Investigate, September 2005

INVESTIGATE

September 2005:

Tamihere

Body Enhancer

Russian Bride

Sexy Beef

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New Zealand’s best cur rent affairs magazine

INVESTIGATE BREAKING NEWS

SEPTEMBER 2005

TAMIHERE’S TRUST Outspoken Labour MP John Tamihere is sitting on a scandal powderkeg that’s set to blow after the election, when a bribery and corruption case comes back to Court.

In this exclusive investigation, IAN WISHART details the tangled web of intrigue, deceit and fraud that could leave Tamihere facing fresh questions from investigators

HOW THEY VOTED With only weeks until the election, here’s a chance to refresh your memory on how the parties and their MPs voted on controversial legislation over the past three years

BODY BLOW Winston and Sylvia Gallot’s weight management programme Body Enhancer was reputedly outselling Xenical, until a District Court judge labelled it a ‘quack remedy’ and entered convictions for false and misleading statements under the Fair Trading Act. But, as IAN WISHART discovers, the trial and verdict are themselves under fire

THE PYSCHOPATH Imagine a country where a man who shot his wife through the chest with a bow and arrow, was declared insane, was sexually abused as a child and who raped others, could be allowed to wreak havoc on four women and their children. As IAN WISHART reports, you’re living in that country

SEXY BEEF Real men eat steak, but could some NZ beef be making men wimps because of female sex hormones pumped into cattle? BARBARA SUMNER-BURSTYN reports on the food additive that scientists used 20 years ago to create lesbian seagulls

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EDITORIAL AND OPINION

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Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart Customer Services Debbie Marcroft NZ Edition Advertising Jacques Windell Contributing Writers: Matt Thompson, Peter Hensley, Clare Swinney, Chris Carter, Laura Wilson, Ann Coulter, Tim Kerr, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, and the worldwide resources of Knight Ridder Tribune, UPI and Newscom Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Tel: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine PO Box 302-188 North Harbour Auckland 1310 NEW ZEALAND

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

Editorial The voice of the people Why Aussies don’t want our exports Turangawaewae Goodbye Jane Clifton Ann Coulter on the new Supreme The threat within Chris Carter The evil of child abuse National: a simple vision A Sydney cab-ride

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL

Time for Ahmed to come in from the cold

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hmed Zaoui. Now there’s a name to strike fear and trembling into the hearts of mere mortals everywhere. A couple of weeks ago the nation was treated to Carol Hirscheld and John Campbell reuniting Zaoui with his estranged family somewhere in Asia. An orchestrated PR stunt?

Yes. It could just as easily have been done off camera as on. But it once again raised the issue at the heart of this whole affair: why in Heaven’s name has it taken nearly four years to sort it out?

I’m sorry. I’m going to have to cast my lot in with the FAZWOP (Free Ahmed Zaoui Without Penalty) campaign on this one. It is time to Let him swear allegiance to our grant Zaoui the refugee stahe so desperately craves. flag, and our values, and promise tusThud.

I can hear the on threat of deportation back to sound of people’s jaws Algeria never to do anything that dropping nationwide as they read this, but I have would harm the majority cultures to say I’ve had enough of of this country the endless to-ing and froing, the debate, the legal wrangling. If this circus keeps going for much longer they’re going to start advertising Ahmed popsicles-ona-stick on TV. On a more serious note, however, my reasoning is as follows: At the best of times, Justice is a process that requires a careful balancing of rights. One the one hand, the right of a community to live in safety. On the other hand, the right of an individual to be treated with common human decency in the absence of a compelling reason not to.

In Ahmed Zaoui’s case, there is good reason to be highly suspicious of his past activities and the people he associated with, at least one of whom has ties to al Qa’ida. However, the Government has had years to sort this mess out swiftly and it has not done so. There comes a point whereby the exercise on points of law 6, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

becomes futile. And the battle to expel Zaoui has, in my view, reached that point.

Let’s look at the practicalities for a moment. Even if Zaoui is declared a prohibited import, he won’t be subjected to the immigration equivalent of aerial spraying, he’ll be allowed to stay unless New Zealand can find another country that will take him. And the chances of that are slim to zilch.

Is he a security risk? Well, he might be in Algeria, although even that is now questionable. But let’s assume he is a threat to New Zealand. He now has a very high public profile. But most of all, if the Security Intelligence Service can’t keep tabs on Zaoui from this moment forward then we have much bigger security issues to worry about than a middle-aged mullah from the Middle East.

There comes a time when good governance demands that occasionally we just have to let some things go, in order to move forward. By rights, the Government should have done a much better job reining in its daft Refugee Status Appeal Authority. By rights, the law should allow for the security agencies to simply veto applications by any foreign national, refugee claimant or otherwise, where it is percieved they may be a threat to this nation.

And so we reach this point, where in the interests of common humanity it is time to give Zaoui the chance to settle, if not as a refugee then as some kind of other migrant. Give him the chance to bring his immediate family, and only his immediate family, over here to join him, and show him that New Zealand society has more good grace than any Muslim nation. Let him swear allegiance to our flag, and our values, and promise on threat of deportation back to Algeria never to do anything that would harm the majority cultures of this country.

If Zaoui can agree to this, we should forgive, forget and leave the issue of surveillance to the SIS. And let our Government learn a lesson: be better prepared next time around.

James Morrow September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM,

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VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES FAMILY PLANNING ON CRUSADE I am writing in reply to the letter from the Family Planning Association’s Executive Director Gill Greer that appeared in the August edition of Investigate.

Ms Greer states that “abstinence-only messages frequently ignore the complexity and diversity of young people’s lives, relying on negative messages about condoms…and provide little information and understanding of the complexity of human sexuality.”

I would suggest that the “anything goes as long as you use a condom” message that the FPA proudly trumpets is a prime example of the “failing to understand the complexity of human sexuality” that Ms Greer speaks of. I also find it rather strange that she refers to “relying on negative messages about condoms” when these so-called “negative messages” are coming from qualified medical professionals and verifiable research.

Ms Greer suggests that because young people aren’t using condoms then increased condom promotion can’t be blamed for increased sexual activity in society. This makes no sense and it completely ignores the fact that condoms are always promoted in conjunction with a sexual doctrine that insists that as long as you’re having fun then sex is merely a physical act with no moral, social, or emotional consequences. Condoms are only offered, by the propagators of such philosophies, as a magic silver bullet that, supposedly, allows young people to live out this flawed idea of human sexuality without the fear of physical consequences.

Come on Family Planning, when will you figure out that the continued promotion of the sexual revolution’s failed concept of a free-love utopia is causing New Zealand society untold problems and that condoms simply aren’t the missing ingredient that will make it work?

During a radio interview in June, the FPA’s own Dr Christine Roke even stated that “abstinence is the best protection” and yet her organisation continues to insist on promoting everything but to young people. This is 8, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

like a mathematics teacher insisting that “two plus two equals four, but we don’t teach that outdated idea anymore because it fails to take into account the complexity of mathematics”.

I think it’s fair to say that if Ms Greer wishes to speak of an “ongoing crusade” that fails to understand “the complexity of human sexuality” then she needs to look no further than her own organisation which insists on ignoring the obvious and preaching a sexual gospel that fails to acknowledge the reality of cause and effect.

Brendan Malone, Family Life International

WE’RE PAYING FOR IT As a reader of the original article and of subsequent letters I felt the need to inform others of a little known fact regarding sexual health and the subsidised health care system.

Readers may be surprised to know that the medical health system is in fact subsidising the provision of condoms, oral contraceptives and injected contraceptives via Primary Health Organisations. In the Waikato the PHO has a funding system in place for under twenty five year olds to receive free sexual health consultations.

As a PHO management group member I assumed this was for disease management and treatment. But alas no, it was for the free provision of contraception in the vague hope that the teenage birth rate would be reduced. Of course it has not.

Neither has the rate of STI’s. They are at epidemic levels.

One could say that by funding the contraception the Government is in fact encouraging teenage sexual behaviour. By the way, no complaints from the Government’s coalition partners, have they been conned too!

It would seem that the term ‘health’ is used all too often by a variety of agencies who have no understanding of the word’s true meaning, instead using it as a means of generating income to the detriment of the

majority. Once again it is the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies who benefit the most.

Keep writing the truth Peter Raynel ND Thames

LAURA GIRL I read your June article by Laura Wilson about big boys should stop crying. I find it absurd that she should be – as so many other women in NZ – so unfeeling to the plight of males in our country.

Wherever I go I am expected to be politically correct on how I treat a woman, and it is women themselves who cry foul should I even hint at telling them to be less sensitive. Often such a comment in the workplace will end in tears and accusations. But that is exactly what this woman is saying to men. Whom, I ask, has the sexist outlook?

Laura Wilson says that men don’t even know why they feel so hard done by. Today men often don’t. That doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong.

Boys are no longer encouraged to be masculine. No, masculinity today seems to be seen as aggressive, violent, and predatory. Whereas, in reality if we celebrate manliness it is essentially using the former adjectives to be competitive, exploratory, self-sacrificing and protective.

All the things many women want but seem so reluctant to affirm.

So many good men will never be known or celebrated in our communities yet they have built houses, fought for our rights, healed us and gained justice. Essentially they have helped build our world.

What about 9/11 and other disasters? Men worked tirelessly amid twisted beams, broken concrete, and unstable and dangerous structures, just to save one life or to recover a body for loved ones these men may not even know. If we asked them why they did it most of them would disown their heroism, shrugging their shoulders and answer “because it needed to be done.”

I see so many young boys (in school and at home) put down and shamed for their masculine traits. These boys respond by becoming angry and resentful without really knowing why. Laura is a classic example of how many women lack the empathy for these boys as they drop out of school and grow into men who are angry and resentful without knowing why.

The comments from Laura Wilson show a naiveté and lack of understanding of how we are all affected by the society we develop in.

Instead of saying ‘just try harder’ we should be looking at ways we can grow both girls and boys into their fullest potential. We should not be telling our boys that their masculinity is wrong but rather embracing and affirming it and giving them courage in their unique identity.

Only then can we be balanced.

Laura should recognise her ignorance and stop beating that same old drum of an out of date belief that boys shouldn’t cry. The day must come when male-bashing marks the speaker not as politically correct, but as bigoted.

The way to solve these problems is not through denigrating men but to heighten male consciousness and pride, allowing males the restoration of masculine responsibility. Or is that too threatening for Laura?

Dr Richard Knight, Auckland

ELECTION BRIBE It may sound like a good idea to give interest free loans to students, but it is families with kids and mortgages who pay the 33% and 39% in tax needed to fund them.

I’m sick of this government’s arbitrary decisions on how to spend my hard earned pay. I want a government that lets me make my own decisions about whether I spend my money on education, raising children or repaying my mortgage.

Mike Williams, Auckland

ROADSIDE DIVISION OF THE IRD I glimpsed through your recent article on traffic policing. I have this to contribute to the matter.

As a professional driver I have twice fallen foul of police for minor logbook infringements over the past year. The first time, I had forgotten my logbook and I ended up in court which cost $850. five months ago I was infringed for declaring insufficient rest hours over a 24 hour period (seven rather than nine). It was a simple enough error. I’m again due in court. The prosecuting sergeant has been sympathetic but the law is the law. I’m now facing a 30 day disqualification.

I don’t mind having to learn from my mistakes but this is over the top. I don’t expect to have to go before a judge every time I make a simple mistake in a logbook, just because the police force is keeping its quotas up. That’s how it appears and other colleagues of mine have had similar experiences.

Meanwhile high level crime stays up and the 111 system is a mess.

To me this is all just revenue gathering; there is nothing very constructive about it. Surely the police can tell between a driver who’s simply made an error and someone who needs taking off the road. I’ve had enough and I’m going to see if there is anything I can do about it.

Andrew Shirtcliffe, Auckland

HELL RAIS’N HELEN When the overzealous servants of Henry II interpreted his wishes regarding Becket to mean that they should get rid of the priest, Henry took the responsibility for the murder, having himself whipped through the streets by eighty monks. In contrast our latter-day leader, having benefited likewise from the overzealous service of her minions, takes the view that she was completely oblivious to the fact that the vehicle she was seated in was travelling at up to 172 KMH, straddling both lanes down the middle of the road, with sirens blaring and lights flashing. What rot. It is wrong that these people be left to bear the sole burden of responsibility for an act that she could have ended with two simple words to her driver. “Slow Down”.

Peter Tashkoff, Auckland

VACCINE REACTION DATA In the August 2005 issue of Investigate, Laura Wilson mentioned the Centre for Adverse Reaction Monitoring. I am proud to say that the New Zealand Pharmacovigilance Centre, formerly CARM, is hosted at the University of Otago. As a search of http://carm.otago.ac.nz quickly shows, it doesn’t have very many people. Their mission is to collect adverse reaction reports from all around New Zealand, look for signs of trouble, and send out warnings. They also forward data to Uppsala; reaction monitoring groups around the world share data so that the whole world has a source of information about adverse reactions to medicine that is not filtered through the pharmaceutical companies.

The guidelines for reporting say “New Zealand has the highest rate of reporting adverse reactions to medicines in the world, both in terms of reports per 1000 doctors and reports per million population. This does not reflect a bigger problem in New Zealand; rather we are more diligent about reporting these events. However, it is estimated that only 5% of all reactions are reported so there is still room for improvement.”

There are about two and half thousand reported events per year, so a lot of events go unreported. The guidelines also say “CARM accepts reports from consumers, but where possible an attempt is made to involve the patient’s practitioner who often may be unaware of the reaction”.

The CARM people are pretty good at spotting and reporting things once they get in their data base. It’s getting there that is the trouble.

Once a reaction has occurred, it has to be reported to the doctor or dentist. But you have to pay to see them, which must deter many September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM,

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reports. Then they have to believe that the reaction is a reaction to some medicine. Doctors want to make people well; it is distressing for a doctor to believe that he has done something to make you sick. So until a link between a medicine and a reaction has become well known, it is hard for a doctor to believe that you are right about the link. For example, not so long ago I found to my surprise and dismay that I had gout. No doctor ever told me that this was a known side effect of my blood pressure medicine, which it is. What doctor wants to believe that they gave a patient something as painful as gout? Nor did anyone ever tell me that gout was also linked with another medicine that was prescribed for me, although there are four such cases in the portion of CARM data I have been studying. Once the doctor believes it, she has to think it worth her time filling out and sending off the report, and if a reaction is already known, she may not think it worth while. The MedSafe website says “If you experience a serious or unusual reaction to a medicine, your doctor will report this to [CARM].” So if a doctor thinks your reaction is not serious or not unusual, it probably won’t be reported to CARM, which systematically deprives CARM of important information. The gout/blood pressure medicine being known, I would not be surprised if my case has not been reported, and if that is so, there’s a missing gout/ other medicine case also.

Some medicines are part of “intensive monitoring programmes” for which doctors are supposed to report all cases they hear of. Vaccines are covered by an intensive monitoring program. In fact, I suspect that the time Laura Wilson rang CARM was the time when they were snowed under with reports related to the meningococcal vaccination then taking place.

My children certainly suffered more from this vaccine than any other vaccine they have had. I am still upset that the children and parents were told “one prick and it’s over” when the responsible people should have known that “one prick and several days or more of feeling miserable” was closer to the truth (although they did get better).

Eventually CARM will have enough data to tell whether the vaccine poses a serious risk.

We in New Zealand can be proud of CARM. It has been providing an important service since 1965, despite having to spend far too much effort fighting for its existence. We can all do something to improve the quality of their data by asking our doctor “will you be reporting this to CARM?” when we think a problem is due to a drug, or even sending the information ourselves.

A good starting point at the MedSafe web site is http:// www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/puarticles/menzb.htm and another is http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/consumers/cmi/m/menzb.htm.

In fact, even parents who do want their children to receive this vaccine would do well to read the second one.

By the way, what a great article on “The Safe Sex Myth”. Let me say a big thank you for providing references so I was able to check up for myself.

Richard A. O’Keefe, University of Otago

ZULU KILO DOWN I am writing in response to the article by Neill Hunter published in your March 2005 edition entitled “Zulu Kilo Down” and a letter to the editor printed in the April 2005 edition.

Unfortunately, the article does not provide an accurate record of either the CAA investigation of the accident or the subsequent Coroner’s inquest. To that extent, the article is misleading. While the article contains a number of errors and inaccuracies, I will restrict my comments to those relating to the issue of flight and duty times as commented on in the investigation report.

During the CAA accident investigation, both the pilot’s logbook 10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

and the daily flight records were sighted. These documents are required by law to be current. The information contained in them was included in a draft investigation report.

In February 2004, the draft report was circulated to various parties, including the families of the pilot and the loader-driver. These people were given every opportunity to comment on or refute anything contained in the report. No response was received from any party in relation to flight and duty times. The report was therefore finalised on the basis of the undisputed information.

On the day of the hearing of the inquest, 13 October 2004, Mrs McRae provided the CAA investigator with a copy of a statement prepared by her for the Coroner. This included references to both men flying during the two days immediately preceding the day of the accident. This was the first occasion on which that flying was raised with the CAA investigator by anyone. It was not made clear how long Mrs McRae had been in possession of this information or why it had not surfaced earlier.

During his evidence, the investigator mentioned this issue to the Coroner and indicated that he would look into it further. He did not, at any stage, state that he was certain that the hours mentioned in his report were correct. Notwithstanding that the question of flight and duty times remained outstanding, the Coroner issued his findings at the conclusion of the hearing that day.

Immediately after the inquest, further investigations were conducted.

These included sighting of the loader-driver’s time-sheets, which had not been made available earlier. The investigator had also conducted a second examination of the aircraft’s daily flight records. On this occasion, these records, although unchanged, were accompanied by the pilot’s diary pages for the relevant days. These confirmed that he and the loader-driver had flown on the two days prior to the accident. Again, it was not made clear why this information was not brought to the attention of the investigator earlier. None of this additional information had been made available to the CAA during the draft report stage.

The CAA did not, at any stage, lose control of its investigation.

This process includes the gathering, recording and analysis of all relevant information; the determination of possible causes; formulating appropriate safety recommendations and the completion of a report.

Accident investigators are only able to consider and assess the information that is available to them at the relevant time. If correct information is withheld from an investigator, the natural consequence is that that information will not be included in the report.

Subsequent to the new details coming to light, the accident investigation report was re-drafted to reflect the correct position. However, the analysis and conclusions sections of the final report remained unchanged.

This was because, in the expert opinion of the investigator, the new information did not give rise to additional or different findings. I accept this judgment of the investigator in relation to the significance of the new information in the overall context of the accident.

The purpose of an accident investigation is not to identify the “proximate” or most likely cause of an accident. Often, an aviation accident is the last event in a chain of several events or factors, each contributing to the final outcome. It is not unusual for a “dominant” cause of an accident not to be identifiable. Unfortunately, this was one such case.

The letter to the editor printed in the April 2005 edition of “Investigate” contains a number of serious allegations. These cannot go uncorrected. The members of the CAA’s Safety Investigation unit carry out significant safety functions consistent with the Civil Aviation Authority’s objective of achieving an integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable transport system. Their role is to investigate incidents and accidents in order to identify causes and, in doing so, to reduce the likelihood of repeated occurrences. This function is carried out by trained professionals, who strive to identify the causes of accidents, often in

extremely difficult circumstances. I have complete confidence in the unit’s investigations and in the reports that follow.

Suggestions that these investigations are undertaken with some sort of ulterior motive are inappropriate and unwarranted. They ignore the fact that CAA accident investigations often point to improvements that could be throughout the civil aviation system, and within the CAA itself. Both versions of the CAA report into the ZK-LTF accident called for improvements in the rules relating to fatigue management in agricultural operations. To an extent, this call was adopted in the Coroner’s recommendation that “companies employing topdressing pilots should have in place rules which ensure that pilots do not operate when they are fatigued.” In accordance with CAA policy, this recommendation has been considered in conjunction with industry participants in a review of the rules governing agricultural aviation.

That review is on-going.

John Jones, Director of Civil Aviation, Wellington

HEY TAMMY I was delighted to have that information about politics for the lead up to the election. It was timely. I write letters to our daily paper and it is valuable material for my thinking clearly and to influence other people.

I enjoyed Tammy Bruce’s story also and realized how prejudice makes one blind. Now I see clearly what we can do at the grass roots. I’ve emailed my 9 children and some grandchildren to tell them to buy this magazine.

Thanks for your good work.

Dawn Garner, Wanganui

MORE TAMMY Thank you Neill Hunter and Investigate for your unbiased, factual articles on Tammy Bruce’s visit to New Zealand. Just one correction Liberal Forum not Liberty Trust has been holding evenings with informative speakers in Hamilton for 2 1/2 years now.

This was an interesting experience for me and those who gave incredible support to bring Tammy here. I very quickly learned that some in the media either have no intention of giving us unbiased or even truthful information. They then allow us to think we are making informed decisions based on their facts, or they simply think we are dumb and need to be told what to think!

I also knew when the Sunday Star Times called Leighton Smith and Alan Duff “Libertarian Demagogues” (sounds intimidating but the reality – an oxymoron) that we had the right people involved with the tour, what fun we had!

I have just returned from 10 days in Melbourne visiting my grand daughter and was hugely impressed with the level of debate in their current affairs programmes, we seem only to get one side of the story dished up here, I would suggest this is the influence of State-owned radio and TV. How fortunate we are to have Investigate!

Tammy’s message is so relevant to us. Don’t give our government more power; wrestle it back! Individuals and families can and do make better choices for their own future, trust yourselves and insist that government does too.

Otherwise, personal responsibility and consequences for actions will become something from a ‘Bygone Era’.

When ‘The Sisterhood’ decides that 2000 years of families with two parents is no longer relevant for our enlightened era, or legalising prostitution is good for women…and it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t!!! Don’t let them convince you otherwise!

Yes, because of Political Correctness you will be labelled! So what?

That is the secret, once we all stand up and say what we think we can’t be stopped, ‘The House of Cards’ will fall and New Zealand will once again be the best place on earth to live!

Joanne Reeder, Hamilton

IT WAS DONE WITH MIRRORS I have been following the debates around Intelligent Design and evolution. In your last reply to Warwick Don you write about “Intelligent Design scientists”. Does this imply that ID is some sort of scientific enterprise?

ID maintains that there are molecular systems which are too complex to have naturally evolved and we need an ‘intelligent designer’ to explain them. This looks like a good argument to a layperson and seems plausible, but it doesn’t hold in any scientific context. It doesn’t qualify as science because it cannot be tested in any meaningful way.

Do we need to redefine science to allow for supernatural explanations? Then we have to include astrology as well. ID doesn’t fit the current definition of science and therefore has no place in the science classroom. There must be thousands of mechanisms in molecular biology that can be explained today and which looked mysterious just twenty years ago. Likewise there are thousands of unresolved problems today, which will find a natural explanation in the next twenty years. Unless, of course, ID was allowed to take over. Science would come to a grinding halt. Whenever we get to something complex, we simply say: the ‘designer’ did it.

Science is said to be responsible for all the evils of modern civilisation.

The Wedge Strategy, written in 1999 and the driving force behind ID, aims “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God”. Ian, if this is the goal of ID, then please stand by it and treat it as a religious theory.

Science is not out to disprove God, but at the same time you cannot prove the existence of God with scientific methods.

Hans Weichselbaum, Auckland WISHART RESPONDS

No Hans, ‘the designer did it’ is not the end of debate. Unlike neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, which can’t take the heat, ID welcomes debate and the pursuit of scientific truth, wherever the evidence may lead. If evolutionists come up with the better explanations in future, great. So far, they’re taking a hiding, and science is all the better for the competition.

CELLULAR COMPLEXITY Your response to my recent letter (August 2005) requires comment: (1) The idea that organisms or their molecular components “know” which changes to retain or discard is “novel” alright! Certainly, nothing I have written has implied this. I can’t see any problem in envisaging an increase in complexity of ‘the first cell’ (initially a single-celled organism far simpler even than a bacterium) with each subsequent ‘stage’ still functional and subject to selection. One widely accepted theory depicts cellular complexity increasing partly as a result of the incorporation of free-living bacteria into the substance of the eukaryotic cell and becoming important membrane-bound organelles (mitochondria and chloroplasts) that have improved the functioning of the cell itself.

(2) The key point concerning the “tornado in a junkyard” analogy is that it in no way corresponds with any of the scientific scenarios pertaining to life’s origin, all of which depend ultimately on inherent processes, such as self-assembly, at the molecular level. Nevertheless, antievolutionists have eagerly appropriated the analogy as it suits their campaign of denigration.

(3) Any ideas involving extraterrestrial intelligent beings are only scientific if they postulate natural, not supernatural, entities. In other words, scientists (as scientists) cannot “demur” to any “possibility of divine fiat in regard to the origin of life”, or in regard to any other natural process for that matter. I might add that, in my view, postulates involving intervention by ‘outside’ natural agents border on the untestable. Far less problematic (it is certainly accessible to current September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 11

methods of scientific inquiry) is the idea that our planet, once it had cooled sufficiently, was successfully seeded by organic molecules formed naturally in interstellar clouds of dust and gas and transported in comets or meteorites.

Keith Gregory (August 2005) is confused. For example, he has a plainly wrong conception of how organisms arose during evolution and a TTSS is not an organism (see my letter, May 2005). He asks, what is the power behind life? If he has a supernatural source in mind, then it is beyond the ken of science. Finally, even if the past cannot be observed directly, the consequences of past events and processes can be studied and hypotheses tested.

Warwick Don, Dunedin

THE ETERNAL QUESTION Many thanks for printing my letter in entirety in the Aug. issue. It was an attempt to ask a serious question in a (hopefully) humorous way.

However, I have a much deeper reaching conundrum and hope you may be able to help.

The point is that you and Warwick Don are both very intelligent and very well educated men. Your discussions are somewhat over the head of we hoi-polloi – and I believe there are a few people even less well educated than me. So, I would like to attempt a somewhat simpler approach.

When I was at school about 100 years ago, we had, I think, some 98 elements which could not be reduced further. I understand a few more have been manufactured or discovered since, let’s say there are now, perhaps, 110 irreducible elements. Firstly, I find it rather hard to visualise the trillions upon trillions of tonnes of matter in this Universe compressed into an atom size speck which then exploded and in milliseconds became the size of that Universe – or at least a start thereto. Whatever, let’s accept that it did happen that way. The first question which comes to mind is the obvious one of where did this matter come from in the first place ? Secondly, what made it explode with the force that must have been entailed ? Given that amount of force, I would have thought the component atoms would have been blasted so far afield that they would never find their way back home, so to speak.

So therefore, a more difficult conundrum, to me anyway, is how did a certain group of those 110 elements decide to combine to become granite mountains, another group became the earth which covered those mountains and yet another group transmuted into the myriad varieties of grass, flowers and trees which grew in that earth ? This, of course, is begging the earlier question of the origin of the globe on which all this occurred.

Again, a number of elements combined to become animals with tails and horns, some animals have tails but no horns and some have neither. Other animals stood on their hind legs and developed language and thus communication. There is a vast variety of sentient animal life from the tiny fly, barely visible to the naked eye, to the blue whale, the largest known mammal on earth, all of which have life and some degree of a sense of purpose. The plant world also has another vast variety of life – non sentient but still life nonetheless. How do some of these compounds have sentient life, some have mere life and others have no apparent life at all.? Let’s not forget that also, that as I understand, both flora and fauna have changed immensely since the dinosaur’s day.

To use a simple analogy, as an engineer, I know how carbon and iron can be found in the ground and can be combined to form steel in many different guises. Brass is formed from the elements copper and zinc, bronze from copper and tin. Again, as someone interested in words and literature, I can see how the mere 26 letters of the alphabet can be mixed into the hundreds of thousands of words we enjoy and how those words can be the origin of the millions of books of all degrees of intelligence extant today. But, and it’s a large but, in both these latter 12, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

cases, sentient and erudite minds directed the discoveries and developments, the emotions and the words.

So now we come to my main question. Given that we can, presumably, accept that our comparatively feeble works were directed by learned and erudite minds, why is it so difficult for some people to accept there was an intelligent mind behind the creation of the whole cosmos – an infinitely (and I use that word advisedly) more complex construction?

Keith Gregory, Taupiri

BUDDHISM AND MOURNING I write in regards to Ian Wishart’s column “Tears in Heaven” in the August 2005 issue of Investigate here in Australia.

Ian raises the very interesting issue of death, and how it is dealt with in different religions (and by the non-religious). I can sympathise with his views on the attractiveness of the Christian view in this regard, although, I feel that he has misunderstood the alternatives offered, particularly by Buddhism and atheism.

It is true that Buddhism asserts reincarnation, although to characterise this as “a meaningless, cosmic Groundhog Day” shows a lack of understanding of the broader principles of Buddhism. The suggestion that the Buddhist view of reincarnation is somehow lacking in spiritual meaning does not take into account that Buddhism seeks to reject the illusions that make up much of what a Western or Judeo-Christian mind uses to give meaning to the world.

It is the view of Buddhism that the self and the mind are illusions, albeit compelling ones, and it is these things that are the source of much, if not all, of our suffering. Buddhism also seeks to accept that all things are transient, and one of the sources of suffering is the mistaken belief that some things have permanence. One path to enlightenment is learning to detach from the concept of permanence (although this is often misinterpreted by Westerners as implying that Buddhists don’t hold on to anything – that’s not true, they hold on to things for only as long as they are there, then they let go).

To use death as an example, given the self is an illusion, what we Westerners (to use a broad generalisation) grieve when someone dies never really existed.

This can be a difficult concept to grasp or accept for a Western-cultured mind that has been brought up in a world that reinforces our concept of self. However, for a developed Buddhist, the self is already dissolved long before someone dies. During life, they appreciate that someone is a collection of behaviours, dispositions, beliefs etc, and while these things can be conveniently labelled the ‘self ’, the self itself doesn’t exist.

Undoubtedly, even a devout Buddhist will mourn the loss of a loved one, but this mourning takes on a somewhat different character – they mourn the loss of contact with that individual in their lives, but they do not mourn for that ‘person’ as such. To them that individual, that ‘self ’, is gone, and the elements that make up that individual have dissolved back into the world. This may seem impersonal, but that is only in light of the assumption that the self is a real thing.

Surely, there are many interpretations of Buddhism – some more spiritual than others – but the general principle is that the “loss of personal identity” is not a thing to be mourned from a Buddhist perspective.

From an atheistic perspective, to which I myself subscribe, it is not necessarily much different. I am not Buddhist, but I do accept that the self and the mind (along with a few other things, such as free will) are illusions. These beliefs are not supported by any spiritual belief, but by science and reason.

When someone dies, I don’t hold the implicit or explicit belief that their consciousness in any way persists. As such, I try not to empathise with something that has ceased to exist. I mourn the fact they are no longer in my life, and celebrate their life, but I try to avoid speculation about ‘where’ they are now.

There is still mourning to be done, and this may be harder to deal with than if I was Christian, but I personally prefer this situation to the Christian alternative.

Undoubtedly the Christian belief does give relief to those who are mourning death, in the very way Ian has so well described in his column. However, this belief is, in my opinion, not based on reality. If there is no self, no soul, no God and no Heaven, there is nowhere for the dead to go, except into oblivion.

I can see the attraction of wanting to believe in the soul, God, Heaven etc, but in the face of the apparent evidence (to me, at least) believing in them is papering over the cracks with wishful thinking to ease the pain of loss rather than dealing with the root causes of why we feel that loss (which is to be found in the illusion of self etc). This is in the same way that parents might tell their children the family pet has gone to ‘a better place’ instead of confronting them with the concept of death at that age.

This issue is unquestionably deep and involved, and I thank Ian for raising the issue for consideration by the readers of Investigate, even if I don’t agree with his views.

Tim Dean, Sydney WISHART RESPONDS

Tim, it’s not that I don’t understand the Buddhist or atheist positions. It is that I don’t think they correspond with reality. While I accept it is possible to cope with death by acting as if life itself is not real, the Buddhist religion ironically still rests on good old-fashioned Western logic for its foundation. The very act of making the statement, “All is illusory”, or “All is transient”, is a self-defeating one. If “All” is illusion, then the statement itself must be illusory too and be no more true to the Buddhist than the opposite, “Everything is real”.

As you point out, if the self and the mind are illusions, then they are compellingly real illusions, and I don’t see many followers of Eastern faiths prepared to test the illusion by stepping out in front of a bus on the offchance it is not real.

So the Buddhist is trapped in a dichotomy, living a life in a world that seems suspiciously real, and where one’s worldview also relies on a Western-style truth claim, that reality is an illusion. Either that statement is real, or it is not. If it is real, the Buddhist still loses because he’s just found the one thing that is not an illusion. If the statement isn’t real, then clearly he is truly lost. I don’t adhere to the Christian worldview because it comforts me. I adhere to it because it appears to be the best explanation of the nexus between human spirituality and the natural universe. Like you, however, I find discussion on the topic fascinating.

