officials in the Democrat and Republican parties and administrations were all persuaded by their respective intelligence evidence that Saddam had WMD – this is quite a different kettle of fish to the mantra of the anti-war left that “Bush lied – people died”.

The much maligned Bush surge strategy worked so much so that Obama has ostensibly followed Bush’s post 2005 strategy in Iraq and has replicated it in Afghanistan. General Petraeus’ success in waging a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq recently saw his unanimous Senate confirmation in his role taking over command in Afghanistan despite the partisan opposition of many Democrat Senators when he was first appointed to the Iraq command by George W Bush. Military and civilian deaths in Baghdad are now lower than Obama’s home town of Chicago and there have been three elections since liberation with 62% turnout in the most recent 2010 elections which is higher than various US midterm elections.

Feith’s book details the extensive debate that was had inside the Bush Administration regarding the war and the considerable lengths Bush and his top officials went to devise every sensible way to resolve the issues and risks that Iraq posed SHORT of war again contrary to the popular view of the war mongering Texan cowboy.

Finally, let’s assume the CIA had reported that Saddam had destroyed all his WMD stockpiles? The next question would’ve been “How readily could he produce significant amounts of chemical or biological material?” The answer was: Saddam had retained the personnel and facilities for the task AND retained the intention to reinvigorate his programmes – the existence of PROGRAMMES is more important than stockpiles. The post-war search was unable to unearth any substantial stockpiles but the Iraq biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes remained active and were easy to reactivate.

Jeff McIntyre’s speech was delivered to the 2010 Summer Sounds Symposium, www.summersounds.co.nz

Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. Here the day he was captured by the Americans. December 2003 / ALBUM / ORONOZ

References 1. Douglas Feith War and Decision Douglas (New York NY, Harper Collins 2008) pp 181 – 212 2. Interview with David Albright and Kevin O’Neill published as “Iraq’s Efforts To Acquire Information about Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Related Technologies from the United States” by the Institute for Science and International Security November 12, 1999 http://www.isis-online.org/ publications/iraq/infogather.html 3. Rt Hon The Lord Butler of Brockwell Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors Review of the Intelligence of Weapons of Mass Destruction pp 490 – 503 http://www.archive2.official-documents.co.uk/document/deps/hc/hc898/898.pdf 4. Institute of Defense Analysis Iraqi Perspectives Project Vol 1 (Alexandria, VA 2006) 1 p27 http:// www.fas.org/irp/eprint/iraqi/index.html 5. Charles Duelfer Iraq Survey Group https:// www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/ iraq_wmd_2004/chap5_annxF.html 6. Hans Blix Update on Inspection Report UNMOVIC 27 January 2003 http://www.un.org/ Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm 7. Pres Bill Clinton in speech to Pentagon Staff as reported by 8. Pres Bill Clinton address to Joint Chiefs of Staff

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/17/ transcripts/clinton.iraq/ 9. Sec Madeline Albright in Town Hall meeting held at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/18/town. meeting.folo/ 10. Sec Sandy Berger Ibid 11. Transcript at http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Letters,%20reports%20and%20 statements/levin-10-9-98.html 12. Transcript at http://www.house.gov/pelosi/ priraq1.htm 13. Institute for Science and International Security The German Federal Intelligence Service Assesses Iraq’s Likely Nuclear Weapons Program (December 2009) http://www.isis-online.org/isis-reports/ detail/the-trials-of-the-german-iranian-tradermohsen-vanaki-the-german-federal-in/ 14. Rt Hon Ann Taylor MP Intelligence and Security Committee of the House of Common Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction – Intelligence and Assessments September 2003 p21 http://www. fas.org/irp/world/uk/iraqwmd0903.pdf 15. Summary only of key findings Charles Duelfer Iraq Survey Group https://www.cia.gov/library/ reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/ chap5_annxF.html q

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money

Eggshells, baskets and breakages A conversation with SCF investors captures Peter Hensley’s attention

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an and Ken, long time friends of Jim and Moira were around at their place for afternoon tea. “Have you heard the news?” Ken asked Moira. “And what news would that be?” Moira cheekily replied.

“That the Government is using taxpayer’s money to bail out South Canterbury”.

Moira’s matter of fact response was “they had little choice. It was either that or they could have sat back and watched even more confidence erode from the financial system”.

Moira’s statement surprised Ken. He knew that their friends had a healthy number of

SCF perpetual preference shares which had been specifically excluded from the Government Guarantee. In other words, Jim and Moira weren’t covered. In the rush to survive, it appears that the management may have sacrificed the value that was backing these investments. Being shy was not one of Ken’s attributes and Jan was not surprised when he asked Moira about their perpetual preference share holding.

True to form, Moira was quick to explain that it was all part and parcel of being an investor. Most if not all investment has some

When it came time to call in the receivers for SCF, the Government was quick to act and not only did it act quickly, it acted boldly and decisively to go where no government has gone before 64 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

level of risk attached to it. When these notes were first issued to the market, SCF investment came with an investment grade from the major research houses and due to it’s recent expansion required more capital to satisfy the authorities. These perpetual shares also carried the implied personal backing of Mr Hubbard, who said that he would not stand by and see people lose money because of his actions.

A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then. New Zealand has stood and watched Mr Hubbard’s personal fortune disintegrate in a blink of an eye. “Besides”, Moira went on to say, “Jim and I practiced the second rule of investment, never put all your eggs in one basket”. She reminded Ken that the first rule was to spend less than you earned. “Sure we have lost money in South Canterbury perpetuals, we have also seen a few other investments go south, but we believe that considering the circumstances, we are still better off than most”.

Jim chipped in to support Moira’s defense of their investment strategy. He had heard all the arguments and suspected that Ken was going to say that they would have been better off leaving their money in the bank.

Jim explained that the risk far outweighed the perceived safety of the bank.

Jim stated matter of factly that the status of the bank depositor was actually lower than the status of a perpetual share holder. A person who has money deposited in a bank is simply an unsecured creditor to the bank.

Ken was amazed at the inference that Ken and Moira appeared to be suggesting, that the bank was an unsafe place to invest money.

It was Moira’s turn to step up to the plate and explain the logic behind their statement.

The banking and financial system in any country is based solely on confidence. The vast majority of the population realised that banks could never repay all depositors in cash all at once. It relied on the confidence of the people that they could satisfy most demands from day to day, however the stability of the overall system rested with the collective confidence of the populace.

Moira went on to explain that the Government instigated the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme in mid 2008 because they could see the stability of the whole financial system was in jeopardy. Many people don’t realise that the Government backing for the banks ceased on 30th April 2010. There were only a small range of non bank deposit takers that were still covered under the guarantee, the largest by far being South Canterbury Finance.

The Government is still concerned with the potential contagion effect that a loss of confidence could have on a fledging economic recovery. They know that it could wreak havoc on an economy struggling to deal with the widespread destruction of wealth that has occurred over the past four years. When it came time to call in the receivers for SCF, the Government was quick to act and not only did it act quickly, it acted boldly and decisively to go where no government has gone before. They promised to pay everyone with the only exception being the share holders and the perpetual preference shareholders. The process is still being worked through but depositors are expected to be refunded their cash within weeks, not months.

Jim had quietly retreated to the kitchen to replenish the cake plate with more scones and on his return he asked Jan how they were getting on with their second son. Jim and Moira knew that he was experiencing cash flow problems as the recession was biting into the website design business they had started a couple of years ago. Jan and Ken had been emotionally blackmailed to lend him the money to get started, and now he had come back for more, saying that bank

was being unreasonable in not extending their overdraft.

Jan and Ken knew that if they did lend him more money they would be jeopardizing their own lifestyle and whilst it was extremely difficult to say no to family, especially offspring, they felt they were being backed into a corner. They also knew that the money would be used on lifestyle and that by advancing him the money it would only postpone the inevitable demise of the business whilst simultaneously potentially curtailing their own ability to make ends meet.

Normally it was Jan who would rather go without then let one of the kids suffer. She surprised Ken this time by saying they simply could not afford it. She was not sure how their son would react, but she was alert to the fact that he would not learn from the experience unless he learnt to live with the consequences of spending money he did not have.

Moira spoke in supportive terms and was quietly pleased that she had converted another disciple to the doctrine of fiscal prudence.

An unwritten consequence of Moira’s first law of finance being, spending less than you earn, was the responsibility of deciding what to do with the balance. In one’s early years it was typically mortgage reduction, and once

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that had been extinguished one’s thoughts generally turned to investment options.

Helping family out with finances could fit into part of the strategy, however it only worked if the kids cooperated and understood that for the system to work properly, it had to be a two way street.

They had to learn the responsibility that came with borrowing money, be it from a financial institution or from family. It has to be repaid with interest.

In respect to the wider community Moira was concerned that investors might turn gun shy of the investment marketplace. Although a natural reaction, she was apprehensive with the concentration risk they could be unconsciously exposing with what remained of their investments funds. Whilst she had no trouble with the banking system as a whole, she fretted that investors would choose a single bank for all their deposits.

When she verbalized her concerns with Jim, he sensibly replied that they had no control over what others did, they could only ensure that they followed a sound investment strategy.

A copy of Peter Hensley’s Disclosure Statement is available on request and is free of charge.

Copyright © Peter J Hensley, September 2010.

EVE’S BITE

THE DIVINITY CODE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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education We should mourn for our children that the gift of learning, so highly valued among Third World children, is here treated by educationists as a burden to be turned into ultimately boring infotainment

A failing state system Amy Brooke argues national standards are a farce

A

government minister’s assistant recently revealed she was shocked at how illiterate is the correspondence she is receiving from kindergarten and junior teachers.

It reminded me of a government report last December stating that teachers were deliberately setting low goals to stop primary school pupils failing – with some principals hiding poor results from boards of trustees. Education Minister Anne Tolley was shocked by the revelation that teachers and principals were not telling parents when their five and six-year-olds do badly.

Unfortunately, the minister appears to be a slow learner. This fudging of accountability, of how illiterate are many of the teachers themselves, has been going on for years. And while I’m all for genuine national standards to give all children a fair chance and to stop protecting incompetent teachers, the ones

the minister has introduced are not national standards at all.

When we faced the problem of whether or not to home-school our four sons, we made the choice, mainly for the sake of the supposed benefits of socialization, to send them to school, keeping an eye on what they were being taught. What I encountered along the way would fill a book as I progressed from puzzlement to protest, from discomfort and disillusion to deep concern about what was happening to our state school system. A former secondary language teacher from a family background steeped in education, I’d long understood that those first primary school years are the most important of all for our children.

That we have largely failed them, with so many emerging into secondary school barely literate, ill-spoken, largely ignorant of great

66 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

children’s literature, most even switched off reading because of the over-praised, junk Newzild books thrust on them by our second-rate literary cliques and reading advisors, is a disgrace. Add to this an inordinate emphasis on the highly sanitized version of Maori supremacy over their supposed colonial oppressors – while neglecting all knowledge of the extraordinary events which have gone into the making of a great European civilization. Anything approaching coherently teaching all New Zealand children about this shared history and fascinating ancestors is long gone, its loss an indictment on those who have cheated them these recent decades.

