Investigate magazine, Dec 08

Merry Christmas

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INVESTIGATE

John Key targeted:

December 2008: Media bias • The Christmas Special issue • The Church of Oprah Issue 95

news media implicated

New Evidence

backs up the Christmas story

Oprah Winfrey’s new religion

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Contents 44 24

50

32 FEATURES

24 Dog-whistle Electioneering 44 The Christmas Spirit A Canterbury University study suggests the news media were heavily biased against the National Party and John Key during the election campaign. IAN WISHART analyses the study, and its implications for the daily news media

32 Christmas - The Evidence

For years major newspapers and magazines have devoted issues each December to attacking the basis of the Christmas story. But now, new evidence is backing up the traditional version. In this extract from his book The Divinity Code, IAN WISHART lays out where critics like Richard Dawkins and John Spong have got it wrong

In a continuation of our Christmas special, former Christian turned atheist turned agnostic SIMON GEMMILL questions some basic assumptions about faith

50 Oprah’s New Religion

America’s talk-show queen has not only sold The Secret in 124 countries, and pushed other bizarre New Age beliefs on her audience - now she’s helped launch Barack Obama into the White House as part of a brave new order. ROLLAN MCCLEARY backgrounds the New Age search for their own ‘Messiah’ Cover: NZPA

Editorial and opinion 06 Focal Point

Volume 8, issue 95, ISSN 1175-1290

Editorial

08 Vox-Populi

The roar of the crowd

16 Simply Devine

16

Miranda Devine on drugs

18 Mark Steyn

On a cartoon president

20 Eyes Right

Richard Prosser on ‘The People’

22 Line 1

Chris Carter rocks the boat

Lifestyle

18

60 Money

Peter Hensley on retirement

62 Education

Amy Brooke’s clarion call

64 Science

Earthquake warning systems

66 Technology

Notebooks, Dragon 10

68 Sport

Chris Forster on the Blackcaps

60

70 Health

New breakthrough in heart care

72 Alt.Health Probiotics

74 Travel

A Lost City, and Ireland

82 Food

James Morrow cooks noodles

84 Drive

Corvette’s new ZR1

82

86 Toybox

The latest and greatest

88 Pages

Michael Morrissey’s summer picks

92 Music

Chris Philpott’s CD reviews

94 Movies

Quantum of Solace, Ghost Town

96 DVDs

Mamma Mia!

84

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

Richa Fuller Fuller Media 09 522 7062 021 03 74079 richa@fullermedia.co.nz

Contributing Writers: Melody Towns, Selwyn Parker, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Chris Carter, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Design & Layout

Heidi Wishart Bozidar Jokanovic

Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine PO Box 302188, North Harbour North Shore 0751, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor Ian Wishart Customer Services Debbie Marcroft Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com

By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983

NZ 09 373 3676

By Post: To the PO Box NZ Edition: $75 Au Edition: A$96 Email editorial@investigatemagazine.com ian@investigatemagazine.com australia@investigatemagazine.com sales@investigatemagazine.com debbie@investigatemagazine.com All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted.

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> focal point

Editorial

A provocative columnist

W

hen Amy Brooke submitted her column this month, we immediately recognised it as edgy. The slap around the chops using the tangata whenua as the example cuts a little close to the bone in our household, given Heidi’s rich Maori-Italian heritage.

But queasiness aside, Brooke makes some telling points.

Like it or not, the West is the planet’s greatest-ever civilisation. It didn’t get that way by navel gazing and overindulging in political correctness. Collectively, under the civilising influence of Christianity, a mass of competing tribes and cultures across the Mediterranean, then Europe and eventually the world found common ground and unity of purpose in pursuit of advancement and greater goals.

Private cultural issues, like wearing a ceremonial kilt or continuing to speak Latin, were matters for those directly affected and interested, not the wider Western culture.

The Maori renaissance in this country has been driven by the same lack of cultural anchors as the rise in support for Wicca or other pagan religious beliefs – the idea of the noble, romantic savage, somehow wiser than modern humanity.

Tied up in all this revisionist angst is the victimhood movement, and the US election has thrown up some issues strikingly on a parallel, such as the question of whether African-Americans should get some kind of apology and reparations for being ‘victims’ of the slave trade.

Many have undertaken pilgrimages back to their tribal homelands in Africa, only to come face to face with what their destiny may have been had their ancestors not been plucked from West African shores. That destiny might have involved abject poverty, or tribal massacres, or slavery at the hands of rival tribes or Arab people traffickers. Slavery still exists today in Africa, and the conditions are far worse than those endured by slaves sent to the West.