ICE – IN CASE OF EMERGENCY I wanted to let your readers know of a new initiative after the London attacks: “A campaign encouraging people to enter an emergency contact number in their mobile phone's memory under the heading ICE (In Case of Emergency), has rapidly spread throughout the world as a particular consequence of last week's terrorist attacks in London.

“Originally established as a nation-wide campaign in the UK, ICE allows paramedics or police to be able to contact a designated relative / nextof-kin in an emergency situation.Almost everyone carries a mobile phone now, and with ICE we'd know immediately who to contact and what number to ring. The person may even know of their medical history."

“It only takes a few seconds to do, and it could easily help save your life. Why not put ICE in your phone now? Simply select a new contact in your phone book, enter the word 'ICE' and the number of the person you wish to be contacted.”

Thought it was worth it.

A Grey, Christchurch Letters to the editor can be posted to: PO Box 302-188, North Harbour, Auckland, or emailed to editorial@investigatemagazine.com

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 13

SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE

Why the Aussies are rebelling against globalization, and NZ potatoes

E

ight tired tractors rolling across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the farmers on board had driven from Tasmania in a last-ditch bid to save small Australian food producers, processors and corner shops. The Fair Dinkum Food campaign is a valiant David versus Goliath effort which is most likely doomed. But judging by the ecstatic welcomes the protesters have received in country towns, the farmers may have tapped into a growing grassroots antagonism towards big supermarkets and other retail giants.

What started as a stand by Tasmanian potato farmers against a McDonald’s plan to substitute cheaper New Zealand potatoes for half its chips has grown into a protest against globalisation, only without the ferals and the violence.

They are Australia’s anAs Woolworths and Coles swalswer to Jose Bové, the low up independent service sta- French farmer who drove tions and bottle shops and push for his tractor into a a bigger share of pharmacy items, McDonald’s in 1999.

Bové became a symbol fears are growing that the giants of the anti-globalisation are taking over the world movement soon hijacked by violent anticapitalists. The difference here is the Tasmanians don’t want to destroy McDonald’s, Coles and Woolworths.

They just want Australian consumers to demand locally grown food, says the protest leader, Richard Bovill, a farmer and former Woolworths distribution manager. They also want food labeling laws strengthened so country of origin is clear and consumers can choose to buy Australian.

“Of course Coles and Woolworths have the right to do business and make profits,” said Bovill over the roar of his tractor as he drove into Mildura en route to Canberra. “We’re just saying you derive your profit from this marketplace so we are asking [for] more loyalty to the Australian market.”

14, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

Typical of the welcome the protesters have received was the dinner thrown in their honour last night by the celebrity chef Stefano de Pieri on his Murray River paddle-steamer. Their campaign has also attracted support from the Federal Agriculture Minister, Peter McGauran, who has urged supermarkets to buy Australian, and ordered an investigation into the impact of fruit and vegetable imports.

And when the convoy rolled into Shepparton in Victoria none other than the cardboard king Richard Pratt fronted the rally. “If we don’t act now there won’t be a major fresh and processed food industry in this country in 20 years,” he said. “Most of the food our grandchildren eat will be imported.”

Woolworths has hit back with full-page newspaper ads declaring 97 per cent of its fresh food is Australiangrown – and “we’re working on the 3 per cent.” But Bovill says fresh food is not the problem – yet. It is processed fruit and vegetable imports that hurt an industry unable to compete with prices from European countries with farm subsidies and Asian countries with less exacting environmental controls. Frozen mixed peas and carrots can come from Belgium, for instance, sweet corn from the US, beans from China, and peas from New Zealand.

Cost pressure on food producers is intensifying as both Woolworths and Coles move to cheaper home brands, which give them bigger profits.

The Tasmanian potato protesters might be the last in a long line of primary producers (think milk and eggs) who buckle under market pressure, except for changing attitudes towards the big shopping chains.

As Woolworths and Coles swallow up independent service stations and bottle shops and push for a bigger share of pharmacy items, fears are growing that the giants are taking over the world.

A protest against a proposed Woolworths supermarket this month in the small town of Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, revealed a glimpse of that ill

“In Britain, too, there is growing antipathy to what is dubbed the “cloning” of the high street.

The supermarket giant Tesco has felt the sting of consumer boycotts, farmer protests and community petitions against new stores, whether in shopping centres on a town’s outskirts or, into smaller locations on prime retail strips”

feeling. Television footage showed the most unlikely people – old grandpas and conservative burghers – in a violent confrontation with police. The locals, whose catchcry is “Woolies are bullies”, are claiming the development site is the habitat of some rare platypus, but in truth they are afraid the supermarket will kill their local independent stores and ruin the culture of the town.

“This is globalisation at its worst, a Woolworths, the giant corporate, moving into poor little Maleny,” one protester told ABC radio.

In Britain, too, there is growing antipathy to what is dubbed the “cloning” of the high street. The supermarket giant Tesco has felt the sting of consumer boycotts, farmer protests and community petitions against new stores, whether in shopping centres on a town’s outskirts or, into smaller locations on prime retail strips.

In Birmingham, protesters campaigning against a proposed Tesco’s even claim the supermarket will kill the game of cricket. So, while there are just eight Tasmanian tractors heading our way, they may be riding a global wave.

But the sentiment may not extend to consumer spending habits.

While everyone in Sydney’s east laments the decline of Oxford Street

and Double Bay since Westfield’s new mega-mall opened in Bondi Junction, guess where they shop?

The entrepreneur Dick Smith, who has his own line of foodstuffs, is pessimistic.

“It’s just the supermarkets getting food more efficiently to people at lower prices. But it’s the end of the small businessman, the small farmer, the small food producer, the small shopowner. Part of our culture will just go,” he said gloomily yesterday while holidaying on a boat between Cooktown and Cairns.

“Where 35 years ago I was able to start Dick Smith Electronics with $610, the potential to start small businesses in the future will be destroyed.”

However, Smith doesn’t blame supermarkets, which have to keep their shareholders happy.

He puts the blame squarely back on us, Australian consumers “obsessed with price”.

“If the product came from China and was fertilised with human excrement but was a cent cheaper, then most Australians would buy it,” he said.

Over to you.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 15

LAURA’S WORLD

LAURA WILSON Defining one’s turangawaewae

R

ecently my Nepalese husband asked me what rituals and ceremonies we would hold for our newborn child, according to NZ custom. I avoided his gaze while my mind whipped around desperately trying to conjure memories of gatherings, celebrations, anything vaguely ritualistic to do with childbirth.

I came up with one drunken baby shower and church christening (very long and boring for a 16 year old). I contemplated making something up to give my culture some colourful habits but New Zealand may be lacking in deferred instead to the rather sad truth, that we the festive department, but our don’t make much of a traditions regarding common song and dance about new Tradition raises barely areas of land and water are to be life. a blip on the radar screen treasured, for they are quite rare of my life.

Sheepishly, I asked what our son would go through had he been born in Nepal.

The list was extensive, a two-year string of events marking his entry into the world including naming ceremonies, blessings and offerings to various deities, rice-eating ceremony for his first taste of solid food, anklet ceremony to ensure his first steps are blessed, and so on.

In stark and somewhat grey contrast here in NZ we plucked a name from the A-Z book of names and sent it off to Wellington, receiving 5 days later in the mail a birth certificate. Oh, and we planted a pohutukawa tree over the placenta. No songs, no dances, no hallelujahs.

I contemplated, and still do, having a church blessing, but it feels rather like praying to God because the aeroplane engine has just caught fire, a little insincere considering I enter a church less than bi-annually.

Nepal is a riot of festivities, of which the minority are religious. The bulk of them seem to be about rather 16, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

mindless fun, such as the colour festival wherein powdered dye is thrown at everyone by anyone, until the countryside resembles a five-year-old’s finger painting. And the Bisket-Jatra wherein a bamboo tower some hundredfeet high is erected and dragged several miles through town, halting all traffic and trade to be left on a hillside by now-drunken thousands to rot back to nature.

Within New Zealand I have experienced the beauty of tradition during occasions such as kapa-haka assemblies at a Northland school I taught at. Seeing my mostly un-scholarly students on stage performing ancient chants with indescribable depth moved me to tears and made me long for the kind of connectedness they experienced.

Yet for every cultural tradition I admire there is another I despise. The habitual conformity that keeps festivals and celebrations alive also perpetuates nasties such as entrenched power structures that invariably become class systems. At least modern democracies loosen the grip of the elite classes by cyclically removing them from their thrones (and by throwing a few women into the brew).

For all the rhythmic, smiling beauty of Nepali life I would not be able to abide rule by inherited King or chief for ten minutes. The challenge for cultures like Maori, who are reasserting their cultural ways after a century’s hiatus, is to be selective over restoring tradition.

With the handing back of valuable resources has come the attempted reinstatement of past ruling heritages by some individual Maori looking to claim a bigger slice of the pie, virtue of some former noble birthright.

Nefarious concepts of unequal entitlement tenaciously resist the levelling influences of democracy. The elite don’t want to become ordinary, and the ordinary want something to aspire towards. In Nepal, the concept of some being better than others is not regarded a custom, but a biological reality, similar to the idea of blue blood.

It tortured me to witness how the lowliest castes accepted their role in city life, namely sweeping the streets and removing dead bodies. Called Dalits, these people

are not educated as literacy skills are considered of no import in the life of a sewer worker.

Far from staying out of Maori customary ways I would fight any return to concepts of inherent superiority/inferiority within the New Zealand community. As traditional customs are revived, the level playing field may become increasingly hard to defend. As it is, New Zealand supposedly consists of one ‘tribe’ of mixed race with the same rights for all. If someone from Hamilton wants to go fishing in Paihia, they can do so without feeling they are poaching from another’s territory.

Whilst Maori tribes are defined by area as well as genealogy, ownership or accentuated rights to an area are concepts better suited to days when people did not move about so much. The fact that I live in Paihia does not mean I cannot enjoy city life when I choose. In fact, Auckland is my city as much as anyone who lives there.

It is indescribably awful to be walking down a lovely beach and suddenly get the feeling that maybe you shouldn’t be there. You are on someone else’s turf, and that someone does not want you around.

Compare that with feeling that key areas of nature are ownerless and all those who love her may enjoy her. Commonality of land ownership such as parkland and the coastal strip is a harbinger of equality and perhaps more importantly, fraternity.

Fraternal sharing of land is a quality seemingly lost on the Italians whose beautiful lakes and coast are virtually inaccessible thanks to a ring-pass-not of marble and peach-stone villas owned by the superrich. Peasants in hill villages have to be content with distant views of lakes they once gathered water from. In contrast Norwegian waterfrontage is sacrosanct. Not only is it very difficult to own, but it is anyone’s right to camp temporarily where they choose.

New Zealand may be lacking in the festive department, but our traditions regarding common areas of land and water are to be treasured, for they are quite rare. Rights of Way such as the Queens Chain were enshrined before the wealthy had time to gobble up waterfrontage and other prime areas. To see these strips being allocated for the special requirements of any sector saddens me, as it is rare for an attitude of sharing to win over one of territorialism anywhere on Earth.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 17

EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER Goodbye, Jane

I

’m not buying the Listener anymore. This decision is, I don’t mind admitting, a bit of a wrench. After all, I have had a long, and for the most part, relatively trouble-free relationship with that magazine. I grew up with it, it was there on the coffee table all through my formative years, and both it and the Establishment which it represented, were part of the foundation of my early life, along with Vegemite, the National Programme, and the six-monthly sharemilking changeover.

By ditching this piece of my ingrained past, I’m not attempting to deny the memory of what once was, or rebuild myself anew. Rather, the truth is that I can no longer bring myself to It isn’t good enough for journalists wade through the mounand broadcasters to promote their tains of what I, today, perceive to be blatant leftown personal fancies, whilst hiding wing propaganda which behind a pretence of objectivity fill its pages, masquerading as journalism, when the only remaining reward for such toil is Jane Clifton’s political column.

I confess to having been somewhat irked when, a few years back, the Listener ran an article (penned by one of its senior writers) concerning the relative capabilities of the F-16 fighter jets which the RNZAF was proposing to lease at that time; an article which, in my considered estimation, contained a not insignificant number of considerable discrepancies with the truth.

I confess to being further irked when the Listener declined the opportunity to print a couple of letters from myself, offering readers a balance on the thrust of the said article, based on the actual facts, as I understand them to be (and I believe that I understand them very well indeed), with regards to that particular aeroplane.

Despite these glitches, and a few other minor points of irritation, I continued to support the magazine as my entertainment companion of choice.

This week’s issue, however, was the last straw; a des18, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

perate scream for help from what appear to be some of Helen Clark’s most committed acolytes, in the face of Labour’s plunging poll ratings, and the looming prospect that a potential third term for this Government is very probably slipping away.

Actually, I’m not really getting at the Listener specifically, or at least, solely. Over the last couple of years I’ve read less and less of it anyway, to the point where nowadays it’s pretty much only the TV guide, and Jane’s astute observations, to which I afford more than scant attention. I used to enjoy Findlay MacDonald’s editorials, even though I almost never agreed with him; but since Pamela Stirling took over….well, sorry Pam, but the subject matter has, generally, become just a little too wishy-washy for my liking.

It’s this business of subject matter, and apparent bias, which is at the heart of my gripe with the revered magazine, and for that matter, much of the Fourth Estate in general.

The media wields enormous influence over public opinion, and it irks me greatly that so few of today’s editors, broadcasters, publications, and journalists, even bother to pay lip service to the concepts of unbiased, fair, objective reporting. They’re pushing their own barrows, politically and economically, and making little secret of the fact.

So who am I to talk? I’m an unashamed nationalist, a right-winger, massively self-opinionated, and a strident critic of almost everything connected with left-wing political philosophy. There’s no way I could be called an objective journalist – but then I don’t pretend to be one, either, and therein lies the essential difference. I’m an opinion columnist, and not afraid to admit it. But altogether too many of New Zealand’s writers and commentators, in my view, pass themselves off as unbiased recorders of fact, when in reality they are every bit as slanted as myself, yet lack the honesty to be up front about it.

So, moral high ground to me – but where does that leave Joe Public?

Effectively, Joe knows virtually nothing about the

actions or agendas of Governments, other than what he is told via the media. His attitudes towards, and opinions regarding such Governments, are therefore liable to be influenced by the manner in which such actions and agendas are reported and described, and, logically, by any partisan bias or philosophical spin placed on such reporting by the individual and collective Estate responsible for its dissemination.

So what, some might ask; many may well agree that such is the way of the world, and that I am being naïve in expecting that it should, or could, be any different.

Well, I don’t believe I’m naïve, but I do know that I’m very annoyed. To my mind, the deliberate use of media organisations as tools of propaganda, is simply another example of the widespread dishonesty and ethical corruption which has begun to afflict our society more and more in recent decades. Sorry, but I do expect better of people. It isn’t good enough for journalists and broadcasters to promote their own personal fancies, whilst hiding behind a pretence of objectivity. If we cannot, as individuals, see the need to lift our game where matters of personal ethics are concerned, and do so without prodding or motivation from outside, then there is little hope for the generations who will follow us, being able to achieve it themselves; generations for whom we are setting, at present, a very poor example.

At the risk of excessive doomsaying, I believe the rot is well and truly set in, and something needs to be done about it. It is broke, and it does need fixed. I suppose my message to the media is, quite simply, if you’re going to hold a particular prejudice, at least have the moral courage and decency to be open about it. It has been my experience in life, by nature, through upbringing, and from the learning of experimentation, in all arenas, that it is always, without exception, better to be straight with people; other than, perhaps, those odd occasions when discretion may prove to be the better part of valour.

The broadcast media is undoubtedly more powerful than its print cousins, in terms of its ability to reach its message into people’s homes, and into their subconscious, to be regurgitated as attitude, and presumably, to shape the mood of the electorate.

This writer gave up watching TV One News, in favour of the TV3 variety, on principle, at the time of the Scampi affair.

Such was my discomfort at what I perceived to be a blatant campaign, on the part of our State-owned broadcaster, aimed at discrediting Winston Peters, that I changed my loyalty in protest. This is not because I support NZ First, because I don’t; I have a great deal of time for Winston, but I’ve never voted for him. It was because TVNZ’s coverage of the whole inquiry, to my mind, was so gleefully biased against, and so vitriolic towards Winston Peters, that I felt my intelligence as a viewer was being insulted. I am firmly of the belief that Joe Public, if and when given all the facts, is quite capable of sorting truth from fiction all by himself. Telling Joe what to think, or how to think, or lying to him – through omission, or the altering of context or chronology – is neither necessary nor desirable. In my opinion (about which there is nothing humble) behaving in such a manner cheapens a media organisation, and betrays a cynical disregard for the principles of democracy.

And I do happen to think that those principles are important. I will not always agree with my fellow man, but I will always defend his right to hold an opinion which differs from my own. Just because the man standing to the left of me in the pub on Friday night may not be able to express his views as eloquently as the man on my right, does not mean that his opinion is any less valid; his vote, after all, is worth as much as either of ours, and so should it ever remain.

Because of this, it is equally important that the media, through which he gleans the information on which he bases his opinions, is fair and unbiased in its delivery of that information. Journalists, publications, and broadcasters, in my opinion, have as much of a moral responsibility to execute objectivity and fair play in the dissemination of the truth, as

do politicians, judges, and clergy folk. That the former example has begun to conduct its affairs in a manner all too similar to that which we are becoming accustomed to seeing from the other three, is a sad testimony to the degradation of the unwritten, honourable, ethical code which once drove all the institutional pillars of our supposedly noncorrupted New Zealand society, in years and generations past.

These pillars, and the Establishment which rests upon them, form the foundation on which our society is based. The Police, the Military, Industry, Science, Education, Business, and the Churches, all combine, to provide the stable – and, we would like to hope, truthful – framework within which democracy may be promulgated. We hear about them all through the media. If that media has become bent, then by definition, the opinions held by the public, with regard to the constructs of society, will be bent as well.

I believe this is important. Apart from anything else, this is an election year; Joe and Janice Public are to be required to choose a new Government in a month or two, and how may we expect them to do so properly, effectively, and in the interests of New Zealand, if the information given them via the media, with regard to the various alternatives on offer, is not complete, accurate, and without partisan bias or slant?

In any event, the wheels are in motion. I have said my piece, and I am making my protest. My relationship with the Listener is over, for better or worse. It is done. I shall purchase it no more. I will, I am sure, become used to the effects which this voluntarily chosen course of action will have on the routine of my weekly life. Fear not for the state of my informed viewing (not that I have time to watch TV anyway), as I will not go without a TV guide; the Otago Daily Times puts out a fine example every Tuesday.

And as far as Jane Clifton is concerned, if I can’t manage to sneak in a crafty read in the supermarket, I suppose I can always ask Mum and Dad to fax me a copy.

(How New Zealand’s political and media pundits would likewise survive, without access to Investigate, I shudder to think.)

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 19

BREAK POINT

ANN COULTER

A judge in the hand is worth two from a Bush

A

fter pretending to consider various women and minorities for the Supreme Court these past few months, President Bush decided to disappoint all the groups he had just ginned up and nominate a white male. So all we know about him for sure is that he can’t dance and he probably doesn’t know who JayZ is. Other than that, he is a blank slate. Tabula rasa.

Big zippo. Nada. Oh, yeah ... We also know he’s argued cases before the Supreme Court. Big deal; so has Larry Flynt’s attorney.

But unfortunately, other than that that, we don’t know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever.

Since the announceIt’s always good to remind votment, court-watchers have ers that Democrats are the party been like the old Kremlinof abortion, sodomy and atheism, ologists from Soviet days and nothing presents an oppor- looking for clues as to what kind of justice tunity to do so like a Supreme Roberts will be.

Will he let us vote?

Court nomination Does he live in a small, rough-hewn cabin in the woods of New Hampshire and avoid “womenfolk”?

Does he trust democracy? Or will he make all the important decisions for us and call them “constitutional rights”?

It means absolutely nothing that NARAL and Planned Parenthood attack him: They also attacked Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Hackett Souter.

The only way a Supreme Court nominee could win the approval of NARAL and Planned Parenthood would be to actually perform an abortion during his confirmation hearing, live, on camera, and preferably a partial-birth one.

20, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations. He was arguing on behalf of his client, the United States of America. Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases, dropping a footnote to a 1994 law review article that said: “In the interest of full disclosure, the author would like to point out that as Deputy Solicitor General for a portion of the 1992 – ’93 term, he was involved in many of the cases discussed below. In the interest of even fuller disclosure, he would also like to point out that his views as a commentator on those cases do not necessarily reflect his views as an advocate for his former client, the United States.”

This would have been the legal equivalent, after O.J.’s acquittal, of Johnnie Cochran saying: “Hey, I never said the guy was innocent. I was just doing my job.”

And it makes no difference that conservatives in the White House are assuring us Roberts can be trusted.

We got the exact same assurances from officials working for the last president Bush about David Hackett Souter.

I believe their exact words were, “Read our lips; Souter’s a reliable conservative.”

From the theater of the absurd category, the Republican National Committee’s “talking points” on Roberts provide this little tidbit: “In the 1995 case of Barry v. Little, Judge Roberts argued — free of charge — before the D.C. Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of the neediest welfare recipients, challenging a termination of benefits under the District’s Public Assistance Act of 1982.”

I’m glad to hear the man has a steady work record, but how did this make it to the top of his resume?

Bill Clinton goes around bragging that he passed welfare reform, which was, admittedly, the one public policy success of his entire administration (passed by the Republican Congress). But now apparently Republicans want to pretend we’re the party of welfare queens!

Soon the RNC will be boasting that Republicans want to raise your taxes and surrender in the war on terrorism, too.

Finally, let’s ponder the fact that Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That’s just unnatural.

By contrast, I held out for three months, tops, before dropping my first rhetorical bombshell, which I think was about Goldwater.

It’s especially unnatural for someone who is smart, and there’s no question but that Roberts is smart.

If a smart and accomplished person goes this long without expressing an opinion, he’d better be pursuing the Miss America title.

Apparently, Roberts decided early on that he wanted to be on the Supreme Court and that the way to do that was not to express a personal opinion on anything to anybody ever. It’s as if he is from some space alien sleeper cell. Maybe the space aliens are trying to help us, but I wish we knew that.

If the Senate were in Democrat hands, Roberts would be perfect. But why on earth would Bush waste a nomination on a person who is a complete blank slate when we have a majority in the Senate!

We also have a majority in the House, state legislatures, state governorships, and have won five of the last seven presidential elections — seven of the last 10!

We’re the Harlem Globetrotters now — why do we have to play the Washington Generals every week?

Conservatism is sweeping the nation, we have a fully functioning alternative media, we’re ticked off and ready to avenge Robert Bork ... and Bush nominates a Rorschach blot.

Even as they are losing voters, Democrats don’t hesitate to nominate reliable left-wing lunatics like Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lifetime tenure on the high court. And the vast majority of Americans loathe her views.

As I’ve said before, if a majority of Americans agreed with liberals on abortion, gay marriage, pornography, criminals’ rights and property rights — liberals wouldn’t need the Supreme Court to give them everything they want through invented “constitutional” rights invisible to everyone but People for the American Way. It’s always good to remind voters that Democrats are the party of abortion, sodomy and atheism, and nothing presents an opportunity to do so like a Supreme Court nomination.

The Democrats’ own polls showed voters are no longer fooled by claims that the Democrats are trying to block “judges who would roll back civil rights.” Borking is over.

And Bush responds by nominating a candidate who will allow Democrats to avoid fighting on their weakest ground — substance. He has given us a Supreme Court nomination that will placate no liberals and should please no conservatives.

Maybe Roberts will contravene the sordid history of “stealth nominees” and be the Scalia or Thomas that Bush promised us when he was asking for our votes. Or maybe he won’t. The Supreme Court shouldn’t be a game of Russian roulette.

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September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 21

DOUBLE SPEAK

IAN WISHART The blonde leading the blind

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chanced to pick up the Sunday papers a couple of weeks ago and was struck by the growing “reality gap” between the newspapers’ opinion columnists and the factual news reports the papers contained. At issue was Winston Peters’ sledgehammer-for-a-nut speech about possible Islamic terrorists in New Zealand.

Let me say this right now, Winston is deliberately politicking on this one, because he knows it will resonate with NZ First’s core voters. I don’t think he needed to be so inflammatory in talking about the “Serpents” in the Mosque. However, at a factual level, he is correct: there are some elements within New Zealand’s Islamic community who are hostile to western culture and not only sympathise with al The War on Terror will not end Qa’ida but probably share vision of a new Islamic anytime soon. Eventually, Australia the empire ruling the world, and New Zealand will be struck. which is the driving phiAnd the reason the War on Terror losophy of the fastestgrowing group in Islam, won’t end is because it is a global Wahhabism. When comcultural struggle mentators talk about the race between Christianity and Islam for the hearts and souls of the planet, they’re not talking about St Matthews-in-the-City and the Ponsonby Mosque. They’re talking about power-ofGod, miracle-working Pentecostal Christianity, up against There-is-no-god-but-Allah-and-Muhammed-is-hisprophet Wahhabi Islam. Most journalists in the NZ media lack any meaningful direct understanding of Pentecostalism, and even fewer understand Islam, which means you’re unlikely to see cogent, incisive reports on the massive global power-play that’s currently underway.

In the case of Herald on Sunday columnist Kerre Woodham, however, one of her recent offerings on Peters’ claims was a case of the blonde leading the blind.

“This time around it’s the serpent in the Mosque, the updated version of reds under the bed. This is a winner 22, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

for Peters. There’s a real fear among some people that we’re letting terrorists into the country – and what’s worse, we’re giving them benefits and free housing. These people genuinely believe that New Zealanders naïve gullibility will be repaid with a bomb on the Harbour Bridge or under the Sky Tower, and no amount of reasoning or argument will convince them otherwise.

“The pity and contempt the Peters acolyte feel for those who refuse to believe New Zealand’s Muslims will blow up the country is reciprocated by my pity and contempt for them.”

Don’t get me wrong, Kerre is a friend and I have enormous respect for her broadcasting abilities and her right to her viewpoint. But as I said up the top, what she and other liberal commentators are saying is totally divorced from the reality of the news reports in the same papers they write for.

Whilst almost every opinion commentator has scorned Peters, successive news reports have featured: police intelligence officials confirming that there are terrorist sympathizers in New Zealand; members of the Muslim community, even those hostile to Peters, forced to concede that they know of sympathizers as well; and international al Qa’ida expert Rohan Gunaratna quoted as saying there are nearly a dozen “groups linked to international Islamic terror networks operating out of New Zealand cities”.

So why are liberals so out of touch with the facts? I suspect simply because to admit the facts is too hard for most of them to stomach. Either the commentators are right and there is no threat, or the police and intelligence analysts and westernized Muslims are correct, and there is.

It may be irksome to Kerre and others that Winston Peters has turned the War on Terror into a domestic political issue, but unfortunately he’s right. There is a clear and present danger, as Tom Clancy might say. The error Winston makes is tarring by association the entire Islamic community here, but Kerre makes the same

error in whitewashing the Muslim community en masse as well.

Forget the one-label-fits-all stereotype, we are talking about a sub-sect of Islam, but nonetheless one that has growing influence in New Zealand.

Liberals scoff that New Zealand could be a possible target, but they forget that the ANZAC invasion of East Timor was sufficient to attract Osama bin Laden’s personal condemnation in an al Jazeera video. They also forget the Boeing 757 flight manuals copied in Arabic in Hamilton just a couple of months before 9/11, they forget the plot uncovered in Auckland to blow up Sydney’s nuclear reactor during the Olympics, and they forget radical group al Haramain’s attempt to take over the Christchurch mosque a year ago.

The War on Terror will not end anytime soon. Eventually, Australia and New Zealand will be struck. And the reason the War on Terror won’t end is because it is a global cultural struggle. The suicide bombers in 9/11 had lived in the US. Some had families, children and ordinary jobs there. Likewise in London – homegrown, brought up in “Islam is Peace” mosques, speaking with English accents.

To assume that because we offer social welfare to disgruntled migrants we’ll somehow buy our way out of trouble is part of that “naïve gullibility” Kerre talked of.

I mentioned earlier the looming clash of civilizations. Forget capitalism vs communism, or even West vs East. Those perspectives are far too narrow. The next big confrontation will not be about political systems, but about belief systems. The world’s two largest religions are enjoying massive growth globally on a scale that eclipses any time in history. In China, one in ten people are Pentecostal Christian. There are more Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party – and China is still a one party state.

At current growth rates, the only Buddhists left in the world by 2032 will be living in Grey Lynn or Thorndon, because there won’t be any left in Asia. A staggering 200,000 people a day are converting from Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism and Islam to Christianity. That’s 140 people a minute, every minute of the day seven days a week. By the time you’ve read this article, that’ll be nearly a thousand new Christians. And they’re not popping up in the West. New Zealand’s isolation in the International Cricket Council over Zimbabwe reflects the demographic power shift in religion as well: the Archbishop of Canterbury may remain the nominal head of the Anglican Church, but white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are a tiny minority of the worldwide Anglican Church now, and hold no real power. The West, with all of its political self-absorbtion, is almost irrelevant in this three-act drama.

The Muslim community made a salient point in the wake of the London bombings – every day in Iraq people are being killed by suicide bombers. This is true, but it only tells half the story. Every day, particularly in Africa and Asia, more than 400 Christians are also being murdered because of their beliefs. Thousands more are beaten, raped or tortured. Every day. The violence inflicted by militant Islam and militant secularism far exceeds the violence in Iraq. Close to home, these events are happening in Indonesia and the Philippines.

That is the clash of cultures. That is the ultimate frontline of the War on Terror. Bringing that same chaos, which has existed now in the Third World for decades, into the decadent West is icing on the cake for bin Laden and co. Welcome to the bigger picture.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 23

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER A clear and present danger

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omething that I do tend to bash on about, I guess, is our collective need to confuse tolerance and the so-called celebration of diversity with any sort of ability to differentiate between a simple right and a wrong. Similar difficulty also seems to exist in our ability to recognise clear and present danger that, to all but the truly stupid, quite obviously is now, by invitation, dwelling amongst us. That danger no longer facing any requirement to batter down our society’s castle gates to gain entry, but having been welcomed in en-mass by the same sandalwearing nit-wits who shortly will be expecting us to re-elect them back into power.

Islam: a peaceful religion of sweetness and Those who are with us regardless light that we are now daily of race or religion are our broth- being coached to believe ers, those who are not, in a word we should embrace and are our enemies, which when you celebrate as one of the world’s great religions, come to think about it, is both which on the surface simple and direct seems fair enough, well that is of course if we are also equally prepared to overlook the small matter that of recent times a number of these bearded and be-robed folk appear to have developed something of a mania for trying to kill us all in bulk numbers.

And it is not as if this should really come as some sort of a surprise to us either. Indiscriminate murder, long before Afghanistan and Iraq became the rallying call of these religious nutters, was long the calling card of one Yasser Arafat who, you may recall, in company with other deranged Arab ‘leaders’ tended to specialise in the bulk extinction of complete innocents for varied political causes, but nevertheless also being ‘justified’, hailed and indeed wildly encouraged by a goodly proportion of Islam at large.

Don’t try to tell me that the larger part of the Islamic 24, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

world doesn’t know precisely what is going on in the more extreme branches of its highly structured and very well disciplined religion and well ordered lifestyle. Nor that an increasing number of straight out psychopaths running many mosques throughout the western world are not openly calling for death and destruction to be visited amongst the people that have given them residency and shelter...the prime example of this being the silly Poms who have based in London a coterie of wild eyed Islamic Clerics who make dear old Bin Laden sound like a choir boy…and then they wonder why it is that these self same religious manipulators of young and impressionable minds find it so easy to work their evil purpose by persuading even British born Muslims to set about murdering their fellow citizens.

Freedom of speech and of association is all very well, but not to the point surely where one would seriously consider allowing say a re-incarnated Adolph Hitler to set up shop in Berkley Square to train a bunch of fanatics to bulk kill Londoners simply because he’s ticked off that he got his backside kicked in the last world war.

Which of course is exactly what the Brits have done with these followers of the Bin Laden doctrine: let these nutters set up shop, build their bombs and God knows what else they have tucked away there at the moment, and then act all surprised when years of this stupid ultra-liberal philosophy ends up killing completely innocent Londoners.

So I guess when you sit down and think about it, in one way Tony Blair is somewhat culpable for these recent bombing and general mayhem, but not so much because of his Government’s support of their oldest ally, the ‘great Satan’ and his mate George Bush’s antiterrorism policies, but rather because, like so many of the West’s touchingly innocent politicians, they just cannot for the life of them recognise the inherent danger that exists when you needlessly invite into your country people with a very well documented history for fanatically inspired and religiously based mindless violence.