Anne Tolley’s national standards were doubtless a well-meant initiative to take the first steps to restore to primary school children the ability to acquire at least basic tools to set them on the first steps to genuine learning. (So, predictably, radicalized left- wing and at times, quite unscrupulous teacher unionists were going to be gunning for her.) The real tragedy is that they’re not national standards at all. They’re simply another form of the discredited internal assessment the education politburo substituted from the late 80s onwards, when it succeeded in getting rid of real standards of accountability, external nationwide examinations sat by children from every school in New Zealand, free from class teacher manipulation. These largely established who was being well–taught; what teachers, schools, and indeed what parents were failing their children; what children were failing themselves. So naturally they had to be done

away with and the bogeyman of – shock/ horror – league tables! – was the red herring to achieve this.

Suddenly, the importance of healthy competition to help achieve better results all around was down-graded in favour of face-saving for poorly performing schools.

My parents between them had enthusiastic charge of well-performing North Island east coast Maori schools, and made it possible for their brightest and best pupils to eventually go on to university to take their places among their European peers in academically worthwhile courses, not today’s largely selfserving options of treaty law, soft-option sociology and other arts courses. They would be horrified to see on-going excuses made for poor performing Maori schools in particular, when the reasons are quite obvious.

Today I would not be sending my children to a state school – or even a private one that didn’t provide valuable, essentially conservative teaching practices, rather than distracting them from the wonderful discoveries of real learning in favour of the undemanding, basically third-rate. The abandonment, too, of any expectation that teachers themselves should be well-educated, well-spoken, wellbehaved, and even well-groomed – let alone enthusiastic and knowledgeable in their subject areas – has been a tragedy.

The substitution for genuine learning has overseen the nonsense of children teaching themselves, the junk notion of relativism arguing no area of knowledge superior to another. The result? So many displacement activities: the promotion of infotainment; the stultifying emphasis on political correctness; an obsessive environmentalism; an unhealthy focus on media issues; and the pernicious veneration of celebrity and pop personalities and their vacuous views.

Add to this ephemera the equally damaging doctrine of teens (and now preteens) “needing” instruction in sexual activity, and it is little wonder that vulnerable pupils of both

sexes are obsessed with how they look, even highly intelligent girls aiming to be skeletal fashion models; the boys targeting the girls; both into heavy drinking.

While adults argue about the drinking age, and the usual non-achieving commissions come out with their typically silly solutions such as increasing the price of wines the young don’t drink (among Jim Anderton’s specialty price-ups was sherry) they ignore the real causes of damage to this generation. Our empty-minded, intellectually, morally, and spiritually deprived young with almost nothing to show from those long school years deserve far more accountability from the destructionists responsible.

They won’t get it while parents are distracted by the pretence of national standards, and while our monolithic education establishment works with underinformed politicians temporally elevated as a minister. They won’t get it while we do not centre-stage the fact that the real adventures are those of the mind. The excitement of a genuinely interesting life doesn’t come through gyrating onstage with a guitar extension; nor though alcoholfuelled partying and a premature, destructive entry into emotionally dangerous sexual experiences. We should mourn for our children that the gift of learning, so highly valued among Third World children, is here treated by educationists as a burden to be turned into ultimately boring infotainment.

Anne Tolley has it all wrong, Trevor Mallard even more so, aiming for every child

a computer. Arguably the computer in the classroom is one of today’s biggest impediments to real learning. The dangers not only from children being physically based too long in front of a computer screen – added to the dumbing down of coherent teaching and learning, independent thinking and analysis – have all been well documented.

That ageing Berkeley hippie Clifford Stoll, computer guru author of Silicon Snake Oil, has written on this in High Tech Heretic – Why Computers Don’t Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian, engaging with the arguments from our educationists. “So how long does it take to learn word processing? A day? Maybe three? Of course, using a computer requires learning to type. Oops, I mean, acquiring keyboarding proficiency. Still this is hardly rocket science… And for years we’ve been bludgeoned with the cliché, ‘Information is power.” But information isn’t power. After all, who’s got the most information in your neighbourhood? Librarians. And they’re famous for having no power at all. And who has the most power in your community? Politicians. And they’re notorious for being ill-informed.”

And who has the most power over our children, over New Zealanders? Politicians.

Is this fine with everybody? © Copyright Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz www.100days.co.nz www.summersounds.co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

Arguably the computer in the classroom is one of today’s biggest impediments to real learning

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 67

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science

Mouillaud Richard/NEWSCOM

What’s my line?

Peter Curson investigates the science of queue-jumping

W

e seem to spend a considerable amount of our lives in queues. Not simply queuing for trains or buses, at petrol stations, the cinema, in peak hour traffic, or at supermarket checkouts, but also in what have been called “invisible queues” – waiting for promotion, the annual bonus or salary rise, or for annual leave. Quite possibly, life itself can be seen as just one long queue – with birth, puberty, marriage, divorce and death simply staging points along it. Perhaps, life itself is the “waiting element”.

Queues seem to occupy an important place in our lives and are possibly a concrete expression of our attitudes to people and things around us. There are also particular rituals about queuing. Take for example, the people who camp out all night to be near the head of the queue in the annual London sales. Ironically, there are some occasions when the sheer presence of a queue may be taken as implying that there is some-

thing worthwhile at the end. Thus you can get situations during end of year sales whereby people actually join the queue without knowing what actually is being sold.

Perhaps the queue becomes a reassuring comfort for many people or even a miniature world order with its own set of laws of organisation. Just to be in a queue may for some people be enough in itself. Certainly for many English people it would seem to be more than enough!

Queuing seems embedded in our psyche.

Many of the thousands who queued to see Churchill’s grave after his death had no chance of actually getting to see it, and they knew it. Simply to be in ‘the queue’ or perhaps to be ‘seen’ in the queue was the important thing. The same applied when I was an undergraduate at Auckland University in the early 1960s when I remember the pride of many students being able to claim that they queued for 6-8 hours to get tickets for the Proms or to see a visiting orchestra. It

68 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

seems to be a way of expressing sentiment, feeling or attitude.

To many the queue is a miniature world with strict rules and one in which personal contact can be kept to a minimum and anonymity reigns supreme. Queuing is a way in which the risks of close human contact can be formalised and reduced to a minimum while still allowing orderly access to a service. Perhaps this is why the English like queues and are so good at it. They can bury themselves in anonymity, maintaining a form of distant cordiality.

In many societies many people seem to take queuing for granted and only become agitated or annoyed when something goes wrong, such as when a supermarket checkout is closed down or the operator has to check on a price, or when the person in front of you at the bank speaks only broken English and wants to send money to an overseas bank account. What this means is that as long as a reasonable flow is maintained, people are content or happy. It is when a logjam occurs, and something interrupts the flow, that queue tolerance evaporates and people become agitated and unhappy.

There seems little doubt that many people take queuing for granted and while queue boredom may be fairly common as we edge ever so slowly forward towards the head, from time to time we find ourselves involved in what might be termed ‘queue rage’, whether it be caught in a traffic jam at peak hour, behind a long queue in the supermarket or bank, at the economy check-in at the airport, or simply waiting for that promised promotion or wage rise. In some cases this produces an out-pouring of ‘anti-queue behaviour’ where people attempt to ‘jump the queue’ bringing forth an outpouring of ‘tutting’, head shaking, and a chorus of ‘lack of manners’ and ‘do you know that there is a queue’, from others in the line.

Perhaps the operation of our major airports best sums up the essentials of queuing behaviour. Most major airports maintain a number of runways in operation (as a bank or supermarket checkout will have several tellers/cashiers at the counter – never my bank!). At the airport the actual landing or takeoff time is about one minute. But as there are usually peak arrival and departure periods, aircraft are often ‘stacked’ (expected to form a queue like us in the bank or supermarket). There they will develop a holding pattern until allowed to progress one step in the stack (forward a place in our bank queue) as the runways free up. This

then is the basic pattern which only alters according to probability laws such as when an emergency allows an aircraft to queuejump others in the stack, and the stack generally behaves just like a queue of people. If an aircraft decides that the stack is too great, that their fuel is too low or that it is too close to curfew, it may decide to divert to another airport (in our case, leaving the long bank queue and deciding to go to another branch either because the queue is too long, or perhaps that our lunch hour is running out).

I suppose that from a functional point of view, a queue is simply a way of managing supply and demand and of handling a situation in which the service or resource to be allocated is scarce or in demand and there is a need to seemingly treat applicants as equally as possible. From another perspective perhaps queues are a bureaucratic device of our Welfare State that turns us all into supplicants waiting in a slow moving but orderly line for service.

Each queue has its own form of discipline and rules that govern behaviour. Compare those queuing in a bank, for example, with those queuing to get into a football match.

The most formal rules and queue discipline apply to ‘invisible’ queues such as being placed on ‘hold’ when telephoning for a service or to make an enquiry. Here queuing takes on a different dimension where the service operator exercises power over who ultimately gets to the front of the queue.

Like it or lump it, queues are here to stay even if some manage to bypass them altogether. Most of us have witnessed Business Class passengers at the airport being preferentially diverted away from queues or VIPs being ushered past people waiting for a table at their favourite restaurant. Interestingly, when VIPs or the so-called ‘privileged classes’ do actually have to queue, it is usually at special events and locations such as at the woman’s toilet at Government House garden parties, the toilet at the Opera or the toilet in the Business Class lounge.

Another variant of this is seen in the influx of Asian students in many of our cities. To them the queue is an anathema, an unknown dimension, and perhaps in a society of more than one billion people orderly queuing is something of an irrelevance.

Many is the time when I have been first in the queue to board a city-bound bus only to be physically jostled aside by a mass of Asian University students consumed by the desire to be first aboard. Much the same happens when the peak hour train pulls into a

crowded station and opens its doors. This is no place for the timid or faint hearted and the race goes to the swiftest, largest and most aggressive. To confront such problems foreign students in Britain have been asked to attend special programs on the British Art of Queuing and it is interesting that prior to the Olympics in China in 2008, Beijing instituted a ‘queuing day’ on the 11th day of each month in order to educate the population about orderly queuing and the need to eliminate queue-jumping. The official slogan for this exercise was “It’s civilised to queue, it’s glorious to be polite”.

From time to time we also see situations which produce what can be called ‘panic queues’ such as in times of natural disasters or catastrophes, petrol rationing, queues outside failed Building Societies/Banks or vaccination queues during times of epidemic

It is when a logjam occurs, and something interrupts the flow, that queue tolerance evaporates and people become agitated and unhappy

crisis. Here queuing reveals it’s most emotional and least attractive side with examples of ‘spill’, hysteria and panic.

In other cases queues may become ‘hidden’ in the sense that the service provided is secluded away from public view. In the late 1960s a small VD clinic attached to the hospital on the island of Rarotonga maintained a system whereby entry and queuing was along a secluded beach track well away from public thoroughfares. In addition, the clinic nurse also ran an evening ‘clinic’ from the back of her house well away from the road.

People have an often extraordinary attachment to ‘their’ queue. In fact one of the most striking features of queues is the mixture of entrenchment, identification and vulnerability which characterises those queuing. Many years ago I joined a queue for the boat-train to Paris at a central London station. At 12.45

there were just a dozen or so of us queuing for the 2.30 train. By 1.15 the queue began to build and by 1.45 it was very long, doubling back on itself a number of times. At 1.50 there was a station announcement that a relief train would leave in 20 minutes time from an adjacent platform and that there was no queue. The announcement was repeated several times. Only a handful of people left our queue, however, and cautiously made their way to the new platform. The rest stood firm. One explained – “I’m not moving now.