None of this is an attempt to justify slavery, or any other kind of wrongdoing, but it serves to give some perspective against the arguments of those who would load up another generation of schoolchildren with Western liberal guilt.

Slavery is wrong, fullstop. The descendants of Western slaves, however, are free and equal citizens – yet another tribe in Western civilisation’s pantheon of cultures. The slavery endured 200 years ago by black Africans is no worse than that endured by the Gauls, Celts or other subject peoples under Rome’s dominance 2000 years ago.

Barack Obama is only president of the US today because the descendents of African slaves, like Oprah Winfrey, swung behind his campaign and block-voted – 95% - favour of America’s first INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

black president. Given that African-Americans make up only 12% of the US population, that’s not bad going. New Zealand, which has always considered itself more enlightened, is yet to have its first Maori prime minister.

The breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi 150 years ago are no worse than those endured by all peoples worldwide who’ve ever come into contact with another tribe, race or culture.

Collectively, our ancestors have all trodden that path, have all suffered wrongs, have all endured brutal lives. There is nothing ‘special’ in today’s modern focus on victimhood.

And yet, modern liberal guilt is being heavily pushed in our school curriculum and threatens to derail an already weakening western culture. What was a relatively unified civilisation is being splintered back into its component cultures by dodgy educational theorists and historical revisionists who’ve attended too many Grey Lynn consciousness-raising evenings.

One feels the need to scream out, “Just get over it”, but one also feels the intended recipients of the message would never hear it, let alone understand it.

The danger with this revisionism is that it creates a sense of victimhood where once there wasn’t So whilst Brooke rattles some cages this issue, she’s also right: education should be about moving forward by learning lessons about the past, not by relitigating the past.

This, of course, has been a theme of the new John Key administration: looking forward instead of back; holding out an olive branch to the Maori Party regardless of need.

Some are no doubt wondering what Investigate does after such a momentous change in government. Same thing we did yesterday – news and current affairs journalism, chasing issues and stories that matter, and continuing to hold people to account. If the system works, and things get dealt with, great. If it all descends into cover-ups or the too-hard basket, we’ll be all over it like a rash. Just like we always have.

For thirteen years, the publishing company behind Investigate has been reporting and writing stories. We’ve covered the Bolger years, the Shipley years, the Clark years and now we begin the Key years.

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> vox populi

Communiques The roar of the crowd

Here’s some news: Obama won This evening, Radio N.Z. uncharacteristically featured a straighttalking American named Dr. David Yeagley of Oklahoma City on his views about the electing of Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency. Only they didn’t use this man’s usual name; they referred to him as Bad Eagle, because he has the website www. badeagle.com and is a direct descendant of some Indian warrior.

So in a surprisingly balanced item (for RNZ) there was a short Presidential Election discussion with this man and two others, of varied political perspectives.

What I heard from Yeagley seemed very much to echo what many of us believe is the situation in N.Z. also, so I looked up that URL and came across the following, which is part of his current on-site discussion about the above election. I hope you find it as refreshingly frank and informed as I have done. Here it is :“If Obama wins, it is because of young people, women, inexperience, and ignorance. It is because of the deceptive promise of wealth without labour--being given someone else’s wealth, and because, collectively, people are generally weak. It is because of the lack of courage, and the resultant insecurity. It is also because of greed. The poor are never exempt from greed.

“If Obama wins, it is because of decades of Communist ideology being established in the Democrat Party, permeating the American educational system, gradual brain-washing on an unprecedented scale in America, and because the masses always choose the easiest path. The “people” is always an infant, always dependent, and vulnerable, often victimized by those in power.

“If Obama wins, it is because white Communist liberals have shoved race and sex in the face, in the bed, and in the lives of young people for the last 50 years. Obama is the result. A black, foreign, Communist leader is the epitome of alien focus which the Oedipal white liberal Communists have been working to bring about for half a century. They have triumphed. They wanted America to be a Third World country, so they--the elite Communist cartel, could be the leaders. America has been raped.

“If Obama wins, it is because people feel sorry for the poor miserable Negro, and think that voting for one would represent the healing of the human Collective Conscious. All would be well, finally. They thought this cultural rape was deserved, that America needed to be humbled, and the world would be a better place.

“If Obama wins, it is because most people are weak, and they like feeling they’ve been wronged. This gives them, they think, an instant moral advantage. “I’ve been wronged!” It is immediate value, without effort. “I’ve been wronged!” is the Communist message to each individual. “I deserve more! You’ve oppressed INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

me!” This appeals to the imagination, the ego, the spirit of rebellion, self-justification, and even aspiration. But, in ignorance, the people know not what Communism really is, how it really works, and what its results actually are.