Certainly it is more than true that very likely the largest proportion of Islamist immigrants will never in their wildest dreams either take part in or, in a substantive way, ever support the kinds of terrorism that are now becoming commonplace in their religion’s name. Nevertheless it is also surely true that we are not seeing a concerted effort, either, by these peaceable folk to round up these fanatics and to inform the authorities as to their activities. Worse, I am sure that a number of people are still haunted by the images of the street parties that were held in numerous Islamic countries on the occasion of the destruction of New York’s twin towers...which I am sure even to the most liberal folk in our own society was really not a good look.

So I guess a bit of a challenge to the vast majority of the very decent and I am sure very peaceful followers of Islam that are living in our, and other western countries at the moment: Time to stand up and be counted I would think, and no better way exists to do that I would imagine, than for you good folk hence forth, by dint of your closeness and specialised knowledge as to what is currently going on within both your close-knit religion and culture, to give a very early warning to the relevant authorities should you even suspect that Ali and friends are about to murder or maim some of the otherwise friendly and nice people that you guys have now chosen to live amongst. For all I know it may well have been the Prophet himself who once said that “it is not by words but by deeds that man will be judged” the deeds in this case being best demonstrated by the quantity and quality of the information that true followers of Islam henceforth freely give to our police and security services.

Indeed I am quite sure that also henceforth mere words of regret will no longer carry much weight as far as the ordinary citizens of your host countries are concerned, because as I am sure that you are now quickly starting to discover, citizenship in most western countries carries with it certain responsibilities not least of those being an absolute commitment to pursue, if necessary to the ends of the earth, anyone at all who murders our citizens or in fact had any knowledge of, or in any way supported a crime of this nature.

With regards to New Zealand itself, it is true that there appears little reason for anyone at all to start a terrorist campaign on our shores, but then as far as Kiwis are concerned, being amongst the biggest offshore travelers in the world, we are bound, albeit by being simply in the wrong place at the wrong time to, once again fall victims to Islamic

terrorist activity. At which point it may also not be out of place in this wee opinion piece to point out what I believe are a few salient, if not particularly pleasant historical facts as to the character and eventual resolve of the Western World’s peoples that currently are being targeted by Islamic extremists...

There will, in the not too distant future, should these attacks escalate and substantively worsen, quickly come a most unfortunate turning point in both our attitude and tolerance, the last historical occasion during which this was demonstrated being of course WW2, during which time otherwise peaceable and largely tolerant Westerners beat into absolute submission those who had chosen to attack and threaten our way of life. Wicked, decadent and perhaps even immoral, our collective societies may well have become, indeed many people in these same societies are well aware that it is high time that the pendulum should begin to swing once again towards the paths of righteousness, what we will not ever tolerate of course is the likes of Islamic fundamentalists under whoever’s banner it may be, to bomb or in other ways murder our people to achieve this end. For be assured, tolerance may well be the catch-phrase of our largely out of touch political leaders, it is, however a much more fragile commodity than we all might think amongst the bulk of people at large.

So in short, Western nations currently under threat or actual attack should simply require all citizens or residents to give absolute support to the rounding up and capture of all who would do us harm. Any who either preach or in any way support Islamic terrorism or for that matter terrorism of any form should simply be deported forthwith.

Those who are with us regardless of race or religion are our brothers, those who are not, in a word are our enemies, which when you come to think about it, is both simple and direct.

This may very well be the 21st Century, where we have tried to adopt tolerance and understanding as a credo; that there are people still determined to take us back to the dark ages and, by indiscriminately and violently attacking us, to work their will upon us there is now little doubt, as there is also little doubt that they will never succeed, but it will also require a rapid coming together of the true and peaceful followers of Islam to stamp out the violence and indeed the wickedness currently being carried out in their name. The rest of us, if we can, would like to help.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 25

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART Child abuse and the nature of evil

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urveys show around 90% of Australians and New Zealanders have a spiritual belief. Many people as part of that belief acknowledge the existence of spiritual evil, whether in the new agey “bad karma” sense or in the traditional Christian, Islamic or Jewish view of evil personified in satanic form. In Europe, however, belief in God is dropping away rapidly as Europeans see themselves as enlightened social liberals. In France, in particular, belief in the existence of the Devil is held by only 17% of the population, compared with 65% in the US. Remember those cartoons with Is it possible that by the angel on one shoulder and abandoning belief in God, people can leave themthe devil on the other? What selves wide open to genuhappens when the person in ine spiritual evil? That is the question ultimately the middle no longer believes thrown up by last month’s in angels – where then does convictions of 62 people their advice come from? in a French village for “raping, prostituting, molesting or failing to protect 45 children as young as six months old,” as the Belfast Telegraph succinctly summed it up.

The accused villagers, aged between 27 and 73, including 26 women. These people were the parents and grandparents of 45 children from 23 families. As the newspaper notes: “They took part in the sexual assaults themselves or accepted small payments, including cigarettes, drink and food, for the use of their children.”

Some people would have us believe that sexual orientation is something we’re born with. What are we to make of the news that the inhabitants of an entire village were born paedophiles? Do we believe this is a random fluke of nature, or is the cause of this infestation more likely to be a direct result of the culture and belief systems our generation is creating in the West?

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Like the eagerness of Germans to round up “subhuman” Jews for the final solution, or the speed with which otherwise civilised Los Angelenos descended into brutal bloodlust, rape and riot, burning their central city in 1991; I’m far more inclined to believe that evil is not a “natural” genetic flaw, it is a path we choose. Remember those cartoons with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other? What happens when the person in the middle no longer believes in angels – where then does their advice come from?

The answer can be seen in the French town of Angers.

The mastermind of the Village of Paedophilia was a 37 year old with previous convictions, and four children of his own were repeatedly raped and abused by strangers. One 12 year old girl was said to have been raped 45 times.

A mother, Patricia, was found guilty of raping her own daughter, and prostituting 11 neighbourhood children.

The abuse took place in properties owned by the local council, and 21 of the 23 families were under the “supervision” of social workers. In fact, fifteen social workers had been rostered to look after Patricia’s family.

Several witnesses testified they saw Patricia’s husband Frank raping his own children, even though one was yelling out, “stop daddy, you’re hurting me”.

One factor that researchers have long known is that people who are sexually abused as children are more likely to become abusers as adults. Patricia and her husband had both been molested as children.

In Christian theology, there is a reason for this: demonic transference. Several times in the New Testament, Christ talks about people possessed by demons, and how unless a person changes their bad habits, the spiritual baggage they cast out will come back: “It goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go and live in there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”

In the book of Matthew, 8:31, Jesus comes across a possessed man and casts demonic spirits out of him:

ZUMA

“The demons begged Jesus, ‘If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs’.” And he did.

Christ treated demons, or dark angels, as real creatures, albeit invisible to the eye. If they left a place, they had to go somewhere else. And they had the capacity to invite their mates around for a few cold ones and blue movies.

There have been several Hollywood movies on the premise of demons leaping from victim to victim, and the spiritual sickness in the French village of Angers is stark testimony. Is there a better explanation for why 62 residents of a village should suddenly take up child molestation on masse, passing their own kids around to other villagers and watching six month old babies being sexually violated?

A random fluke of nature or genetics just doesn’t explain it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exculpating these scum by suggesting they’re not really guilty because “the devil made me do it”. The devil planted the idea, but they chose to act on it.

Which brings me to Graham Capill and other men of the cloth, Protestant or Catholic, who have turned out to be child molestors. While it is true that there are infinitely more cases of child abuse outside the church, it is those within the clergy who gain the most media attention.

The reason is simple, in my view. If personal evil exists in the world, and I am convinced it does, then it is entirely logical to expect that Evil to attack those professing to follow the good. Look at the accusations of hypocrisy leveled at Capill by New Zealand’s atheists and secular humanists as a general tarnish against Christianity. Sure – Capill was a personal hypocrite. But what he said publicly about the dangers of pornography and social liberalism is correct. Clearly his message was

not hypocritical, unless atheists would now have us believe that child abuse must be alright (some, in fact, do argue this) and Capill was a hypocrite for arguing the contrary. For all I know, Capill’s journey began with pornography or abuse as a child. Maybe in offering the warnings he was in fact speaking from personal knowledge, from what was left of his conscience while he let the darkness consume him.

Whatever, the media frenzy around Capill, whilst justified on one level, was equally hypocritical – given the media’s role in selling sex, liberalism, violence and other nasties to the wider community. There was an element of spiritual cannibalism going on here. Or Pot calling the Kettle black.

If Christ could spend his days on earth being shadowed by Satan, indeed, having the devil offer him every worldly pleasure possible in a bid to tempt him off course, is it any less likely that Satan is doing the same thing to otherwise good people worldwide, every day?

If life, as Omar Khayyam proffered, “is but a chequerboard of nights and days, where Destiny [the final outcome of the battle between good and evil] with Men for pieces plays”, is it really a surprise that some fall by the wayside, taken out of the game because they’ve compromised themselves or their team?

In the West, we’ve been far too quick to abandon belief in not just spirituality, but specifically the Light and the Dark. Even many Christians now believe only in the Light, and don’t think the Dark is real.

Explain that to the 45 abused children in Angers. Tell them that they were mere victims of coincidence, that their parents didn’t really succumb to the darkness. Then click the heels of your nice red shoes and take a trip to Kansas.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 27

POLITICAL HEAT

DON BRASH National's vision is simple

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ew Zealanders have worked damned hard for the past two decades – harder and longer than most other people in the developed world. We have hauled our country from near bankruptcy in the mid-eighties and improved our productivity growth rate to levels that, though still below the average in other developed countries, are markedly better than they were.

As a country, we made huge, painful changes, took the risks, took the knocks, and gave our country a new future. It’s now surely time you enjoyed some of the benefit of the hard work – instead of a greedy, spendthrift government that takes too much out of your pocket to bolster its army No wonder we are seeing New of bureaucrats and buy favour with dependent Zealanders voting with their feet. beneficiaries. New ZeaNo wonder we lost the population land has had six good – but no thanks to of a whole New Zealand city to years this Labour Government.

Australia last year Others were responsible for making the painful changes that rebuilt our international competitiveness.

World demand for our farm exports has been strong, and foreign exchange rates turned in New Zealand’s favour in the late nineties. World interest rates have been low, and we benefited from a huge inflow of people after the awful events of September 11. Our businesses and our people were ready, and able to take advantage of the situation.

But who made the biggest gains? The Clark-Cullen Government, of course. It will have collected more than $55 billion in additional tax revenues by the end of the current financial year and it has built up record surpluses.

Hard-working New Zealanders have seen no tax relief – no income tax reduction for working families, no change to our now-uncompetitive company tax.

28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

No wonder we are seeing New Zealanders voting with their feet. No wonder we lost the population of a whole New Zealand city to Australia last year.

What a huge loss – simply because we have a business-blind government that sits on record surpluses, absolutely refuses to reduce taxation, wastes money on incredibly complex systems for managing – but not delivering – healthcare and education, and ignores the needs of our working wealth builders.

For six years, they have concentrated on redistributing the wealth of New Zealand when they should have been helping you lay the foundations for another round of wealth creation.

Let me say from the outset that it is imperative that this situation changes, and a National Government led by me will make sure it does. National is committed to lower tax rates as part of a coordinated set of policies to build the more prosperous nation that we all deserve to be a part of.

National can make New Zealand a higher-income country, and higher incomes come from productivity growth, which in turn comes substantially from business investment. Taxing away business cashflow is inconsistent with New Zealand’s generating the business investment necessary to build a prosperous nation. We must put an end to policies that say to business “Invest in Australia”.

So I can confirm to you today what I have been talking about for some months now – that a National Government will reduce company tax to at least the equivalent of that in Australia during its first term of office. In other words, we will drop our present rate of 33 cents in the dollar back to not more than 30 cents.

This will have the effect of making us more competitive with our biggest trading partner.

National has reminded Labour constantly of their responsibility to ensure New Zealand has top quality infrastructure, to help us achieve and sustain the best economic and social standards.

Safe, well-designed and well-maintained road and rail networks; more power generation and transmission capacity; efficient sea and air ports; competitive shipping and aviation services; high quality water supply and waste disposal systems; sophisticated telecommunications.

Everyone knows how badly we need them all – but Labour hasn’t been listening. Our pressing needs were ignored – until just a few weeks ago. Then, Helen Clark and Michael Cullen suddenly panicked.

They realized they could lose this election. All of a sudden the things that were impossible or unnecessary became urgently necessary and very possible. Labour doesn’t really understand about the need for constant commitment to policies that encourage business and workers to get on with building new products and services; creating real jobs and more wealth; and laying the foundations that give our country a safer and more secure future. But they do understand about pork-barreling their way through an election campaign.

I have more faith in the commonsense of New Zealanders. The people know that we have been steadily rolling out key policies in areas like agriculture, biosecurity, resource management, law and order, education, welfare, race relations, employment relations, the Treaty of Waitangi, and roading. They know we take a risk in releasing policy early. They see Labour reacting – and trying to neutralize the appeal of our new policies with half-hearted efforts of their own.

Now we have Helen Clark promising a deadline on the filing of Treaty claims; Trevor Mallard culling some race-based spending and low-grade tertiary study courses, and promising to waive interest on student loans; George Hawkins putting some more police out to chase speedsters. All of a sudden, Pete Hodgson is promising to accelerate motorway development all over the country.

New Zealanders know that Labour said no action was necessary on these issues – before we proved they were wrong, or perhaps just started closing the gap in the polls. Everyone knows Labour’s counter-offers are half-hearted and half-baked – and in the case of their hastily whipped up student loan policy, downright dangerous. They also know that today National is committed and well-equipped to do the job that’s needed – and do it properly.

We are determined to deliver a lower-tax, higher-growth economy that will build a New Zealand where there is real opportunity, room for aspiration, reward for effort, more individual security and less State-directed dependency. Our kind of New Zealand will have a top quality standard of living. To get it, we need top quality infrastructure.

We have a growth plan that’s ready to run – and no ideological hangups to hold us back. Unlike Labour and its allies, we will not impose a carbon tax that will add cost, and slow growth and development.

We will not penalise businesses and workers who generate our growth and wealth for the sake of a system that favours the competing businesses and workers of some of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to emitting greenhouse gases. It doesn’t make sense to do so when you realise that we contribute less than 0.5% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by all the world’s developed economies, and our scope for reducing agricultural emissions is so limited.

No one else is being asked to hobble their economy to uphold Kyoto – and we don’t intend to be the world’s first in that contest.

Kyoto is just one of the points of difference between Labour and National as New Zealanders face the challenge of rebuilding and sustaining the strength of our economy.

Unlike Labour, we are not going to tinker with the Resource Management Act. We are going to change it substantially. This Act imposes huge costs, delays the solution of our roading and energy crises, hinders investment in major industries like forestry, and creates time-consuming difficulties, costs, and uncertainties for farmers, small business operators and home-owners. Within three months of forming a government, we will introduce our first phase changes to pro-

vide greater certainty, consistency, and speed in decision-making. They include: • A requirement for councils to automatically grant resource consents for applications that comply with national standards.

• The ability for applicants to refuse further information requests from councils and have their proposals accepted or rejected on the information provided.

• A requirement for objectors to show they have a genuine interest in or will be directly affected by a resource consent.

• Repealing the provision that enables council notification decisions to be appealed to the Environment Court.

• Enabling applicants to seek direct referral to the Environmental Court for major consents that are likely to be appealed regardless of council decisions.

• Enabling the Environment Court and councils to reject vexatious and frivolous objectors.

• Making a late consent a free consent, whereby if the council fails to process a consent within 20 working days it cannot charge processing fees.

A National Government will substantially accelerate road construction. We have already made a commitment to finish the Auckland Corridor Network – originally planned some 40 years ago – within 10 years of forming a government, as well as to complete the Waikato Expressway as far as Cambridge, four-lane State Highway 2 from its junction with State Highway 1 just south of the Bombay Hills to its junction with State Highway 27, and deal with the pressing problems in the western Bay of Plenty and around Wellington.

And just in case anybody thinks that roading problems are uniquely an Auckland, or an urban, issue, it is worth reminding ourselves that, when the Allen Consulting Group did an analysis of New Zealand’s roading problems for the Automobile Association last year, they discovered that the biggest pay-off to improved investment in the roading network was in a package of rural passing lanes! National will promote public-private projects as a serious way of moving roading projects forward where appropriate.

We are confident that these initiatives – change to the RMA, the Building Act and the Land Transport Management Act, additional public sector funding and the potential to use tolls and private sector capital – will address the very real roading problems that are holding back economic growth and imposing a savage human cost in the form of road accidents which are markedly more frequent, and more fatal, than in similar countries.

Finally, I want to talk about employment law. National is very concerned at the effect on business of Labour’s Employment Relations Law Reform Act, which undermines the rights of both workers and employers. We predicted that the effects of this law would be dire, and already this year we have seen a surge in industrial action in the workplace. This law was all about protecting and growing the power of unions. National will not let unions regain the stranglehold they once held over the economy.

The next National Government will repeal this law. We will bring in a new Act incorporating the best of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 and the Employment Relations Act 2000. Its changes will include: • Giving employers and employees the same rights in employment agreements.

• Removing union monopoly bargaining rights over collective agreements.

• Establishing a 90-day probation period for new workers to reduce barriers to employment.

In this package of policies you see the fundamental difference between the two major parties contesting this election. National is concerned with the needs of the people who generate New Zealand’s wealth – hard-working, tax-paying New Zealanders and their families.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 29

DIARY OF A CABBIE

ADRIAN NEYLAN

That’s my boy

O

n a recent Friday night I carried a fifty-some-thing fella from the North Shore down to Sutherland. After a day on the grog at a convention junket he was wasted. Yet he was not not so wasted that he couldn’t relate a chilling tale involving his son. It was a story I readily identified with, as his ‘boy’, as he kept referring to him, was around the same age as mine.

My passenger recounted how several years ago his then 18-year-old son was in the City on a night out with some mates. Late in the evening, one of his friends became involved in a scuffle outside a Hungry Jack’s.

On moving to help his The assailant was apprehended, mate, my passenger’s son was stabbed some ten charged, convicted, jailed for a times around the body. few years, then released – only In an instant he was profusely, his to knife someone else and bleeding life literally draining down return to jail the gutter. News of what happened came at 4:30 am, when the local police knocked on the door after fruitless attempts by the hospital to contact him and his wife.

Despite losing litres of blood, the boy recovered. What a guy. The assailant was apprehended, charged, convicted, jailed for a few years, then released – only to knife someone else and return to jail. What a waste.

In relating this tale, my passenger had obliquely voiced his concern over his son’s ongoing fight for justice. The boy was still in court, seven years later, pursuing a matter of principle relating to the attack. After advising his son to finally put the whole terrible incident behind him and simply try and get on with his life, the kid emphatically responded, ‘Dad, the physical scars may have healed, but in my head it feels so raw I’ll never get over it’.

30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

My passenger looked across at me and shaking his head said quietly, ‘It’s killing me to imagine what he feels’.

My passenger had been a knockabout bloke most of his life, growing up in the tough inner-west of Sydney.

By his own admission he’d made many mistakes over the years. And despite his age he insisted how, much to his embarrassment, he often felt the same hopes and vitality as that of his son. So much so he couldn’t wait for the arrival of the first grandchild. His was a sentiment we both shared, and had a good laugh at our encroaching dotage. It was a warm exchange on which we parted.

One week later, I came across an item in the Daily Telegraph entitled, ‘Leave people to their peril’: Citizens are under no obligation to rescue strangers in peril, a court had ruled in dismissing an appeal by a man stabbed after he sought sanctuary in a fast-food restaurant.

Eron Broughton was out in Sydney’s CBD early in 1998 when he and three friends were threatened by a knife-wielding gang...they sought refuge in a Hungry Jack’s restaurant, asking a security guard to call police.

But the guard pushed them back into the street where Mr Broughton was stabbed 10 times. He sought damages in the District Court in 2003, claiming the guard’s negligent or reckless actions led to his injuries...The then 24-year-old lost his claim after Judge James Black found the chain did not owe Mr Broughton a duty of care.

Mr Broughton appealed the verdict but it was dismissed yesterday by the Court of Appeal.

This boy’s personal struggle brought to mind something I heard recently. A terminally ill patient had commented to his mentor, ‘Sometimes it’s best to simply give up’. I interpreted this to mean that in life, sometimes you must pick your battles.

This advice seemed especially pertinent to my distraught passenger and his son’s long road to recovery.

For them, those grandkids can’t come soon enough.

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

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 31

32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

A matter

of trust

JT comes within a whisker of the clink Just before Christmas, a former Labour party campaign manager and a publican will go to depositions in a bribery and corruption scandal that is likely to seriously damage the political future of Labour MP John Tamihere.

IAN WISHART has new information

T HERALD / PRESSPIX

he email had come in on our public webmail account anonymously, with outrage: “It is a great story – politics, backroom deals, colourful people, disgusted members of the force and SFO, bucks, theft, you name it. A deal has been done…to protect Tamihere…doesn’t want any more agro before the election…Tolich is taking the rap…A lot of us are pissed off because this is a police matter where there is no politics but is being kept by the SFO where Helen can keep an eye on it…I have stuck my neck out sending this but my colleagues have pushed me to it. Don’t try and trace it as it is from an internet café and don’t bother to reply. This address won’t be used again.”

In the Investigate newsroom, the email glowered from the screen amid hot debate about the merits of dipping into the Tamihere saga again. We’d known since last year that the $195,000 golden handshake issue was a red herring – Tamihere had acted within the law. But Investigate had never taken a close-up look at the other allegations swirling around the outspoken Labour MP. Tamihere himself had flicked the switch on what may yet become his nemesis when in July last year he sent a stinging letter to the Waipareira Trust calling for an independent audit: “It seems to me on the information to hand that the situation involves incompetence, negligence or corruption, and an independent audit and review from people with some capacity and integrity is long overdue.”

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 33

The following day, a group of people including Tamihere and two names you’re about to read more of – Diane Tuari and Mike Tolich – tried to stage a coup on Waipareira’s premises by claiming to have ousted the existing chair and CEO. It was a short-lived coup, but it did provoke an audit which backfired on the Labour MP by potting his 2IC. So here, for the first time in New Zealand, is the most comprehensive story yet published on the Tamihere affair: a massive investigation into the alleged diversion of nearly $200,000 in pokie machine profits, with nearly $100,000 in alleged bribes; and the details of John Tamihere’s involvement in a scandal and a court case that could sink his political career when it comes to trial next year. Is it “incompetence, negligence or corruption”? Ultimately a court will judge, but here’s a taste of what’s likely to emerge.

O

ur story begins back in mid-1999, when John Tamihere was about to resign from his position as CEO of the Waipareira Trust in order to campaign for election as the Labour MP for the Hauraki (now Tamaki Makaurau) electorate. Assisting Tamihere to get his affairs in order was one Mike Tolich, son of a former policeman, Tamihere’s Labour election campaign manager and, at the time, Chief Financial Officer at the Waipareira Trust. To add to the cosy nature of their business relationship, Tolich was living with Tamihere’s cousin, Diane Tuari.

In fact, while working as a public servant at WINZ, Tuari had also been working at the Trust, racking up nearly 4,000 kilometres worth of vehicle usage during one period. With Tamihere’s impending departure, and the likelihood of a new broom imposing tougher financial controls, both Tamihere and Tolich talked of a need to tie up some loose ends before he left, loose ends like payments to certain people.

As Tuari tells the story, John Tamihere wanted to pay her a special sum of money “to reflect my ten years’ service” to the Trust, before he left. That sum was $20,000. According to Mike Tolich, Tuari kept “pestering” him for the money “because she and John had a deal”.

According to John Tamihere, he wasn’t “disinclined” to pay Tuari some money but couldn’t recall the $20,000 figure and claims to have been guided by Tolich.

Regardless of whose memory is correct, Tuari was given a cheque for $20,000 by Tolich, not in her own name but made out to cash.

Nowhere in Waipareira Trust’s accounts is there any disclosure of that $20,000 payment in Tuari’s name. The cheque requisition order was signed by John Tamihere and Mike Tolich.

Tolich is understood to have later told investigators “I was instructed

by John to take care of it…we had a cash flow problem, and some things had to be taken care of.”

In October last year TV3 News broke the story of the Paragon Report, so-named because it was written by a team of private investigators at Paragon Risk concerned at the discovery of $100,000 worth of false invoices, most of them written in the last five days of June 1999. Strangely, in business terms, payment for those invoices was made almost immediately by Waipareira Trust – within one week of them being issued. Normal business practice is 20th of the month following invoice. Especially when, as Tolich has said, the Waipareira Trust was short of cash.

What raised Paragon’s suspicions meanwhile was the discovery that none of the organisations named on the invoices appeared to exist.

“We believe that the eight paid invoices are not genuine,” wrote Paragon. “The inability to readily identify these organisations, the false and/or vague nature of their addresses, and the cash cheque methodology of their payment is cause for concern.”

Additional signs of fraud, said Paragon, were the discovery that all eight invoices:

34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

• “Were all printed on plain A4 paper devoid of any letterhead • “They all follow an identical page layout • “They were all printed using the same font style • “They were all formatted using the same pattern of bold and lowercase type style • “All 1999 invoices showed the Waipareira address as ‘P.O Box’.

Both 1998 invoices showed it as ‘P.O. Box’ • “Seven of the eight showed the date format as ‘June 30 1999’ or ‘June 27 1999’ or ‘December 23 1998’ • “The six 1999 invoices bore the same spelling mistake for the word liaison, mis-spelling it as ‘liason’ • “Three of the 1999 invoices bore the same spelling mistake for accommodation, mis-spelling it as ‘accomodation’ • “Two 1999 invoices bore the same spelling mistake for mechanisms, mis-spelling it as ‘mechanisisms’ • “All invoices bore no GST numbers” “Despite purporting to be from five different organisations variously located between Northland, Auckland and East Cape, they all appear to have been generated on the same computer, by the same person [and] the cheques were all cashed at either the BNZ in Henderson or New Lynn within a few days of their being issued.”

One of those cheques, it is now known, was cashed by Diane Tuari, Mike Tolich’s partner and Tamihere’s cousin.

The clincher, however, was Paragon’s subsequent discovery of two further invoices, “namely two invoices from Mike Tolich, variously dated ‘July 26 2000’ and ‘April 17 1998’ that depicted an identical invoice layout, format and spelling mistakes to the questioned creditor invoices.”

In other words, here was the Chief Financial Officer at Waipareira, John Tamihere’s right-hand man and Labour Party campaign manager Mike Tolich, caught red-handed writing bogus invoices for huge sums of money at a time when Waipareira was strapped for cash, presenting those invoices to Tamihere for payment authorization and getting cash cheques.

For his part, Tamihere can’t recall seeing those invoices and it was he who asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate, back in November last year.

Paragon Risk’s Phil Roigard warned at the conclusion of his report: “Issues of possible breach of fiduciary duty and/or potential criminal offences may be involved, and with that in mind you may consider that this matter should be more appropriately determined by a statutory authority such as the NZ Police or the Serious Fraud Office.”

For his part, Mike Tolich claims he’d sought approval from Trust chairwoman June Mariu, and for her part Mariu acknowledges giving approval to pay some money to Diane Tuari and two others, Daphne Ropiha and the man Tamihere called “Uncle Paki” – master carver Paki Harrison. What Tolich didn’t tell Mariu however was exactly how much he and Tamihere had decided to pay the three people: $20,000 each for the two women, and $25,000 for “Uncle Paki”. In cash.

“I was not aware of the exact amounts paid [in 1999] to Mr Harrison, Miss Tuari and Ms Ropiha, until November 2004,” Mariu is understood to have told the SFO. Nor was Mariu aware that payment had been generated by way of fake invoices.

Adding to the confusion, Ropiha denies receiving the $20,000.

Investigators asked Tolich why he had made out cash cheques, and why he used bogus invoices to hide the massive cash payments to Tuari and the others.

“Mainly for taxes,” Tolich allegedly replied, explaining that the process was used to “protect” the recipients from possible scrutiny by the IRD. For his part, John Tamihere denied that assisting anyone to avoid or evade taxes was the motivating factor for the cash cheques and bogus invoices.

But it is here that the story takes a fascinating new turn. It wasn’t just

“TAMIHEREWAS REALLY NERVOUS,”THE PUBLICANTOLD INVESTIGATE,‘ACTING LIKE HE WAS DEAD SCARED HE’D BEEN FOLLOWED. HE COULDN’T SIT STILL, COULDN’T STAND STILL. HE WAS SO EDGY THAT WHEN HE LEFT HE TOOK MY CAR KEYS BY MISTAKE, AND HAD TO COME BACK FOR HIS’” about fake invoices. Investigators would soon uncover mysterious money coming into Waipareira, as well as the transactions going out.

In the wake of the Paragon report’s publication, the Serious Fraud Office interviewed John Tamihere twice: once in November last year, once in January this year. In his statements to the SFO, Tamihere said he hadn’t been aware of the fake invoices until he’d seen them splashed across the TV news. He immediately spoke with Mike Tolich to find out what had happened because – according to Tamihere – he was facing some tough questions from his own boss, Helen Clark.

Tamihere told the SFO Tolich explained he’d created the false invoices to cover a series of payments and was extremely apologetic about it.

“I know where the cash went,” Tolich allegedly replied, which is just as well because no one else, including the SFO, did.

“Just follow the money.” It’s the old adage of investigative work worldwide, whether it’s the Winebox, the Iran-Contra affair, UN Foodfor-Oil or the good old Waipareira Trust. Soon after the Serious Fraud Office began digging, they hit paydirt: a series of payments into the Waipareira Trust that seemed to coincide with some of those fake invoices and cash cheques sucking money out.

On June 9, 1999, a thumping great “donation” of $30,000 landed in one of the Waipareira Trust’s bank accounts. It had come as a community grant from an Auckland tavern’s gaming machine trust. By law, a large chunk of the profits from suburban pokie machines is required

to be disbursed to community groups who apply for grants. The Department of Internal Affairs routinely audits the numerous gaming trusts to ensure profits go where they’re supposed to. All Waipareira had to do, as a community organization, was ask. And boy, did they receive.

On July 7, 1999, a further $40,000 was donated to the Trust by the same pub gaming trust, bringing the total donation to $70,000 – right at the time Waipareira needed to find nearly $100,000 to make mystery cash payments on a set of fake invoices, authorized for payment by CEO John Tamihere.

But there’s a twist. Of the $70,000 that came in, $35,000 was allegedly paid back to the donor – under the table. According to June Mariu, the idea of applying to the gaming trust for funding had been raised by Tolich during a discussion about Waipareira’s cash flow crisis.

“I can get $40,000, but we have to give $20,000 back,” Tolich allegedly explained.

Mariu, Waipareira’s chairwoman, only recalls the one conversation about a kickback for the $40,000, and is understood to have told the SFO she doesn’t even know whether a kickback was ultimately paid.

According to Tolich, it was. Two of the fake invoices – one for $12,500 and another for $7,500 – were drafted to hide what he called the $20,000 kickback to the publican, which may be why trustees like Mariu or Trust secretary Reg Ratahi denied knowledge of any kickbacks actually being paid.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 35

But, controversially, Mike Tolich initially dropped John Tamihere right in it with the SFO. Investigate understands the SFO asked Tolich whether Tamihere was “aware of the payment, the kickback?”

“Yes, I understand he was.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Yeah, I did. Yeah. He was aware of the process.”

And, from his long connections to rugby league, Tamihere is indeed well aware of the process of paying kickbacks in return for community grant funding. He told the SFO that as the Chairman of Maori Rugby League, “Organisers from a number of areas would come up to me and say ‘we put in an application for this, we got $7,500, and we’re giving $5,000 back’…so this is, was, a widely happening behaviour”.

If true, it suggests the country’s gaming laws are being massively abused to the point where it has become an open secret, and that a Minister of the Crown was aware of this.

However, Tamihere specifically denies being aware at the time of any kickbacks being paid in the case at hand.

A

ccording to the SFO, another of those fake invoices was created to cover the $20,000 cash cheque John Tamihere authorised to pay his cousin Diane Tuari.

But there’s more. The documents disclose that another of the fake invoices was used to hide a $20,000 cash cheque payment to a private trust run by John Tamihere and Mike Tolich – the Te Tahi Trust.

When Tamihere emerged from questioning at the hands of the SFO last November, one of the first things he did was contact Tolich: “During this conversation,” Tamihere later told investigators, “Mr Tolich also suggested the $20,000 cash deposit into Te Tahi Trust had come from Waipareira Trust. Mr Tolich told me he had a range of authorities and approvals from the executive committee of the Waipareira Trust to put the money into the Te Tahi Trust account.”

But if that authorization existed, why was the deposit made by way of a cash cheque, drawn against a false invoice to a fake organisation using a bogus address?

“I’ll tell you this for free,” growled one former senior Waipareira official to Investigate, “I never came across any reference to Te Tahi Trust in any of the Waipareira accounts. There was no record of it.”

Interestingly, Tamihere’s statements to the SFO are contradictory.

On another occasion he was asked “Did you ask Mr Tolich where the $20,000 came from?”