I have been in this queue for over an hour and I am staying put!” It was “his” queue and nothing would make him abandon it. The relief train lacked credibility. Only his queue was real. Recently a new variant of queuing has emerged whereby people are allocated a ticket number on entry and thereafter sit or stand waiting for their number to be called or displayed on the video screen. In this case the physical nature of the linear queue has been replaced.

Thirty years ago a correspondent in the New York Magazine identified four major types of queue behaviour. Firstly, were the ‘sharks’, those aggressive single-minded people who subvert the ordered queue line and continually pressure the front. Secondly, there were the commensal ‘remoras’ who closely attach themselves to the ‘sharks’ and feed off their success. Thirdly were the ‘eels’ who approached the queue obliquely, quietly edging in from the side. Finally, were the ‘jellyfish’ where most of us fit, who simply join the line and go along with the flow.

Possibly there are also some broad ‘laws’ governing queuing behaviour. At least five seem worthy of note. (1) If you find yourself in one of several queues at the supermarket checkout, you will notice that your queue is always much slower than others. If you change over to what you thought was a quicker queue, it too will slow down and the one you left, speed up. The moral – stay put. (2) Talking to one’s self or to others in the queue is unacceptable behaviour. One should preserve social distance at all costs. (3) No one should be allowed to push in or get in front of you. (4) Polish up your particular queue skills to combat slowness, boredom and frustration. These include concentrating on something interesting, like the man’s haircut in front of you, listening to your iPod, or watching the way the woman in the car in front applies her makeup. Above all, try to avoid making loud cell phone calls. (5) Finally, on no account consider abandoning your queue. Such people do not prosper.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 69

n THINK LIFE

technology

How to ‘Heidi’ yourself Plastic surgery addicts get fix online, reports Bridget Carey

W

ant a new nose? Chin reduction?

Botox? A South Florida cosmetic surgeon has an app for that.

After the success of his iSurgeon app on Apple’s iTunes, Dr. Michael Salzhauer of Bal Harbour Plastic Surgery was approached by the United Kingdom’s version of MTV to create a similar program for its website.

Called “Heidi Yourself,” the new online tool lets users see what they’d look like if they changed their body or facial features.

The name comes from MTV reality TV star Heidi Montag, who admits to having 10 plastic surgery procedures in a single day.

Heidi Yourself went live at the end of August and gets about 200 hits a day. And about half a million have downloaded Salzhauer’s free iSurgeon iPhone app since it launched last year, he said.

Salzhauer is among a handful of plastic surgeons using iPhone apps to promote their practice with a do-it-yourself-first photo editing tool. Toronto-based FaceTouchUp. com, which created morphing software for Salzhauer’s homepage, is building iPhone apps for plastic surgeons in Toronto and Beverly Hills and is slated to release more from doctors in California and New York in the next two months. In March, Dr. Elizabeth Kinsley of Covington, La., launched the iAugment app, designed to show a woman what it would look like to have larger breasts.

For Salzhauer and others, the interactive apps have become a new form of marketing. Out of the roughly 1,000 operations Salzhauer has done in the past year, about 50 clients mentioned they changed their images on the iPhone app before coming in.

70 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

“In this economy, it’s not like plastic surgery is on top of everyone’s mind,” Salzhauer said. Few who visit the MTV UK Heidi Yourself site may travel to see him, he said, but the exposure is worthwhile. And a few clients who downloaded iPhone versions have come from out of town to book his services.

“Cosmetic surgery has been hurt by the recession and it’s more of a luxury,” said Steve Ullmann, a healthcare management and economics professor at the University of Miami. “As more people can see what they are able to become ... it can generate more business.”

Like prescription drugs advertisements and self-diagnosing websites such as WebMD.com, the iPhone apps give patients a sense of power.

“It’s knowing what you want to ask the doc-

Although plastic surgery often raises concerns of negative body image messages, Salzhauer said the only complaints he’s heard are those who wish the software was more advanced.

tor before you even walk in,” Ullmann said.

In the case of iSurgeon, that power comes with a light-hearted cosmetic surgery spin.

Like competing apps, iSurgeon requires users to upload a photo, preferably a profile shot of the area to be changed. A finger swipe or mouse click will stretch, shrink and lift parts of an image.

The iPhone app includes a timed game to see how quickly and accurately you can improve another patient’s nose, breast, tummy or butt. And with every nip and tuck on the app comes comical sound effects of moans, buzz saws and screams.

“I take my work seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously,” Salzhauer said.

While some may use it for a cheap laugh, Salzhauer said he sometimes gets about 50 to 100 images sent to him daily from people who want to show him what they created on the app. A few months ago, about half of those were sent jokingly, but now 75 percent of the e-mailed photos he gets are taking the app seriously.

The technology to morph photos with a virtual makeover has been around for some time on the Web and in professional software like Adobe’s Photoshop, which can cost $500. But with the ease of a smartphone application, it only takes seconds to take a photo and begin editing it.

“Photoshop software is kind of complicated and expensive,” Salzhauer said. “This is free and instant.”

The free iAugment app by Louisiana’s Kinsley racked up about 100,000 downloads in the first month and now averages about 50,000 to 60,000 downloads a month.

“Those numbers are a lot greater than

what I expected, and I think people think it’s a fun thing,” Kinsley said. “Plastic surgery can be very intimidating and it can be very intimidating to make that appointment.” The app serves as an icebreaker.

Kinsley said she’s been surprised at the number of plastic surgeons who have reached out to ask how they can make their own app – or be featured on her app. She charges an advertising fee for inclusion in the app’s “Find a Recommended Surgeon” feature.

“If you look at the cost of developing an app versus a YellowPages ad, it’s pretty close,” Kinsley said. “It’s a more 21st century way of marketing.”

Hisham Al-Shurafa, founder and CEO of Toronto-based FaceTouchUp.com, said he’s been getting requests to make apps for cosmetic surgeons in Florida, California and New York. The most popular feature after photo morphing: being able to see real patient before-and-after photos.

“They say it’s nice if a patient or potential patient can just open up their cellphone and

show their photos,” Al-Shurafa said. “I’m pretty surprised now that we’ve been getting contacts from various corners of the country, from various doctors asking if we can build them an app. Typically doctors are late adopters when it comes to technology.”

The free version of Salzhauer’s iSurgeon puts the Bal Harbour Plastic Surgery name and contact information on the finished product photo, and encourages users to share edited photos on Facebook. But the paid version for $1.99 – purchased by about 7,000 – lets users save photos without the practice’s logo.

Hiring a programmer to create it cost Salzhauer about $10,000. “It was surprisingly affordable,” Salzhauer said, and he’s long since made his money back on it.

Although plastic surgery often raises concerns of negative body image messages, Salzhauer said the only complaints he’s heard are those who wish the software was more advanced.

The next step: building an application for the larger-screen iPad. But for Salzhauer, it’s a side project – not a priority.

“I think everybody is trying out new things to get through this economy,” he said.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 71

n THINK LIFE

online

with Chillisoft financially sound for cyber-criminals to set up call centres with own personnel, then cold call and bait their way through long lists of phone numbers all over the world, making some easy income in the process.”

You’ll pay for it Hey, wanna buy a cheap watch? What about some antivirus software? The perils of internet scams

J

ust when you think internet scammers have dredged the deepest depths of deception, up pops another, even more devious dupe to part you with your cash, passwords and, unfortunately, your reputation. Not only will they disguise themselves as your long-lost friends in a spot of bother overseas (the so-called ‘friends in distress scam’ -http://www.snopes.com/fraud/distress/ family.asp) or try to sweet-talk you into sharing your Facebook password (this rort from the people at Facebook themselves – http:// blog.eset.com/2010/08/26/share-your-password-spam-your-friends) but now they’ll personally call you and try to convince you into downloading malware, and, even more brazenly, send them cash for the privilege!

ESET’s David Hartly exposes this growing threat (http://blog.eset.com/2010/08/06/ support-scams-on-the-rise-1).

“Several months ago,” Hartley writes, “reports started coming in that people are receiving unusual phone calls. These are calls from people claiming to represent online computer repair services, with various generic names such as PC Support, PC Doctor, Online PC Repairs, etc, and offering to ‘fix’ someone’s computer.

“Usually the caller says they have MCSEs (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers) and

Cisco Certified engineers available and offers to fix and optimise the computer remotely and clean it of any malware. The hesitant ‘customer’ is told their system is probably riddled with worms and viruses, and is given simple instructions on how to open the Event Viewer and look for errors and warnings.

“As the Event Viewer is a reporting tool and therefore usually flags frequent but usually non-critical errors and warnings anyhow, this looks convincing enough for most computer-wary victims to lend the caller an ear, believing that something may actually be seriously wrong with their computer, and being all too ready to believe that their antivirus has let them down.

The victim is then usually instructed to access a certain website and download components needed to remotely fix their computer (and we all know what that can entail). But to add insult to injury, the victim is asked for credit card details to pay for the procedure and then offered an extended ‘Warranty Service’ at serious prices, such as 1 year for €99, 2 years €189, or 3 years €289 in some of the reported cases!

“So, what we’re seeing is a further personalisation and development of computerrelated criminal activity. Evidently it is proving

72 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

Who’s to blame?

The next question, of course, is who is behind all of these clever scams? The cynical type might suspect it is the antivirus companies themselves. And why not? The more threats, the more protection you need.

Employment security forever. Well, maybe not. ESET blogger Randy Abrams puts this urban legend to rest.

“There are several good reasons for an antivirus company not to write malware,” writes Abrams. “If an antivirus company wrote malware then they would jeopardise their business. If they got caught doing this they would be out of business and face criminal charges in many countries. This isn’t a very smart business strategy.

“Right now there is too much malware to keep up with. Antivirus companies struggle with the sheer volume of threats, there isn’t a need for more. I’m sure the labs at the AV companies could keep busy for a long time processing the samples that haven’t yet been added for detection.

“It is a really stupid business model for an antivirus company to pay someone to write malware when there are so many people who already do it for free. Writing viruses is not that hard a thing to do. It doesn’t take much more skill than a novice programmer has to write a virus, it isn’t rocket science. The bulk of the malware we see today is used to steal money, online game credentials (for money), and personal identities (for money). We see malware written and used for corporate espionage, and probably for government espionage as well.”

So malware is written to part you from your hard-earned cash, not simply to cause mischief and grief. It’s a profession, just like burglary and P dealing. You don’t think the police are behind the criminal gangs on the streets. The AV vendors, at least the legitimate ones, are on your side.

Safe computing is good business and that is exactly what they promote.

Hacked together by Chillisoft NZ from various sources, blogs and ramblings including David Harley (CITP FBCS CISSP), Senior Research Fellow, ESET LLC (developers of ESET NOD32 antivirus software) and Randy Abrams, Director of Technical Education, ESET LLC.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 73

FEEL LIFE SPORT

Harry Engels/Actionplus/NEWSCOM

Stumped Corruption permeates dark corners of the gentlemen’s game. The unacceptable face of betting embroiled three Pakistan players in a global scandal. But cricket’s ruling body may have been dealt a losing hand – as Chris Forster discovers

T

emptation may have been too much to resist for the Pakistan captain and two of his most talented charges. A dodgy Pakistani bookmaker was captured on film by an English tabloid, bragging about his powers of persuasion as he piled wads of cash onto a coffee table.

Opening batsman Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and his 18 year old pacebowling accomplice, Mohammad Amir – are accused of accepting cash from the notorious Mr Mazhar Majeed.