“If Obama wins, it is because the American people can’t imagine Obama could be so bad, or that he could cause anything bad to happen. In ignorance, they believe the good feeling he generates with mere words. They are willing to be swooned by the black foreigner. They are willing to be lead by fancy, or anything but the American Constitution, that hated dead letter of dead white men. The Democrats have been pushing for a Constitutional Convention for years, and recently. Hillary took the lead. It’s all about a one world “Communist” government. They have to “revise” the Constitution to take America there. This is the “change” Obama preaches.

“If Obama wins, it is because those who want world power created him, and want to use him to achieve their ends. He is their willing puppet. He is not a leader, but a follower, and a faithful one. (I shudder at the thought– if he steps out of line, how quickly they will remove him.) He has shown no evidence of conscience thus far, but, he may find himself, he may find his true self, under world pressure.

“If Obama wins, it is because American media has become propaganda, nothing more or other. Protestant capitalism and the work ethic have neglected to mind the store, so to speak. Too busy working, making success, the keepers of the gate allowed the weak to grow up ignorant and misinformed, following after their own inclinations, and subject to the first fancy foreign liar with dark skin. “ (End of quote) Barbara Faithfull, Auckland

The mmp problem Just a comment or two regarding Trevor Loudon’s “the Thorny Issue of MMP” (Investigate, October 2008).

He starts with the completely invalid criticism, “minor parties exercising influence far beyond their size”. This is only possible because the marketing strategists of the two main parties are desperate to avoid the spectacle of the two parties voting together.

After all, this would demon­strate conclusively that the difference between them is even less than the $5 a week tax cut they’re currently offering. And why shouldn’t they vote together in the inter­ ests of New Zealand citizens?

Later Trevor writes concerning the old ‘First Past the Post’ system, “It was designed to enfranchise the political mainstream ...”

As I understand the situation the last time any governing party

AND T S E NOW, FROM NZs B CHILDREN WRITER ’S “It is hardly to be expected that poetry rooted in ‘a sense of place’ will always travel well, but good poetry in the English language on universal themes should be accessible beyond its own shores. One contemporary New Zealand poet whose work would appeal to many Australians – and can be read with great profit as well as pleasure – is Amy Brooke, a prominent writer and children’s author. Deep down things is a selection of her work from over four decades…the product of a passionate intelligence and a deeply effective, though unobtrusive mastery of technique…

Perhaps we are getting back, after about three decades of suppression, a poetry of meaning rather than of word-games and disconnected, de-constructed images…whose words, often deeply moving, speak of things obviously worthwhile, obviously healthy.

Deep Down Things is a breath of fresh air, and highly recommended.”

– Hal Colebatch, for Quadrant.

NIGHT FLIGHT – REMEMBERING ANZAC DAY Lord, I’m not yet twenty, My brother only twenty-three; if one of us must die tonight let it not be he!

Or me…

Yet there the crescent moon rising gold above the land cradles the ghost of another; one reborn, one dying in the arms of a brother, a sign of things to be..?

I promised to come back.

Some day I will.

But not tonight. The woods below are where my pup and I grew up. We owe that old dog, whining in his sleep our childhood days. Three pairs of eyes on silver moving in the stream…

What does he dream?

Do owls still keep the twilight watch below?

I see our fields are white with snow.

But dark shadows now streak by.

He led me by the hand once when lost and small. I understand Keep them both safe, Lord; the call for sons, while grieving mothers let them go free!

If one must go, take me. listen to our planes climb high, and fathers pace – and loving others; my girl who kissed me, smiling still.

Christmas is coming!

Amy Brooke

Deep down things, together with Amy Brooke’s magical stories for young readers, is obtainable from any good bookshop, or Nationwide Books

www.nationwidebooks.co.nz

w w w . a m y b r o o k e . cINVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM o.nz

December 2008

had a majority under that system had been in the 1951 election.

This is enfranchising the politi­cal mainstream?

T. Toohill, Whangarei

Moose fur is cheap, apparently It is disappointing to see NZ news media parroting off unbalanced and superficial reports about Governor Sarah Palin’s US$150,000 [NZ$250,000] wardrobe.

With just a little investigation I have discovered: 1. Sarah Palin did not personally spend $150,000. The Republican Party put up the money and aides actually did the shopping.