“I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“He wasn’t prepared to tell me…he said to me, ‘oh, no, I’m presently before the Serious Fraud Office and [my lawyer] has told me to just not say anything at this time and I’m not going to say anything to you, either’.”

Nor was June Mariu, the Trust chairwoman and a Tamihere ally, aware of any donations made by the Waipareira Trust to John Tamihere’s election campaign, although she says she would have supported it if she’d been asked.

But there’s an even deeper legal issue here: Waipareira is officially a ‘charitable’ trust, which means it is forbidden by law to donate for political purposes. Even if chairwoman June Mariu had agreed, she would have broken the law in approving a donation to Tamihere’s election fundraising.

Is that the real reason the invoice was faked – because either Waipareira, or Mike Tolich, or John Tamihere, or all three, knew that such a donation would be illegal? We don’t know.

Tolich maintains he never told Tamihere the donation had come from Waipareira, not wanting to disturb him with the detail. “He’s the visionary, I’m the bloody fixer!”

36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

Officially, Te Tahi Trust was set up to handle donations to John Tamihere’s Labour Party election fundraising. Unofficially, say SFO investigators, “Te Tahi was effectively Tamihere and Tolich’s private piggy bank”.

How piggy?

“Fresh questions have emerged over statements in Parliament by Labour MP John Tamihere after new documents show he received the benefit of thousands of dollars from an account under scrutiny from the Serious Fraud Office,” reported the Herald on Sunday’s David Fisher in June this year.

“Mr Tamihere told Parliament on November 3 that he received no personal benefit from Waipareira Trust transactions being investigated by the SFO. But documents obtained by the Herald on Sunday show one of the payments under investigation by the SFO went into his election fund – Te Tahi Trust – and he or his family got benefits of at least $9,500 from the account.”

Investigate understands Te Tahi’s goal was to raise $50,000 in funds to pay for Tamihere’s election campaign. Tamihere is on record as telling the SFO he was only aware of $25,000 being in the account, which makes – at first blush - one of his subsequent actions difficult to explain: why, if you’re a Labour election candidate desperate to fundraise $50,000, and you have only $25,000 in the bank, would you sign a cheque for $20,000 to donate to a sports club associated with the tavern that generously gave $70,000 to the Waipareira Trust?

What politician simply gives away nearly all the money he desperately needs to pay for his first ever election campaign, only weeks out from the election, no questions asked? Because that’s what Tamihere allegedly told the SFO – he simply signed a cheque and didn’t ask any questions of his fellow trustee, Mike Tolich.

In fact, this was Tamihere’s answer throughout the SFO investigation, that he was a big picture guy who relied on Tolich to attend to the detail. He didn’t know what the cheques were for, may not even have known how much he was paying out. As a politician once tipped as a competent potential Prime Minister, it is perhaps this admission that will be the most politically damaging to Tamihere when full details eventually emerge at trial.

Tamihere’s apparent blind faith was more fully appreciated by SFO investigators, however, when they discovered that just a few days after Te Tahi’s generous $20,000 donation to an amateur sports club was made, a whopping $40,000 suddenly landed in the Te Tahi Trust bank account from the aforementioned pub gaming trust associated with that sports club.

If there’s a political law of reaping what you sow, Tamihere’s harvest had suddenly doubled. Nor did his good fortune end there. Just days after Tamihere had been elected as the Labour MP for the Hauraki seat, the same pub gaming trust dumped a further $20,000 in the Te Tahi Trust account.

Was the $20,000 cheque signed by Tamihere and Tolich an inducement to the pub charity to encourage them to throw some more money Te Tahi’s way? John Tamihere denies knowing of any inducements.

Instead, the common denominator in all of this is his right-hand man, Mike Tolich. Tolich, you see, had access to all the different parties in these transactions. Not only had he controlled the finances at Waipareira, he was also a trustee and cheque signatory on the Te Tahi Trust. More significantly, Tolich was also a trustee on the very pub gaming trust that had generously poured money into both Waipareira and Te Tahi.

The pub gaming trust was arguably within its legal rights to donate money to Waipareira and Te Tahi. Both the latter organizations had made the required applications for a community grant. Te Tahi’s applications, incidentally, were signed by none other than Diane Tuari. However, what the SFO is focusing on is money flowing back the other way,

HERALD / PRESSPIX like that $20,000 cheque John Tamihere signed out of his precious election campaign fund to donate to the pub’s sporting club.

The SFO found evidence that for some of the donations made by the pub’s gaming trust, there seemed to be a “kickback” of around half the money paid back to interests associated with the tavern.

Why would this be? Why would somebody donate $70,000 and then ask for $35,000 back? Why not simply donate only $35,000 and save yourself the hassle? In general terms, a possible scenario is this one: the pub gaming trust is governed by laws requiring it to make community grants. That money is therefore not available to individuals associated with the pub, because the donations are audited. However, what if the gaming trust came to an unwritten arrangement with a community organization where, instead of offering maybe a $10,000 grant, they would offer a $70,000 grant provided half was “donated” back to private interests associated with the gaming trust’s trustees?

The net result is a community organization receiving a $35,000 grant instead of only $10,000, and a bunch of trustees suddenly able to access $35,000 in pokie machine profits that by law they had not been able to touch.

This, in essence, is what the SFO alleges happened.

Mike Tolich claimed to the SFO that the publican running the gaming trust had demanded 50% kickbacks as a prerequisite for granting donations. Even though the SFO could only track three transactions that could remotely be described as kickbacks, they’ve laid charges against the entire $184,000 donated (split between Waipareira and Te Tahi) and assumed that $92,000 has been paid back to the publican, most of it in cash. The publican has been charged, even though a “driftnet fishing expedition” through their bank accounts and financial situation turned up only the $35,000 payments from Waipareira and the $20,000 one

from Te Tahi – all of which were banked into a community club which organized charity events and things like sending children on the Spirit of Adventure.

Of the first $20,000, the publican claims to have simply given two tavern staff $10,000 each as a reward for hard work on several community events. “None of that money went near us personally,” says the publican. “We didn’t take a cent.”

Election 99 was the beginning, not the end, of the cosy relationship between the pub gaming trust and Te Tahi Trust. The documents show grants of $45,000 between May and August of 2001, and a further $9,000 in July 2002, just before the general election that year.

But it is a $20,000 donation to Te Tahi in May 2001 that attracted some of the most attention from the SFO. The money arrived on May 7. On May 11, ten thousand dollars was withdrawn in cash from Te Tahi’s National bank account. According to the SFO, this was a cash “kickback” destined for the publican. The money was taken out in the form of 500 twenty dollar notes. The withdrawal slip, signed by Tamihere and Tolich, shows two forms of ID were presented, one was Mike Tolich’s credit card, the other was John Tamihere’s credit card.

Both Tolich and Tamihere admitted that it looks as though the Labour MP was present while the alleged “kickback” was being withdrawn in cash from the bank, although Tamihere could not recall it. Tolich is understood to have told the SFO he probably did not tell the MP why they were really withdrawing $10,000 in $20 notes, and Tamihere apparently never asked.

That’s a total of $114,000 that a pub gaming trust gave to Labour candidate John Tamihere and Labour campaign manager Mike Tolich’s Te Tahi Trust. For the record, none of the money allegedly withdrawn back out of Te Tahi in cash – some $37,000 – has been traced to September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 37

Investigate’s knowledge. The trail goes cold with the person or persons making the cash withdrawals. Tolich claims the money went to the publican, not to himself or Tamihere. The publican denies receiving any cash payments and alleges the SFO should be taking a much harder look at Tolich, particularly as Tolich and Tuari allegedly used some of the kickback cash to go on an Australian holiday.

On March 15 this year the SFO charged Mike Tolich and the unnamed publican with several counts of fraud and using a document for pecuniary advantage, relating to the misappropriation of gaming monies.

Investigate has discovered evidence, however, calling into question the thoroughness of the SFO inquiry. For a start, the SFO knew that one of the first things John Tamihere had done after the Paragon fake invoice story broke was make a beeline straight to a secret rendezvous with the publican.

For an MP who claimed no knowledge of the intrigue that had gone on between Waipareira, the gaming trust and Te Tahi, it seems strange that he would travel to the home of the publican to discuss it.

“Tamihere was really nervous,” the publican told Investigate, “acting like he was dead scared he’d been followed. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stand still. He was so edgy that when he left he took my car keys by mistake, and had to come back for his.”

A

lso at the same meeting, arriving in a separate car, Mike Tolich. When Tolich was asked by the SFO why he and Tamihere had been to see the publican, Tolich is under stood to have said he and the MP went “to warn” the publican that the game was up. He said they discussed the fake invoices, the kickback and the fact that one of the fake addresses was coincidentally close to a property the publican owned. Tolich added that the purpose of the meeting was also to ask the publican to “contribute” even more money to fund Tolich’s legal bills. He was given $2,500.

Despite having been told this by both Tolich and the publican, the Serious Fraud Office chose not to put any questions about this meeting to Labour MP John Tamihere. Nor does it appear that the SFO has interviewed John Tamihere’s successor as Waipareira’s CEO, Ian Mackintosh – a man named in TV3’s Paragon coverage as a potential witness to the aftermath of Tamihere’s reign at Waipareira.

It wouldn’t be the first time the SFO has failed to do proper investigations. The Winebox Inquiry stands silent witness to that, and ironically even Mike Tolich managed to insult the SFO on a similar point: “This is the second time the SFO’s had a crack at Waipareira,” Tolich is understood to have said, referring to an investigation in mid-2000, “and the first time, I didn’t get asked in for one question. And I find that strange, to be honest.”

Especially considering he was Waipareira’s Chief Financial Officer.

There is also conflicting evidence about how much Tamihere knew.

In his initial discussions with the SFO, Mike Tolich confirmed that Tamihere knew about the kickbacks, and the “process”. But in his final interview, it is understood he told them Tamihere did not know. The SFO accused Tolich of covering for the Labour MP, and that the evidence clearly suggested Tamihere was involved, and that he knew.

The stridency of the interviews by SFO investigators Clive Hudson and Willie Harris was not matched by SFO Director David Bradshaw however.

“Mr Tamihere will not be charged,” Bradshaw told the media on March 15. “The evidence in relation to his involvement in the matters that I investigated does not support the laying of charges.”

Additionally, the depositions hearings for these charges will not take place until December, well past the election date.

The publican is fuming.

“Tamihere and Tuari are in this donkey-deep, in my view, but they haven’t been charged. We never demanded kickbacks, and we only 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

received a handful of donations. Tolich is the one who was on all the trusts, and now he’s boasting that he’s cut a deal with the SFO.” Whether he has cut a deal or not remains to be seen. There is no suggestion from the SFO that he has.

In documents the SFO filed with the police to action the arrests of Tolich and the publican, the SFO specifically states that in his January 26 interview Tolich had “said that neither Mr Tamihere, Ms Tuari or Ms Te Hira were aware of this ‘kickback’ payment.”

Yet in their synopsis of his interviews in November, there is no disclosure from the SFO to the police that Tolich had claimed at that point that Tamihere was aware of the kickbacks.

The SFO told police that they had not been able to discover any records for the Te Tahi Trust, even though more than a hundred thousand dollars had been ploughed into it. There is no record of the trust doing any community work, yet co-trustee John Tamihere was not questioned further by the SFO to our knowledge.

Tamihere may have problems under the Trustee Act, which requires trustees to act prudently with funds under their control. Tamihere’s assertion that he “trusted” Tolich and happily signed blank cheques or facilitated the withdrawal of large sums of cash – without asking questions – could be challenged under the prudence test, let alone the I’ma-competent-future-prime-minister test.

The former Cabinet Minister even denied ever glancing at the previous butts of blank cheques he’d signed. Weren’t you even curious, the SFO wondered?

“No, I didn’t, because I had a relationship with Mr Tolich over some long period, and I had never, I just never had any need or desire to check up.”

Tamihere told the Douglas White Inquiry ordered by the Prime Minister that the purpose of Te Tahi Trust was to “facilitate and support cultural, social, political and economic development for Maori”, yet in his statement to the Serious Fraud Office he was forced to admit “I do not know if the Te Tahi Trust ran training programmes to assist Maori.”

John Tamihere was a trustee of the Te Tahi Trust. If he didn’t know, who would?

There is also the issue of Tamihere’s financial or legal liability in regard to Te Tahi. If the Trust he set up was involved in criminal offending, a legitimate question to be asked is whether John Tamihere was negligent in his duties as a trustee. If so, does he bear any civil culpability for possible unpaid taxes by the Te Tahi Trust? Tamihere has admitted to the SFO that he assented to the trust being used “as a business tool” by Tolich. The Labour MP also admits knowing that his trust “was going to seek some funding from gaming machine grants”.

Did you file tax returns for the trust, at all, asked the SFO? “No,” replied John Tamihere. So here was one of Labour’s rising stars, setting up a personal trust that collected more than a hundred thousand dollars in donations, using questionable accounting and governance practices, and he knew his organization was not filing tax returns.

And John Tamihere, based on the evidence presented to the White Inquiry and his interviews with the Serious Fraud Office, appears not to have declared in his personal tax return up to $10,000 worth of payments he took from the Te Tahi Trust for “Christmas” and other prima facie personal spending.

Douglas White QC said at para 6.33 of his report that “Tamihere did not file a tax return for the year ended 31 March 2000. He relied on the exemption in s33A of the Tax Administration Act which in general terms relieved salary and wage earners from responsibility for filing a return.”

Yet s33A makes it very clear that a return must be filed if the person received the benefit of any other income. To be fair to Tamihere, however, the SFO was not concentrating on tax liabilities when it spoke to him, so a final determination on whether those Te Tahi payments to Tamihere should have been declared would depend on whether the

IRD launches an investigation, and whether Tamihere can show a legitimate, non-income related purpose for the payments.

Nonetheless, the White Inquiry’s clearance of Tamihere on tax issues has arguably been weakened by this latest revelation.

Nor does another White finding look quite so strong. At para 4.49 of his report, White says on the basis of the evidence supplied to him

by Tamihere and Waipareira there was “no evidence of any other payments by the Trust to Mr Tamihere in the period after his resignation as chief executive officer.”

Yet the disclosure that Tamihere’s trust benefited from $20,000 of Waipareira funds, when it was prohibited by law to donate them to his trust and the donation of which was hidden by a false invoice, and which Tamihere may have dipped into for personal use – based on his admissions to the SFO – now cast doubt on that clearance by White and another one at para 5.2 where he finds: “No Trust subsidiary, associate entity or other company in which the Trust had a shareholding made any payment to Mr Tamihere after his resignation as chief executive officer of the Trust in June 1999.”

Likewise, the White report finds only $11,000 was donated to Tamihere’s election campaign for the purposes of his electoral return.

However subsequent investigations have shown not just $20,000 coming in from the Waipareira Trust using a false invoice created by Tamihere’s co-trustee and campaign manager, but also massive donations from the pub gaming trust.

Tamihere appears to have clearly known about these donations because he told the SFO that money from the gaming trust was to be spent on “my election of support, and the support of furthering the interests of why I was going into politics.”

There are also questions remaining over the status of John Tamihere’s Ministerial Assets return, although they may be merely technical. The White Inquiry found that a property purchased in August 2001 was owned by Tiriti Corp Consultancies Ltd and CR Trustees Ltd [a professional trustee firm] and a 1/3 share was held by Tamihere’s partner, Awerangi Durie.

According to White, although Tamihere was a director of Tiriti, the company was merely acting as a trustee for the Tamihere Childrens

Trust, and John Tamihere had no beneficial interest in the home himself. The technical question however is this: according to Companies Office records, Tiriti Corp Consultancies Ltd was struck off the companies register from August 2001 until it was reinstated in March this year. That raises legal issues about both the status of the house and of the Tamihere Childrens Trust during that period.

The White report makes no reference to Tiriti being a defunct company when it heard evidence on the matter in November 2004. At that time, John Tamihere as a Tiriti director should have known that his company had been struck off.

Documents available on the Companies Office website indicate that John Tamihere filed a string of annual returns for three missing years on the one day, March 24, 2005, nine days after being cleared by the Serious Fraud Office.

As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Mike Tolich visited Tamihere at his new home in Te Atatu, despite a warning from the SFO that talking to Tolich might not be in Tamihere’s best interests.

Tolich, said Tamihere to the SFO in one of his interviews, was “built like a brick s*** house” and tall, at 6’4”. He was “useful” to have around not only for his financial acumen but his imposing physique.

Was Tolich the loyal Brutus to Tamihere’s Caesar? Prepared to go the extra mile to ensure Tamihere always had the funding he needed?

That’s a matter for next year’s court trial to determine. The question on everyone’s lips, however, is how Tolich will perform under cross-examination on the witness stand: John Tamihere’s loyal lieutenant is currently taking the complete responsibility for what is prima facie a major political fundraising corruption scandal, if proven. Even so, Tolich has forced Tamihere to wear the “I’m With Stupid” T-shirt for now, and next year’s trial will probably sink the political career of one of urban Maoridom’s brightest hopes by painting the MP as incompetent and naïve in the way he undertook his duties as a trustee. Will Tamihere, in the end, be saying, “Et tu, Brutus?”

i September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 39

PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE WITH JUST WEEKS BEFORE NEW ZEALANDERS CAST THEIR VOTES, INVESTIGATE HAS, AS PROMISED, COMPILED THE DETAILS OF HOW PARTIES AND POLITICIANS VOTED ON SOME OF THE BIG CONSCIENCE ISSUES OF THE PAST THREE YEARS: CIVIL UNIONS, PROSTITUTION, KEEPING THE DRINKING AGE AT 18 AND BANNING SMACKING. SEE HOW YOUR MP FARES ON OUR LIST… ACT PARTY DEBORAH CODDINGTON GERRY ECKHOFF HEATHER ROY KEN SHIRLEY KENNETH WANG MURIEL NEWMAN RICHARD PREBBLE RODNEY HIDE STEPHEN FRANKS

CIVIL UNIONS YES NO YES YES NO NO YES YES NO

PROSTITUTION YES NO YES YES N/A NO NO YES NO

18 DRINKING AGE YES NO YES YES YES YES YES YES NO

BAN SMACKING NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

GREEN PARTY SUE BRADFORD ROD DONALD IAN EWEN-STREET JEANETTE FITZSIMONS SUE KEDGLEY KEITH LOCKE NANDOR TANCZOS METIRIA TUREI MIKE WARD

CIVIL UNIONS YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

PROSTITUTION YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

18 DRINKING AGE YES YES NO YES YES YES YES YES NO

BAN SMACKING YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

PROGRESSIVE JIM ANDERTON MATT ROBSON

CIVIL UNIONS YES YES

PROSTITUTION NO NO

18 DRINKING AGE NO NO

BAN SMACKING YES YES

NZ FIRST WINSTON PETERS BRIAN DONNELLY PETER BROWN BRENT CATCHPOLE BILL GUDGEON DAIL JONES RON MARK CRAIG MCNAIR PITA PARAONE EDWIN PERRY JIM PETERS BARBARA STEWART DOUG WOOLERTON

CIVIL UNIONS NO YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

PROSTITUTION NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

18 DRINKING AGE NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

BAN SMACKING NO YES YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

UNITED FUTURE PAUL ADAMS MARC ALEXANDER LARRY BALDOCK GORDON COPELAND PETER DUNNE BERNIE OGILVY MURRAY SMITH JUDY TURNER

CIVIL UNIONS NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

PROSTITUTION NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

18 DRINKING AGE NO NO NO NO YES NO NO NO

BAN SMACKING NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

NATIONAL KATHERINE RICH CLEM SIMICH PANSY WONG SHANE ARDERN DON BRASH GERRY BROWNLEE DAVID CARTER JUDITH COLLINS BRIAN CONNELL BILL ENGLISH SANDRA GOUDIE PHIL HEATLEY PAUL HUTCHISON JOHN KEY WAYNE MAPP MURRAY MCCULLY SIMON POWER TONY RYALL LYNDA SCOTT LOCKWOOD SMITH NICK SMITH ROGER SOWRY GEORGINA TE HEU HEU LINDSAY TISCH MAURICE WILLIAMSON RICHARD WORTH

CIVIL UNIONS YES YES YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

PROSTITUTION YES YES NO NO YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO YES NO YES NO NO YES NO

18 DRINKING AGE NO YES NO NO YES NO YES NO YES NO NO NO YES NO NO NO NO NO NO YES NO YES NO NO NO NO

BAN SMACKING NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 41

LABOUR RICK BARKER TIM BARNETT DAVID BENSON-POPE GEORGINA BEYER MARK BURTON CHRIS CARTER STEVE CHADWICK ASHRAF CHOUDHARY HELEN CLARK MICHAEL CULLEN DAVID CUNLIFFE LIANNE DALZIEL HELEN DUNCAN RUTH DYSON RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER MARTIN GALLAGHER PHIL GOFF MARK GOSCHE ANN HARTLEY GEORGE HAWKINS DAVE HEREORA MARIAN HOBBS PETE HODGSON PAREKURA HOROMIA DARREN HUGHES JONATHAN HUNT ANNETTE KING WINNIE LABAN JANET MACKEY MOANA MACKEY STEVE MAHAREY NANAIA MAHUTA TREVOR MALLARD MAHARA OKEROA DAVID PARKER MARK PECK JILL PETTIS LYNNE PILLAY MITA RIRINUI DOVER SAMUELS JIM SUTTON PAUL SWAIN JUDTIH TIZARD MARGARET WILSON DIANNE YATES CLAYTON COSGROVE HARRY DUYNHOVEN TAITO PHILLIP-FIELD DAMIEN O’CONNOR ROSS ROBERTSON JOHN TAMIHERE

CIVIL UNIONS YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES NO NO NO NO NO NO

PROSTITUTION YES YES YES YES YES YES YES ABSTAIN YES YES YES YES YES YES YES NO YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES NO YES YES NO YES YES YES YES YES YES YES NO YES YES YES YES NO NO NO NO NO NO YES

18 DRINKING AGE NO YES NO NO NO NO YES NO NO YES NO YES YES YES ABSTAIN NO NO NO NO YES YES YES YES YES NO YES NO NO YES NO NO NO YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO YES NO YES YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

BAN SMACKING YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

MAORI PARTY TARIANA TURIA

CIVIL UNIONS NO

PROSTITUTION NO

18 DRINKING AGE NO

BAN SMACKING YES

42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 43

44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

BODY BLOW Fair trial or kangaroo court?

THEY WERE FRONT PAGE NEWS, BRANDED AS DISHONEST LIARS AND SNAKE OIL MERCHANTS BY AN AUCKLAND JUDGE BUT, AS IAN WISHART INVESTIGATES, WERE THE TEAM BEHIND BODY ENHANCER REALLY PROVEN GUILTY?

S

ylvia Gallot leans forward across the table, eyes flashing like obsidian in a lightning storm – an indication, perhaps, of both the fury and the determination inside. “I did not believe that any court would come back and reach the decision they reached. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Because they had to prove that our product didn’t work, and they certainly didn’t prove their side of the story.”

It is, as every first year law student knows, an absolute maxim of justice that prosecutors in a trial must prove the defendants are guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”. Defendants do not have to prove themselves innocent.

So when the New Zealand Herald splashed across its front page one Saturday morning in June: “Fat Loss Couple Branded Liars For Bogus Product”, the Auckland couple behind the Body Enhancer phenomenon knew their world was collapsing around them, and as far as they could see “justice” had nothing to do with it.

It was in August 1998, four years after retiring as an associate deputy principal at a large girls’ high school, that Sylvia Gallot (rhymes with Jello) first flicked a switch on live radio to advertise an unknown weight loss formula she called Body Enhancer. Since then, the brand has become ubiquitous on talk radio as Zenith Corporation, the company Gallot runs with her husband, Winston, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars a year into marketing the weight management equivalent of the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices.

“There was a time,” recalls Winston Gallot, “when one pharmaceutical company had access to the figures on major drug sales, and they

showed us the figures for Xenical. We were selling considerably more Body Enhancer than Xenical was selling in NZ. I remember the sales manager saying, ‘Boy, Roche won’t be happy about that!

“Imagine us, a little minnow like Zenith, an obstacle in the path of a company like Roche. Are they going to be happy? Not in my view.”

Roche probably wasn’t too happy either about taking a shot across the bows during the court trial from Boyd Swinburn, one of the prosecution’s star expert witnesses.

“I have conducted randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials with the weight loss products dexfenfluramine and orlistat (Xenical). These trials demonstrate not only how effective these compounds are but also document their side effects. However, even with the evidence of effect, I have been publicly critical of the implied claims in the Xenical promotions for the amount of weight loss that might be expected from the drug. The trials show an average weight loss of 24kg, whereas the advertising implies much greater losses. When the gap between the actual evidence of weight loss and the implied effectiveness of the product is large, the public is likely to be misled. The consumers of weight loss products are particularly vulnerable to ‘magic bullet’ claims.”

Nonetheless, Xenical wasn’t in the dock.

If nothing else, the Body Enhancer trial epitomised the standoff between pharmaceutical giants and the natural supplements industry.

The chemical companies have long complained that they have to do extensive testing on their products, while dietary supplement makers do not. It is this complaint, and the special relationship between the September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 45

pharmaceuticals and the Government through the drug-buying agency Pharmac, that lies at the heart of current moves by the Government to crush natural health suppliers under a truckload of red tape disguised as “synchronisation” with Australia. This, despite the fact that there are only a couple of known cases of deaths resulting from supplement use in New Zealand compared with many deaths as a result of pharmaceutical medication.

Investigate was approached several years ago by a pharmaceutical ‘insider’ – a senior executive offering to blow the whistle on monetary kickbacks to officials, wastage and massive profiteering: “You know something?” he asked, “take a pill that my company is selling to Pharmac at $5.50 a unit. We’re manufacturing those for about two cents each.

That’s a 27,500% profit margin. And you’re paying for it.”

Unfortunately, the executive’s motivation in approaching the magazine was to gain leverage in a confidential settlement deal, and he chose the money rather than the chance to bag his former employer at the end of the day. Nonetheless, his claims are corroborated by others in the industry, who also remember the days of pharmaceutical giants offering GPs overseas holidays, new TVs and the like if they prescribed company A’s drugs instead of company B’s; so the doctor’s choice of drug for patients may not be motivated by what is best for them but for how many nights at Phuket the deal is worth to the doctor.

F

or its part, Zenith Corporation has been one of the most high profile dietary supplement companies, responsible not just for Body Enhancer but also the huge-selling Bee V Balm, which hit international headlines thanks to a discovery that bee venom could, strangely, assist in reducing inflammation and pain. So Zenith, then, was the latest in a string of disruptions to the equilibrium of the pharmaceutical industry which is being forced to battle an increasing consumer swing away from conventional medicines towards dietary supplements.

It didn’t take long for the Commerce Commission to sniff out the new kid on the block. Little over a year after launching Body Enhancer, Zenith Corporation received a visit from the Commission’s Simon O’Callaghan and an assistant.

“They said they had a complaint from someone who’d purchased Body Enhancer,” remembers Sylvia. “He was a man who had a number of medical issues, we had actually refunded him a hundred dollars from what I recall, and we had also given him discounted product but he still wasn’t happy. So the Commerce Commission came to see us with one of our brochures and asked us, ‘from where did you get the statements you’ve used in the brochure?’, and we said ‘from the manufacturers’.”

Zenith, at that stage, did not manufacture the formula themselves.

“The product in its infancy was a product called Metafit,” says Winston, “which had been selling in the US and is still selling today I believe. That basic Metafit formula was used by a chemist here in Auckland to produce a weight management product for the Australian market, and he developed the product, it was called ProteCol, it had been selling in Australia, in Queensland for about six to nine months before a similar product was released here in New Zealand that eventually became Body Enhancer. The formulas in New Zealand and Australia were identical. It was manufactured in Auckland here for both markets by Immuno Laboratories.”

Zenith, in essence was the retailer, and Immuno Laboratories was the manufacturer/wholesaler, supplying its product under different brand names on both sides of the Tasman. So when the ComCom came calling, demanding to know the basis for claims that Body Enhancer “will assist” with weight loss, Winston Gallot’s first reaction was to show them where those claims were being made by the actual manufacturer.

46, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

“These statements were made on the ProteCol brochure, of the same formula product, that was selling in Australia and made by Immuno, which pre-dated Body Enhancer, and we had it on a signed company statement. When the ComCom came to see us originally their whole purpose was to establish where we got those statements from, We gave them clear evidence, on Immuno letterhead with a company stamp and a director’s signature at the bottom, to show where these statements came from.”

Ah, yes, therapeutic statements. In the eyes of Labour’s health regulators, it should be illegal to make therapeutic claims about natural health products. It doesn’t matter that TV viewers are bombarded with advertisements from major cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies selling “a younger, healthier you”, it doesn’t matter that women’s magazines would go out of business if ads promising some kind of therapeutic benefit were banned.

It doesn’t even matter if you make a product as fat-laden as snack food – you can still purchase (yes, that’s right, you cross their palms with silver) a Heart Foundation ‘tick’ endorsing your product as healthy.

As long as you are a multinational pharmaceutical or food brand, there’s a very good chance you’ll never be touched by the regulators.

In the Auckland District Court, Judge Lindsay Moore did not intend to be moved by claims that regulators were picking on the little guy: “Whether, in New Zealand or elsewhere, there are products similar to Body Enhancer promoted by representations similar to those which are the subject of the charges before the Court is irrelevant to the determination of whether such representations are liable to mislead the public, false or misleading. All evidence and submissions of that sort illustrate is the apparently sizeable on-going market for products claimed to be of benefit to the many people desirous of loosing weight, improving their body form and image, or both. It has never been a defence to any criminal charge that other persons are apparently getting away with identical or similar conduct. One of the fascinations of the criminal law is the frequency and extent to which apparently intelligent and prosperous people continue to be taken in by fraudulent schemes the general natures of which are widely known and understood within the community at large. Ponzi schemes and advanced fee frauds (including of the Nigerian variety) are obvious current examples.”

One moment the Gallots were on trial for promoting a weight management formula, and the next they’d joined the ranks of Al Capone.

Clearly, Judge Moore seemed excited about this trial.

“We are not in the High Court now, Mr Katz,” snapped the Judge to Zenith’s barrister, John Katz QC, after the lawyer objected to the casual way the prosecution’s documents had been thrown together, making cross-examination difficult.

“No,” thought one observer in the public gallery, “that’s patently obvious.”

The Gallots grimaced. From what Katz had told them, Judge Moore appeared to have made up his mind before the trial even began.

“There was a pre-trial hearing in chambers,” says Winston, “and both John Katz and our supporting solicitor, Wendy Duggan, were present, and at that hearing the judge made reference to ‘this quack remedy’, and Katz made specific reference to that terminology in his opening address by saying ‘We’re not dealing here with a quack remedy’, and he made that reference specifically because the judge had made it in chambers, so he felt we were fighting an uphill battle right from day one.”

As Judge Moore had succinctly observed, this was not a civil case, it was a criminal trial. To that end, the burden of proof fell on the Crown, and it was a high burden: “A conviction can be entered only if the informant proves the guilt of the defendant beyond reasonable doubt. That means to have proved to that standard the essential elements of that charge.”

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 47

But having set that as the benchmark, in Investigate’s view both the prosecution and the judge dismally failed to reach it and, worse, Judge Moore appears not to have realised his apparent error at law. You see, the essence of the charges was that Zenith Corporation was making false claims about Body Enhancer and its benefits: “13. False representations – No person shall, in trade, in connection with the supply or possible supply of goods or services or with the promotion by any means of the supply or use of goods or services, (e) Falsely represent that goods or services have any sponsorship, approval, endorsement, performance characteristics, accessories, uses, or benefits; or” But remember, the prosecution must prove that the claims are false. On paper, Judge Moore appears to have recognised this: “There is no obligation upon a defendant to prove its innocence or to prove anything else.”

Unless the prosecution could prove beyond reasonable doubt that Body Enhancer did not assist appetite control, or weight loss, or the building of lean muscle mass, or an improvement in vitality, then by definition of logic the charges had to fail.

At the risk of labouring the point, the Commerce Commission and its lawyers had to prove that Body Enhancer didn’t work, before they could label its promotional claims as “false”. Instead, they pulled a stunt and in Investigate’s view Judge Moore fell for it, casebook, wig and gavel.

T

he stunt was simple and spectacularly executed. Instead of proving that Body Enhancer itself did not work, the ComCom did the legal equivalent of tarand-feathering, insinuating guilt by association. Over the course of six weeks, the ComCom case was built on attacking the merits of individual ingredients in Body Enhancer, based on overseas studies, rather than by simply testing the product itself.