The junior Mohammad bowled some outrageous no-balls during the September test between Pakistan and England at the home of cricket, Lord’s – and the three accused became central figures behind an illegal act known as “spot-fixing”.

The International Cricket Council had no choice but to lay charges on the trio under the Anti-Corruption Code, and suspend them pending the result of an independent tribunal hearing. There were calls to throw the book at them and ban them for life.

74 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

Hardline commentators wanted Pakistan to be stripped of its international status.

But that would leave a huge hole in a game which survives and thrives on its incredible popularity on the sub-continent.

ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat stressed their stance in bold letters.

“Corruption will not be tolerated in our great sport” But how far do they go?

New Zealand has a squeaky clean reputation in all sports open to corruption. There’s no rampant abuse of steroids by cyclists, and no real history of boxing matches being manipulated by evil promoters. Matchfixing isn’t even on the radar in the remote Antipodes. The notable exception was the Warriors’ salary cap abuses before the 2005 edition of the NRL, although nothing to the extent of the Melbourne Storm’s season of shame this year.

Cricketers like Black Caps captain Daniel Vettori have to rely on their guile, talent and teamwork to compete against nations with far greater population pools and cash resources.

Vettori immediately stated publicly that life bans are the only way to halt corruption, but he was a little more circumspect on the eve of the annual New Zealand Cricket Awards.

“It’s just people in that world basically, who strike up a conversation and lead you to doing something wrong. It can be a long drawn out process … and leads to players being put into difficult positions.”

Vettori did reveal his predecessor Stephen Fleming was approached a few years ago.

“He notified the anti-corruption unit straight away”.

Senior batsman (and former vice-captain) Brendon McCullum is hoping for the best.

“It’s disappointing to hear anything that is damaging to the game – which is being talked about (through the media). It’s hard to have an opinion on (it) until the results come out.”

But McCullum does advocate harsh action if the Pakistan trio are guilty.

“There needs to be some sort of severe punishment. It can’t be condoned in our sport.”

The ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit was setup in the wake of the Hanse Cronje affair in early 2000, headed by former cop, Sir Paul Condon.

It’s the body that claims to have limited corruption to a bare minimum. That was until the Pakistan trio were caught and charged.

“Spot-fixing” in itself pales into insignificance to the match-fixing scams the late disgraced South African captain Cronje and

his cronies were involved in at the start of the century.

Their corruption was completely out of control, the Pakistan incidents were isolated acts that don’t in themselves change the course of a match.

The ICC was also under pressure to take it easy on talented pace bowler Mohammad Amir, whose tender age made him a prime target for the crafty bookies and their wicked ways.

Amir is still only 18 and the youngest test cricketer to claim 50 test scalps.

He forms a mean opening bowling partnership with the other accused, Mohammad Asif.

27 year old Asif is also a fine cricketer, but has a shady history. In 2007 he was banned for one year by the Pakistan Cricket Board for taking the anabolic steroid nandralone, while his accomplice Shoaib Akhtar received a two year suspension. Both had the bans lifted by a Pakistan court later that year.

But Asif ’s steroid troubles didn’t stop there.

He needed rather expensive and clever lawyers to extricate him from Dubai, where he was caught with an illegal substance in his wallet.

Then back at home he was again caught out and served a ban through to late last year. His future seemed bleak if caught by the ICC. Asif ’s past history of cheating may even have led the young Amir to take the money and run, although that’s pure media speculation.

The team’s captain Salman Butt fronted the media shamelessly when the revelations first

The team’s captain Salman Butt fronted the media shamelessly when the revelations first became public in late August, and his role in the whole sordid affair was rather murky

became public in late August, and his role in the whole sordid affair was rather murky.

All three were caught by Scotland Yard police officers with cash notes with the same serial numbers possessed by the shady bookie, after searches of the cricketers’ hotel rooms in London.

Pakistan is a deeply troubled nation, riddled with Muslim extremists and suicide bombers. The lives of tens of millions of ordinary citizens have been devastated by

unforgiving floods, and most of the world doesn’t seem to care.

The nation’s top cricketers have to play all their international matches abroad because of the stark threat of terrorist attacks. It’s a basket case.

But that case possesses talented cricketers in the fine tradition of Imran Khan, Zaheer Abass, Javed Miandad and Wasim Akram (who’s a mentor to the teenager Amir).

The ICC had to be very careful when it weighs-up the penalties.

There are only 8 decent international teams in world cricket; England, Australia, India, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, the West Indies … and Pakistan.

Zimbabwe’s totalitarian nightmare under Robert Mugabe has taken them off the radar and all the efforts to get Bangladesh up to speed have failed.

Life bans for three cricketers from Pakistan, including their two best fast bowlers, would decimate the team.

Spot-fixing is corruption no doubt. But bowling a few no balls for cash, is not throwing a match, or worth ruining a career.

Their currency as tourists or offshore attractions has already radically reduced. Many cricket fans will not turn out to see a second rate cricket side, let alone the Great Unwashed who thrive on the Twenty-20 format.

All this will be deepening the worry lines on the brow of Justin Vaughan and his team at New Zealand Cricket, with Pakistan looming as the main attraction for the meat of the summer ahead.

THE HANSE CRONJE AFFAIR

PAKISTAN

7 April, 2000 – Delhi Police intercept conversation between blacklisted bookie Sanjay Chawla and Cronje 8 April – South African Cricket Board denied their players were involved in match-fixing.

11 April – Cronje confesses he had “not been entirely honest” Admits accepting bribes of $10,000 – $15 000 for “forecasting” results.

7 June – King Commission begins.

15 June – Cronje releases statement confessing his contact with bookmakers.

11 October – Cronje banned for playing or coaching cricket for life.

17 October, 2001 – Appeal against life ban dismissed.

June 1, 2000 – Cronje killed in a plane crash in South Africa. *Pakistan batsman Saleem Malik and Indian captain Mohammed Azhharuddin (who was implicated by Cronje) were also been banned for life, although both have successfully appealed against the penalties in their homelands.

TWENTY-20 INTERNATIONALS Dec 26 – Eden Park, Auckland Dec 28 – Seddon Park, Hamilton Dec 30 – AMI Stadium, Christchurch

South African Captain 1992-2000

tour of New Zealand

TESTS Jan 7-11 – Seddon Park, Hamilton Jan 15-19 – Basin Reserve, Wellington ODIs 22 Jan – Westpac Stadium, Wellington 26 Jan – Queenstown Events Centre 29 Jan – AMI Stadium, Christchurch 1 Feb – McLean Park, Napier 3 Feb – Seddon Park, Hamilton 5 Feb – Eden Park, Auckland

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 75

FEEL LIFE HEALTH

Cholesterol & longevity

High levels of cholesterol may improve longevity, writes Masanori Tonegawa

T

he Japan Society for Lipid Nutrition has drawn up new guidelines stating that high cholesterol levels are better for living longer, defying conventional wisdom.

There are two kinds of cholesterol - lowdensity lipoprotein (LDL) that is considered “bad,” and high-density lipoprotein (HDL), which is regarded as “good” cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is delivered to cells throughout the body, while HDL is excess cholesterol collected from the body.

The Japan Atherosclerosis Society, an organization focusing on lifestyle-related diseases, has advocated people lower their LDL cholesterol levels by improving dietary habits and using medication, because high LDL levels could cause heart disease.

In 2007, the society set diagnostic criteria

for hyperlipemia, or elevated levels of lipids in the bloodstream, flagging LDL cholesterol levels of at least 140 mg/dl and HDL levels less than 40 mg/dl as dangerous for both men and women.

“According to domestic and foreign research, the higher LDL levels become, the more arterial stiffening advances.

Correspondingly, incidence of heart disease also rises. We concluded that LDL cholesterol levels more than 140 mg/dl could easily cause heart disease,” said Hirotsugu Ueshima, professor emeritus at Shiga University of Medical Science, who devised the atherosclerosis society’s criteria.

However, Tomohito Hamazaki, a professor at Toyama University’s Institute of Natural Medicine, who compiled the new

76 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

cholesterol levels guidelines for the Japan Society for Lipid Nutrition, countered Ueshima’s argument. “When examining all causes of death, such as cancer, pneumonia and heart disease, the number of deaths attributable to LDL cholesterol levels exceeding 140 mg/dl is less than people with lower LDL cholesterol levels.”

The lipid nutrition society guidelines do not posit new criteria, but Hamazaki cited some study results to prove his thesis.

According to a eight-year study of about 26,000 men and women in Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture, the death rate of men whose LDL cholesterol levels were between 100 mg/dl and 160 mg/dl was low, while the rate rose for those with LDL cholesterol levels of less than 100 mg/dl.

The LDL figures exhibited less influence on women, but the death rate still rose for women with LDL cholesterol levels less than 120 mg/dl.

A separate study of 16,850 patients nationwide who suffered cerebral stroke showed the death rate of people with hyperlipemia who died from a cerebral stroke was lower, and their symptoms more slight.

“Cholesterol is an essential component for the creation of cell membranes and hormones. It’s not recommended to lower LDL figures by means of dietary intake and medication,” Hamazaki said.

Additional differences exist between men and women’s LDL figures.

“When women reach menopause, their cholesterol figures rise sharply, yet do not affect the arteriosclerosis process or development of heart diseases. At the very least, cholesterol criteria is not necessary for women,” Hiroyuki Tanaka, director of Niko Clinic in Takeo, Saga Prefecture.

The society’s for lipid nutrition’s recently issued guidelines should become an opportunity to highlight the need for treatments to focus on the difference between genders and the related disease risks.

HEALTHBRIEFS SPORT AS A NATURAL HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE BLOCKER. High blood pressure is a significant factor in cardiovascular disease such as stroke or heart attack.

Sport can reduce the risk because, along with a healthy diet and moderate alcohol consumption, non-drug therapy includes vigorous physical activity, according to Sven Fikenzer from the German Highschool of Health Management in Saarbrucken.

“Between 30 and 60 minutes of sporting activity a day can be very effective.”

“A medical study here in Germany has shown that a quarter of all Germans between 20- and 30-years-old are affected by high blood pressure. In many cases they are not even aware of this,” says Fikenzer. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, sport endurance can significantly reduce blood pressure levels. Among the best sports are cycling, low impact aerobics, jogging and walking.

If a parent or grandparent has had high blood pressure, your risk of contracting the condition is higher. Fikenzer advises getting your blood pressure checked one or two times a year if this is the case.

If you have high blood pressure and you are receiving the correct drug therapy, there is no need to avoid engaging in sport. However, if you are taking beta blockers you should get a physical performance check-up from a cardiologist or sports doctor.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 77

FEEL LIFE ALT.HEALTH

The Vitamin C debate

Medical ethics professor Grant Gillett wades into the Vitamin C debate

F

irst, I must say I am not an authority on Vitamin C but I take from the documents I have viewed the following conclusions.

1. Disputed and anecdotal claims have been made for the dramatic efficacy of hi-dose (>1g per day) (even mega dose >25 gram per day) Vitamin C in life threatening disorders.

2. There is no clear evidence for that claim despite European publications on oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction.

3. There is evidence that in a patient with a serious risk of developing renal insufficiency Vitamin C may precipitate terminal renal failure due to oxalosis.