2. $50,000 of purchases was unused and would be returned; $50,000 was spent on outfitting the Palin fam­ily; $50,000 was spent on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.

3. It is not unreasonaable for the Republican Party to help the Palins in view of the fact that they live in Alaska and were required to travel the length of USA to Florida, one of the hottest states.

4. The Palins do not personally keep the clothing. When they have finished with the clothing, it will be given to charity.

5. In Alaska the Palin family have very frugal habits being a typical middle class American family. Sarah Palin’s earrings were a gift and her wedding ring cost $35!

The key issue is not Sarah Palin’s clothing fibre but her moral fibre!

Kerry Sharp, Palmerston North

The divinity debate Re last issue’s ‘Letters’. Thank you Ian. You have taken time to answer me and I am grateful. I will ponder on your points and perhaps when I have pondered enough I will write to you. I do agree though that I straddle both cultures in a syncretic manner.

I am a woman however.

Vasu Iyengar Wishart responds:

Yes, apologies for assuming you were a male. It was the writing style.

And a third perspective Congratulations to both Dr Iyengar and Ian Wishart on a most interesting discussion conducted with great care and respect. As a committed Christian and former Baptist minister I found the matters under discussion to be of great importance.

One significant issue was raised by Ian Wishart and it is this that I wish to comment on.

Ian Wishart says, ‘There is clear Biblical authority that torture or child sacrifice are crimes against God.’ Amen to that. Then later he writes, ‘Christians, of course, have also committed their share of atrocities – but in clear conflict with their Scriptures.’ Pardon!

Certainly if one goes by the teachings of Jesus these atrocities are totally in conflict with Scripture. But if one goes by the Old Testament, with its various ‘slaughter of the Canaanites’ passages, among others, then they are in perfect harmony with Scripture.

The huge problem for us Christians is this. Contained in the various writings that make up our Bible are a number of passages which explicitly say God ordered the killing of innocent men, women, children and even babies. Passages which, down through the centuries, have been quoted time and again by various Christians to justify their own slaughters of the innocent.

Among them is the frightening little jewel in Psalm 137 v 9. In this verse the Psalmist gleefully pronounces against their 10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

Babylonian captors, ‘Happy and blessed shall be he who takes and dashes your little ones against the rocks.’ [Amplified Bible translation] Here is a supposedly ‘inspired’ writer in the ‘word of God’ enthusiastically calling for what can only be described as barbaric and evil behavior.

Some questions for Ian Wishart.

Ian, do you believe that this verse is ‘inspired by the Holy Spirit’?

Is the writer inspired by God when he claims that people who do this baby bashing are to be regarded as ‘happy and blessed’?

Is he correct to believe, as he clearly does, that God approves and indeed calls for these babies to be treated this way?

The truly frightening thing is just how most orthodox evangelical Christian scholars will fight tooth and claw to support the claim that indeed it was God who ordered these brutal slaughters, justifying these passages by using the most unbelievable special pleading and downright dishonest exegetical gymnastics. All despite the fact that when radical Muslims try to use the same excuses and quote passages from the Quran to justify their slaughter of innocent people, these same Christian scholars will scream blue murder, loudly proclaiming that God would never support such evil actions. They have one set of rules for themselves and another for non-Christian religions; a mind blowing hypocrisy!

They also totally ignore the fact that this view of God as the harsh executioner willing to murder even innocent women and small children is forever totally contradicted by the explicit teachings of Jesus Christ.

They are set up for this sort of evil by their orthodox understanding of what is called, in evangelical circles, ‘Biblical Inspiration’.

This view says ‘inspiration’ means that everything written in the Bible is infallible and cannot ever be called into question. They are therefore prevented from using their brains and stating the obvious. Namely that the Hebrew writers of these passages were using the hoary old excuse so common to those committing genocide, ‘Oh we didn’t really like doing it, but God told us to do it’.

Poor God must weep at being blamed for many of humanity’s most heinous acts.

By the way – here’s something really silly to think about.

If, as we Christians assert, Jesus is the second person of the trinity and therefore part of the Godhead, then (and there is no way around this little horror) Jesus had to have been the one, or at least part of the one, to have demanded that these various shocking slaughters be done in his name! The orthodox Christian then wanders off into loony-toon land because he is forced to say that somehow Jesus had apparently completely changed his mind by the time he came to earth – demonstrated by the fact that he repeatedly teaches that God is a loving Father who commands us to forgive and love our enemies. In the name of all that’s fair and believable, just how stupid is this. Yet it is the unavoidable logical conclusion forced on any Christian who wants to cling to the silly, poorly thought through orthodox evangelical understanding of biblical inspiration.