If the individual ingredients could be shown to be worthless, argued the prosecution, then it must logically follow that the final product would be useless too. To demonstrate the faulty logic – both with the prosecution and their scientific experts who advanced it, and the judge who swallowed it – consider this analogy: Try putting these ingredients in a pot together – instant coffee, boiling water, softened butter, sugar, vanilla essence, eggs, flour, cornflour, baking powder, milk and coffee icing. Now, without doing anything else, sample a few raw spoonfuls. You’ll probably gag as you do. Those ingredients, however, when mixed in the right portions and in the right sequence, with the right application of thermal energy, will reward you with a vastly more palatable coffee cake at the end of it. The secret is not just assembling the right ingredients, but developing a recipe that works.

This, say the Gallots, is what they did with Body Enhancer, in association with a highly qualified biochemist, Dr Munem Daoud.

“If you want to understand how this product works you’ve got to understand the concept of synergy,” insists Winston Gallot. “It’s all to do with synergy. It’s not only individually but the collective impact of the ingredients over the period of the course. It won’t happen in the first few weeks because you’re trying to build up a threshold level concentration of these ingredients in the body so that ultimately they’ll reach the point where they can go to work if they’re allowed to by the individual.”

The District Court, however, was having none of this “synergy” nonsense. If the ingredients thrown together in a pot didn’t taste like coffee cake then clearly they never would.

Star witness for the prosecution in this matter was Dr Peter Barling, a senior lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Auckland. Despite making the point himself that he had not studied the potential synergistic benefits of the Body Enhancer recipe, and that benefits may exist, Barling proceeded to pour scorn on the individual ingredients.

Of the hydrolised collagen, Barling said in court: 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

“Hydrolyzed collagen – 2100 mg/day. Collagen is the main protein component of connective tissues, such as skin and bone. In its native state, it ends to be rather indigestible, but is sold as gelatine – the main protein component of most jellies. Once digested, collagen is converted into a mixture of the twenty amino acids normally present in protein structure and equally available from an source of high quality protein such as milk, other dairy products, meat, fish, eggs and cereals.

Both gelatine and hydrolyzed collagen end up being absorbed as the same mixture of amino acids. A phone call to New World, Titirangi on 20th January 2002 indicated that they sold Pam’s Jelly powder in an 85 g pack for 42 cents. This makes 500 ml of jelly. So the value of the hydrolyzed gelatin in a day’s supply of Body Enhancer is approximately 1.04 cents, and equivalent to less than one tablespoon (12 ml of) jelly.”

Commenting on Barling’s findings, Judge Moore was in jovial mood.

“If, in the advertised representations relating to Body Enhancer’s protein content, generalities were replaced by reference to a small tablespoon of jelly and a large tablespoon of milk, only mirth, not sales, would result. The upshot, and it could be applied to many of the other alleged active ingredients as well, would be wonderfully reminiscent of Euripides’ use, in Aristophanes’ The Poets, of references to a little bottle of oil to deflate high flown language. Those with more modern tastes might be tempted to create ditties after the manner of W.S. Gilbert. ‘With the twelfth of an egg and a teaspoon of bran …’ sounds like something from The Sorcerer.”

On the face of it, things sound bad for Body Enhancer at $80 a bottle. But the truth is a little less stark, and Sylvia Gallot is furious: “Barling said something incredibly stupid, about gelatine. He said I can go and buy a teaspoon of gelatine and it costs me four cents. I don’t think he’s actually researched the Dalton size of collagen. There’s gelatine and there’s gelatine, collagen and collagen. You can get collagen with a Dalton size of up to 10,000 Daltons and there’s no way that can be absorbed. We buy a very expensive collagen at $23 a kilo that’s got a very tiny Dalton size, and that’s not going to be in a teaspoon of jelly worth four cents. This is something they ignored.”

Barling admitted that Body Enhancer did contain a high quality protein “in a very absorbable form that the body could utilise very quickly to help replenish and rebuild muscle tissue…in my opinion this claim is true”, but the good judge just brushed right on past that, nodding approvingly at suggestions that the protein could also be found in some foods so one wouldn’t necessarily have to purchase Body Enhancer to enjoy the benefits of the protein.

By the same logic, because you can buy steak in the supermarket and cook it yourself, restaurants must be breaking the law by charging $30 for a steak dinner.

Again, says Winston Gallot, the court totally missed the point – Body Enhancer gave customers all the ingredients they needed in a concentrated daily dose, precisely so they didn’t have to hunt out obscure foods in the right combinations. If you remember the beef and lamb TV ads from a few years back comparing the iron in a lambchop to a monstrous plate of spinach, you might get the picture.

Gallot says Judge Moore ignored the evidence in front of him, in favour of an “ordinary bloke’s guide” to pharmaceutical production.

“If you were going to take a two month programme of Body Enhancer,” explains Gallot, “and these ingredients could work individually, you’d take one ingredient one day, one the next, and so on down the list for two months. But it would never work. The body would dilute each ingredient over time, so the others as you added them couldn’t work with them anyway, and there would be no synergy.

So you take them all together, for a very good reason – that it takes some time for these ingredients to accumulate in the body and build to that threshold level of concentration where they can start to work in the body.”

But the synergy argument is even more compelling, says Gallot,

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 49

when one realises the complexities of getting some minerals actually into the bloodstream.

“There’s an assimilability issue here too, on the quality of the ingredients you use. You could go out and buy some zinc tablets for 10 dollars, but most of it is just going to pass right through your system, because at a cellular level your cells will not recognise the zinc as a food so the cells will not accept it. You go out and buy a $30 bottle of zinc tablets that are covalently bonded, in other words they’re wrapped in protein, when that chunk of mineral approaches the cell walls wrapped in protein it is recognised as food, the perforations in the cell wall will open and the zinc is absorbed and utilised by the body.”

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ut apart from the paint-by-numbers approach to science endorsed by the Court, the judge arguably misdirected himself as to the relevance of the instructions for use of Body Enhancer. Both in the instructions on the packet and throughout the company’s radio commercials, and there were many, it was made abundantly clear that Body Enhancer would only work if customers drank six to eight glasses of water a day as part of the programme, and avoided food after dinner so as to allow the ingredients to work on an empty stomach. Exercise and sensible eating habits wouldn’t hurt either.

Despite the fact that all these factors were highlighted, Judge Lindsay Moore apparently figured the case would run better if he could ditch the evidence and promotional literature that didn’t suit his own views: “As the wording of the informations [charges] makes plain, the representations charged are representations as to the product Body Enhancer, not as to any programme or regime of which it is said to form part. The defendant’s recommendations as to dosage, frequency and timing of use, and steps to be taken in association with the use of that product are by no means irrelevant, but only the first two fall to be considered when suitability for purpose, or benefit, are evaluated. That is because in every charge the challenged representation is a representation as to the product, and to it alone.”

In a legal sense, it is difficult to see how the prosecution can prove the claims about Body Enhancer’s effectiveness are false, if instructions on how to use it are ignored. The product does not exist in a vacuum.

It exists in a box with detailed instructions on how it has to be used.

Without those instructions, the product is just gunk in a bottle.

Judge Moore didn’t see it that way.

“There is an obvious distinction between taking a product as recommended, in the simple sense of how much and how often, and following a wider regime involving not only consumption of the product, but also other dietary and/or lifestyle components which could of themselves give rise to the benefits of the type claimed for the product.

In that later situation, benefits could occur which promoters of the product, and their less perceptive customers, attribute to the product, when in reality those same benefits could have been obtained from following the regime without any consumption of the product.”

But here’s the rub. To make an assertion, as the prosecution did, that the weight loss attributed to Body Enhancer was the result of people not eating after dinner, the prosecution first had to run a scientific test of the product to see if that was indeed the case. A controlled trial.

And it was never done.

“Has the Commerce Commission ever run a scientific trial to prove that Body Enhancer doesn’t work?” Investigate asked Winston Gallot.

“No they haven’t. They’ve had five, six years to test the product. We did test it with two independent assessments of the product that proved over 90% of people had successful results. They’ve never tested it. They cannot say that Body Enhancer does not work.”

It is staggering that criminal charges can be laid, a company and its directors dragged through the mud and their business destroyed, with-

50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

out the Commerce Commission being required to first check whether their suspicions were actually true. Zenith Corporation could only be guilty of making “false” representations about its product if, and only if, the Crown proved that Body Enhancer did not assist with weight loss or increased vitality when used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. And the only way to prove that was a controlled scientific trial. The prosecution never did one.

Legally, Zenith Corporation had to prove nothing. Zenith did not have to prove that its ingredients were effective at either an individual or synergistic level. Zenith didn’t even have to prove that Body Enhancer worked at all. The burden of proof fell on the Crown in all charges. In Investigate’s opinion, the only “quack” in the courtroom was the Beak.

Intriguingly, the prosecution made much of the fact that Zenith’s own scientific trial of Body Enhancer, carried out by a registered Waikato health provider, was not a full randomised double-blind trial and therefore of “limited” assistance. Nonetheless, regardless of its deficiencies, it was still one scientific trial more than the prosecution had done.

And given that there is no scientific study proving Body Enhancer doesn’t work, let’s take a look at a study suggesting it does.

In February 2003, 106 people in the township of Huntly and nearby environs signed up as volunteers for what the local health provider, Raukura Hauora o Tainui, was billing as a “controlled randomised study” of Body Enhancer.

On Raukura’s part, the motivation was simple - a large number of locals had weight issues, and Zenith was offering $200,000 to get the study done.

Researchers divided their volunteers into three groups. Group A would take Body Enhancer and also participate in physical exercise.

Group B would only take Body Enhancer, and Group C would only participate in physical exercise.

Forty-one people were enrolled in Group A, and 35 completed the six month programme, a completion rate of 85%. They were required to exercise communally three times a week at the local fitness centre under the supervision of a qualified fitness instructor. Additionally, they had to take Body Enhancer.

The 41 Group B participants had it easy. All they had to do was sip 15ml of Body Enhancer each night before they went to bed, and drink six to eight glasses of water a day. Apart from their normal daily activities, there was no special exercise routine for those in Group B. Only one person dropped out over the six months, meaning nearly 98% of those taking part completed the programme.

The final 24 in Group C, those doing exercise only, had the lowest completion rate: 83%.

So to the results. The average weight of Group A participants was 97.4kg when they began the programme, and 91.5kg at the end. On average, participants lost 5.8kg in weight. The study showed there was no appreciable weight loss for the first few weeks, and the biggest benefits kicked in between weeks 8 and 16, midway through the trial.

The average waistline improvement was 2.1 inches over the six months.

The biggest weight loss was 14.5kg for one lucky volunteer.

Group B, those taking only Body Enhancer, enjoyed an average weight loss each of 4.3kg, with one participant recording a massive 13kg weight loss. Remember, no one in Group B was doing an exercise regime. Of the 40 who completed the course, four of them gained weight – on average 1.3kg, but the other 90% all lost it.

“When compared with the resultant weight loss of Group A (which included physical activity),” wrote the study authors, “it suggests that Body Enhancer was a major contributor to the weight loss experienced.”

The average ages of the two groups tell a story as well. Group B’s average age was nearly 43 years old, while Group A’s average was only 35.7 years. That makes the weight loss for the older middle-aged spread team

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 51

even more remarkable, although it may be a factor also in the smaller decrease in waistline measurements of only 1.3 inches on average.

B

ut it was the fate of those in Group C, the people doing exercise only, that really told the story. Although, again, someone achieved a 13.5kg weight loss, the average loss for the group was a disappointing 1.3kg, less than a third that of those taking Body Enhancer only and putting their feet up. Seven of the 20 who completed the exercise-only regime (35%) actually gained weight, compared with only 10% of those taking Body Enhancer.

Appropriately enough, perhaps, all of this information flowed like water off a duck’s back when it came to the good Judge Moore, who was critical that the study had not distinguished between the product itself and the lifestyle regime recommended on the packet of no food after dinner and drinking plenty of water.

“His [study leader Dr Tane Taylor’s] approach did not grapple with the issue of the efficacy of the product as opposed to the regime within which it was taken. When cross-examined upon that topic Dr Taylor agreed that it was possible that if someone took a tablespoon of flavoured water, but ate nothing between dinner and bed, they could lose weight.

“When pressed on the issue of whether, that being so, people should pay considerable money for what could prove to be the equivalent of a bottle of flavoured water, Dr Taylor made plain that he was concerned with the outcome for the patient. So he did not necessarily agree that it was essential to know whether the product was providing benefit over and above what was referred to as the exercise and dietary package.”

Judge Moore’s intransigent attitude to Body Enhancer might have been justifiable, had he demanded the prosecution carry out a randomized controlled trial of their own on Body Enhancer to assess that very distinction he was so keen to make. But he didn’t. No prosecution study of Body Enhancer was ever done, even though the prosecution was required by law to prove the product did not work.

Judge Moore’s apparent biases were, in Investigate’s opinion, unsupported by the evidence before him, irrelevant and speculative, especially as the test results on Body Enhancer only were three times better than for those who went to the gym three times a week. In the spirit of the Clairol herbal essence shampoo commercial, if I can lose nearly five kgs in weight just by sipping flavoured lolly water and not eating after dinner, “I’ll have what she’s having!”

Judge Moore, however, was scathing: “The product Body Enhancer has been proved beyond reasonable doubt not to be suitable for any of the purposes claimed and not to confer upon its users any of the benefits alleged.”

Of Sylvia and Winston Gallot, he wrote: “Far from being relative innocents they were considerably shrewder, tougher, and more determined than those with whom they dealt.

They saw, seized on and exploited an opportunity to make very large profits. From that they were not going to be deterred. If charm seemed likely to work, they used charm; if lies seemed likely to work, they used lies; if aggression seemed likely to work, then there was no shortage of that. They were both scientifically literate. They obviously appreciated the significance of properly conducted clinical trials, also the significance of the absence of such trials of the product.”

It’s a shame, say the Gallots today, that there’s an absence of trials of the product by the prosecution.

“The ComCom really had to establish that Body Enhancer didn’t work,” argues Winston, “to make the judgement as strong as it did.

They never even got close. They opened their textbooks, they used medical references on the ingredients only. But the ComCom had six years to test Body Enhancer, and they never tested it. Why didn’t they test it?”

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Of Sylvia Gallot, Judge Moore said: “There was far more than just one piece of dishonesty exposed, and not only upon his part. From her husband’s evidence it appears that Mrs Gallot had no tertiary qualifications, but she had taught science at senior secondary school level and risen to a position of authority at a major secondary school.”

The clear implication was that Sylvia Gallot had dishonestly obtained teaching positions without disclosing she had no tertiary qualification. It’s an inference Gallot roundly rejects. “I had a 27 year career in teaching. I was not required to have a degree when I entered, and I never hid that fact.”

One of the convictions Judge Moore entered against Zenith centred on a claim in its instruction pamphlet that: “Regular use of Body Enhancer will assist with … Liver detoxification” Said Moore, this “first conveys the sense that there is such a process as liver detoxification. It does not assist an advertiser to claim suitability for a purpose that does not exist, or a benefit of use that does not exist. A claim that a particular process or outcome exists when it does not is not only liable to mislead but false.”

Judge Moore may not have heard of it, but the phrase “liver detoxification” appears in orthodox medical journals, as Investigate discovered. The British Medical Journal, the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding, and the European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology all discuss “liver detoxification”, and an article on the US medical website WebMD discusses it in context with obesity related issues and diet: “Here’s where “liver detoxification” might come in. When the liver is working double-duty to protect you from an onslaught of bad diet, bad judgment, and unavoidable insults, it could benefit from a little extra help. Antioxidant vitamins such as C, E, and beta-carotene; minerals such as zinc and selenium; B-vitamins that aid alcohol metabolism; and herbs said to “cleanse” the liver such as milk thistle, dandelion root, and schizandra, might help protect liver cells while ridding our body of poisons. “ There is a lot of experimental work in the laboratory and in animals suggesting the beneficial effect of milk thistle extract,’ Raman Venkataramanan, PhD, FCP, tells WebMD. He is a professor of pharmaceutical sciences and pathology at the University of Pittsburgh…”

Judge Moore did set out his reasons for both ignoring the claim that Body Enhancer works synergistically, and the reality that a large number of people using the product actually do lose weight: “Given the number, and in some instances (such as Aloe Vera) the complexity, of the ingredients in the successive formulations of the product, there is no basis for concluding that some or all of the ingredients in combination could be relied upon to produce, in the context of the use of the product, an outcome which no individual component could achieve. The contrary possibility of combinations operating within human metabolism to nullify any remote chance of a beneficial outcome is also present. On what is presently known, and that is all the Court can work with, the likelihood of Body Enhancer being suitable for the attainment of any asserted purpose, or to produce any asserted beneficial outcome, is far too remote to be regarded as a reasonable possibility.

“On the defence’s own evidence the asserted assurance of suitability for purpose and of benefit (“will …”) must be false when those in the target market already have within their diet all that is required of the relevant components of Body Enhancer or all the materials that the human body needs to metabolise an ample supply. The proclaimed certainty of outcome would be generally inappropriate even for a proven registered therapeutic product. Here, though therapeutic representations were made, the bases upon which they were made is extremely hypothetical and speculative. But there is nothing hypothetical about

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 53

the money paid by those purchasing the product on the faith of the representations charged.

“The foregoing does not mean that some of those using Body Enhancer cannot have undergone change in body weight or composition or both. Professors Mann and Swinburn referred to the causes and solutions to obesity as mostly to be found in lifestyle and diet. Dr Cortizo’s evidence was to the same effect. Many of the documentary exhibits before the Court touch on that topic in ways which emphasise the difficulties that many people encounter in doing what they know they need to do to overcome obesity.

“The regime within which it is recommended that Body Enhancer be taken has features which could benefit those seeking weight reduction. No attempt has been made to justify the explanations which the defendant or earlier promoters of Body Enhancer gave for following that regime. But eating nothing for three hours after the last meal of the day, then having but a glass of water before going to sleep, eliminates evening snacking which Professor Mann saw as an obvious source of excessive intake of high energy foods. Avoiding snacking at that time, if it becomes a discipline, is obviously likely to develop into better eating habits at other times of the day.

“The direct benefits for the obese in consuming six to eight glasses of water per day seems to be a controversial topic. But there is an obvious likelihood of indirect benefits in the sense that such water consumption may induce a feeling of fullness leading to reduced consumption of high energy drinks such as those containing substantial quantities of sugar or alcohol, possibly also to a reduction in nonliquid food intake.

“Another feature of the recommended regime is the distinct possibility of it leading to better and more consistent sleep habits, which in turn lead to a greater sense of well being and thus to increased physical activity.

“The likelihood of other confounding factors is obvious. The regular taking of an alleged weight control product expresses a personal focus on obesity which can, even subconsciously, find expression in beneficial changes in lifestyle and diet because it reflects a determination, however temporary, to address a condition the general solutions to which are widely understood.”

W

as it a fair trial, or a kangaroo court? Clearly the Gallots feel they’ve been walloped by a rogue marsupial dressed in black flowing robes, and even though sentencing won’t take place until September 1, they’re already planning to appeal.

The ComCom, they allege, made sure it got front page coverage in the newspapers to destroy Zenith Corporation. “[National MP] Wayne Mapp tells me the commission hired a big PR company to do their promotion, to promote the judgement,” says Winston.

“It’s developed into something a lot bigger, some big pharmaceutical companies have come in behind the ComCom and there’ve been comments made in the past that these people wanted Zenith, the quote was ‘dead and buried’, not just stop them trading but ‘dead and buried’. We don’t want this company to produce any more products because they’ve had two successful ones. Body Enhancer, goodness, if it goes on, these people could take over the whole weight management market in NZ, it’s that good! It’s been that successful, and we don’t want it because we’ve got our own competitive products.

“The judgement tried to make out that all the findings are on every Body Enhancer formula that’s ever been out there, including what was being sold in June this year, 61 ingredients vs 23, as per the time the charges were originally laid. And the Herald went along with that.”

For the record, the charges relate to product sold in 2000 and 2001.

But the damage to Zenith Corporation and the Body Enhancer 54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

brand has been huge. Even though the only study in existence to actually test Body Enhancer indicates 90% of users will lose weight if they follow the programme, and even though the company has thousands of testimonials from satisfied customers, the effect of the engineered media coverage and the vicious personal attacks in the judgement have reduced company turnover to a fraction of what it was in May. Most of the company staff have been laid off, and radio stations are too afraid to advertise the product. The company’s tollfree line, 0508 508 508, now rings only to the sound of re-orders from existing customers, the supply of new customers having been choked off by the advertising block.

For the 2002 financial year, turnover was $2.2 million with a gross trading surplus after production and cost of sales of $495,000 before deduction of company running expenses and salaries for a dozen or so people. Zenith Corporation spent $689,000 on advertising in that year.

In his ruling, Judge Moore spelt out the penalties available to him if Zenith was convicted.

“40. Contraventions of provisions of Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV an offence – (1) Every person who contravenes any of the provisions of Part I (except sections 9, 14(2), and 23, or Part II, or Part III or Part IV of this Act, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction , (a) In the case of a person other than body corporate, to a fine not exceeding $30,000; and (b) In the case of a body corporate, to a fine not exceeding $100,000.

(2) Where a person is convicted, whether in the same or separate proceedings, of 2 or more offences in respect of contraventions of the same provisions of this Act and those contraventions are of the same or a substantially similar nature and occurred at or about the same time, the aggregate amount of any fines imposed on that person in respect of those convictions shall not exceed the amount of the maximum fine that may be imposed in respect of a conviction for a single offence.

Significantly, the Act suggests that where charges arise from essentially the same material and around the same time, the maximum fine cannot exceed $100,000. Despite that, the prosecution are seeking more than $2.5 million in fines.

Additionally, the prosecution want Winston Gallot to personally fund a “corrective” advertising campaign in five of the country’s major daily newspapers and on radio, plus a mailout to tens of thousands of Body Enhancer customers advising them that the company has made false and misleading statements.

If agreed to by the judge, again it is difficult to see the verdict surviving on appeal.

The bottom line, say the Gallots, is that only one study of the Body Enhancer programme exists and it shows weight losses comparable to those achievable on Xenical, if the prosecution evidence on Xenical was correct. Body Enhancer is half the price. Although the prosecution attacked their product’s ingredients individually, they say, the ComCom has been forced to acknowledge in its approach that people are claiming to have lost weight on Body Enhancer, but the ComCom’s explanation is that it must be the instructions for use achieving that and not the formula itself.

But the prosecution, which says Body Enhancer is not fit for the purpose intended, has never put the product through a controlled trial of its own to prove the allegation.

Perhaps the most significant piece of silent witness, however, is that since the negative publicity and the damning court judgement broke, only 60 people have written to Zenith asking for a refund on product purchased between 1999 and today, out of tens of thousands of customers.

Clearly, Body Enhancer customers are not exactly voting with their feet.

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September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 55

SHE WAS A RUSSIAN DANCER. HE WAS A SUBURBAN NEW ZEAL AND PSYCHOPATH. IAN WISHART HAS THE STORY OF A PAEDOPHILE’S MANIPULATION OF THE LAW TO GAIN ACCESS TO CHILDREN, AND A TRAIL OF WRECKED LIVES HE’S LEFT BEHIND HIM eardrops well, glistening in the soft evening light, but they never fall. “I can’t cry anymore,” she says after a moment, gathering herself again. “I don’t cry,” she repeats, softly, more to herself than anyone else. Her name is Elena Reznikova*, and on a cold August night she’s a long way from home, back in the Ukraine. The story, of a journey from her life as a Russian ballerina to be surrounded by semi-stacked boxes of files in a tatty West Auckland suburban law office after hours, is a long and (like many Russian stories) tragic one.

Daughter of a Soviet Air Force pilot, her mother a nurse, Elena Reznikova had a relatively normal childhood in communist Russia. Born in the remote prov*All names except those of Elena Reznikova and Paul Copeland have been changed for privacy purposes 56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

ince of Khazakstan – a legacy that would return to haunt her in New Zealand, Elena’s parents shifted to a home in rural Ukraine, not far from a local nuclear power station named Chernobyl. She draws back the collar of her turtleneck sweater: “See, I still have scar from cancer,” she notes, touching her throat. Her voice is hoarse and barely there.

As if sensing the unspoken question, she adds: “I have lost my voice, all year. Stress. It will kill me eventually, I think.”

Stress. Now there’s an understatement.

It was back in February 2001 that Elena met New Zealander Paul Copeland, courtesy of a Russian bride internet agency.

“I wanted to get out of Ukraine, out of Russia,” she reflects. “I met a person on internet line. He look good.

He promised me beautiful life, I would ‘bloom like a

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 57

flower’. I fell in love with his photos, I was ready to take care of his children. He said he needs a woman who will look after his children, who will cook, who will clean – and I was the best – and I was ready to be a stepmother, to be friendly with his other partners. Because he was like me, he had three different children from three different relationships. Can you imagine this madness?”

Elena had been married and divorced. Like thousands of Russian women, she was deserted by the men in her life because of appalling economic conditions over there.

“My friends told me, ‘don’t give up, you can find a good man’.

Because it is impossible to find in Ukraine, with children, it is economic, men are unable to provide.”

Copeland, she says, was everything she thought she wanted in a man. “All my girlfriends were crazy about him because he was good looking, charming, gentleman, just a little bit drunk, but we just thought he liked his beer, as we do in the Ukraine.”

But Elena had no idea the New Zealander had a very dark past, despite an incident that ever so slightly foreshadowed what she would later discover.

“My neighbours came over. We have a tradition in Russia to make a person drunk because we want to know how he acts when he is drunk, because people are different when they are drunk. Paul was drinking and drinking, and he started to try and jump off the second floor balcony, because he said he was trying to escape being locked up.”

In 1989, Paul Copeland hit the headlines throughout New Zealand for trying to murder his first wife with a crossbow in Tauranga. It was a well-publicised court case, with testimony of terror.

As an NZPA report from his trial in May 1990 recounts: “A 32 year old Tauranga man tried to kill his estranged wife by shooting her with a hunting bow and arrow…from only a feet away…the broadhead spear arrow penetrated part of the woman’s liver, stomach and one of her lungs, poking out the other side of her body.

“She managed to make her way to the kitchen where she tried to use the phone but was prevented by Copeland, who forced her up against a wall in the hallway opposite the kitchen.

“Feeling dizzy, she had slid down the wall but managed to get up again to make her way downstairs and to her car where her young daughter was waiting for her. She had collapsed beside the car and neighbours who saw her had rushed to her aid,” the Crown Prosecutor was recorded as telling the High Court at Rotorua.

“Copeland, from an upstairs window, had asked several times if she was dead yet.” e was found not guilty by reason of “temporary” insanity.

Copeland, you see, had always been troubled. His father was named in investigations as a violent, alcoholic paedophile, who’d allegedly sodomised his young son. In his early teenage years, Paul Copeland allegedly returned the favour by raping one of his younger sisters. There were burglaries, drug use, car thefts and fraud charges. Violence towards animals was also a Copeland trademark – executing cats and other small animals by bludgeoning them, revelling in the gore. Little surprise that the teenager ended up in the Tokanui mental institution as a result of his behaviour.

Family members would later talk of assault convictions in Australia, drink driving and firearms convictions.

None of this, however, was contained in the internet dating agency files as Copeland linked up with Reznikova in far off Ukraine. Instead, the New Zealander turned on the charm, promising marriage and more to the former ballerina and mother of two boys.

“He said he wanted to make me pregnant, that this was beautiful because I need a baby girl, so we need to do it immediately because it would be easier to get visas.”

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By August 2001, Elena was pregnant with their child – her third.

“Paul was very good for about two weeks after I got pregnant, then he started to drink, he said he’d spent all the money for tickets, nearly, and I said ‘listen, we have to have money for tickets to go to your country’.”

In September that year, the couple and Elena’s youngest son, Yuri, landed in Auckland.

“I couldn’t speak English. None. I couldn’t put sentence together. I couldn’t make myself understood. I left behind my eldest son because the immigration people in Moscow said it would be hard to get him out here, because Paul didn’t have enough money to pay. But he promised me he would bring him out later.

“I’d always wanted to speak English well, like I do now. I wanted my children to speak English, and I wanted to have a good job and be happy.

So New Zealand looked to me like a countryside that I liked, because my family came from the countryside. We had 100 turkeys. My family grows vegetables, we have lots of food, very hard working people.”

Clean and green the countryside in her new home might have been, but behind the four walls of Copeland’s house she began to discover his demons.

“When I arrived in September I used to clean the house because I was a good cleaner…and I found some photos of other women with children, in Spain, Africa and elsewhere. So I asked him, ‘was this your previous girlfriend?’ He said ‘no, I just used to live with her for a while’.

I said ‘why didn’t you bring her to New Zealand?’. He said ‘she wasn’t good, but her children were good’.”

Elena wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

“When we first arrived, we had sex all weekend, every day, but when his other children arrived he wasn’t interested in me, he doesn’t have sex with me. I’m asking him, ‘Paul, I’m waiting for you upstairs’, but

he never came up. I’m four months pregnant but I’m a woman who is still healthy, you know.”

Over the weeks and months of her pregnancy that followed over the summer of 2001, Elena claims Copeland became more and more distant, more focused on the children, including Elena’s six year old Yuri.

“On the beach I noticed that he was putting his fingers in between the children’s legs every time he picked them up. His children always used to scream in the bath. I said to him, you bath boy, I bath girl. He was always present in the bath when the children were there. I don’t leave babies in the bath alone, but when children are five or older it is a different thing.

“I often heard the children sobbing, and once [his daughter Amanda, from his second wife] came out crying and I asked ‘who hurt you’, and she pointed at Paul saying ‘him’.

“He used to call me worthless, and good for nothing whore. On the few times we had sex after that he became violent, even though I was pregnant. He never kissed me, and turned my face away during the act of intercourse. He was cold and brutal. Then, at the end, he got worse.

He had so much sex with me at the end that I had premature baby.”

Their child, Nicholai, was born in March 2002, with complications.

“When he was born the baby didn’t breathe, and he said ‘I don’t know why I should have to buy expensive medicine just to keep the baby alive’. He refused to buy medicine, so I used to go to the church, and there was a very good woman there and she gave me $20.”

When the baby had to be rushed to hospital, Paul Copeland allegedly took his time.

“He wanted the child to die. He told me. He didn’t want to take me to hospital. He went so slow. As a mother, I’m lucky I have medical skills to keep this child healthy and alive, so when he got better – it was four months later – I moved out of the house.

“There was a neighbour across the road, and everybody knew about his background, nobody told me, it was a huge secret from me. And when I used to speak to people in the church, everywhere, people used to be so nice, they understood my problem and thought they would encourage him to marry me, so I would get residence. But I wanted to go back to Ukraine because I left my son behind and he told me I will never see him. Then he said if I went back he would keep my two other children with him, so I used to carry on in the home, being with him together, and no one could help.”

When she tried to get Copeland to sign their baby’s birth certificate, he spat the dummy.

“He screamed at me about a former wife who had taken his money.

He called her ‘a bitch, a whore and a lesbian’, and swore that no woman would ever get anything from him, although he did eventually sign the certificate.”

During this time, she says, Copeland would often threaten to have her deported back to Ukraine without her children. “I’ll keep them, and you won’t be able to go to court because I’ll make you leave the country.”

Copeland also took the unusual step of publishing a photograph of his fiancée onto an internet porn site, along with a story about their sexual exploits when he first met her in Russia: “My Elena didn’t like to drink, that was a problem! Still, I had my two beers and the offer of SEX was on, it was the Russian wash down now with no hot water from the tap. So Elena would fill a basin with hot water, and I would sit in the bath. Elena would wet me then with soap wash my body down, then rinse me. Now, guys who haven’t experienced this, it is good, very good to receive this care. So we are clean now, and it’s time to get dirty, so it’s off to the bed again for a lesson in Russian! The sex was good, very good…as will be revealed soon.”

The revelations are too graphic to reprint in a magazine.

Elena could see no way out. Although her understanding of English was growing, she still found it hard to speak it, and many people simply wrote her off as “an over-emotional Russian”. But the woman from the church who’d paid for the medicine to save Nicholai’s life turned out to be a guardian angel.

“So that woman, she said ‘I will help you go to a Women’s Refuge’.

I said ‘what is that?’ Because we don’t have that in our country. Can you imagine how crazy it seemed for me to leave for Women’s Refuge with four months old baby, and leave the man whom I loved, believe me. Later on I realised it was only about that he wants children to abuse.”

Elena fled on a Friday afternoon with baby and older son in tow.

She asked the Women’s Refuge to help get her deported back to the Ukraine on the grounds that her immigration status was now void because of the relationship break-up. And she didn’t have the money herself for airfares. But on Monday morning, Paul Copeland had already obtained a court ruling preventing Elena from taking baby Nicholai out of New Zealand.

The Russian mother was trapped. Her own immigration status meant she now had to leave New Zealand; the court order meant her four month old baby son could not go with her. Paul taunted her by threatening to keep Yuri as well.

“He always told me that he would send me back to Ukraine but he was keeping Yuri with him.”

Even so, Elena Reznikova still had no idea just what her fiancé had done in his past. It wasn’t until Paul’s sister picked her up from the Refuge that the missing pieces of the jigsaw began to tumble into place.