4. The families of Douglas Pinny (Waikato DHB) have taken to subterfuge to try and help their family member get better with supplements that they cannot afford to mention to the medical team for fear of reprisals or adverse effects on their relative’s care. I also understand a family in North Shore has repeatedly requested vitamin C and have been refused, and that their daughter is not doing at all well.

I find it incredible that things have deteriorated to the extent that they have between these families wanting to do the best for their sick family members and the teams of health care professionals who, according to the existing codes of ethics in NZ, should be working cooperatively and collaboratively with them.

I understand that where there is objective

evidence of harm from some suggested intervention (on the basis of reputable scientific evidence), a medical team might refuse to comply with a family’s request for a certain treatment.

I also understand that where there is inordinate expense to the care provider, a family’s request might not be able to be complied with.

I appreciate that where a patient or the authorised decision maker refuses to consent to a regimen of care, the provider needs to be very sure that it can be proven to be in the best interests of the patient according to a reasonable medical consensus in order to proceed with that regimen of care. Things are otherwise with requests for a particular intervention, where the decision rests with the health care team who are charged with acting in the best interests of the patient.

I would observe that in disputed cases a reasonable body of medical opinion may lie outside the normal bounds of those opinions readily available in NZ health care and that an article such as the European consensus statement on endothelial dysfunction and oxidative stress must be taken seriously such that good reasons should be given as to why its claims should not be factored into crafting a regimen of care for an apparently suitable patient.

Whereas the anecdotal evidence given by the family should be considered with due care and diligence in the light of a professional duty of care, counter-evidence that the doctors wish to be taken into account

should be based on sound scientific evidence and ought to be carefully weighed and collated with the realities of the case before them. The way that a case unfolds, especially where prognostic predictions based in orthodox views seem to be unconfirmed, may represent a signal that some factors affecting the course of the patient’s disease are not fully understood within the bounds of conventional medical wisdom.

These general considerations seem to me to recommend an overall humility and readiness to listen by medical staff unless they have sound evidence that what a family or patient is proposing is likely to be prejudicial to the course of the patient’s illness.

Where the predicted course of disease is terminal, there is little to be said for medical closed-mindedness about anecdotal treatments and where factors appear to be having an effect which cannot be accounted for by the regimen of treatment and its evidentially supported credentials, the medical staff ought to be especially attentive to alternative suggestions and not to allow theoretical considerations to outweigh apparently inconsistent clinical developments. It is worth noting that some of the relevant changes and their causes may be more readily observable by those less convinced of the rightness of their convictions or committed to a particular paradigm of health care.

It seems to me that the hospitals concerned in these cases (at least in the events that have been communicated to me) have followed what they consider to be the ethical requirements for patient consultation but the sense I get from the families concerned is that the spirit of those consultations has not always been congenial or open-minded.

I would like to think that that is a mistaken impression in that I incline to the view that the profession usually conducts itself with good will and a genuine sense of partnership in its clinical activity (in so far as resource constraints permit). I do hope that proves to be so in each of these cases.

Grant Gillett, FRSNZ, FRACS, D Phil (Oxon), MBChB, MSc, Professor of Medical Ethics, Otago Bioethics Centre, University of Otago Medical School

78 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

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Stevens was in South Africa where a local gave him daily doses of a boiled root preparation of PS. He found it beneficial and on returning to England he introduced the extract to Europe.

With an interesting history it maintained a presence in Europe until Schwabe Pharmaceuticals analysed the product in the late 20th century and were able to isolate the active ingredients and launch the extract as Umckaloabo in Germany.

Kaloba® Today In recent years, Kaloba®, an alcohol extract made from P. sidoides, has become a highly popular product in Germany and Europe for winter ailments, helping to support normal and healthy airways function. In Germany Kaloba now ranks as the most popular formulation for winter ailments and its sales are just behind aspirin.

Kaloba® has been available in New Zealand since May 2008.

Available from Pharmacies and selected Health Stores.

For more information phone 0800 657 876 Mon-Fri 9am-5pm or email info@phealth.co.nz Distributed by Pharma Health NZ Ltd Your Health. Nature’s Power.

PO Box 15 185, Auckland 0640. www.pharmahealth.co.nz Supplementary to and not a replacement for a balanced diet. Use only as directed and if symptoms persist, see your health professional.

TAPS NZ6898

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 79

TASTE LIFE TRAVEL

Nirvana for golfers & surfers For surf, hit the Mexican coast, writes Mark Conley

P

UNTA MITA, Mexico – “If the tide pushes up, punch it,” said my seafaring golf guide, Arturo Castro, one early July day in Punta Mita.

The statement could’ve just as easily been uttered a few miles down the coast at Castro’s favorite surf spot, La Lancha, while helping this visiting surfista negotiate the unfamiliar elements.

But at this moment the head pro was speaking of my golf cart, which was straddling an 8-foot wide cobblestone isthmus leading to the green of hole 3B at Punta Mita’s Pacifico course – known as the world’s only island green carved from natural topography.

Like some of the surf spots I had already

sampled on my first visit to Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit, a 40-minute drive north of Puerto Vallarta, hole 3B was tantalizingly hazardous.

A beauty that could quickly turn beastly.

And for me, now sitting in my nonamphibious Club Car, midisthmus, ocean creeping, it already had. My Titleist ball had been meekly donated to Poseidon and his warm, crystalline Pacific off the tee box.

I had resigned myself to enjoying the spectacular scenery and just hitting another from the drop zone when we got to the green.

Sure enough, there came the tide. It was time to punch it.

There are myriad Southern Hemisphere destinations to indulge in surf-and-turf nirvana (Hawaii, for starters). But there may

80 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

not be a more enjoyable combo locale than the largely untapped 190-mile stretch of coast that lines the Mexican state of Nayarit.

It is a comfortable, mellow-vibed land of uncluttered surf lineups and wide-open fairways, with amenities ranging from posh to funky and everything in between.

It begins with Punta Mita, a 10-year-old, 1,500-acre private community at the north end of Banderas Bay. Its gorgeous peninsula is surrounded by ocean on three sides, which made it a desirable home to the luxurious Four Seasons and recently opened St. Regis – and their accompanying Jack Nicklausdesigned golf courses.

And while you’ve got to be a guest of one of the resorts (let’s say, um, not exactly reces-

Mark Conley/MCT/NEWSCOM

On this trip, I needed only to go as far as hole 3B to find my most memorable aquatic adventure

Marc Piscotty/Icon SMI/NEWSCOM

sionary challenged) to play the otherwise private courses, a good public option sits right up the road at Litibu Campo de Golf, a new Greg Norman course set to host a Canadian Tour tournament in October.

The places to seek out surf, any time of the year, from swells northerly in the winter and southerly in the summer, are vast.

But they can also be elusive. Many, such as Castro’s favorite spot, La Lancha, require one to park just past a particular sign marker off the main road, locate a well-placed hole in the chain-link fence and wander down a dirt path cut into the jungle.

Some of the best spots in southern Nayarit – such as El Faro, Monuments and The Cove, all visible right off the Punta Mita

golf courses – are only accessible via boat.

Fortunately, several outfits catering to surfers have sprung up in recent years, and the most knowledgeable of them know exactly where it will be good – even when seemingly nothing else is breaking.

But Nayarit also has a perfect option for surf newbies, 20 minutes through the bumpy jungle road from Punta Mita in the arty, hippie expat haven of Sayulita. The crescent-shaped stretch of beach is littered with surf schools, family restaurants, ambitious ware peddlers and gringos tucked under rented palapas with their buckets of Tecates, soaking in the sights.

And the Sayulita water – the rare spot crowded even by California standards – can indeed be a sight. The wave is mellow righthander well-suited for longboarding, but it’s inhabitants make for a lively mix. They range from twentysomething Americano girls riding tandem to local hot dogs showing off their headstands to first-timers trying to corral the giant foam beast they were handed at the rental kiosk.

Farther up the coast, to the quaint town of San Pancho and well beyond into the heart of Nayarit, lie many other consistent

breaks with nary a soul populating them.

Beach breaks. Point breaks. Reef breaks.

Breaks that require either a knowledgeable boat skipper or a four-wheel vehicle, a good map and a bit of gumption.

But, on this trip, I needed only to go as far as hole 3B to find my most memorable aquatic adventure.

Castro, 37, is the head golf pro at Punta Mita Club de Golf, which last year added a second Nicklaus course to the mix. He is also a San Francisco transplant who got his start as a golf pro at Harding Park while studying at San Francisco State.

He developed his love of surfing in the chilly beginner waters off Linda Mar in Pacifica, working his way up the coast to take the inevitable winter lumps doled out

by Ocean Beach.

Ultimately, the surf/golf addiction and a bit of good luck led Castro here, where the water is warm and the living easy.

“I get to surf and golf just about every day of the year – what more could I want?” said the rare PGA golf pro who goes nowhere without a surfboard strapped to the roof of his vintage VW Beetle.

“Just in case. You never know,” he said.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 81

As I punched the golf cart accelerator back on the isthmus at 3B, I wished I had Castro’s Al Merrick quad fish strapped to my roof – just in case I needed a flotation device to paddle back to shore.

The worst-case scenario (the cart’s battery could get flooded by seawater and stall out) really wasn’t too daunting. More embarrassment than despair.

In the past, with the tide pushing higher than it was for us, others had been stuck

out there and had to wade back through knee-high water, golf bag, spikes and all, Castro said.

Though the tide was sending seawater a few inches over the path’s surface in rhythmic pulses, it wasn’t high enough to reach the poor Club Car’s inner recesses and make 3B any more damning for me.

With a bit of creative accelerator punching, we made it out and back with no mishaps – save for a shanked pitch from the

drop zone leading to double bogey for a certain visiting surfista.

Awed and humbled by one of those golf holes that simply must be seen, I was ready to return to the more conventional water hazards of the Riviera Nayarit. A few jagged rocks here, a hefty south swell there and a pack of Portuguese Man ‘o War floating through the surf zone to spice things up.

It’s all good stuff but it had nothing on hole 3B.

hole 3B. They’re also currently working on putting together a “Surf-n-Turf” package hosted by head pro Arturo Castro.

Palladium Vallarta Resort & Spa – 01152-329-226-9900 www.fiestahotelgroup. com. Affordably priced beachfront allinclusive that is very family friendly. (Best demonstrated by the zoo that resides in the middle of the property.) It’s a fiveminute drive from Litibu Campo de Golf ($100-150) and sits right in front of one of the area’s most consistent surf spots, called Burros. Guests can rent surfboards on the beach, when they’re not sipping cervezas under a palapa.

Surf Exploration: Beginner options

IF YOU GO Getting There: From Puerto Vallarta,

you rent a car – or grab a cab or shuttle – and head 40 minutes north. Some of the roads remain a bit rustic – confirmation that you’re leaving the beaten path.

Where to Stay/Play: Four Seasons Punta Mita – 011-52-329-291-6000, www. fourseasons.com/puntamita. The lap of luxury is not cheap (rooms in the $400500 in the summer offseason), but the resort if offering a credit on stays of three nights or more that make it cheaper than $300 a night to stay. Part of that credit can be directed to a round at the Bahia or Pacifico courses ($265) and a date with

82 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

aplenty on the beach at Sayulita. El Tigre Surf School is a good place to start. More advanced surfers will want to consider finding a boat driver to explore some of Nayarit’s hidden nooks and crannies. The folks at Mictlan Surf School near Anclote beach (info@mictlansurf.com) and Accion Tropical near La Lancha (www.acciontropical.com) are both good bets for finding a knowledgeable boat driver who will find you the goods. (Having a few surf compatriots that will split the $50-100 cost – and also share the best waves discovered – is key.)