Another basic mistake is made by evangelicals when, by very selective verse quoting, they claim that they hold this view of biblical inspiration only because Jesus taught it. I would suggest that any study of the Matthew 5 ‘You have heard it said [in the Jewish scriptures], but I say unto you’ passages, will show Jesus has a very non-orthodox understanding of ‘inspiration’. He must have scandalized the Jewish Scribes by happily contradicting, in Matthew 5 v 38-48, numerous Old Testament teachings, saying quite uncompromisingly that they were flat out wrong.

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For me, the answer to this dilemma is simple. I hold the view of inspiration taught by none other than John Wesley, that great evangelical and founder of Methodism. When writing about the Canaanite genocide and the Hebrew writers’ claim that God had ordered it, Wesley thundered ‘such a claim makes him [God] more false, more cruel and more unjust than the devil – God hath taken satan’s work out of his hands – God is the destroyer of souls.’

Wesley’s view demands that Christians at long last front up to this issue, be brutally honest and acknowledge the obvious fact that the writers of the Bible books were fallible men. Men who, like the apostle Paul, ‘know in part and prophesy in part’. Wesley calls on us to test all biblical writings by the ‘what did Jesus teach?’ standard, always asking this key question, ‘Are the views expressed in this passage consistent with the clear teaching of Jesus Christ?’ If this is not the case, then we have a duty to acknowledge that the writer is demonstrating the very human capacity to mix the message with his own biases and limited understanding of just who God is.

This surely is the most Christ-centered way of judging the truth of scripture and fortunately, when this standard is used, most of scripture does come up trumps. It also forever saves us from perpetrating that great evil of trying desperately to justify the forever unjustifiable, merely because it is written in the Bible.

Another conservative evangelical scholar has bravely broken ranks with the appalling genocide justifications of the majority of his contemporaries. Church of the Nazarene scholar Dr C.S Cowles, who also follows Wesley’s understandings, writes, ‘Jesus is the criterion for evaluating scripture, the prism through which the Hebrew scriptures must be read.’

Bruce Puddle, Tauranga Wishart responds:

By the rivers of Babylon when we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. The Psalm you raise with the baby-bashing is a lament, parts of which have been immortalised for a generation in Boney-M’s number one mega-hit from the 1970s.

In context, the Psalmist is remembering Israel, and mourning what the Babylonians did to the children of the Jews.

The NIV translation [generally regarded as the most literal translation] of the verse you raised, 137:8-9, reads: “Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

I’ve emphasised the ‘your’, because it provides a more subtle and I believe accurate rendering of the intent of the passage. The Hebrew writer was calling on God to avenge what had been done to Hebrew babies, by repaying in kind.

You ask if I believe the verse is inspired? Clearly, I believe the entire Bible is inspired. But does that mean the Holy Spirit wrote the entire thing without human input? No. The doctrine of inspiration does not preclude the inclusion of human drama and perspectives of the human writers.

If you, as a father, had watched an invading army seize your beloved children and smash their heads to a pulp against rocks, would you not feel that pain, or would you take an academic approach to it?

14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

The Psalm acknowledges the pain, and the very human tragedy being played out, but that particular verse is not recording God ordering such a punishment. Instead it is recording the Psalmist telling the Babylonians the pain they should suffer.

Psalm 109 is another that curses the oppressors, despite Christ’s later call to love your enemies. The agony of the Psalmist in the face of what he has endured is clear, but nonetheless after his rant asking God to avenge him, he nonetheless accepts the decision to do so is over to God. As I have argued previously, there is a distinction between the events of the Old Testament and those of the New. The Old chronicles God’s efforts to keep the Hebrew line that would give rise to Mary and ultimately Jesus clear of spiritual corruption – particularly via influences and bloodlines of pagan tribes. Once Christ was born, many of those issues became less relevant. Purity via deeds was surpassed by the sacrificial atonement of Jesus, and hence the new covenant.

While I agree that Christ is the lens through which we should view the Old Testament, many modern scholars would disagree with Wesley’s defeatist readings of the Old Testament. The overarching warning of the New Testament is the eventual return of Jesus, this time in judgement, at a time more terrible than any in world history. So the judgements executed in the Old are merely foreshadowing Jesus’ role in the New. Joshua 6:21, for example, records the destruction of Jericho including the children. But the sins of Jericho and its culture had been recorded earlier in Leviticus 18, setting out that the culture was a cancer on the region, whose practices included regular sacrifice of their own children.