“She told me her brother is a paedophile, and he raped her and two others. And their father was a paedophile. It was like a dream for me because she got my Russian dictionary and she showed me the words.

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I hadn’t realised then that he had tried to kill his ex-wife. I was more shocked when I found that out.”

It was at this point that Elena was introduced to Copeland’s third wife, a woman named Elizabeth who’s still living in hiding, 11 years after first meeting Copeland. Elena had found a contact number for her and rang her from the Women’s Refuge. Elizabeth says she could barely understand the distressed Russian woman with the thick accent, but she took down bottles so she could feed baby Nicholai. When she heard Elena’s suspicions that the children had been sexually abused, this former Copeland bride heard the penny drop. Elizabeth immediately phoned Copeland’s sister when she got home, who explained that Paul had also sexually abused her when she was a child. “You should believe Elena,” Copeland’s sister told Elizabeth. t turned out Elizabeth was another foreign woman lured into Copeland’s orbit in 1994, just four years after his trial for trying to murder his first wife. Elizabeth’s own marriage was in difficulty, and she says Copeland was “very romantic” and charming, and convinced her to leave her husband. She says he acted like a father to her two daughters, and “got me pregnant two months after we met”.

Sound familiar? Copeland told Elizabeth it would be easier to get residency if she was pregnant.

Once his victim was trapped, Copeland moved from suave suitor to Hannibal Lecter, catching the neighbour’s cat, gassing it to death, and then burning it in front of his wife despite her pleas to spare the creature.

A recent study suggested people who torture animals are more likely to be sexual abusers. On the Richter scale of deviance, Paul Copeland was already an 11.

After Elizabeth and Paul’s son, Timothy, was born in 1995, he again turned his attention to Elizabeth’s two older daughters, often watching them shower, poking them frequently with a toilet brush while they were naked, assaulting them, verbally abusing them, making one of the girls pick up excrement in the garden using only her bare hands.

Elizabeth worked nights, leaving her husband to babysit six month old Timothy and her two daughters. The children’s grandmother would often pop in and find the girls weeping and distressed. He teased one of the older girls about her weight, calling her Moby Dick, and suggested to a family friend the other “would be a slut and pregnant” by the time she was 14.

It was around this time that Elizabeth, wife number three, discovered a box under the stairwell containing files relating to Copeland’s childhood and the fates of wives one and two.

She read of the bow and arrow attack on wife one, the declaration of temporary insanity and the very brief spell in Tokanui Hospital before the psychopathic Copeland had convinced the cuckoo-keepers he was sane enough to fly the nest. She read of how Paul had allegedly been raped by his own father, and a history of sex abuse in his family. She discovered how he’d met wife number two, a German woman (mother of Amanda), and burned her passport and all her papers. How he’d smashed all the windows in his house on one occasion, and psychiatric reports detailing the horrific tortures he’d practiced on animals as a child.

Naturally, after reading all this, Elizabeth became absolutely terrified about what might happen to her and her children.

When she tried to leave, and she did so half a dozen times, Copeland would invariably track her down, stalk her and terrify her until she returned. In the end, however, he booted her out along with her two daughters. Elizabeth says he physically threw them out the door, locked it and stayed inside with Timothy and Amanda. By the time Elizabeth returned with help, Copeland had barricaded both of his biological children in an upstairs bedroom.

Elizabeth staked out the local supermarket and tried to grab Timothy from the shopping trolley while Copeland’s back was turned, but 60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

SHE TOLD ME HER BROTHER IS A PAEDOPHILE, AND HE R APED HER AND TWO OTHERS. AND THEIR FATHER WAS A PAEDOPHILE. IT WAS LIKE A DREAM FOR ME BEC AUSE SHE GOT MY RUSSIAN DICTIONARY AND SHE SHOWED ME THE WORDS. I HADN’T REALISED THEN THAT HE HAD TRIED TO KILL HIS EX-WIFE. I WAS MORE SHOCKED WHEN I FOUND THAT OUT he foiled the rescue by screaming “Help, this woman is stealing my son!” He put Timothy in hiding. Police eventually found the two year old at Copeland’s sister’s house.

The stalking and terror got worse, however, and eventually Copeland managed to convince Elizabeth that he would leave her alone if she’d just give him access on alternative weeks to Timothy.

Mindful of the crossbow attack, Elizabeth signed the custody form.

It was after that, she says, that she noticed her little boy’s behaviour change markedly on his return from access visits; it was, she says unusually aggressive and strange.

This, then, was the story of wife number three.

The woman who would have been number four, Elena, is deeply saddened at the fate of Copeland’s first two children.

“Last time I saw Timothy and Amanda they put their heads down,

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they know that I know their problem but I can’t help them. They don’t talk, they’re very embarrassed to tell anybody what’s happening to them because they’re scared that their father will kill them. He told them, ‘I will kill you if you tell anyone’. He told it to my son but my son is Russian and Russians are very strong. We have a, how do you say, self, self preservation, as a child when you’re young. You learn to save yourself in a difficult situation, even losing your life.”

In the past year, Elena’s older son Yuri has told of being made to watch naked children on Copeland’s computer during the months that Copeland has had Nicholai in his care, and Elena’s family friends say Nicholai has complained of a “sore bottom”, and “dad touching me in the bottom”.

The boy has also returned from Copeland’s care walking strangely.

“I have three boys,” says Elena. “I have a lot of experience as a mother of boys. When they are small their penises never stand up, they don’t have hormones for sex, but my little boy, his penis is so sensitive. I think it has been massaged. He wakes up at night and says ‘it hurts’. I am so scared what will happen to him if he goes back to his father. This child has already been damaged.”

Yuri says he and the other children witnessed Paul Copeland interfering with Nicholai’s genitals and bottom – in fact, all the children were made to watch it.

Elena obtained a psychologist’s report on Yuri two years ago, and she says the psychologist was convinced Yuri had also been abused.

She says one of the most frightening things about Copeland is his psychopathic aloofness.

“He’s absolutely normal in public, but he’s not normal. His body language is absolutely absent. He doesn’t move, there’s no body language. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a former criminal anymore because I was scared that one day I would have to protect myself and the lives of my children. He told me I would never see my eldest son again, and I haven’t seen him in four years, his threat came true.

“When I go to bed I feel that I’m already dead or am unable to leave, or help my children to be happy, to be together. The man is killing me psychologically, emotionally. He would like to kill me physically. He has already tried to kill his ex-wife.

“My second relationship, my partner said ‘Elena, I can’t pay these bills for lawyers, this is crazy, just give the child away’. I said, ‘Peter, this is sexual abuse’. He said, ‘I know’. He said, ‘sorry Elena, I do love you but with all these problems I don’t want you. I don’t want your children’.”

Nor has the New Zealand Government come to the rescue of the children. The Immigration Service has cancelled Elena’s right to stay in New Zealand, and wants to deport her, if necessary without her children who would be left in the care of Paul Copeland.

“My application for residence was cancelled because I was born in Khazakstan. It’s another nonsense. Khazakstan is part of Russia and it appears on my birth certificate, but my parents took me out of Khazakstan when I was two months old, so Immigration Service asked me for a police certificate from Khazakstan, and it’s impossible to get! It’s so stupid.”

It wouldn’t be the first time New Zealand’s bureaucrats have been called stupid.

With Copeland continuing to stalk her and harass the men helping her, Elena found herself increasingly isolated. No money to keep up her fight to stay in New Zealand long enough to get the non-removal order lifted, no money to buy groceries. No work permit. She turned, reluctantly, to prostitution to pay the bills.

“I hated it. I did not want to do. But how else could I survive? How else could I provide?”

Today, she sells other services.

“My flatmates discover my cooking and cleaning is so good, they pay me to do all of it.”

With the help of a Russian-speaking lawyer, she’s launched a re-

HE’S ABSOLUTELY NORMAL IN PUBLIC, BUT HE’S NOT NORMAL. HIS BODY LANGUAGE IS ABSOLUTELY ABSENT. HE DOESN’T MOVE, THERE’S NO BODY LANGUAGE. I DIDN’T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH A FORMER CRIMINAL ANYMORE BEC AUSE I WAS SCARED THAT ONE DAY I WOULD HAVE TO PROTECT MYSELF AND THE LIVES OF MY CHILDREN newed bid to secure New Zealand residency and, as at the time of writing, she has temporarily wrested back control of her children from Paul Copeland and is helping heal their scars.

“I got Nicholai back two weeks ago,” she murmurs. “He wakes at night, but I think he will get better. I love him. Once I didn’t want to stay in New Zealand. Now I do.”

The most stunning aspect of the whole story, however, is why on earth a man with Paul Copeland’s psychiatric history, a sexual predator who raped his own sister and tried to murder his wife with a bow and arrow, a man who enjoyed killing cats in the cruellest ways he could find – why such a man would be allowed anywhere near a child by CYFS’ social workers and psychologists.

For Elena, that is the biggest mystery of all.

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BEEFCAKE The hidden sex hormones being added to beef

THERE’S NOTHING MORE RED-BLOODED THAN A JUICY SLAB OF STEAK, BUT BARBARA SUMNERBURSTYN REPORTS THAT A FEMALE SEX HORMONE LINKED TO ‘GAY’ BEHAVIOUR IN ANIMALS IS BEING PUMPED INTO SOME NEW ZEALAND BEEF CATTLE, WITHOUT BEING DISCLOSED ON FOOD PACKAGING LABELS 64, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

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utchers dancing like Hari Krishna’s, senior citizens thrashing out hard rock, the EversSwindell twins smiling furiously, meat, especially red meat is hot right now. “New Zealand ers are fond of their meat,” says Richard Umbers, managing director of supermarket chain Progressive Enterprises. And quality, he comments, is everything.

Meat and Wool New Zealand agrees. Their website extols the benefits of year round outdoor grazing. ‘Livestock grow to good weights with little need for veterinary drugs, chemical inputs or feed supplements.’

But like ‘fog facts,’ – important things known but not known that nobody seems able to focus on anymore – described in Larry Beinhart’s book, “Fog Facts’ Politics: What We Don’t Know and Why We Don’t Know It there’s more going on in the paddocks than just grass munching.

Hormone Growth Promotants for example. Known in the industry as HGPs, the official line is that the sex hormones implanted into the ears of cattle are natural

or nature identical substances that simply replicate nature, mimicking the hormones lost through castration and equating to other natural dietary sources of hormones such as eggs or soybeans.

But how do New Zealanders feel about growth promoting hormones implanted in their meat patties? Rod Slater, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau says that at the time of establishing the Quality Mark in 1997 consumers surveyed showed a clear preference for meat free of hormone additives. He says they no longer survey this but he is convinced our attitudes have not changed.

Until a few weeks ago The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) agreed. In the section relating to HGP’s in meat the NZFSA declared it was ‘their policy that consumers should be provided with adequate information so they can make informed choices about food matters such as this, and good food labelling is important in this process.’

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 65

THE EU COMPLETED A FULL SCIENTIFIC RISK ASSESSMENT, RE-EVALUATING THE POTENTIAL RISKS TO HUMAN HEALTH FROM HORMONE RESIDUES. THIS RESULTED IN THE PERMANENT PROHIBITION OF ESTRADIOL 17ß

But question your butcher about HGP’s and he’ll look at you blankly. Read the labels on the packaged meat at some supermarkets and you’ll be hard pressed to find any acknowledgement of hormone use, despite the fact that they’re implanted into around 80,000 head of cattle each year. While that figure is low, about 2 percent of our total market, if you’re a meat eater, that’s a potential additive you didn’t bargain for.

The NZFSA endorsement of food labelling to ensure informed choice has now disappeared from their website. (1) When questioned about the presence of artificial hormones in New Zealand’s meat chain and the lack of labelling Sandra Daly, Director of Communications reports they are a science-based organisation and based on the scientific evidence, there is no consumer protection basis for banning HGP use for beef production for New Zealand. (2) Australia endorses that position. In a major report the Australian Department of Health and Aging found that the human safety and toxicology of HGP’s have been extensively assessed by regulatory authorities in Australia, the USA, Canada and New Zealand, in addition to expert scientific committees from the World

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Health Organisation. The NZFSA says the report forms a part of the information New Zealand considers in developing their views on HGPs. They comment that all international bodies and national regulatory agencies accept the safety data that residues of registered hormones do not pose a threat to consumers.

All that is, except the European Union (EU). The use of HGPs was banned by The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in 1988. The WTO responded that the ban was unscientific. In 2003 the EU completed a full scientific risk assessment, re-evaluating the potential risks to human health from hormone residues. This resulted in the permanent prohibition of estradiol 17ß.

Their precautionary approach extends to five hormones (testosterone, progesterone, trembolone acetate, zeranol and melengestrol acetate) that have now been provisionally prohibited. (12) In addition to estradiol 17ß there are seven registered HGP’s in New Zealand including those containing progesterone and trembolone acetate. (13) In banning HGP’s the EU say they have considered all social, economic and political factors. They concluded that estradiol 17ß was a ‘complete’ carcinogen and that

others such as trembolone acetate the synthetic equivalent of testosterone, should be viewed as having potentially endocrine-disrupting, developmental, immunological, neurobiological, immunotoxic, genotoxic and carcinogenic effects. The EU claims there is a lack of data to support an alternative view. They also contend that despite the WTO rulings there is limited information available on the levels of the various metabolites, or breakdown products, despite this information being relevant.

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he EU also suggests that young children may be more sensitive to low levels of the hormones than previously thought. The authors conclude that in light of recent progress in our understanding of estrogen levels in children, possible adverse effects on human health by consumption of meat from estrogen-treated animals cannot be excluded.

The WTO has consistently ruled against the EU. Despite WTOapproved retaliatory economic trade sanctions imposed by the United States, the EU continues to defy orders to lift the ban. EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy stated in November last year that the EU ban on certain HGPs was based on a thorough and independent scientific risk assessment. (12).

The precautionary principle exercised by the EU appears to be echoed by a leading comparative cancer research programme at Cornell University.

They say that while there’s no evidence to suggest that eating meat from hormone-treated animals affects breast cancer risks, a conclusion on lack of human health effect can only be made after large-scale studies to compare the health of people who eat HGP meat to people who don’t. These have never been done. Cornell also acknowledges that large epidemiological studies have never been done to assess whether or not early puberty in developing girls is associated with having eaten growth hormone-treated foods. (14) The Australian report concludes that even with the EU’s latest data supporting the ban they can find no grounds for amending Australia’s regulatory position on HGPs. (6) New Zealand takes the same position.

Derek Moore, New Zealand manager for Elanco the makers of Compudose, one of the most widely used HGPs in New Zealand, is verbose in his dismissal of any concerns surrounding the products.

“There is no question that the EU position is a form of trade embargo and market protectionism. It’s a non-tariff trade barrier.” He went on to describe the precautionary principal (the EU’s better-safethan-sorry approach to implementing health regulations) as entirely arbitrary. “I give it no weight,” he said and added that the science in

THE LESBIAN GULLS

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he issue of estrogen in the diet is a controversial one.

Scientists have discovered a number of foods – most notably soy – that contain high levels of phytoestrogens, the plant equivalent of the female sex hormone.

Although initially dismissed by some as “soy conspiracy theory”, research on the effects of phytoestrogens and other estrogen compounds on human sexual development is now widespread, particularly because of soy’s use as a milk substitute for infants.

New Scientist magazine reported two years ago that girls raised on soy infant formula are more likely to suffer menstrual discomfort, and boys born to vegetarian mothers are five times more likely to suffer genital abnormalities. Other studies have reinforced suspicions about diets high in phytoestrogens, and some scientists now believe there’s evidence that they could be a factor in causing homosexuality.

The first evidence came in from the animal kingdom, as Science News online reported: “While the health community has recently begun a host of studies to explore a possible link between estrogenic pollutants and cancers in women, few researchers have focused on the related reproductive risks such environmental hormones may pose for both sexes. That’s unfortunate says Theo Colborn, a zoologist with the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., because reproductive effects are likely to be “much more widespread.”

“Indeed, she notes, animal data are beginning to suggest that far smaller exposures are needed to trigger reproductive effects than to induce cancers. And because some of these reproductive changes may be subtle, they could evade detection for decades – even a lifetime– unless hunted for explicitly.

“Colborn has convened a number of symposia in the past few years for researchers who study reproductively impaired wildlife populations or laboratory animals exposed

to environmental hormones. Most of these scientists, she says, describe the links they’re finding between impaired reproduction and “hormonal” pollutants as sobering—if not downright scary.

“Indeed, she and many other environmental scientists worry that if hormone-like contaminants can feminize male animals, these ubiquitous pollutants may also underlie troubling reproductive-system trends being witnessed in men.”

A University of California, Davis, study by avian toxicologist Michael Fry in the 1980s determined that estrogenic pollution lay behind the “lesbian behaviour” of seagulls. Significantly, to test their theory, they injected normal seagull eggs with estradiol, the additive being pumped into some New Zealand and Australian beef.

“To connect these effects with estrogenic pollutants, Fry and his colleagues conducted a number of experiments during the 1980s. In one, they injected eggs of contaminantfree gulls with estradiol…When the hatchlings emerged, they exhibited the same array of feminized sex organs as DDT-contaminated Western gulls on Santa Barbara Island, off the coast of California.”

The estradiol, and a range of other estrogenic pollutants like DDT, effectively “chemically castrated” the males, Fry says.

As Science News reported: “He suspects the males’ likely lack of interest in mating explains not only why female gulls dominated Santa Barbara Island’s breeding colony in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also why the females cohabited.”

Increasingly, scientists suspect environmental hormone pollutants caused by human agriculture and industrial waste are working into the animal food chain and creating more instances of so-called “gay behaviour” by animals.

The question is, what are the hormones doing to humans?

Ian Wishart

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 67

favour of HGPs was so unequivocal that there was really only one side to this issue, the side of the facts.

Compudose is a controlled release estradiol. The package insert says Estradiol 17ß is a naturally occurring substance. In the material safety data sheet published by Elanco, the emergency overview for the product states that estradiol may enter the body through the skin, causes cancer and is highly potent. Fetal changes, reproductive tissue damage, mental disorders are also mentioned, as are increased breast size and other feminizing effects in males occupationally exposed to estrogens.

The published warning for the product says that even intermittent absorption of small amounts of estrogen through the skin may result in accumulation of relatively high systemic levels with concomitant negative health effects on children whose parents work with estrogen products. (3) Elanco, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, is at pains to point out that its product does not pose any health risk, either to those handling the product or to consumers who ultimately eat the implanted meat. “The data is pointing out the hazards of exposure,” says Moore, “that is entirely different from the risk.”

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ompudose is implanted only in the skin immediately beneath the ear of a cattle beast. Disposal of ears of implanted cattle is an issue. NZFSA says they are discarded as waste, rendered or used in gelatin production. Gelatin is made from skin (pig skin and hide split) and bone taken from slaughtered animals that have been approved for human consumption. The resulting gelatin is then used in a plethora of locally produced products. A report by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) said that failure to discard implanted ears could lead to mg amounts of hormone residues to enter the food chain and cause acute toxicity in consumers. The NZFSA responds that Australia allows HGP implantation in other parts of the body. But as Elanco New Zealand points out, the product and all product use guidelines are the same as in New Zealand. Martin Holmes, a spokesperson for the APVMA says that, as in New Zealand, Compudose is implanted only in the ear.

A further issue is the use of antibiotics. Elanco acknowledges that

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the implant may be dusted with the antibiotic tetracycline. Derek Moore is unsure if the New Zealand version contains any antibiotic. He suggests that perhaps the implant is coated in talcum powder.

In the United States the needle used to insert the implant is also often coated with an antibiotic. Vet Services in the Hawkes Bay are adamant they do not use antibiotics to cleanse needles. But either way the trace use of an antibiotic for non-therapeutic purposes is concerning. In the United States a bill currently before the US House of Representatives (The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2005) stated that non-therapeutic overuse of antibiotics in animals was creating severe antibiotic resistance in people. The task force cautioned that if current trends continue, treatments for common infections could become nonexistent. (7) Again the EU is at the forefront of precautionary measures, banning the use of all non-therapeutic veterinary antibiotics identified as similar or identical to those used in humans. Elanco says it has yet to be demonstrated that non-therapeutic use of antibiotics has a detrimental effect on humans.

So why use HGPs at all? The industry calls them ‘quality enhancers’.

In a local trial cattle treated with Compudose had an average weight increase of 23.5% (9). Cattle treated with HGPs grow faster enabling them to be sent to the works in shorter time, lowering the farmer cost of beef raising. It’s estimated that for every dollar spent on an HGP there is a five-dollar return.

Because of the EU ban and restrictions in nine other countries considered minor markets HGPs are strictly controlled in New Zealand.

They include identification prior to or immediately after implantation, double-tagging, strict dose notation, a level of paper work that one vet described as onerous, implantation by trained and certified implanters and a requirement that all lost tags be replaced immediately. Once HGP cattle reach the works they must be separated from other animals and either killed in a separate area or only after all the equipment is completely cleansed. Abattoir workers spoken to described the processes as time-consuming. The NZFSA reports that failure to abide by any conditions outlined by MAF could result in prosecution and fines of up to $100,000.

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IN THE UNITED STATES THE NEEDLE USED TO INSERT THE IMPLANT IS ALSO OFTEN COATED WITH AN ANTIBIOTIC. VET SERVICES IN THE HAWKES BAY ARE ADAMANT THEY DO NOT USE ANTIBIOTICS TO CLEANSE NEEDLES. BUT EITHER WAY THE TRACE USE OF AN ANTIBIOTIC FOR NON-THERAPEUTIC PURPOSES IS CONCERNING

But an inspection by a team from the EU in May found the systems were not quite as robust as the authority suggests. (11) The team reported a number of issues, such as the accuracy in accounting for all doses of HGPs passing through the distribution chain. They were concerned that administration of HGPs and completion of the records were being carried out by the farmers themselves and they called for tighter control on use of animal remedies that contain active ingredients that are banned in the EU. The New Zealand Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines group who manage HGPs say they have now taken corrective actions.

Perhaps the most salient point for New Zealand meat consumers is the fact that all identification procedures and separation effort is designed solely to protect our standing with the EU. “There is no emphasis on ensuring the local market can access non-HGP meat,” admits the NZFSA. (8) They advise that there are three main mechanisms for post-slaughter separation and identification. Organics such as those run by Biogro, the New Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau’s domestic Quality Mark and Qualmark. (Qualmark reports that they do not certify meat)

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ew Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau advises consumers to look out for their red tick of hormone-free approval. Seager Mason, technical director for BioGro says organic food by definition is free of additives. “The whole point of organics is the system for monitoring the producers.

Food producers should always declare the means of manufacture.” He comments that any decision on the safety or otherwise of food ingredients should be made by the consumer not the ‘vested-interest’ producer. He adds that regulators have made a deliberate decision to exclude the public from decision-making. “In essence they’re saying they know best, that we should just trust them. It’s patronizing at best.” He comments that when

a government department calls itself a ‘scientific organisation,’ they’re about to give you the benefit of political or personal opinion. “We’re educated to a high level in New Zealand. Surely we are able to assimilate facts and opinions and make our own decisions.”

Such is the adherence to the ‘science’ of HGPs and the belief that the EU ban is nothing more than market protectionism, the only risk acknowledged by the NZFSA is a trade risk. Implanted animals in New Zealand are not tested for residues of any of the registered HGPs. Instead up to 450 non-implanted cattle are tested to ensure compliance with the identification regulations to protect the export market.

NZ Food Safety Authority director of animal products Tony Zohrab was reported recently as saying any decision on the use of HGPs is very much a commercial one between farmers and processors. The organisations official position is that while consumer perception obviously plays a role in decision-making, wherever possible, when that perception is at odds with scientific evidence, they prefer consumer education to scientifically unjustified regulation.

Elanco’s Derek Moore says their own consumer research shows people want safe and affordable food. “The use of HGPs and antibiotics in animal production is of very low concern.” And he comments that banning things is unacceptable in our modern marketplace.

He’s right of course. HGPs should not be banned.

The tracking and status of HGP cattle in New Zealand is comprehensive and effective. Labeling for the local market is no more commercially onerous than separation for the European market. Consumer choice is promoted as the ultimate freedom. It is the market that must test the validity of claims in support of HGPs. It is the market that must sort out whether consumers really want to eat meat grown with growth promoting hormones.

REFERENCES 1. NZFSA chemicals in food: Date accessed, 12/6/2005" http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/consumers/food-safety-topics/chemicals-in-food/hgps/ 2. Answer to question 30 from NZFSA, document on file 3. ca_msds_compudose.pdf 4. compudose – Elanco.pdf 5. Compudose.pdf 6. review_HGP.pdf 7. http://www.theorator.com/bills109/hr2562.html 8. Q & A document from NZFSA on file 9. http://www.country-wide.co.nz/article/3484.html 10. Andersson, A-M and N.E. Skakkebfk (1999): Exposure to Exogenous Estrogens in Food: Possible Impact on Human Development and Health.European Journal of Endocrinology 140 477-485. Balter, Michael (1999): Scientific Cross-Claims Fly

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In Continuing Beef War. Science Vol 284 1453-1454 11. http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/acvm/publications/agvet link/issue-21/article10.htm 12. http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleases Action. do?reference=IP/04/1345&format =HTML&aged= 0&language=en&guiLanguage=en 13. http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/acvm/registers-lists/acvmregister index.htm?setup_file= acvmreg.setup.cgi& session_file= &_dmode =b&LICID=&TRADE_NAME =&PRODUCT_TYPE=Hormonal +Growth+Promotant &NAME =&COMMON _NAME=&DATE_ SINCE=& DATE _BEFORE= &sort_by= 0&sort_order =forward& rows_to_return=10&submit_search=Search 14. http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Factsheet/Diet/fs37. hormones.cfm

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September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 71

LIFESTYLE

EDUCATION

KRMNLS N TH CLSSRMS Geoff Laurent argues we’re missing some of the basics of teaching reading skills

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ebate over how to teach reading has been turned to stealing and violence: “I can’t read. The teachpresent for some time. It usually involves ers knew and did nothing. By Standard Four I gave up ‘phonics’ versus ‘whole language’ proponents. trying and started beating everyone up and stealing.”

However, it is starting to look like a new question needs to The path for a child like this is almost mapped out: be asked: “Are our educators being criminally negligent?” expulsion from school, into crime, then to prison or I make this accusation on the basis of my experience worse. There are other things in the mix but the part of teaching remedial students in schools as well as operat- illiteracy is definitely underrated by most people. ing as a private language tutor for the past seven years.

This perspective is supported by another Herald artiMy work in low decile intermediate schools and insti- cle quoting a King Cobra gang member. tutions for children who have been expelled from the “Most of the kids in ‘Tinny Houses’ can’t read or main stream education system meant I encountered 12 write. They join because they have no other hope. They and 13 year olds who struggled to read the most simple can’t fit into society. Being in a gang means you can be in words. But I have encountered the same problem in a $10 million company.” children attending the very best schools in the eastern It is widely acknowledge the illiteracy rate in prison is suburbs of Auckland. high. Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of prisonWhen intelligent to very intelligent children are reading ers cannot read well enough to function in society. four to five years below their age, and I can largely solve Figures quoted in parliament claim 40 percent of school their problems within 6 leavers cannot read or months to a year, I can write adequately. Ten Figures quoted in parliament only conclude that somepercent would be cause where, our education for concern. Forty perclaim 40 percent of school leavers system is negligent. cent should send the cannot read or write adequately It is easy to appreciate auditors out with a how important being vengeance. It is nothing able to read is but I don’t think we perceive the depth to but criminal that this can happen in schools no matter which it assaults all aspects of the non-readers life. I say how well resourced and managed they are. this with reference to ‘snapshots’ I am getting from The almost undeniable fact is failing to learn to read parents of their children ‘coming to life’. In one case, produces a stunted life. Classroom teachers should be realising that they are not dumb, that they can read, coin- reacting to reading failures in a similar manner to how cided with previously unseen excellence in athletics. In they would if a child stopped breathing. Sadly the oppoanother, the child was promoted to the top maths group site is occurring. Intelligent children are being labelled and 6 months into the programme. ignored. In one case I am aware of, the parents were told, These are lives that were seriously suffering but largely “your child will just be a social butterfly-don’t worry.” unseen. They were not troublesome kids. Neither were I have also come to be circumspect about anyone being they withdrawn conversationally. diagnosed dyslexic. My own experience supports research At the other end of the scale we do see a tangible that questions the very existence of such a condition. result but maybe fail to make the connection. The frusDianne McGuiness, in her book, ‘Why Children Can’t trated learner becomes violent.

Read’, says, “Clear your minds of notions like ‘dyslexia’ “The NZ Herald (June 30,2000) cites the story of a 10 and ‘learning difficulties’. The research data are overwhelmyear-old who beat up a child so badly he put him in ing that these terms are invalid. If you base your thinking hospital. His explanation to the reporter about why he on a deficit model, this will mean you won’t expect rapid

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progress. If a child has a reading problem you must do something about it fast. Don’t hope the problem will self-correct. It won’t.”

Dr Fred A Baughman Jr, A pediatric neurologist in the United States, says, “In 1993 at least 8 million school-age children in the US were said to be dyslexic. However, what parents are not told is that more than 60 years of research has failed to confirm that a defect of any sort exists in the brain of a child who is labelled dyslexic.”

My personal observations indicate that a child whose learning style isn’t highly visual, and has been encouraged to guess at words, is trapped in a form of mental trial and error. They see a letter grouping that reminds them of a word so they give that word a go. The selected letters can be in the middle, beginning, or at the end of the word, but invariably, what they attach to this recognised grouping is a random snatch from the memory. When given feedback that they are wrong, they make another snatch. So ‘forest’ can become ‘frog’ or ‘store’ or’ first’ or ‘fast’. ‘Plantation’ becomes ‘champion’. This may have the appearance of reading backwards but it is not. Another time the same child says ‘plantine’.

Without exception, children whose only strategy is guessing resign themselves to the fact that slowly looking at a word is a waste of time.

Reading a page of script has simply become a lottery. Rectifying the problem requires two focusses. These are instruction in the phonetic structure and urging the child out of the old guessing approach. Guessing is the biggest barrier to empowering the failing reader. The dearth of phonetic instruction is exemplified by a child name Cheryl, who by year four had also had a year of remedial tuition from a well-known provider. My initial 20-minute interview revealed she regarded all ‘ch’ groupings as ‘sh’ because that was the sound in her name. It seems impossible that any child can get past two years of school without knowing such basics.

Mistakes like this will not occur if children are taught how words are put together phonetically. Once they know the sound that goes with a letter grouping they are in control. Children who learn this way can

decipher words they have never seen before. The argument that there is no point in teaching phonics because not all words follow the rules really is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The number of words that have to be committed to memory are a fraction of what they are without being able to decipher phonetically.

The fact that some children still manage to learn to read cannot be seen as evidence of adequate teaching. Differing learning styles are not being adequately addressed. My observation is that a proportion of children only become adept at some thing when they understand the concept, while others are much more tuned to remembering and reproducing what they have seen and heard.

An example of this differing approach is noted in an article about one of the most brilliant mathematicians of recent times. David Hilbert (1862 – 1943) is said to have astonished associates at mathematical gatherings because he was so slow to comprehend new ideas. To understand an idea he had to work it out himself from the beginning.

Hilbert confessed that whenever he read or was told something in maths, he found it very difficult, if not impossible, to understand the explanation. He had to seize the thing, get to the bottom of it, chew on it, and work it out on his own – usually in a new and simpler way.

It follows that a similar difference in learning styles exists when learning to read. For some, being deprived of the skills to decipher a word phonetically is tantamount to never being taught.