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 83

TASTE LIFE FOOD

/CLASSIC/

Noodling around

Want a fun challenge in the kitchen?

Make your own pasta, says James Morrow

A

h, the pasta aisle of the supermarket.

Fettucini, cavatelli, oricchiette, rigatoni, penne rigate...just reading off the names on the different boxes and bags is enough to make one feel Italian. And so many of these shapes have names that sound cool even in English: Does a plate of priest’s caps (agnolotti) appeal? No? Well, perhaps a steaming bowl of strozzapretti – or ‘priest stranglers’ – will sate your appetite as well as your anti-clerical urges.

But almost every packet of pasta for sale in the supermarket has one thing in common, regardless of shape: it is dried. Which means that it is made by combining water and hard semolina flour and extruded in factories through various shaped dies. Some of these pastas are very good, and indeed gourmet dried pastas are showing up on the shelves of more and more suburban markets

(tip: look for noodles that have a particularly rough sauce-holding surface as a sure tip-off of quality), but they lack a certain something. Now, I keep a five kilogram sack of penne rigate in the cabinet because it’s an incredibly economical and convenient base for a huge number of dinners. But there are times that some occasions, and some recipes, that call for more than just a couple of scoops of Barilla tossed into boiling water.

That alternative is, of course, fresh pasta.

Contrary to what one might think, fresh pasta is not simply the predried version of what comes in a rectangular blue box with instructions to ‘cottura 11 minuti’. Instead it is made from eggs and flour – which is why the stuff has a pretty firm use-by date – and unlike dried, only takes a few minutes to cook.

So where to get the stuff ? Some fresh

84 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

pasta is available from gourmet Italian delis and even supermarkets, but it is ridiculously expensive considering what goes in to it.

Instead, I say, make your own.

I sometimes think that there is a conspiracy out there in the world of TV chefs and cookbook authors to keep certain ideas and techniques just vague and complicated enough so that the average punter remains mystified and unable to fully recreate certain end-products – or at least not regularly enough to become adept at them. I have a fantastic cookbook by the American chef Charlie Palmer which is almost like a detective hunt: every photograph of a finished dish has some extra touch or flourish not included in the printed recipe, and the reader has to study it closely to discern the hidden item. Call it The DaVinci Cookbook school of food writing. The end result is it

convinces ordinary home chefs that fresh pasta can only be made with two kinds of imported artisinal flour and lots of kneading, followed by ample time for both chef and dough to have a good rest.

This is, of course, completely untrue, and there is no reason why fresh homemade pasta can’t become part of any home chef ’s regular – i.e., at least weekly – routine. The advantages are numerous: though it takes a little longer to prepare on the front end (and we’re only talking about twenty minutes, with a little practice), it takes only moments to cook. One need only be up from the table for five minutes, tops, to knock up a pasta course before rejoining the rest of the party.

Furthermore, the texture is night-and-day to that of dried pasta. It holds sauce much more effectively – one might even say intimately – and as a result, one needs less to coat it.

This is where the old adage that pasta is not about the sauce but the pasta comes from, and it’s impossible to understand unless one has experienced the difference. Fresh pasta absorbs sauce in a way dried simply can’t.

To make fresh pasta, one really only needs to get a hand-cranked pasta machine, costing between $60 and $90, depending on brand, at decent homewares stores. Word to the wise: spend the money on the more expensive Italian model if you can. The cheaper look-alike made in Korea will do the job just as well, but doesn’t stand up to regular use over the years, and will need to be replaced far sooner. Beyond that, the only ingredients are flour (I prefer Italian strong, or ‘00’ flour, but the basic housebrand 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 wellfloured 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 secondthinnest setting (generally number 8). Give

R&D Valterza/Digital Light Sou/NEWSCOM

The texture is night-and-day to that of dried pasta. It holds sauce much more effectively – one might even say intimately – and as a result, one needs less to coat it

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.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 85

TOUCH LIFE  TOYBOX

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During internal testing, a 1 hour 44 minute movie (3.9GB) was written to the drive in 1 minute 13 seconds. www.kingston.com.

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NOKIA E7 Billed as the ultimate business smartphone, the Nokia E7 boasts Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support alongside a luscious 4-inch touchscreen display, which uses Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility. The Nokia E7 also comes with a slide out four-row QWERTY keyboard making it the ideal mobile business device. Despite the addition of a full keyboard, the E7 is only a smidge deeper than the Nokia N8 at 13.6mm thin. The device also boasts an 8-megapixel snapper and comes complete with 16GB of onboard storage. Those on the move will welcome the Nokia E7’s travel-friendly 18 days of standby time and up to 9 hours of talktime. The device, which will be available in dark grey, silver white, green, blue and orange will be available in the last quarter of 2010. www.nokia.com

SEE LIFE / PAGES

The Gook and the God of War Michael Morrissey relives Vietnam Matterhorn

By Karl Marlantes Corvus, $38.99 Normally, I barely glance at publishers’ blurbs but this one grabbed my attention.

In the 1970s, no one would publish this book because no one wanted to talk about Vietnam.

In the 1980s, no one would publish this book because Hollywood had covered Vietnam.

In the 1990s, no one would publish it because they wanted it set in the Gulf, not Vietnam.

In other words, interest had shifted post 9/11 to Iraq and Afghanistan ... the world wanted to “see something shorter, something current, but definitely not set in Vietnam”.

The Vietnam war finished in 1975, so it has become history. Today, Vietnam flourishes, tourism is alive and well, and the former devastations of war have largely been erased.

The author, himself an ex-Marine, but also Yale and Oxford-educated, and a winner of some 16 medals, took 35 years to write this book. That doesn’t surprise me in the least.

I was at varsity during much of the Vietnam war era (1964-1975) – and joined large marches against the NZ presence in Vietnam and the war itself, and also wrote anti-American poems. But somehow, now, I feel I can read this account with a clear con-

science in a way that would not have been possible back then. My impression is, even in New Zealand, as is certainly the case in the United States, time has helped heal this festering political wound, and Vietnam vets are being allowed to stand tall, unthinkable as that was in the 70s.

Because of generalised left wing contempt for the war in Vietnam, I took scant notice of actual battles and even the famous Tet Offensive passed me by. I have subsequently learned (2010!) that during the Tet Offensive, the forces of the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) and the People’s Army of Vietnam (the NVA or North Vietnamese Army) fought against the forces of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the United States and their allies. The aim was to spark a general uprising among the population that would topple the Saigon government, thus ending the war at a single stroke.

However, my ears instantly pricked up when I heard about the notorious My Lai massacre (the cynical left wing joke at the time was My Lie) and, as far as I was concerned, along with all left wingers at the time, Lieutenant Calley, a runtish five feet four inches tall, was no different from a Nazi officer on the Eastern front during World War 11 killing Jews – he even said he was obeying orders (!) to kill the

88 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

enemy, which in the case of the My Lai village, included 500 women, children, infants and the elderly. These slaughtered villagers were regarded as aiding and abetting the Vietcong.

(Just by the way, please read The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell, the definitive work on the Eastern Front reviewed in this column in October 2009.)

Again, by way of relevant background, Calley, who got abysmal grades at the college he attended – two Cs, one D and four Fs – only served a three-year sentence and that under house arrest. The original sentence was 20 years, though in fact, his actions could have merited the death sentence. At the time, 79 per cent of Americans polled opposed Calley’s conviction. The subsequently formed Vietnam Veterans Against the War protested that the My Lai incident was not an isolated event and plenty of similar events occurred. Thus, Matterhorn could be read by some as a retro white wash.

Though I have to say, in all honesty, it didn’t read that way to my 2010 eyes. Perhaps the distinction to be kept in mind is between the NVA and the Vietcong.

Accordingly, at this 40-year remove, Matterhorn evoked a degree of sympathy/ empathy unthinkable in the 70s. I read it with a similar frame of mind to The Naked

and the Dead, Norman Mailer’s great novel of World War 11 – as an account of ordinary men – some white, some black – trapped in a bad situation and fighting an almost invisible jungle-hidden enemy i.e. the Northern Vietnamese Army. Until I read this book, such was my ignorance, I was only aware of the Vietcong. In a compendious glossary, Marlantes writes: NVA: North Vietnamese Army, the regular army of the Republic of Vietnam, a wellequipped and well-trained regular fighting force, in contrast with the VC or Vietcong, which was a guerrilla force.

Throughout this novel, the Bravo company only fight the NVA not the Vietcong, so they do not attack villages of civilians, as did Lieutenant Calley. Though the Marines’ job was to kill the NVA, they respected their fighting prowess and tended to have contempt for officers further up the chain of command, and for politicians back home.

Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Also relevant to Matterhorn, Calley was considered incompetent and so disliked that fellow infantrymen thought of fragging i.e. killing him with a tossed hand grenade. Forty-three such fragging incidents occurred during the Vietnam-based Marine corps tour of duty, though not all ended in fatality. I only heard of the term fragging and its meaning as recently as 2008.

Lieutenant Calley is arguably, in some measure, the basis for such a character as Lieutenant Simpson in Matterhorn, though

in a note on the business pages, author Marlantes states that all the places are invented and all the heroes and villains are invented, as well. He writes: I am proud to have served with officers and enlisted men who exemplified all the character, skill and bravery that make one proud to be a Marine. These Marines fought fatigue, and the failures of courage, judgment, and will that make me proud to be human.

In other words, ex-Marine Marlantes ain’t about to dump on his former buddies.

To the deadly NVA foe, could be added blood-sucking leeches, immersion rot which can lead to gangrene and amputation, malaria, and the occasional tiger attack – one Marine is eaten in the novel. “His legs and backside had been ripped open and partially eaten. It looked as though he’d been killed with one quick blow to the skull, breaking his neck.

Puncture wounds from long sharp teeth were sunk deeply into his face and temples.”

As the novel makes abundantly clear, jungle-fighting was no seaside picnic: “His uniform was a mass of tattered holes and filth. One trouser leg had been torn off at the knee, revealing pasty white flesh covered with infected leech bites and jungle rot.

You could smell him as he walked by. But he walked as if the LZ (Landing Zone for helicopters) belonged to him, seemingly unaware of the hundred pounds he carried. He was a bush Marine and Mellas (the central character) wanted fervently to be just like him”.

I will return now to consideration of the now-you-see-them now-you-don’t adversary of the North Vietnamese Army. The gooks, as they were disparagingly called, seldom acquire a human face – they are shadows in the jungle and only rarely seen up close, as in hand to hand combat. It must have been a strangely humanising experience for both sides to see the enemy even as you did your best to kill him before he killed you.

Poisonous snakes and Agent Orange also put in guest appearances.

In the midst of this intermittent chaos of jungle war, is Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas, a college-educated youth of 21, still a virgin and – what seems even more startling – yet to see anyone die. A battle-hardened veteran, he is not. Two months later, he is a changed man.

In the early stages of the book, there is a fair amount of inter-marine bitching. When Wick insults Pollini’s father, Pollini lashes out with his ladle and throw hot water at him; when tough guy Sergeant Cassidy can’t stand Mallory’s moaning about his

head hurting – and especially after the edgy Mallory draws a gun on a medic – he beats him up. Lieutenant Colonel Simpson is a nasty drunk who continues to make life a misery for those beneath him. At this stage, the Marines have yet to see combat.