A visitation of God’s judgement on such a culture, whether by a falling asteroid or via an Israelite army, is still a choice that a sovereign God can make and I have no logical difficulty with the concept that the giver of life has authority to take it away.

The fact that western nations are today slaughtering innocents in the form of 800 million odd abortions in the past 30 years leaves me speculating (not joyously, but sadly) about what kind of granddaddy of all judgements is being stored up for modern Jericho and its leaders.

As a point of fact however, you can’t escape that our modern behaviours are worse than those of the Canaanites, which fits with Christ’s warning that in the end, the final judgement would be truly terrible. Everything else was a mere foretaste. And few but a blind man could look around the world today and not suspect the place is going to Hell in a handcart.

The doctrine of child salvation, by the way, would suggest that kids put to death by pagans, and then by the Israelites as part of a purge, would stand a greater chance of seeing salvation than those who grew to adulthood in a corrupt culture.

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

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> simply devine

Miranda Devine The generation that inhaled

B

arack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams From My Father, five years ago, the jury was still out on whether marijuana causes describes his flirtation with drugs during a troubled early psychosis. Well, that’s all changed – the data has been flooding period. “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow in.” The program highlighted fierce emotional resistance, even [cocaine] when you could afford it … Everybody was wel- within the medical profession, from those who have long held come into the club of disaffection.” At 47, the US president-elect is that marijuana is a benign drug.

Dr Martin Cohen, chief psychologist at the Hunter New typical of his late baby boomer-early generation X cohort, in that marijuana was freely available in his teens and early 20s, virtually England Mental Health Service, told of the hostile reception he received when “about five years ago I was giving a talk to a roomful unpoliced and regarded as relatively harmless, a “soft” drug.

As the pot-smoking generations have moved en masse into posi- of my colleagues on the link between cannabis use and psychosis, tions of power, the days when reporters could play gotcha journal- and one of them became so irate that he walked up to the stage and hurled abuse at me. So it did seem like heresy at the time.” ism with politicians about previous drug use are over.

Yesterday’s heresy is today’s truth, with the journal The Lancet No more will we be diverted by the prevarications of a Bill “I didn’t inhale” Clinton, 62, but nor can we expect leaders to respond last year recanting its 1995 editorial, which claimed cannabis was harmless. It published a paper that examined 35 international with the piety of Kevin “not a part of my scene” Rudd, 51.

Instead we have Julia Gillard, 47, Wayne Swan, 54, Peter Garrett studies and found “a consistent association between cannabis use (no kidding), 55, Malcolm Turnbull, 54, Nick Minchin, 55, and Tony and psychotic symptoms, including disabling psychotic disorders”. Another paper, pubAbbott, 51, freely admitting to lished in June in the the odd youthful toke, though A 2002 study in the British Journal Of World Psychiatry most experimented briefly.

by Wayne Hall of the While marijuana use may Medical Journal made the University of Queensland have lost much of its political and Louisa Degenhardt of sting, politicians should not staggering estimate that “13 per the University of NSW, be afraid of accusations of declares: “There is now hypocrisy, but heed mountreasonable evidence from ing evidence that marijuana cent of cases of schizophrenia could longitudinal studies that is not the benign drug it was be averted if all cannabis use regular cannabis use preonce thought. If anything, dicts an increased risk of their experience gives them were prevented schizophrenia.” the moral authority to ensure There is the long-term young people, particularly adolescents, with their exquisitely vulnerable brains, understand study of 50,465 Swedish Army conscripts, which found those that cannabis is increasingly linked to permanent psychiatric dam- who had tried marijuana by age 18 had 2.4 times the risk of schizoage. As Turnbull told ABC TV six weeks ago: “Yes, I have smoked phrenia than those who had never used the drug. Heavy users were pot … It was a mistake to do so … I think people of our genera- 6.7 times more likely to be admitted to hospital for schizophretion, had we known when we were much younger the severe con- nia. There are the three-year longitudinal study of 4848 people in sequences that can come from smoking marijuana, I would hope the Netherlands; a German study of 2437 adolescents and young we wouldn’t have done so … It’s a very serious drug, and it is a adults between 1995 and 1999 in Munich; and two New Zealand drug that we should strongly discourage everybody … particularly studies. A 2002 study in the British Medical Journal made the staggering estimate that “13 per cent of cases of schizophrenia could young people, from using … It’s not something to joke about.”

Recent research suggests that, without cannabis, the incidence be averted if all cannabis use were prevented”.