If my deductions are correct, those who have failed to institute a comprehensive reading instruction system in our schools have to be questioned. Why hasn’t the fallout been noticed? Why has solid evidence of success with phonics been largely ignored? Why are teachers not given the skills to teach phonics? How is it teachers are permitted to make assumptions that have life long repercussions? And why aren’t we treating the large number of illiterate adults as a national emergency? Life turns a dark colour if you can’t read and write, and the flow on costs for the nation must be enormous. Could it be that better teaching of reading would prevent a prison being built.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 73

LIFESTYLE

MONEY

THE DINNER PARTY Our scribe Peter Hensley gets shot at, and takes the pulse of punters at a party

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he birthday party was supposed to be a quiet explained that finance companies needed surety that the affair. Just family and a few close friends, how- money deposited with them would not be whipped ever when they arrived parking appeared to be at out soon after deposit. The trade off for this confirmaa premium in the small street that formed part of the tion is generally a higher interest rate. Les was not in a coastal village. They were late due to unforeseen circum- position to commit for a longer time and accordingly stances. A small bullet-type hole in the front window could not expect a high interest rate. Satisfied that he of their house interested the police when they reported had received appropriate qualified advice the topic turned it and they were asked to remain home until the officers to trout fishing as he was due to sneak away to Turangi had called around for a closer inspection. The officers on the following Monday for three days. themselves had been delayed by a disturbance in the Les moved on to circulate and his place was quickly centre of town which in turn meant that they were taken by Arthur. Arthur was big on commercial propamong the last to arrive at the gathering. erty. He and his wife were in several joint ventures with The pot luck dinner was well on the way to being fully a fellow who seemed to have a knack for sniffing out consumed by the time they arrived. It was a typical kiwi opportunities. The topic quickly turned to the recent party. Lots of good food, adult beverages and varied surge in property prices. Arthur’s memory turned out conversations. Peter spied a spare seat and took the better than most, as he recalled several instances in the opportunity to sit down and relax. He chatted to the past thirty years when it was almost impossible to sell young lass seated next to him as she was close to his properties on Main street. Well-located properties were youngest daughter in always easily tenanted, age. Before long he behowever he recalled sevcame aware of an older eral occasions where Another contributor could not gentleman who had pothere were more propcomprehend why the Government sitioned himself on the erties available for tenhad to make a profit by creating other chair to his right. ancy than were actually Les bided his time and tenanted. He knew that budget surpluse waited until the young the good times would lass went to refresh her not last forever and drink. He had just sold one of his run-offs, (in layman’s suggested that his goal was to reduce their debt expoterms it is a series of off-farm grazing paddocks) and was sure to below 30%. That way the properties could halve curious as to what to do with his cash. He had no debt in value and they would still be viable investments. Also and the cash was gathering dust at the local bank. Les’s as all involved had other incomes, they were not yet wife Judy had been on to him about asking Peter for his dependent on the income the buildings were generatadvice and thought now was as good a time as any. ing. Peter enjoyed listening to Arthur as he had both Peter asked a few key questions about debt and future experienced and understood market cycles. His logical cash requirements before he suggested that the cash could approach to investment was downright simple and he sit exactly where it was. Les was a little perplexed as he knew his obligations as a landlord. Whilst not unique had seen very attractive interest rates advertised in the he was a rare individual. Arthur also appreciated the media by a range of finance companies. He thought he value of a good holiday and went on to describe their should get onto one of these. The only trouble was last trip to Alaska and the cruise ship voyage to the that Les might need the cash for the potential purchase glaciers. Peter felt quite envious. of the farm next door in several months time. Peter At an appropriate time Peter refreshed his own glass

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74, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

WITH OVER 90% OF BUSINESSES IN NEW ZEALAND HAVING LESS THAN FIVE EMPLOYEES, MS CLARK’S EXTRA HOLIDAYS POLICY FOR ALL SIMPLY INCREASED EMPLOYERS’ WAGES BILLS AND CREATED ADDITIONAL STAFFING ISSUES, HARDLY A PRODUCTIVITY INDUCEMENT FOR SMALL BUSINESS and on his way back from the kitchen he bumped into Chris. Now here was an entrepreneur. A clever, hard working individual who had a habit of making his own luck by using adversity as a tool for improvement. He had had his share of bad luck and was recently rewarded with an above average sale of his business. He told Peter that he was just filling in time as he and his partner were on their way to Australia to take up another opportunity in a new field. As part of the hand-over process he had recently contacted his suppliers and advised them of the sale hoping that they would continue to offer the purchaser similar continuity of supply of products and services. One supplier congratulated Chris on selling and said that he too was thinking of selling up his business interests. At 80 he was more than financially secure, he only worked to stimulate his mind and he wanted an interest to keep himself busy. His next comment took Chris by surprise. He saw the economy at an all time high and his experience suggested that the baby boomers had gotten ahead of themselves with too much debt and not enough old fashioned saving. The signs were everywhere. Novice property punters, with no experience as landlords were leveraging themselves into deals which relied on future price increases to make the venture profitable. They thought that LAQC’s and negative gearing automatically translated into future prosperity funded by the friendly IRD. Both Chris and his octogenarian supplier knew that one should never use the term friendly and IRD in the same sentence. The same could be said for banks, a lifetime of experience had taught them that.

Chris went on to explain the details of their new business venture and the figures sounded particularly impressive.

The circle widened as more party goers joined the discussion which quickly switched to politics, as it tends to do at such gatherings. The topic of Don Brash’s recently published biography was raised by one contributor. He had not long finished the tome and was clearly a newly convinced supporter of the ex-governor of the Reserve Bank. Peter later found out that the devotee was an ex-Labour supporter who had

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

become disillusioned by the alternative bias being displayed by the Government. He believed that the Government should support the overall economy by supporting business. With over 90% of businesses in New Zealand having less than five employees, Ms Clark’s extra holidays policy for all simply increased employers’ wages bills and created additional staffing issues, hardly a productivity inducement for small business. Another contributor could not comprehend why the Government had to make a profit by creating budget surpluses. If the tax take is too high, why didn’t Mr Cullen reduce taxes so that the books balanced. Mr Brash’s extensive experience in both private and public office suggests that he may prove to be a more market-aware Prime Minister than the current incumbent. Over the past thirty plus years he has personally addressed more community organisations and industry conferences than most existing politicians. His skills, talent and ability have been on public display over that same time frame.

The newly found convert suggested that if you take into account the adage that political parties don’t win elections, in fact the other side loses, then Mr Brash appears to have victory well within his sight. The only concern could be who he takes into power with him. Peter listened carefully to the different contributions, which at that stage were being fuelled by the adult beverages. He had learnt that in situations like this, it was wise to keep his own counsel. He had also discovered that when alcohol was involved it was easier and far more polite to listen than try to attempt to share one’s political opinion with an unknown audience.

Shortly after this minor discussion the birthday cake appeared and appropriate songs were mixed with polite present unwrapping and gasps of appreciation. The crowd in the kitchen cleaned and washed the plates and shortly after the party goers and advice seekers started to disperse. Peter’s thoughts returned briefly to the hole in his front porch window, pleased in a way that it was that window and not the windscreen of the car he was driving home.

ing that you now have one empty cylinder.

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

livered to you on your designated day.

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

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 75

LIFESTYLE

TECHNOLOGY

GETTING SMARTER Have laptop? Get a PDA smartphone to make yourself fully mobile, suggests Ian Wishart

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tuck in traffic, and desperately trying to remember springs to mind: use the Treo’s mobile internet to Google the name of that Turkish café further up the line a Turkish café in the suburb concerned, and see what so I could phone in an order ahead. Could I recall turns up. Within seconds, not only had the café-whoseit? Not in a lifetime. I only did a little hooch in my name-escaped-me popped up on the Treo’s screen, youth, but I swear I can feel the loss of every single one but the phone’s intuitive web interface gave me the of those brain cells two decades down the track. option of dialling the café phone number at the tap of My options were limited: try and play ‘guess the name a stylus. And, after making the call, the experience was you’re after’ with Telecom’s 018 service, or simply turn consummated by Treo offering to add the café to the up at the café and wait a further 20 minutes for the address book. kebabs to cook. Neither option appealed.

Oh so easy, and it all took about 35 seconds – less Enter, the PalmOne Treo 650 smartphone. For a time than it takes to navigate Telecom’s 123 service menu. magazine that utilises the latest technology and softThe beauty of the Treo is that its web browser looks ware, the efficiency gains from making staff fully mobile and works like a full monty browser: you get pictures, have been tremendous. Even so, the Treo 650 has been hyperlinks, the works. The PalmOne software supplied a voyage of discovery. Combining all the bells and whis- with the 650 optimises the internet so that websites tles of the Palm range with a mobile phone, the Treo download more quickly than you’d expect to your morange offers a versatility lacking in other PDAs. Frankly, bile phone.

I’d been sceptical of the PDA craze largely because I As outlined above, Investigate magazine staff are couldn’t see much point in them. Those who have equipped with the latest notebook computers and laptops, use them.

Telecom’s EVDO moThose who don’t, use bile broadband (for the The beauty of the Treo is that PDAs. Or so I thought.

NZ edition) and Optus To a large extent, this remobile broadband in its web browser looks and works mains my perspective. I Australia. Thus, for like a full monty browser: you get still can’t see the merit in heavy duty mobile jourtrying to do screeds of nalism/production depictures, hyperlinks, the works real work on a handheld mands, we’re generally device – texting is great using notebooks. Where for teenagers but you’re not exactly going to write King the PalmOne range slots in, however, is on those occaLear on a mobile phone, are you? Sure, any PDA worth sions where a notebook is too bulky or overt to be its name offers synchronicity with laptops or desktop useful. The supplied software, again, provides an interPCs, but unless the PDA is fully wireless and independface for Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel or ent in its own right then it still relies on said PC or Powerpoint) to be optimised automatically and laptop for its internet access which – to me – seems a uploaded to the Treo, where I can either reference them little like putting an eagle on a leash. Great, so your PDA in meetings or edit them on the run before emailing can link through your PC to go online. Yippee! Why them to a colleague via the Treo’s online email function. not just use the PC to go online in the first place.

That email function, in the first instance, is a proAh, but the PalmOne Treo is an eagle set to wing. gramme called Versamail 3.0, which comes as standard Stuck in traffic, brain ticking over in that aforemen- with the Treo. Others, like SnapperMail, can be purtioned mental dash for some kind of solution to my chased for a small extra fee. Initially it was the Versamail Turkish kebab dilemma, when suddenly a third option programme that gave me some grief on the phone.

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76, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

STUCK IN TRAFFIC, BRAIN TICKING OVER IN THAT AFOREMENTIONED MENTAL DASH FOR SOME KIND OF SOLUTION TO MY TURKISH KEBAB DILEMMA, WHEN SUDDENLY A THIRD OPTION SPRINGS TO MIND: USE THE TREO’S MOBILE INTERNET TO GOOGLE A TURKISH CAFÉ IN THE SUBURB CONCERNED, AND SEE WHAT TURNS UP

Thanks to interconnectivity issues between Vodafone (suppliers of the 650) and Telecom Xtra, one first has to purchase an extra service from Xtra for $2 a month before you can download email and – as I was to discover – a technical quirk with the Versamail software meant you couldn’t upload email to send via your Xtra account, you had to find another email provider to do this with. Conveniently, Vodafone allow the use of their own SMTP outgoing mail server so that problem was eventually solved. Alternatively, I could have purchased SnapperMail which works perfectly well with Xtra’s SMTP servers. The software integrates with Microsoft Outlook, although not with Busi-

ness Contact Manager – if you use BCM you’ll need to select all your business contacts and copy them into the Outlook Contact directory in order for the Treo to see them.

The Treo also comes equipped with a digital camera and VGA video camera – again, a useful function both for home and business. Images and documents are either stored on the Treo’s 32mb internal memory or on an SD expansion card of your choice.

Bluetooth is standard on the 650, making for easy wireless synchronisation with the notebook computer or any other Bluetooth-enabled device you wish.

The 650 isn’t cheap – at around $1,150 plus GST it’s the price of a baseline laptop – but its versatility complements an existing IT setup.

You wouldn’t purchase a PDA if you didn’t have a computer, and while you can get great PDAs for $400 upwards, without the mobile phone and internet coverage they’re not necessarily the best value for money if you need portability AND mobility. On the other hand, the Treo also comes in a cheaper format, the Treo 600, which is a similar phone designed for Telecom’s CDMA and 1X networks, rather than GSM. The Telecom version is on offer at $499, but differs slightly in that it doesn’t offer Bluetooth and its battery is built in, which means once the battery’s charge cycle is shot it’s a bit of a mission to fix.

Because of Telecom’s mobile internet framework, the 600 is reportedly slightly faster than the 650 online, but there’s not a lot in it.

PalmOne’s agents in New Zealand tested their phones against the state of the art Harrier EVDO unit offered by Telecom, and found that on the Apple site, for example, the Palm units were only around 30% slower to download pages, despite the vast differences between the mobile internet and mobile broadband services on paper. That said, if speed is of the essence then you’re likely to be using a full EVDO wireless card on your notebook anyway and sucking webpages out of the ether at 500kbs. EVDO on handhelds is still not as fast as it is for computers.

Significantly, both Telecom and Vodafone will be offering much faster mobile broadband speeds between now and the middle of next year as network improvements are rolled out. Even so, the 650 is plenty fast enough for my purposes, and I’m an internet speed freak.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 77

LIFESTYLE

TOYBOX

FULL COLOUR FUN Navigating with latest new releases

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pson NZ continue to push convergence boundaries with their latest multifunction printer, the Epson Stylus Photo RX700. Armed with a 6.3cm colour LCD viewing screen using Photo Fine (TM) technology for high resolution viewing of images before printing, Epson backs the screen up with a new six colour HQ4 dye ink for high quality photographs with a resolution of up to 5760dpi . On the scanner side of the machine, Epson is boasting the highest resolution MatrixCCD(TM) scanner in its class, with a scan performance up to 3200x6400 dpi, and a built in transparency unit allows users to scan both positive and negative film. The Stylus Photo RX700 also includes new utilities such as CD/DVD direct copy and printing and automatically crops the image to fit onto a CD label, printing up to 12 images directly onto a printable CD or DVD or a CD jacket.

Recommended retail for this bundle of performance tech? $749.

78, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

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he New Zealand-based company that’s on track to become our first billion-dollar tech stock has seen another big jump in its fortunes as a result of launching portable in-car navigation systems late last year. Navman’s iCN 635 is the case in point. Packing a high-res LCD screen, and 128MB of flash memory programmed with maps of the North and South islands hooked into state of the art GPS, the iCN 635 will happily tell you not only where you are but when to turn left or right and how to get back on course if you miss a turn. Add in a library of “points of interest” along the route, and suddenly your drive to work becomes a history lesson as well. It’ll direct you to the nearest petrol station or ATM machine. In case you’re not already convinced, Navman also offers optional maps for Australia, North America and the UK, meaning you can simply take the unit with you, hop in a car in New York and get to your destination on time. At $1799, it’s the latest ‘must-have’ for boys who like bright shiny things, and girls who can’t read maps. More details at www.navman.com

he Yamaha Digital Sound Projector (YSP-1) is an exciting breakthrough in home theater technology. Now you can get optimum multi-channel sound directivity to enjoy the full benefits of home theater all from one easily installed component.

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To find out more see http://www.yamahamusic.com.au

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 79

LIFESTYLE

FOOD & DRINK

YOLKING AROUND Eggs aren’t just for breakfast anymore, says Eli Jameson.

Just make sure they’re fresh

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had a friend, many years ago, who was terrified of All one needs to do is heat a pan of water – about an eggs. He wasn’t plagued by dreams that involved inch or so deep – with a slug of good white wine vingiant eggs coming out of the sky, or having to stand egar to the just-bubbling point, slide the eggs in one by up naked and give a speech to the annual convention of one, and wait a few minutes before pulling them out the Egg Marketing Board. Instead, it was the mere sight again with a slotted spoon. If need be, you can stop the of an egg outside of its shell that absolutely horrified cooking by plunging the eggs into a bowl of ice water him. One of his more darkly hilarious monologues and reheat later, a great technique if you’ve got a crowd involved his horror at going out to a pizza restaurant in coming for brunch.

Paris once with a large group of relatives and an even Which brings us to the first problem with eggs, no larger hangover the day after his sister’s wedding, and matter how they are prepared: most of the eggs found having a pie with a quivering fried egg cracked into the on supermarket shelves are not truly fresh, and are laid middle of it placed in front of him by a smirking garçon. by chickens fed in an insipid diet that leaves their prodOddly, though, ‘hidden’ eggs didn’t bother him. uct as tasteless as the factory tomatoes over in the proSauces made with eggs, meatloaves bound by eggs, duce section. This means they won’t poach properly – French toast soaked in eggs – all of that was fine by instead, they’ll run all over the pan (don’t ask me to him, so long as he wasn’t explain the science, just trust around to see the preparation. me on this). Worse, they’ll be You can’t get good eggs Which shows that even if he tasteless. Although there are from chooks whose nerves had a few screws loose in the many instances where an ‘orfood department (it would ganic’ label is just a marketing are being jangled up by a take a Freudian half a decade con to separate greenies from Wagner fetishist to work out how his mother their money – more on this gave him this particular phoin a subsequent column – bia), he at least had pretty good taste. when it comes to eggs, every input counts. If your farmer Needless to say, I’ve never known this terror. Poached is playing music to his hens, make sure it’s calm and on toast with a sprinkling of Maldon sea salt; fried in relaxing stuff. Remember the study which showed that butter and drizzled with hot sauce (Tabasco is great, but students who listened to Mozart for half an hour bemy new favourite is a Mexican brand called Tapatío); or fore taking an examination did better than those who gently scrambled with lots of cream, chives, and smoked listened to heavy metal? The same principle applies here: salmon, I just don’t think it’s possible to go wrong You can’t get good eggs from chooks whose nerves are with eggs. Unless, of course, one overcooks them. being jangled up by a Wagner fetishist.

But it is this first preparation, poaching, that seems I get my eggs from my local farmers’ market, where to cause many home chefs the most grief. Raised to they sell free-range eggs from Chanteclair Farm, and there believe that poaching an egg involves some sort of com- are plenty of similar producers in New Zealand. These plicated French alchemy involving whirlpools and vin- eggs, which can also be found in some supermarkets, egar, and until recently unable to get anything fresher are always fresh, and the hens have been fed a special diet than supermarket eggs that have spent days or weeks in that makes their yolks rich, golden and creamy – as well trucks and on shelves, even many good cooks I know as high in Omega-3, which fights cholesterol and helps just don’t care enough to bother. Which is a shame, mute the chant of ‘remember, thou art mortal’ that given that it is so easy, and the results potentially fantas- tends to play in the back of one’s head when one eats as tic. Nothing showcases a really good egg like poaching. many of the things as I do.

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80, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

BEST-EVER BEANS AND EGGS When the mercury is low and the bank balance lower (or even if it’s not), this is a great, cheap plate of comfort food that elevates its humble ingredients to far more than the sum of its parts.

You’ll need: • 1 800g tin of Heinz baked beans in tomato sauce • 1-2 brown onions • 3-4 tablespoons brown sugar • 50 grams butter • Balsamic, red wine, or sherry vinegar • White wine vinegar • Dijon mustard • 4 slices bread (I like Helga’s Light Rye) • Salt & pepper • 4 eggs 1. First, caramelize the onions. Slice the onions into thin half-moons, and put them into a wide pan over very low heat with the butter, and just let them sit there, stirring them occasionally. The more time you can devote to this, the better: you want them to slowly sweeten with just the barest of heat. About ten minutes in, throw some brown sugar in – this will really up the sweetness factor. After about twenty minutes, turn up the heat to medium and throw in the balsamic (or red wine or sherry) vinegar until it reduces, and then add the beans, stirring in Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper.

2. Meanwhile, get another pan out to poach the eggs. Put in an inch or so of water, add the white wine vinegar (this helps hold the eggs

together), and heat to the barely-boiling. One by one, crack the eggs into a cup or small bowl and slide them into the water.

3. Toast the bread, and cut it into quarters. Assemble by putting half the beans on each of two plates, arranging the toast quarters (using the French and calling them croutons would be too pretentious in this case, even for me) around the beans, and putting two poached eggs on top of each. Season with a bit more salt and pepper, and serve.

Serves two.

‘SPECIAL’ EGGS, ITALIAN STYLE I first saw the great American-Italian chef Mario Battali make a variation of this in the U.S. many years ago; since then, I’ve discovered that poaching eggs in some other sort of sauce is a staple dish in many cultures. The Persians, in fact, do a remarkably similar version of this; they call it gojay farangi; in our house, what my three-year-old calls ‘special eggs’ is an unbreakable Saturday tradition.

You’ll need: • Olive oil • 1 good-sized brown onion • 2-3 (or more) cloves garlic • ½ birds eye or bullet chili, chopped (optional) • 2 x 400g tins peeled Italian plum tomatoes • Dried mint • 4 slices of thick, crusty Italian bread • 4 eggs 1. Make a simple red sauce. Dice the onions, slice the garlic, and throw it in a hot pan of olive oil with the optional chili. Feel free to throw in a slug of the previous night’s wine at this point if there is any left over; red sauces are a very personal thing. Add the tomatoes (make sure they’re imported from Italy; if you want to buy local, avoid Aussie tins and make the sauce with fresh tomatoes instead), breaking them up with a wooden spoon. Add some dried mint, which is my personal touch, and let simmer, uncovered 2. Once the sauce has cooked down a bit, use a spoon or a ladle to

make a depression in the sauce, then crack an egg into the well, repeating until all the eggs are in. Cover and let simmer.

3. Meanwhile, toast the bread – I like to rub the slices with olive oil and a smashed clove of garlic, but that’s not 100 per cent necessary – under the grill. By the time the bread is ready, the eggs should be coming pretty close to done as well. Plate them up by putting two pieces of bread on each plate, then topping with an egg and red sauce.

Serves two.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 81

LIFESTYLE

HEALTH

A HEART- MENDING TALE Turning the growth of blood vessels on and off could treat not just cardiac problems, but many cancers as well

T Claire Morrow

he great elephant descended and left the indenThe heart is a muscle and it pumps blood, just like tation of its foot upon my chest….a Franken- the Counting Crows song tells us. Let’s simplify it for a stein’s monster of zipper scars and pirated body minute, and pretend that there is simply a loop of hose parts. Two heart attacks and two bypass operations – going in a circle from one side of the heart-pump to the six grafts in all, loops of hosing jury-rigged around my other. Of course, it is a tricky hose, it narrows into jalopy of a heart. Two major crashes, but the motor increasingly tiny vessels to supply every bit of you with still runs.” blood. But it will do, as a metaphor. Blood pressure is a One of the most beautiful writers I know was almost measure of how hard heart-pump needs to work to killed by that last heart attack. There is a touching, mis- push the blood all the way around the hose and back to erable aside in Heart: A Memoir about going on a fare- the heart. Hopefully the pump can do this easily. When well tour of good food. The author, my father-in-law, blood pressure is high, the pump is knocking itself out barely recalls it. Defending his memory, he points out trying to push the blood around. Probably because there that the book is ten years old. And the motor still runs. is some kind of gunk (cholesterol) clogging up the So you see, I have a vested interest in keeping hearts inside of the hose. The clog can be in your foot, your running. According to the New Zealand Ministry of brain, anywhere. If there is so much gunk (cholesterol) Health, cardiovascular disease is New Zealand’s biggest built up that the blood can’t get through it will swell up cause of death. Now, I’ll grant you, some of those peo- and burst. If this happens in our brain, cerebral aneuple have reached an advanced rysm (stroke) ensues. age and are in the “gotta die (Note to guys not motiof something” demographic. vated to change: you know If you have the slightest Unsurprisingly, when very old how if blood supply isn’t doubt about chest pain, call people are autopsied, examgetting to your brain, it will the ambos. They will not be iners tend to find not just lots loose function? Now replace of things wrong, not just the the word “brain” with other angry at you for being fine heart failure that killed them. body parts until you feel Cardiovascular disease, howalarmed. Some causes of ever, also takes a lot of lives prematurely. To die at 50 is impotence are avoidable. Maybe a jog, perhaps?) not a tragedy in the sense that dying at 5 years old is, but If all the gunk is near the heart, and the hose is narit still has the sense of a life cut short about it that dying rowed, then the heart-pump doesn’t get blood. Your at 80, for example, does not. actual heart, not our hypothetical pump, needs oxygen, You all know the risk factors, so I will not trouble to and blood carries oxygen. If blood is not getting to mention that being a chain-smoking, salt-shaking, cho- your heart, it is not getting oxygen. It will alert you by lesterol-scarfing, diabetic couch-potato booze-hound is causing pain. In angina, the pain is an alert that the heart not good for your heart. If this is you, you need to find is suffering, but getting some oxygen and will be OK a sympathetic family doctor and explain that you are not with rest or a nitro tablet. Beyond angina, the heart keeps quite ready to change yet, but would they be a love and aching. The elephant standing on the chest is a common give you a quick once-over. Knowing your cholesterol symptom, but the chest pain may be in the arm, shoullevels and blood pressure may encourage you to change, der, back. If you have the slightest doubt about chest but even if it doesn’t, at least you can get on some nice pain, call the ambos. They will not be angry at you for drugs to try and slow down the damage whilst you try being fine. You will be angry at yourself if your heart to work up the motivation to change. has been dying while you sat at home with the martyr’s

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wait-and-see attitude. Some people, especially women and the elderly, report symptoms other than chest pain as the primary symptom, for example sudden shortness of breath, dizziness or extreme fatigue.

We assume, at this point, that you have heeded none of my advice except the bit about calling the ambulance. You are in the cardiac care unit, having had your first or second heart attack. What are your options? You can have angioplasty, where they get into the hose going into your heart and squash, laser or chop out the offending cholesterol.

They can put a nice little stent in to hold the artery open. If things have gone past that point, you can get a CABG (coronary artery bypass graft, known as “cabbage” in the trade). The trick here is to dig up a nice big artery, probably from your leg, and jury-rig a detour for the blood to get back to your heart. Obviously there will be some chest-cracking here – it is not a low-risk procedure. Ah, but that spot of dead lazy heart is still freeloading on the rest of your heart, so you must take care.

Now imagine if you could just get the heart to grow nice new hoses, or blood vessels. Angiogenesis is the word for this, and it is an exciting idea at the bleeding edge of research. If doctors can control the growth of blood vessels then they can do two things: grow new hoses where they are needed (in cases of peripheral vascular disease and coronary artery disease) and stop cancers from growing their own blood vessels.

Solid cancers need blood supplies to get oxygen and nutrients to grow.

No blood, cancer dies.

Human trials are currently underway in the US to develop gene therapy for treatment of heart disease. It is a complex procedure, done at the research level. It works like this: first, researchers find a useful gene and then try to get a patent on it so that they have the intellectual property rights to develop it. (Yes, a lot of people are opposed to this, but con-

sider the alternative: A research-and-development company thinks they have a gene that might revolutionise cancer therapy. It may take many years and a lot of money to get it to market, and many promising therapies will be dropped well before the end of the race. So, what, they should apply for an arts council grant instead?) Then the researchers trick a bacteria or mammalian cells into reproducing the gene, and then they strain it out and clean it up at a very high level. Then all they have to do is prove that what they have created – complex very large proteins – is what they have the patent for. The only thing left is to make it work.

An Australian company, Amrad, has the rights to something called vascular endothelial growth factor B (VEGF-B) and is developing potential cancer therapies with it. Specialising in cancer treatment themselves, they would license the rights to the gene to develop cardiac treatments. David Crump, Amrad’s medical director, told me, “It’s an area of a lot of interest and theoretically it should work…when it hasn’t we have to find out why. Eventually we will get it to work…but then you’ve got to prove it”. Several American companies have reached the human trial stage with these types of therapies, and there are a few coming on to the market now.

For obvious reasons, researchers are only allowed to trial new medicines in people for whom readily available treatment isn’t working.

Over ten years ago, only one of the angiogenesis patients in his trial showed any particularly amazing response, and it was decided that the treatment needed much more work and wasn’t brought to market then. Overall, it was not a particularly successful venture. But, hopefully not in the too distant future, more patients will be good responders to the new medicines. Like my father-in-law, the one good patient, very much alive today.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 83

SCIENCE

FEMALE MYSTERIES Researches discover secrets of female orgasm, wrights Pat Sheil

T

o the male of the species, being involved in a turns out that when women approach climax, whole refemale orgasm is a wonderfully fulfilling experi- gions of their brains seem to shut down, and the more ence. It makes you feel all warm and gooey excited they get, the more functions cease. Speaking at a meetinside. You may suspect that you weren’t entirely ing of the European Society for Human Reproduction and responsible for the successful conclusion of your Embryology in Copenhagen last month, Holsteg said that encounter, but you know that you were a part of it in only one part of the brain was more active than normal some small way. Reflecting on what transpired after- during orgasm – the cerebellum, which is normally associwards, you feel much the same as an Amish man walk- ated with movement. So if you think she’s making lots of ing home from a successful barn-raising. noise because she thinks you’re just tops, well, forget it. GrizBut what exactly is going on here? There aren’t many zly bears brains close down when it gets cold. In women, the men alive who haven’t thought how much fun it would parts of the brain involved in emotion begin to hibernate be to actually experience a full-blown female orgasm, if the hotter they get. Alertness and anxiety fall to near zero. It only once. Not so much actually live in a woman’s body seems that when she’s feeling at her very happiest, she’s feelfor a night, but just to somehow download the sensory ing nothing but the orgasm itself. data into his skull for a few minutes and feel the heat.

Let’s look at the difference between faked and genuine The prospect is some way off, but might just be getting orgasms for a moment. It’s this data that makes Holstege’s closer. If not quite pinconclusions deeply compointing what a woman’s pelling. “The fact that It seems that when she’s feeling climax is, a researcher in there is no deactivation in the Netherlands has at faked orgasms means a at her very happiest, she’s feeling least found out what it basic part of a real orgasm nothing but the orgasm itself isn’t. The results are is letting go. Women can deeply counter-intuitive, imitate orgasm quite well, and somewhat disappointing for men who like to think as we know, but there is nothing really changing in the that they’re the epicentre of the action. brain,” says Holstege. “When women faked orgasm, the Gert Holstege, of the University Groningen, recruited cortex, the part of the brain governing conscious action, 13 heterosexual women and their partners. He asked lit up. It was not activated during genuine orgasm.” the volunteers to lie on a scanning machine bed, where The most striking results, however, were seen in the they were injected with a dye that shows changes in brain parts of the brain that shut down, or deactivated. function. Then they were wheeled headfirst into the PET “During orgasm, there was a strong, enormous deactiscanner, stark naked and legs akimbo. vation in the brain. During fake orgasm, there was no Holstege’s team compared the women’s brain activity in deactivation of the brain at all. None,” Holstege said. four states: resting, faking an orgasm, having their clitoris “It looks like to have an orgasm, you need to not be stimulated by their partner, and clitoral stimulation to the fearful or full of anxiety.” Holstege said he had trouble point of orgasm. (This is the kind of research that only gets getting reliable results from another study on men, bedone in places like the Netherlands – you just can’t imagine cause the scanning machine needs cerebral changes lastit taking place at the University of Kansas, let along Lahore. ing at least two minutes in order to record an activity.

Hats must also go off to a group of horny women whose But the men’s climaxes didn’t last anywhere near that devotion to science was such that they could manage to long, meaning he could not reliably compare the scans come in a lab surrounded with researchers and with their taken before climax and during. “However, for women, heads stuck in a PET scanner.) So what did Holstege find? It the results were clear,” he said.

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LIFESTYLE

TRAVEL

INNOCENT IN INDIA Overwhelmed by it all, on a trip to remember – and forget what you’ve heard, writes Robert Cross

AIPUR, India – “I was told that the first thing were immediately immersed in the daily life of suburyou’ll notice is the smell,” said my friend Dave with ban Delhi and points beyond. We passed miles of roada faint leer. Just a friendly word of warning to get me side enterprises – cluttered tire-repair shops, dusty margoing on the wrong foot. My wife, Juju, and I had been kets, minimalist truck-driver motels, gas stations, outhearing a lot of secondhand and even firsthand tidbits door tonsorial parlors, clothing stores – before the highlike Dave’s almost every time we told anyone about our way led into slightly more bucolic territory with occatravel plans. Visiting India? Get ready for a shock: Pol- sional groves of trees and farmers’ fields amidst the lution. Dirt. Poverty. Stifling heat. Noise. Weird behavior. factories and tall, humming power line towers.

Those odors.

We did see something familiar – a McDonald’s – just I’m here to testify that any negatives were far out- for an instant. That sighting, fleeting as a mirage, trigweighed by the beauty, culture, and architectural gran- gered a craving for caffeine. The sun had grown into a deur we were privileged to sample during a brief visit to big orange blob in a sky of beam-resistant gray, leaving a few cities in the north. our biorhythms stuck on Early Morning.

After we cleared the jetway in New Delhi at 5:30 a.m.

“Coffee!” Juju declared. on an autumn Saturday, the only smell came from the “Yeah, yeah, coffee,” Remish replied. universal airport brew of electric-light ozone, air condi“I saw a McDonald’s back there,” Juju reported. tioning and passenger B.O. Scents no different from “Turn around?” those at O’Hare or LAX. No, we said, keep going. Remish promised there’d be Instead, the first thing we noticed was the wallpaper another coffee opportunity a few miles ahead. And, soon on immigration officenough, the van turned ers’ cubicles, a darling left, cut off a truck and blue-and-pink-flowpulled into the courtWhen the buyer comes in, he will ered pattern of the sort yard of a neat, white put his hand in the milk, shake it out, that might decorate a roadside inn. rub the milk on his fingertips and see little girl’s nursery.

The Highway Moods Still no smell when Motel and Resort how much fat is in it we finally carted our lugappeared deserted at first. gage to the parking lot.