I wearied of the dreary authenticity of every second sentence being concluded with “Over” and at one stage thought of quitting the novel. I began nostalgically re-reading The Naked and Dead and making less than favourable comparison. Mailer’s characters seemed more distinctive and the device of The Time Machine to background their lives, gave them additional depth. I also particularly enjoyed the combative tacitly homosexual dialogue between General Cummings and Lieutenant Hearn. In Matterhorn, the general is a more remote, almost godlike figure that we never get to know. However, I persevered with Matterhorn and I’m glad I did. In the end, I came to regard this novel favourably, though I do not rate it as highly as The Naked and the Dead as a work of fiction, even though its documentary and weapons aspects are more detailed and may be more accurate.

There is a striking passage on page 351 that I would like to quote at length: “Mellas was transported outside himself, beyond himself. It was as if his mind watched everything coolly while his body raced wildly with passion and fear. He was frightened beyond any fear he had ever known. But this brilliant and intense fear, this terrible here and now, combined with the crucial significance of every movement of his body, pushed him over a barrier whose existence he had not known about until this moment. He gave himself over completely to the god of war within him.”

This passage brings to mind Upham’s phrase ‘calm fury’ and of descriptions of warrior adrenalin in Sebastian Junger’s book War, reviewed in this column in June 2010.

Perhaps young men in battle have experienced such intense emotion down through the ages. That, plus the intense camaraderie, makes for a potently addictive mix.

Mellas’s battle frenzy is short-lived, and soon he is dwelling on the sickening thought that he accidentally killed one of his own men. Yet later, Mellas inwardly admits to himself, that part of his psyche is thrilled by killing. Thus we feel the dreaded attractions and addictions of war.

Unlike most movie versions of war and some novels, there are no women conveniently on hand in bars or brothels, and so the novel is nearly over before two Army nurses appear. The sequence that follows

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 89

is deeply moving. In fact, it moved me to tears. Mellas is instantly attracted to one of the nurses while her bitchy companion takes an instant dislike to Mellas and threatens to make trouble for him. The scene is tenderly explored as though they were teenagers meeting at a first dance and lacks any of the aggressive sexual ambiances such scenes are frequently given. A single light touch, a quick cheek kiss, a pulling back from further intimacy – this is all that ever occurs.

Two officers – Lieutenant Simpson and Staff Sergeant Cassidy are in danger of being fragged i.e. blown up by their own men, but in the end the plans come to nothing – though such incidents did occur, along with numerous other lesser quarrels. Men at war also seem to be at war with each other.

Compared to The Naked and the Dead, Matterhorn has a more concentrated scope but in the end more than holds its own. It is an honest book that does not glamorise war, nor jazz it up with instant romance. Though there are battles – not that many – and they are brief – the issues are always clear. Mostly, apart from killing NVA soldiers, it is settling differences within the ranks of the company.

There is a long index with full explanations of weapons, technical terms, slang and jargon. Without it, the civilian reader will be all at sea or should that be all at war?

This long exhausting and apparently accurate-in-every-detail book could only have been written by a Vietnam vet, and if Marlantes has any sense, he’ll leave it as a stand alone book and turn down film rights.

I believe it should be read by left and right wing people who remember the Vietnam war era. It evokes a passion and understanding that the politics of the time necessarily prevented us from experiencing.

Villa Pacifica

By Kapka Kassabova Penguin Books, $39 Before reviewing this intriguing novel by the talented Kapka Kassabova, I would like to raise the hoary chestnut of whether she can, at the present time, accurately be described as a New Zealand writer. She was born in Bulgaria and came here as a teenager and made her debut as a writer here in magazines like Poetry New Zealand, edited by that unappreciated stalwart of NZ letters, Alister Paterson, now our senior poet. She lived and published here for 10 years and was accurately perceived as a great new talent from a very young age – about 17, as I recall. Reconnaissance, her first

novel, was set in New Zealand, but her next novel Love in the Land of Midas, was set in Greece. Her recent memoir, Street Without a Name explored her childhood in her native land of Bulgaria – a grim but moving account of life lived under the miserable greyness of communism. Villa Pacifica, her third novel, is located in some unspecified region of South America, possibly on the coast of Colombia or Ecuador.

However, Kassabova has, for some time, been living in Scotland, where she writes brilliant book reviews in the New Statesman and other English publications. She is now culturally well connected to the English literary scene in way that is not possible in or from New Zealand – not even by C.K. Stead. (And historically not by Katherine

Villa Pacifica is a strange, eerie, tropically atmospheric sort of a book which suggests ambiances of Conrad, Greene, or Marquez and probably other writers I do not recognise

Mansfield – that’s why she left for Mother England.) For instance, Kassabova is a friend of Clive James, need I say more?

My guess is, having established herself in the richer cultural environment of Europe, she won’t return to live in New Zealand.

Though, no doubt, we will keep staunchly claiming her as a New Zealand writer.

Kassabova is still young (in her mid thirties), so if she continues to live and write in Scotland – or in Europe – for the next (say) forty years, our claim on her will increasingly wane rather than wax.

Villa Pacifica is a strange, eerie, tropically atmospheric sort of a book which suggests ambiances of Conrad, Greene, or Marquez and probably other writers I do not recognise. It is as though we were transported

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to some failed Garden of Eden, populated by spooky gypsies and dark presences, with murky poetry near our elbows.

Travel guide writer Ute, a tall unattractive woman, plagued by facial eczema (never fatal but no small affliction), roams the globe with her husband Jerry, a failed writer. Jerry doesn’t see the point of travel guides; Ute doesn’t see the point of fiction.

A perfectly mismatched couple, in other words. Kassabova has a relaxed, meandering way of writing which at first, I found disconcerting, even irritating, but I made the adjustment. It’s probably a case of her yin-ish style of mind and my more yangish psyche not quite gelling. Her style shifts between profundity and obliqueness to the obvious; between strongly defined characters and ones that tend towards cliché. But at her best, she’s a finely lyric writer. Here’s a sample of Kassabova’s richly descriptive style: “It was a wheezy dust-bowl where homeless dogs rutted in the unpaved streets and rubbish lay about like confetti from some forgotten party. Inside darkened bare huts on stilts, men lay in hammocks, scratching, their stained singlets peeled off to cool slack bellies on which flies alighted and disturbed their fitful coma.”

And if that didn’t appeal, how about, “Black tarantulas of hair nestled in her armpits.”

No wonder we are keen to lay claim to her!

Prominent among her characters in the novel is the odious, loud-mouthed Max, a classic crass American. He is the sort of person who is so intrusive you want to run out of the room when he appears. He seems blissfully unaware that he is repellant. After all his rudeness, barbaric behaviour, indecent assault etc, Max appears to believe that a $5000 dollar donation will fix everything. Too predictably perhaps, he pays the price for being a creature of odium by failing to bluff a large jaguar that he is really his friend, and winds up with a crunched neck. The jaguar, along with other traumatised animals, are being nursed back to good health at a zoo that reminds me a little of the Island of Dr Moreau.

Then there is Carlos, a figure of more subtle yet potent masculinity, to whom Ute is deeply attracted – an attraction that lacks a future. After Max’s demise, the narrative takes an even more mysterious turn. Ute eats some hallucinogenic leaves and thereafter her perceptions, and even time itself, appear to distort.

There is a post script by Jerry which speculates that the beach of Puerto Seco and the hotel Villa Pacifica are a wormhole and that he is suffering from post traumatic stress dis-

order, or a manic-depressive episode, or has turned psychotic. It seems that Kassabova isn’t going to make it clear for us which alternative is closest to the truth so some Keatsian Negative Capability may be required. We are, as the text says earlier, on our own. Like much of her work, this jungly-oblique book merits a re-reading to catch nuances and connections missed on a first reading. Her novels, one might say, are just much poems as is her poetry.

South-West Of Eden

By C.K. Stead Auckland University Press, $46

Though I am 9-10 years younger than Stead, much of our Auckland pasts are shared. In those times – our times – school syllabuses and life in general didn’t change at the rate it does now. In this finely wrought, though rather tame memoir, written in Stead’s evenhanded but unadventurous prose, he has stirred memories of school ink wells, the mannered almost campy sadism of corporal punishment, the closing down of schools during the 1948 polio epidemic, the long pole with a brass hook used to close sash windows, the quiet glamour of boys’ bicycles and the challengingly long distance they would cycle (alas, Karl rode further then me), blue bags for whitening washing in the copper, (the same blue bag being used to soothe the pain of bee stings), the wireless (later the radio), the pictures (later the movies), child allowance of ten shillings a week per child, tobogganing down the inside of Mt Eden Crater, (I wasn’t game enough for this but we used to ride wheeled trolleys down Grand View Road), the twin concrete strips along Dominion Rd extension, (where I was later to live), being a postie during school holidays, the pleasure of acquiring half a crown, chanting of timestables, Auckland’s volcanic cones, the Fun Doctor, (a magician and juggler who used to visit schools once a year), party line phones, the vigorous game of king o’ seni, marbles, yearning for but never quite getting that first kiss – and there’s probably more.

I also learnt several new things about the high jump – mainly, that there’s a surprising number of techniques to be mastered.

The most interesting part of Stead’s memoir is the section concerning his great-great grandfather, John Flatt, a Christian missionary who was in favour of missionary land purchases – or opposed to them. After some research in the British Museum, Stead came to the conclusion that his grandmother’s family myth version, though initially con-

sidered incorrect was actually the correct one – that his ancestor in actuality was not in favour of the purchases.

As Stead moves closer to the present, his recall of teachers in the Department of English at the University of Auckland also corresponds with my own memories.

He notes that Curnow, whom he deeply admired, was sometimes unfavourably compared with John Reid as a lecturer.

Curiously enough, even though I considered Curnow to be ‘out and away’ the greatest New Zealand poet – yes, even greater than Baxter (here I am re-quoting Curnow’s own view on Yeats as ‘out and away’ the greatest poet of the twentieth century) – I had the same view of Curnow’s deficiency as a lecturer. However, Curnow used to read the poetry aloud in his magnificently modulated voice which was always a thrill – though it didn’t help us pass exams. Observing Stead’s numerous quotes of well-known poems, I am struck with the Englishness of it all.

From impressionistic memory, the only nonEnglish writer referred to is Alberto Moravia.

I relished the deft way Stead analyses the coolness between Sargeson and Curnow, the leading men of letters in New Zealand at the time. I suspect that old-fashioned rivalry was

behind it. Curnow, who was always scrupulous about detail, wasn’t too happy when Sargeson pointed out that the blossom of the pohutukawa did not consist of petals but stamens. In his memories of his time at the English Department of the University of Auckland, Stead alludes to Robert Chapman, Bill Pearson, Sydney Musgrove, Kendrick Smithyman, and Sir Keith Sinclair (history) – and his remarks and observations are shrewd, and amusing. All of these lecturers also taught me but now alas, they are departed from this world. Stead, then, is almost the last of his line. He also has fond remembrances of Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame who featured prominently in what is his warmest and may yet prove his best novel, All Visitors Ashore.

A criticism might be that there is too much detail about exams and marks (not all that riveting), though, of course, they will remind older readers of that former standard exam, School Certificate. Also, a mite too much quotation from odiously familiar romantics.