Pot protectors have tried to counter with the claim that rates of schizophrenia would drop by at least 10 per cent. That’s roughly 28,000 people in Australia who would be spared this terrible ail- of schizophrenia have not increased in tandem with cannabis ment; around the world in this year alone, about 150,000 people use. But, as Catalyst pointed out, recent studies in London and Zurich have put the lie to this argument. In the Zurich study, would not develop the disorder.

As the ABC science program Catalyst put it last week: “Even from 1977 to 2005, published in Schizophrenia Research last year, 16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

Young people and those with a genetic predisposition are most at risk. Thankfully, the Tough on Drugs strategy of the Rudd and Howard governments has seen a dramatic decline in youthful cannabis use

there was a “strong increase in the rates of psychotic disorders” among the youngest age groups in the second half of the 1990s, which “coincides with the increased use of cannabis among young Swiss in the 1990s”.

As University of Melbourne neuropsychologist Dr Murat Yucel told Catalyst: “The verdict is in that cannabis and psychosis are intricately linked … Everyone is vulnerable … if you use it long enough and heavily enough.”

Young people and those with a genetic predisposition are most at risk. Thankfully, the Tough on Drugs strategy of the Rudd and Howard governments has seen a dramatic decline in youthful can-

nabis use. Among 14- to 19-year-old males, use has dropped from 36 per cent in 1995 to 13 per cent in 2007, according to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey. The decline among 20- to 29year-old males was from 44 per cent to 25. Use among 14- to 19year-old females fell from 20 per cent to 13 per cent; among 20- to 29-year-old females it fell from 23 per cent to 16.

But for those aged over 40, cannabis use increased, especially among the over-50s, reflecting the ageing of the pothead generation. It is this generation, now in positions of influence, who are proving dangerously resistant to changing their youthful notions about cannabis. devinemiranda@hotmail.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 17

> straight talk

Mark Steyn

The rise of a cartoon president

I

n Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, over a thousand people signed president, and the sooner the better – ie, the sooner we do it, the a new petition asking the Japanese government to permit mar- better it speaks of us. They have a point. I look at the roll call of the riages between human beings and cartoon characters. “I am dead on 9/11: Arestegui, Bolourchi, Carstanjen, Droz, Elseth, Foti, no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to Gronlund, Hannafin, Iskyan, Kuge, Laychak, Mojica, Nguyen, become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” explained Taichi Ong, Pappalardo, Quigley, Retic, Shuyin, Tarrou, Vamsikrishna, Takashita. “Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to Warchola, Yuguang, Zarba. Black, white, Scandinavian, Balkan, legally authorize marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

Arab, Asian – in a word, American. The presidential pantheon has And then came Election Night, where an entire constitutional a narrower ring: Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson. Obama has a republic has decided to contract marriage with a two-dimensional tedious shtick about how his name sounds odd and he doesn’t look character and to attempt to take up residence in the two-dimen- like “all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” He’s not just sional world. For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. picking out the drapes for the Oval Office, he’s ordering up the He offers “hope, not fear”. “Hope” of what? “Hope” of “change.” new currency and booking the sculptors for Mount Rushmore.

Okay, but “change” to what? Ah, well, there you go again, getting And why not? Obama in the White House, Obama on the dolall hung up on three-dimensional reality, when we’ve moved way lar bill, Obama on Rushmore would symbolize the possibilities beyond that. I don’t know which cartoon character Taichi Takashita of America more than that narrow list of white-bread protestant is eyeing as his betrothed, but up in the sky Obamaman is fly- presidents to date. ing high, fighting for Hope, Change, and a kind of Post-Modern The problem is we’re not electing a symbol, a logo, a twoAmerican Way. dimensional image. Long The two-dimensional idea before he emerged on the The government as wealthof President Obama is seducnational stage as Barack the tive: To elect a young black Hope-Giver and Bringer of spreader-in-chief was not a slip man of Kenyan extraction and Change, there was a threeIndonesian upbringing offers dimensional Barack Obama, of the tongue but consistent with redemption both for America’s a real man who lives in the original sin (slavery) and for real world. And that’s where Obama’s life, friends and votes the more recent perceived sins the problem lies. of President Bush – his supThe Senator and his dotposed enthusiasm for sticking it to foreigners generally, and the ing Obots in the media have gone to great lengths to obscure Muslim world in particular. And no, I’m not saying he’s Muslim. what Barack Obama does when he’s not being a symbol: his votIt’s worse than that: He’s a pasty-faced European – at least in his ing record, his friends, his patrons, his life outside the soft-focus view of state power, welfare, and taxation. memoirs is deemed non-relevant to the general hopey-changey But, in a sense, he’s not anything in particular, so much as vibe. But occasionally we get a glimpse. The offhand aside to Joe everything in general. The media dispatched legions of reporters the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around” was revealing to hoot and jeer at Sarah Palin’s Wasilla without ever wondering: because it suggests a crude redistributive view of “social justice.”