Then a young man Obviously, Dave had been misinformed. emerged from a doorway and led us into an alcove that Our driver, Remish, helped with the bags, and we set served as a dining room. We were the only customers. off on the five-hour drive to Jaipur and the beginning of Remish waited outside, a practice he would insist upon all our seven-day India adventure. Dawn greeted New Delhi week, no matter how much we implored him to join us. with a gray haze of pollution, and my chest felt heavy. Our Our host brought a basket of India’s famous naan, little white van seemed to be the only passenger vehicle on brown-spotted unleavened bread, accompanied by spicy a highway filled with trucks and bicycles. Huge cows – some sour cream. Juju began eating. I waited for the coffee. gray, others black – lolled on the median strip.

“It’s Sanka,” the employee said brightly. “I must wait Juju and I still were trying to recover from 17 hours until the water boils.” worth of flights, because we had traveled from Chicago We sighed but understood. Why would the Highway to Delhi by way of Amman, Jordan (a long story). We Moods people keep a fresh pot brewing on the off should have dozed off in the van, but the scenery kept chance that a couple of tourists would show up? us riveted. Instead of skimming into Tourist India, we Two hours later, as we drove into the state of Raja-

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sthan, the roadside scene abruptly changed. Our divided highway became a two-laner, adding to our excitement the possibility of headon collisions.

The general atmosphere hinted at ancient customs still honored, routines carried out since the beginning of time, perpetual congestion.

No matter what the women were doing - shopping, sweeping, lecturing their children, tending gardens, herding goats, walking with pots on their heads – they wore brightly colored garments. Red, purple, gold, pink. As a result, every group along the roadway looked like a wedding party. Besides the ubiquitous trucks and cows, we now weaved around camels bearing enormous loads of twigs or tethered into long caravans hauling all sorts of material – from hay to pots and pans.

Remish passed them carefully, only to find his way blocked by bicycle rickshaws and donkey carts.

We entered Jaipur during rush hour, so some of the streets leading to our hotel had been temporarily declared one-way in the wrong direction, apparently an effort – largely futile – to prevent gridlock. While Remish circled the city at a crawl, trying to find a route, we suddenly were interacting with the people. A few tapped on the windows to beg for money or sell us things. But most were in cars or riding mopeds – intent on honking their way through thickets of traffic, but still taking a moment to smile and wave at Juju’s video camera.

We found ourselves in the middle of an enchanting old city, alive with markets and the brilliant colors of the dresses and turbans worn by residents going about their business. Pedestrians skittered between vehicles, which slowed down only when a cow or two decided to lounge in the middle of the street.

Remish at last found the hotel entrance, a discrete opening in a wall and a long driveway leading to the magnificent, cream-colored Jai Mahal Palace. The 250-year-old building really had served as a palace for one of Jaipur’s many royals. Rajasthan has had a bewildering lineup of rulers and high-ranking court figures through its long history, and we

soon lost track of the lineage, despite the best efforts of our local guides. But the maharajas sure had good taste in housing.

We were tempted to stay in the hotel that evening, order room service and rest up for the next day of virtually non-stop touring. But, spurred on by guilt, we set off in the van to a restaurant called Indiana.

A local tourism official had recommended it highly. We entered the bustling Jaipur restaurant district, an area that did have smells – wonderful smells. Indiana turned out to be an open-air establishment with lots of tables and lots of ... tourists. Folk dancers and musicians entertained, while servers brought us mutton do pyaza (spicy goat, yes, goat, meat stir fried with onions) and Chicken Indiana (also spicy).

We thought the name Indiana implied “India-like,” “India-style,” something on that order. But we were told later that the owner was a transplanted American and that the name came from the other side of the world. The diners ate their fill and watched the brilliantly costumed performers glide and tumble across a stage that took up one end of the large courtyard. In some ways, the evening felt like a Hawaiian luau transplanted to the wrong state. But it was fun.

The next morning, our guide, who introduced himself as G.S. Arora, joined us and Remish in the van for a tour of Jaipur. His eyes sparkled mischievously behind his glasses. We would have other guides in the days ahead – a scholarly gentleman in Agra and at the Taj Mahal; a religion expert amid the Hindu temple carvings (some quite erotic) in Khajuraho; the harried scout who showed us the sights in Delhi.

En route to the major sights, we passed a lavishly decorated cinema that looked like a temple, and Arora volunteered some information.

“Bollywood makes hundreds of films every year,” he said. “They have to, because India has 18 official languages, plus 1,600 dialects. If you go to see one of these movies, you will be made to realize that our heroes are much stronger than the western heroes. They can jump from the Eiffel Tower without getting a scratch on their bodies. Not even the western heroes can do that. Facing Egypt’s pyramids, they can jump to the top.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 87

“Almost all of the films have a similar kind of story line. It might be a love story, a family drama, a lot of emotion, but they all have a happy ending. So if you happen to see people exiting the cinema hall, they’ll be smiling ear to ear.

We headed for the heart of Old Jaipur, the walled and picturesque enclave known as the Pink City. Arora explained that in 1876 the reigning maharaja, Ram Singh, ordered all buildings near the palace painted pink to celebrate a state visit from the Prince of Wales, who later would ascend to the English throne as King Edward VII. “Pink is the color of warmth and welcome,” Arora informed us, and pink the old city has remained. The buildings within the wall are repainted every couple of years. “People can use different shades of pink, but the basic color has to be pink,” Arora said. “The authorities take care of the painting.”

The Palace of the Winds was pink, naturally, a beautiful 204-year-old facade about 5 stories high and dotted with tiny windows. From rooms and balconies on the other side, ladies of the court at the adjoining City Palace could discreetly peek down at the street scene.

Arora became very protective at that point, acting as a crossing guard to help us maneuver to a median strip and position ourselves in what he considered the ideal angle for photographs. He also cautioned us: “This being a touristic place, you will come across millions of beggars and hawkers. The best way to keep them away is to not make eye contact. You do not have to respond. Even if you say no, they will feel it’s `perhaps.’’’

Arora did pause long enough to point out a milk market, where farmers had lined up canisters containing the morning’s output from their goats, cows, sheep and buffaloes.

The guide called our attention to a potential customer dipping his hand into a can. “To make the milk more profitable, a lot of water is added to this milk,” Arora said. “When the buyer comes in, he will put his hand in the milk, shake it out, rub the milk on his fingertips and see how much fat is in it. So the more hands that go into this can of milk,

88, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

the better the milk becomes because of this added flavor. Thankfully, this is not the milk supplied to your hotel.”

That led to the subject of cows. “Every morning people would milk their cows and then leave them in the street to be fed by people,” he told us. “The cow being a sacred animal, every household would try to feed them. After eating, they stand in the middle of the road or sit in the middle of the road and chew cud. This is good, because it slows and controls the traffic. And the cows like it, because the fumes make them feel high. In India, every animal except the husband is sacred.”

“How do the cows know how to get home?” Juju asked.

“They always know. They are like homing pigeons.”

At the Amber Palace, our next stop, we found it easy to avoid eye contact with the hawkers because the palace itself commanded our full attention. We decided to ride an elephant up the hill to the palace entrance, a popular if somewhat hokey way to get there. Jeeps were also available, and visitors can hike up the steep ramp if they wish. Juju and I climbed onto a little seat behind our elephant driver. It swayed and tilted, while the driver engaged in a long, loud argument with his supervisor. Evidently, the driver wanted two more passengers for his mount, because the seat can hold four. Juju said, “I don’t like this at all. It’s scary. I want to get off.” Before we could figure out how to do that, the elephant started up the ramp.

Arora, not being a tourist, preferred the Jeep. He met us in the palace courtyard, which was crowded with visitors and the elephants they came in on. He showed us around the wonderfully carved and pearlinlaid areas where rulers held their audiences.

In the days that followed, we moved on to Agra and India’s absolute must-see, the Taj Mahal. The highway leading toward Agra featured a 6-mile stretch of pavement that rivaled some of the worst in sub-Saharan Africa. Remish steered around enormous potholes, rocks and ruts, or forced the van to slither through treacherous puddles. The two-way traffic often had to share a single lane, forcing vehicles to play a slow, bumpy game of chicken on the one passable segment of road.

Every few yards, people were changing flat tires or cursing broken axles. One group had to deal with an overturned truck.

We asked our driver how this could be. How could a highway suffer such neglect? “No money,” he said with a shrug.

After taking in the sights of Agra, we flew to Khajuraho, a relatively tranquil village famous for its beautiful Hindu temples dating back to the Chandela dynasty, which ruled for 500 years until overrun by the Moguls early in the 16th Century. The structures were a pleasant contrast to the palaces, tombs, fortifications and congestion of Rajasthan and Agra. We beheld an array of temple towers surrounded by lawns laced with uncrowded pathways.

Our guide that afternoon introduced himself as Mr. Singh. Immediately, he began to explain at great length the Hindu religion and how the carvings on those temples – built within a 100-year period, starting in AD 950 – illustrated the complexities of Hinduism and honored its divinities in all of their forms. He said the towers had been constructed in this out-of-the-way place to protect the sandstone images from frequent rains and floods that hit the Chandela capitals.

We were still pondering the complexities of the Hindu religion that night, as we dined at the rooftop Blue Sky Restaurant. Below us, merchants sold souvenirs, fabrics, saris, books and miniature copies of temple carvings. Across the street, the actual temples glowed with golden light and a voice boomed in Hindi – a sound and light show. We filled up on helpings of a dish very much like fried rice but punctuated with masala, a mixture of spices that provided a mosaic of delicious flavors.

Weeks later, Juju suggested we go back to India when we could take our time, leave more room for understanding and exploration, follow our whims, maybe go with a group of our friends. I agreed we should try it, so long as we avoided that one bad stretch of road.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 89

LIFESTYLE

BOOKCASE

SIX OF THE BEST Michael Morrissey is entranced by the actions of a Chinese shrink, and a voyage of discovery

MR MUO’S TRAVELLING COUCH

By Dai Sijie, Chatto & Windus, $45

Michael Morrisssey

Dai Sijie’s first novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Mistress was a delightfully-written fable which showed how appealing forbidden western literature (Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens) could be to people living in an oppressive regime. Sijie’s second novel – also exquisitely written – similarly deploys the encounter of a strand of western thought with Chinese culture but this time western psychology ie psychoanalysis is depicted to satiric and ironic effect. Mr Muo is a French-educated travelling Freudian psychoanalyst but his dream interpretations are considered by his listeners to be either fortune telling or greeted with howls of laughter. Freud and psychoanalysis are easy targets to mock – Nabokov never spared the “Viennese witchdoctor” – and at times I found myself chuckling along with the mockers and knockers.

The plot also oozes satiric mockery towards Chinese society and government. For Mr Muo’s real quest in China is not to spread the ideas of Freud but to find a virgin with which to bribe a corrupt judge to free his first love who has been imprisoned for selling articles to the west that describe scenes of Chinese torture. Believe it or not, Muo has trouble finding a virgin – the villages are filled with old women and young girls – the eligible young women having moved into the cities. In other words, the plot is fanciful and Mr Muo is something of a Chinese Quixote tilting at Chinese “windmills”.

Dai Sijie, let me note, writes safely in Paris and in French.

I am reasonably confident this book will not be on sale in China for we are left in no doubt that it is a land of widespread corruption (so what’s new). The cruelty of forcing a family to pay for the executioner’s bullet if they want the body of the deceased returned is also brutally detailed.

The richly elegant style and the multiple layers of irony (Mr Muo is himself a virgin) make this very much a writer’s book. But it also

90, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

clearly has a political message albeit couched in an ironic fable of folly.

Despite its excellence of style, some of the monologues seem inordinately long and discursive though I suspect Chinese readers (hopefully, it will find some) may locate more resonance in them than an Occidental one. Also the basic plot engine is left unsatisfiyingly unresolved – a Kafkaesque touch perhaps – or yet another irony? Readers must decide.

RAMPAGE: The Social Roots of School Shootings

By Katherine S. Newman, Cybelle Fox, David J. Harding, Jal Mehta, and Wendy Roth, Basic Books, $39.95 I recently reviewed We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver, a fictional work which made it plain that Kevin, a fifteen year-old murderer, was more or less evil and Mother’s upbringing could not be blamed for his horrible deeds even though she tortured herself psychologically with the possibility. In Kevin the psychological, let alone the social causes of youthful carnage were not presented as the explanation for psychopathic behaviour. Rampage examines psychological factors but seeks to place more emphasis on overlooked sociological factors.

School killers, as the name suggests, perform mass murder at school. They are disturbingly young and getting younger -– Andrew Golden was just eleven when he teamed up with 13-year Mitchell Johnson to shoot dead five people and injure a further ten. Although like most mature men I tell myself I am not easily shocked, an eleven year-old shooting dead or wounding several people does appal. At that tender pre-pubic age, I was doing projects on tea or sugar, and had never been exposed to a gun – well, maybe an air pistol.

Quite often, there aren’t many clues to forewarn. Johnson had

been rejected by a girl friend and Golden was cruel to cats. Hardly sufficient reason or motivation to shoot 15 people. They, like several such killers, came from a small town. The multiple contributors have tried to find a commonality among school killers by a series of graphs that list factors such as age, ethnicity, urbanicity and aspects of social marginalisation such as being a loner, being teased or bullied, or indeed even just feeling marginalised. They also looked at mental illness, disciplinary history, violent writings, trouble with the law, issuing threats, suicidality, depression or family problems. Finally, they considered access to guns. Summing up their findings, the authors say that there is not enough commonality to compose a reliable or predictable profile. Depressing news, isn’t it?

My gut instinct is that the sociological explanations offered (ie structural secrecy, institutional memory loss, loosely coupled systems, counsellors have too many roles to fill) are weaker and more abstract than the psychological ones which in my view remain more relevant. Small towns and being loners seem to figure prominently but also, alas, there are plenty of school killers who had friends and even mentioned their intentions to create havoc – which were of course often not taken seriously.

The authors seem to contradict themselves on pages 268-269 when they write “... and they weren’t all bullies or teased either” which is followed three lines later by, “And nearly all of them were bullied or teased.” So which is it – bullied or not bullied? The table on pages 312-313 shows each of the shooters were either bullied or there was “no evidence”. I know it’s not strictly kosher to say so, but if every known case shows bullying, isn’t it reasonable to suppose that a healthy percentage of the remaining teenagers were also bullied? Not that being bullied is sufficient cause for wholesale murder.

The chapter on prevention offers some cautious measures – keeping better records, more school resource officers, challenging notions of masculinity, zero tolerance policy of disciplinary breaches (how is this ever possible?), encouraging kids to report threats. All very well.

But I am left with the lingering feeling that this is a study from the inside of American society and to an outsider three factors which, though they are in part included in the book, have a peculiarly American flavour – (a) the wide ownership, obsession and ready access to guns; (b) the status anxiety which makes Americans (especially socially marginalised ones) willing to do anything to achieve fame; (c) a society which accepts adolescence as a zone of complete freedom and independence.

America, one could say, is paying a high price for its freedoms.

HOW MUMBO JUMBO CONQUERED THE WORLD

By Francis Wheen, Harper Perennial, $ 24.99 I’ve always liked books that take a wide overview (it saves me work) and authors that debunk – for there’s lot in this world that needs debunking. Francis Wheen does rather nicely in both categories. Wheen is fair – he’s tough on everyone. Madame Thatcher, Reagan and George Bushes cop heavy flak. So do Anthony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. As do Ayatollah Khomeini and Milton Friedman. And hopefully readers will be pleased to hear that Holocaust denier David Irving gets a roasting.

On the evidence of quotation, Chopra sounds the daffiest – “People who have achieved an enormous amount of success are inherently very spiritual”; this must make Bill Gates the holiest man on earth apart from the Pope and the Dalai Lama. How about – “Ageing is simply learned behaviour”? Demi Moore agrees – she hopes to live to 130. Wheen can be unfairly cruel – “Why the longevity formula failed to work for Princess Diana, with whom he (Chopra) lunched shortly before her death remains a mystery”. Whether it’s Wess Roberts’ The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun or Mars and Venus John Gray or “Six Hats” de Bono, Wheen wraps them all up in a chapter entitled “Old Snake Oil, New Bottles”. Wheen summarises them all as writers of “lucrative twaddle” and blames Dale Carnegie for starting the vogue back in 1948. Whereas Carnegie contented himself with phrases like, “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive, today’s gurus use “neologistic jargon” like “re-engineering”, “demassing”, “downsizing”, “benchmarking” in an attempt “to give their twee cliches an appearance of scientific method and intellectual rigour”. Right on, Francis.

If the gurus are mouthing cliches and twaddle how come top management pays them so much to talk to their staff ? Good question – and apparently there is an answer. One executive manager explained, “What he’s saying is a lot of common sense and not new really. But if I pay him $15,000 to say it, my general managers and my people listen”. So there you are – it’s not really the message but the messenger – and the high fee. Moving on from self improvement, he sideswipes the boadeconstructors (Derrida etc) and includes the twitty Luce Irigray who alleged that Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation as “a sexed equation” that privileged the speed of light over

less masculine speeds. When Allen Sokal, author of the most famous intellectual hoax of our time, (and someone of whom Wheen wholeheartedly approves), accused Julia Kristeva of using mathematical terms she did not understand, she conceded she was not a real mathematician.” Derrida cops it for asserting that Paul de Man’s wartime blatant Jew-baiting was somehow an implicit repudiation of anti-Semitism. I’m surprised Wheen didn’t quote American philosopher John Searle whose demolition of Derrida was published in the New York Review of Books but the field of debunkers – like the producers of bunkum – is richly crowded.

Wheen’s learning is formidable. He cites usually for purposes of intellectual demolition -dozens of books and authors of which and of whom I am ignorant. To catch up with his list of targets would mean reading for a couple of years at least. It’s easy at times to have a moment of confusion between George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, Thomas Friedman and Milton Friedman and the two John Grays, one American and one English.

As debunkers go, I rate Francis Wheen up with the best – with Martin Gardener, or H.L. Mencken. I look forward to further books from this acid-penned guru who hates gurus.

PASSAGE TO TORRES STRAIT: Four Centuries in the Wake of Great Navigators, Mutineers, Castaways and Beachcombers

By Miles Hordern, John Murray, $39.95 This is a book to stir the salt in the blood of even the most earthbound. Isn’t that what shipping clerks and “customer sales representatives” (eg receptionists, bank clerks, office workers) secretly yearn for – to sail off on a blue ocean and anchor in remote and gorgeous lagoons there to parley with beautiful bronzeskinned inhabitants? In days gone by, your best security measure to obtain a benign reception was to be alone – a lone survivor is no threat – and not be part of group (certain to be bumped off).

So off we sail with the Waiheke Islandbased author and his 28-foot sloop for high adventure and reexploration of history on the high blue seas.

By the way, this is how it starts: “At lunchtime I finished a bottle of rum”. That I assume was the dessert – and not the aperitif – following a lengthy journey. Horden’s advenSeptember 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 91

turous sojourn was to take him north of Auckland to the Melanesian islands, west across the Coral Sea to the Great Barrier Reef and into the dangerous maze of Torres Strait, wrecker of ships, killer of men.

In Dillon’s Bay, Eerromango – south of Vanuatu – Hordern outlines the protocol of the Melanesian approach to a lone vessel. ”They would circle the boat in perfect silence ...when ready they made a deliberate noise, slapping the paddle against the surface or clearing their throats.

Then they waited for an invitation to come alongside”. After boarding they would make requests, in this case for tobacco. This happened three times and just as Horden was tiring of the one-way traffic after an exhausting journey, the Erromagans returned with sixty pieces of fruit.

Erromango may seem an out of the way place now but in the nineteenth century these waters saw a brisk trade in sandalwood, used for soap and cosmetics. At first, sandalwood was traded for beads, fish-hooks then saws, tomahawks, carving knives and butchers’ cleavers and still later muskets, powder and tobacco.

Some of the castaways or survivors of shipwreck were treated like kings. For in times of early contact, white sailors were assumed to be spirits or supernatural beings. Big-legged Jimmy was plied with feasts, kava and young women and left hundreds of grandchildren. By contrast, others like Leonard Shaw, who survived a massacre in the Kilinailau Islands, New Guinea was kept as a pet - tortured by children who pulled out his facial hair. Hordern describes the enthralling survival tales of the like of William Lockerby on Fiji, John Young on Hawaii, and Peter Dillon on remote Tikopia, even today without airstrip, wharf, white residents, electricity or telephones.

Both Conrad and New Zealand castaways get a look in.

All around the vastness of the South Pacific, Horden narrates, the castaway, mutineer or beachcomber was often the envoy, of European culture. First encounters were not as we so often fondly imagine – a high ranking officer (Captain Cook say) with a formidable well- equipped ship meeting a noble chief on white beach and exchanging gifts but a lone miserable survivor often seeking advantage and sometimes getting it, sometime not. The somewhat throwaway term beachcomber has been immeasurably enriched for me by reading this book. So we are on double journey with Horden, the still adventurous present – the difficult and complex passage through Torres Strait is thrilling reading – and the even more adventurous past.

I have left the best wine (or swig of rum) to last. Horden, a proven sailor, can also write like the roaring forties. Graham Billing is probably our best naturalist writer but Hordern (English now Kiwi) is running him close.

“Tepid strings of spray spun into the cockpit as if coughed up from the belly of a waking beast.” On virtually every page there are descriptions as fine as this. This is an idle book for either sailor or landlubber.

HADRIAN’S EMPIRE: When Rome Ruled the World

By Danny Danziger & Nicholas Purcell, Hodder & Stoughton, $65 The Roman Emperors were a variegated lot.

By contemporary standards most were cruel with some, like Domitian and Caligula, being crueller than others. Some were total degenerates, such as Tiberius Caesar and, very occasionally, one had a noble character, like the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian was a figure of ambivalence – possessed of powerful intellectual acumen, with a prodigious memory, a man of architectural vision, gifted in the arts and in the skill of hunting, he also had his less desirable side. Like all Roman emperors, saving perhaps Marcus Aurelius, he could be cruel and ruthless when it suited.

On balance, the authors echo contemporary acclaim that regarded him as probably the best suited to hold the “semi-divine” office of Emperor of Rome, supreme ruler of 70 million subjects of which 15 million were Roman citizens. In Hadrian’s day (he reigned from 118-138), Rome was at its peak - 300,000 soldiers including the 12,000-strong Praetorian guard secured an empire that stretched from Britain in the north to Egypt in the south and as far away as Mesopotamia and the Caspian Sea in the east. No Roman emperor before or since travelled as much as Hadrian and while this may have made him popular abroad, he was not so popular in Rome – there was an unsuccessful conspiracy against him.

Though, unlike his predecessor Trajan, not overly interested in conquest, he achieved great popularity with the army for his down to earth relations with them. Hadrian also courted favour with the general populace by the burning of tax arrears and giving handouts to the poor. And like Trajan, who constructed the Colosseum, Hadrian thought on a big scale architecturally. His most impressive legacy was the Pantheon, which contained the largest dome in pre-Renaissance times, a structure made possible by the Roman invention of the kiln-fired brick which led to vault architecture. Though later exceeded by B r u n e l l e s c h i ’s Florentine cathedral, it remains the largest masonry dome in the world. Hadrian, of

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course, is most famous for Hadrian’s wall which marked the northernmost extent of the empire, sections of which remain to this day.

The Romans were partial to a drop and this indulgence had its practical side. By drinking wine, the army suffered less typhoid attacks than if they drank water. On the more poetic side, the authors quote many times from Artemidorus, a contemporary of Hadrian. He was a dream interpreter whose readings of the nocturnal mind vary from the practical (“Dreaming you have a few fleas ... and killing them is good”) to – by contemporary standards – the ludicrous. “Eating books is a favourable sign for teachers ... for everyone else it means death.”

In a not overly large book, the authors give a thorough picture of life in Rome under Hadrian with detailed descriptions of housing, laws, diet, aqueducts, sewerage, good luck charms, gods, the brutal games as well as details of Rome’s awesome sea power and life in Roman Britain – though curiously there is no bibliography and no footnotes. Notwithstanding these customary scholarly omissions, this is an excellent, well-written and highly informative history.

A BOX OF BEES

By Emily Dobson, Victoria University Press, $17.95 Recently I received this new book of poems and while it’s nice to see a new poet getting published I have a problem with many of the lines for they don’t seem to me to be poetry.

For instance: I drop a box of empty frames on the concrete floor to shake out the cockroaches sometimes five or six big ones.

I stomp on as many as I can.

Poetry? I don’t think so. Poetry that has given up rhyme, rhythm, poetic imagery & diction, poetic phrasing and even interesting line breaks and has merely the form of poetry by chopping prose into couplets seems a big ask for readers who may remember Yeats or Keats or Wallace Stevens, not to mention Curnow or Geoff Cochrane or Dinah Hawken.

However, after a while, all the honey started to get to me. Here and there little bits of poetry sneak in. For instance larva who are future queens are described thus: but for now they are only the size of commas.

Hey, that’s a tidy little metaphor. Emily, if you please give us more honey & less wax.

September 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 93

LIFESTYLE

MOVIES & DVDs

KUNG FU FIGHTING There’s nothing frightening about a bizarre new martial arts flick.

Plus: professional skaters and other kids with too much money

Kung Fu Hustle Rated: R

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Shelly Horton

had no idea how I was going to review Kung Fu Hustle. I wasn’t sure if it was the best movie I’ve ever seen or the worst. So I tried explaining it to my friends and found each time I talked about it I was smiling and laughing with amazement. So five stars it is.

I have never seen anything like it. Imagine Enter The Dragon, crossed with The Matrix, crossed with Reservoir Dogs, crossed with a Road Runner cartoon. Yeah, it messes with your mind.

I’ll try to explain the plot but I was so wide-eyed during the screening I hardly took any notes. I didn’t want to miss a second of the sub-titles in case it suddenly made sense.

Set in pre-revolutionary China, Kung Fu Hustle tells the tale of a petty crook called Sing, (played humorously

by Stephen Chow) who wants to join the notorious Axe Gang. The Axe Gang is running the city and killing people with axes (obviously) while dancing in tails and top hats (betcha didn’t see that coming).

Sing pretends he’s part of the Axe Gang to extort money for the poor folk living in a slum called Pig Sty Alley. But all is not what it seems. Pig Sty Alley is home to some kick-butt Kung Fu masters, including the local gay tailor who uses curtain rings to fend off assailants and swoons after a fight, sighing, “Is it a crime to be good at Kung Fu?” So along with the screaming landlady and her husband who also happen to be Kung Fu superfreaks this team plans to battle the Axe Gang. Then it all gets a bit Looney Tunes with the use of CGI and an honest-toGod Road Runner homage.

Finally Sing is revealed as a super-SUPER-powered Kung Fu master and he takes on a Kung Fu killer just released from a lunatic asylum who can harness his own powers and turn himself into a fighting bullfrog.

The climatic fight scene is an insane building-smashing, CGI-bending, martial arts masterpiece.

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Stephen Chow not only plays the lead role, he also wrote, produced, and directed the movie. Whatever he’s on, I’ll have what he’s having.

Millions Rated: PG

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reath taking, magical, delightful! A family film that is inspiring yet not sickly sweet. Disney you ask? DreamWorks perhaps? Nope. Millions is a Danny Boyle film. Yes, the same Danny Boyle who brought us the drug-fest Trainspotting and zombie flick 28 Days Later has produced one of the most enchanting films of the year. And without an animated animal in sight.

Millions is set in Northern England in the week running up to Britain changing from it’s currency from pounds sterling to euros. Two young boys find a sports bag stuffed with more than £250,000 in cash and, with just seven days before it becomes worthless, have some quick decisions to make.

Anthony (the charming Lewis McGibbon), is nine years old and a bourgeoning capitalist. He plans to buy property and wants to avoid paying tax (“Do you know how much 40 per cent is?” he asks, “Nearly all of it”).

His seven year old brother Damian (captivating newcomer Alex Etel), is a more troubled soul who has memorised the names and dates of every saint in the Christian calendar and wants to use the money to help the poor. While his unimpressed older brother tells him there aren’t any poor where they live as the house prices keep them out, Damian’s struggle to do the right thing make him the star of this modern day fable.

This imaginative and incredibly funny film follows the trial and tribulations of the two boys as they deal with their windfall while escaping the crooks who want their stolen loot back. They have to rely on each other as their Mum is dead and their Dad (the adorable James Nesbitt) is lonely and unaware of their money dilemma.

This sophisticated family film uses exceptional

camerawork and floating music to show you the world through a child’s eyes. The ending is a little sappy but in a morality tale it’s expected the characters have to choose between right and wrong. And so much of this film is very right.

Lords of Dogtown Rated: M

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ords of Dogtown is a movie based on Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary based on the real lives of the Z-Boys, the famous Californian skateboard legends of the 70s. But as with any copy, it gets weaker with every reproduction.

It’s the story of the Z-Boys, a group of grommets who muck around with skateboards when the surf is flat. One day the local skate/surf

shop owner, Skip Engblom (brilliantly played by Heath Ledger – who I think was channelling Val Kilmer), comes up with a key breakthrough, polyurethane wheels. The trick is they grip. So with the additional traction, the Z-Boys try skating the sides of the big, open drainage canal that runs through the area. Then when locals were forced to empty their pools due to water restrictions the Z-Boys saw those curved pools as cement dreams.

Their freestyling techniques cause such a stir they introduce their own sub-culture to skateboarding. With that the big sponsorship bucks (and the groupies) followed. Of course the money corrupts their friendship and they all go their separate ways, reminiscing of those lazy summers.

The Z-Boys are: Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch), Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk) and Stacy Peralta (John Robinson). They all do an OK job but none of them can do the amazing stunts that are in the documentary so it seems like the fuss is all about nothing.

As always, you can’t beat the original.

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DVDs

FINDING NEVERLAND 97 minutes, PG Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet lead a star studded cast in Finding Neverland, the movie about the events that inspired Peter Pan. The film follows Sir J. M. Barrie (Johnny Depp), the man who took his vision of flying children, ticking crocodiles and pirates to an audience who, in 1904, probably didn’t realise what they were in for. In Neverland, we join Barrie as he first meets Sylvia Davies (Winslet) and her four boys, learns their stories and becomes so engrossed that he models his new play on the children – the “Peter” of Peter Pan being Sylvia’s initially melancholy son Peter Davies. Sylvia is a young, beautiful widow with a demon she refuses to confront, and James Barrie gives her sons a new lease on life with imaginary journeys to Africa, battling pirates in the Caribbean or fighting the Indians in mid-western America.

Director Marc Forster catches the tongue-wagging subplots as rumours begin to spread about the married Barrie and his winsome protégé.

Fantastic cinematography and a brilliant storyline keep you immersed, but although it is rated PG, it’s a film more likely to appeal to adults because of its tragic themes.

Special features include commentary, three featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes.

Reviewed by Luke Webster

CELLULAR 94 minutes, M True to its title, the star of Cellular is a cellphone. It saves lives; it solves crimes.

If it ducked into a phone booth to change into, oh, I don’t know, a mildmannered fax machine, you would swear this was Superphone.

In a city of freeways and traffic jams, it was only a matter of time before 96, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005

someone made a movie about cellphones set in Los Angeles. Cellular is a thriller and, to its credit, it wastes no time kicking the thrills into high gear. You barely have time to watch Kim Basinger’s Jessica Martin walk her son to the school bus and then stroll back to her (quite lovely) home when – bang – some guys kick the door in, shoot her housekeeper and drag her off and throw her in an empty attic Empty, that is, except for a phone which the bad guys proceed to smash. If you’re looking for an art movie with high concept, this isn’t it, but if you can get past the issue of why an empty attic has a phone, Cellular provides a fairly entertaining ride. Need it be said that Jessica tinkers with the smashed phone and manages to make a connection with the cellphone of Ryan (Chris Evans), the shirtless hunk whose girlfriend has just berated him for being shallow and self-centered. But when Jessica gets him on his cell phone, he is transformed into the selfless hero who comes to care deeply for this woman he’s never met.

Ryan spends the rest of the movie tearing around Los Angeles trying to thwart the kidnappers and save Jessica. Director David R. Ellis crafts an impressive procession of car chases, fight scenes and things going boom. And he keeps things moving at such a rip-roaring pace that all the ways in which this movie just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever blur into the background.

Aiding in this effort are the better-than-they-have-tobe performances of the movie’s principal actors.

Basinger’s Jessica is right up there with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley as a by-any-means-necessary heroine. Basinger isn’t afraid to let her character dive into the deep end of the emotions pool – there is a frenzied edge to her desperation that rings absolutely true. And then there is William H. Macy as the soft-spoken cop who figures out, eventually, what’s going on and pitches in to save the day. He’s great but he’s off-screen for way too much of the movie. The 11th commandment of Hollywood should be “Thou shalt not waste William H. Macy.”

By the time the film builds to its climax, the twistswithin-twists tension of the movie is strained beyond repair – so many people are in on the secret the bad guys were trying to cover up in the first place, they’d pretty much have to kill everyone in Los Angeles. But banish such thoughts, along with any other thoughts, and you won’t find yourself abruptly disconnected from Cellular.

Reviewed by Tom Maurstad