The cautious, calculating Stead has produced a work that borders on sentimentality but which is saved from the saccharine by the loving precision of its detail and the intelligence driving it.

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SEE LIFE / MUSIC

Somebody call the police Chris Philpott doesn’t find Interpol completely arresting Interpol

Linkin Park

The Naked and Famous

In the world of alternative rock, where so many bands are endlessly hyped and ultimately over-rated, Interpol stands as one of the few groups who perhaps don’t get as much credit as they deserve.

Starting life in 1997 before releasing their fantastic debut Turn On The Bright Lights in (2002) before hitting the big time with sophomore effort Antics in 2004, behind the success of singles “Evil” and “Slow Hands”, and third album Our Love To Admire (2007) which established the band as a commercial success.

Going with an eponymous title for their fourth album, Interpol have made an entertaining album that will certainly appeal to fans, but which deviates little from their established formula.

The guitar interplay of singer Paul Banks and lead guitarist Daniel Kessler anchors the group’s sound, evidenced by the quirky melodies they produce on album highlight “Barricade”, but it also gives way to the haunting, echoing strumming of songs like “Memory Serves” and “Lights” from time to time.

All of that said, Interpol (the album) doesn’t really bring anything new to the table; Interpol (the band) are consistent, but the result is an unsurprising record which doesn’t really move the listener in any substantial way.

Well, where to start.

Linkin Park have had something of a rough ride. After the success of nu-metal debut Hybrid Theory in 2000, the group released Meteora to rave reviews in 2003 and seemed to be on top of the world. Not content to sit pretty and make the same album over and again, the group joined with legendary producer Rick Rubin for 2007’s Minutes to Midnight – while initial reviews were poor (local website Stuff gave it 1 star out of 5) it did become something of a success, and pushed the band into new, more experimental territory.

That journey continues with the release of A Thousand Suns, their second release with Rubin at the helm and a much more ambitious album than their earlier efforts.

Sadly, if I were to describe it in one word, I would say “horrible”.

Aiming for a conceptual effect, Linkin Park have instead made a disjointed record that seems mostly made up of filler (5 of the 15 tracks are extended intros or outros) and is completely lacking in the kind of catchy, jump-out-and-grab-you songs the group is famous for.

This is easily one of the worst albums I’ve heard this year, if not this decade.

When it comes to Kiwi hit-makers The Naked and Famous, I really have just one question: did they name themselves after the 1994 single from one-hit wonder act Presidents of the USA? Inane references to long-forgotten mid1990s bands aside, The Naked and Famous have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with – their debut single “Young Blood” debuted at number 1 on the New Zealand charts, while follow-up single “Punching In a Dream” also cracked the Top 10, despite being one of the weaker tracks on this, the group’s debut full length album.

Not bad for a previously little known alternative/pop band from Auckland.

Their debut full length offers more of the same, and is nearly exactly what you might expect – for example, “Young Blood” works because of a catchy hook built around an interesting synth line and grinding guitars.

Passive Me Aggressive You is jam-packed with more (much more) of the same.

From opening track “All of This” to remarkably epic closer “Girls Like You”, Passive is an album designed to capitalise on what you already know about the group, and appeal to fans who’ve already picked up on their sound. It’s a success.

Interpol 3 stars

A Thousand Suns 1 star

92 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

Passive Me, Aggressive You 3.5 stars

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SEE LIFE / MOVIES

Out of the shadows Ben Affleck’s latest should earn him an Oscar, writes Rick Bentley The Town

Starring: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall Directed by: Ben Affleck Rated: R (for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use) Running time: 123 minutes 5 stars Ben Affleck’s The Town should earn him an Oscar hat trick: nominations for best director, writer and actor.

Such praise is well deserved for The Town.

Affleck never undercuts an emotional moment for the sake of an action sequence, which creates a perfect blend of humanity and thrill that even more experienced directors can’t find.

The town is Charlestown, a Boston neighbourhood that’s produced multiple generations of bank and armoured-car robbers.

Larceny skills are passed down the way most people share family heirlooms.

Doug MacRay (Affleck) wants out after he falls for a hostage from a previous robbery. He thinks he’s found a way to financially escape through a huge heist he’s being forced to commit. His big problem will be severing ties with family and friends.

That Affleck has such a sharp directing style is no surprise. He showed skill han-

dling the criminal and personal sides of a complicated story in his 2007 release Gone Baby Gone.

The Town is more impressive because Affleck blends a compelling story with interesting characters AND amps up the action with a high-speed chase and high-calibre shootout.

There’s no sign Affleck lost focus by also playing the lead role. His work as director and actor are equally keen.

Affleck’s acting efforts are magnified by a standout supporting cast topped by Jeremy Renner as Doug’s best friend and criminal partner. Renner has a talent for creating characters who appear to live in the dark space between sanity and insanity, and this performance is razor sharp.

The surprise is Blake Lively as Doug’s occasional love interest – drugged-out single mom Krista Coughlin. Lively, who is so closely associated with the high fashion, high society CW series Gossip Girl, transforms herself. Pulling off the role was pivotal to the structure of the film.

Good movies are the result of great directing decisions. Great movies come from making decisions no one else will make. Affleck shows with The Town how he’s turned a lot of tough decisions into one of the best films of the year.

94 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010

– By Rick Bentley

Devil

Starring: Chris Messina, Bokeem Woodbine, Bojana Novakovic, Logan MarshallGreen, Matt Craven Directed by: John Erick Dowdle Rated: PG-13 (for violence and disturbing images, thematic material and some language including sexual references) Running time: 76 minutes 2.5 stars M. Night Shyamalan indulges his messianic side with Devil, a quasi-religious supernatural thriller he has released under his The Night Chronicles production banner. It’s a tidy tale about the Devil picking off folks trapped in an elevator in a Philadelphia high-rise while cops and security guards look on, in horror, through closed-circuit TV. Devil is the sort of story Rod Serling would have taken for a spin in The Twilight Zone, back in the day. Shyamalan came up with the idea, produced it and got others to script and direct this 76-minute exercise in movie minimalism.

Our superstitious narrator regales us with memories of “stories my mom used to tell,” tales about how “the Devil roams the Earth.”

And a sure sign Satan is about to torment the doomed before they make it to Hell is a suicide. Thus, that jolt when somebody

For all its preaching about guilt, redemption, punishment and salvation, Devil delivers its chills in a compact, efficient package of extreme close-ups, decently-timed surprises and the terror of dreadanticipation

plunges through a top floor window clutching a Rosary sets us up for the elevator that won’t elevate.

Five are trapped – a rude and abrasive salesman (Geoffrey Arend), a looker (Bojana Novakovic), a sweaty security guard (Bokeem Woodbine), a testy older woman (Jenny O’Hara) and a mysterious young man in a hoodie (Logan Marshall-Green).

They’re irked – but not to worry, the head of security (Matt Craven) says over the PA system. They’ll be out before the panic attacks start.

But they aren’t, and the cop (Chris Messina of Vicky Cristina Barcelona) sent to investigate the suicide is on a new case, looking in on a body – somebody killed during one of the many moments when the lights blink out and the pounding sounds of a basketball in a dryer emerge from the closed compartment. That’s when we realize the narrator is the guy with the answers – a Catholic Latino security guard, Ramirez, who flirts with being a stereotype.

The performances don’t give us much.

Everything’s entirely too calm for entirely too long. But only when Ramirez (Jacob Vargas) tries to explain the unexplainable by dropping his toast, jelly-side down, on the floor, does Devil live down to the hilarious promise that had audiences howling at

the film’s trailer this past summer. As the pretentious words “From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” hit the screen, you could hear the hoots all the way into theater lobbies. It was so widespread that viral videos came out mocking the idea that the fellow whose films since Signs have annoyed and dismayed horror fans could still consider himself a “brand.”

But for all that, for all its preaching about guilt, redemption, punishment and salvation, Devil delivers its chills in a compact,

efficient package of extreme close-ups, decently-timed surprises and the terror of dread-anticipation. It’s not great, but it’s not bad, and the fellow who foisted the The Happening, Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender on the faithful would take that praise any day. No doubt the mind of M. Night is troubled that he didn’t get a directing credit (John Erick Dowdle of the taut and tense Quarantine did) for a movie that at least doesn’t further devalue his brand.

– By Roger Moore

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM October 2010 95

SEE LIFE / THE CUTTING ROOM

Cry me a river, Phoenix Will Casey Affleck end up in movie jail after admitting Joaquin Phoenix doco was a hoax? Patrick Goldstein reports Judging from the early reaction inside Hollywood, Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix will have a lot of explaining to do in the coming weeks. It turns out that Affleck’s I’m Still Here, which purported to be a documentary, depicting an out-of-control Phoenix self-destructing before our very eyes, was actually a hoax. Virtually all of the footage, notably the scenes of Phoenix doing drugs, consorting with hookers and berating his personal assistants, was fake.

Affleck’s embarrassingly weak defence? “I never intended to trick anybody,” he told the New York Times. “The idea of quote, hoax, unquote, never entered my mind.” He said he wanted viewers to experience the film’s narrative, about the disintegration of celebrity, without being clouded by preconceived notions. “We wanted to create a space. You believe what is happening is real,” adding that he considered what Phoenix did on screen “a terrific performance, it’s the performance of his career.”

While it’s a performance, it’s also undeniably a trick. In fact, Affleck had clearly hoped to trick as many people as possible, at least in the sense of making audiences wonder if what they were seeing was real or staged – or some strange new hybrid art form. He failed in the most obvious way.

Even though the film has attracted a mountain of press attention – there’s nothing the media loves more than the prospect of eyeballing a celebrity in a steep career tailspin – very few people have bothered to see the film, which has been in limited release in selected cities around the country. And while some critics, such as Roger Ebert, were upset

by Phoenix’s behaviour, a number of others, like my colleague Kenneth Turan and the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, seemed to immediately suspect the film was a put-on.

Dargis described the movie as “a deadpan satire or a deeply sincere folly (my money is on the first option),” adding that the film was being “unpersuasively sold as a documentary.”

So what was Affleck really up to? I suspect that he (and Phoenix) thought it would

Robert Caplin/NEWSCOM

be a real kick to see how many people they could embarrass and fool into taking the whole spectacle seriously, especially the supposed rubes in the media whom they clearly despise. People in Hollywood have little concern for truthtelling, since there is so little of it in their daily showbiz lives, where everyone is passing themselves off as something they aren’t, whether it’s lying about their age, how much cosmetic work they’ve had done or how much they supposedly liked their best friend’s new movie – you know, the one they secretly hated every minute of.

It was especially telling that the first two showbiz insiders I spoke to after the news broke had similar reactions – as in, big friggin’ deal. To hear them tell it, the film was an eccentric, not to mention self-important, exercise in foolishness, concocted by two knuckleheads who seemed peeved either because they didn’t have successful A-list careers or because they thought the industry was too dull and mindless to allow them to take the kind of bold risks that real artists take.

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People in Hollywood have little concern for truthtelling, since there is so little of it in their daily showbiz lives

If Affleck and Phoenix had really pulled off the hoax – i.e., drawn big crowds to see the movie – perhaps their peers would’ve showed more respect. But in Hollywood, people keep their distance from failure, always afraid of being too close to the stink.

The early betting line is that Affleck won’t be getting to direct another movie any time soon. Affleck likes to think of the movie as “gonzo filmmaking.” But his detractors see it as little more than clownish score settling.