Where would we go to do this to Obama? Where’s his “home Yet the nimble Hope-a-Dope sidestepper brushed it aside, telltown?” Bill Clinton was famously (if not entirely accurately) from ing a crowd in Raleigh that next John McCain will be “accus“a place called Hope.” Barack Obama is from an idea called hope. ing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in What’s the area code? 1-800-HOPE4CHANGE. The 1-800 candi- kindergarten.” date offers the hope of electing a younger Morgan Freeman, the But that too is revealing. As John Hood pointed out at National cool, reserved, dignified black man who, when he’s not literally Review, communism is not “sharing.” In a free society, the citizen God walking among us (as in Bruce Almighty), is always the con- chooses whether to share his Lego, trade it for some Thomas the science of the movie.

Tank Engine train tracks, or keep it to himself. From that freedom You can understand the appeal of such an idea. Even if you’re of action grow mighty Playmobile cities. Communism is comnot hung up on white liberal guilt or Bush loathing, there’s an pulsion. It’s the government confiscating your Elmo to “share” it urge to get it over with, to say, well, America should have a black with someone of its choice. Joe the Plumber is free to spread his 18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. He offers “hope, not fear”. “Hope” of what? “Hope” of “change.” Okay, but “change” to what?

own wealth around – hiring employees, buying supplies from local businesses, enjoying surf ’n’turf night at his favourite eatery. But, in Obama’s world view, that’s not good enough: the state is the best judge of how to spread Joe the Plumber’s wealth around.

The Senator is a wealthy man, mainly on the strength of two bestselling books offering his biography in lieu of policy and accomplishments. Many lively members of his Kenyan family occur as supporting characters in his story and provide the vivid colour in it. But they too are not merely two-dimensional cartoons. His Aunt Zeituni, a memorable figure in Obama’s writing, turned up for real just before the election, when the dogged James Bone of the London Times tracked her down. She lives in a rundown housing project in Boston.

In his big pre-election infomercial, Obama declared that his “fundamental belief ” was that “I am my brother’s keeper.” Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother’s keeper, why couldn’t he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy’s income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother’s keeper, and his aunt’s keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid

Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.

The government as wealth-spreader-in-chief was not a slip of the tongue but consistent with Obama’s life, friends and votes. The Obamacons – that’s to say, conservatives hot for Barack – justify their decision to support a big-spending big-government Democrat with the most liberal voting record in the Senate by “hoping” that he doesn’t mean it, by “hoping” that he’ll “change” in office. “I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible,” declared reformed conservative Ken Adelman, “than his liberal record indicates.”

He’s “hoping” that Obama will buck not just Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and the rest of the gang but also his voting record, his personal address book, and his entire adult life. Good luck betting the future on that. The “change” we’ll get isn’t hard to discern: An expansion of government, an increase in taxes, a greater annexation of the dynamic part of the economy by the sclerotic bureaucracy, a reduction in economic liberty . . . oh, and a lot more Chicago machine politics.

This month, many Americans voted for the two-dimensional Obama – the image, the idea, the “hope”. But it will be the threedimensional Obama – the real man with the real record – that America will have to live with. © Mark Steyn 2008

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 19

> eyes right

Richard Prosser

Our word is law

T

he election is just over a week away as I sit and type. By MMP to best effect yet, either. It still delivers an FPP Parliament, the time this edition hits the news stands it will be all over largely because we expect it to. We still speak of its potential outbar the shouting; and bar the crying and screaming, the comes in terms of National Government or Labour Government, recriminations, the taunts and jeers – and that’s only what rather than consensus coalition. We still expect the largest minorwill be happening in the media, even before the playful scamps ity Party to form the core of any Government, and its Leader to we elect to represent us are let loose in their poorly supervised become the Prime Minister. In Europe’s more mature democraWellington kindergarten. cies, conversely, coalitions where the smaller Party gets to fill the I have my own predictions as to the outcome, of course, and Top Job, and the larger one controls the purse strings, are compreferences; I’ll let you know how close I got next month, but in monplace. Here we fret about tails wagging dogs, and cling to the some ways that isn’t really the most important thing right now. antiquated and somewhat bizarre notion that one Party or another What bugs me most – at least this month – about the electoral has some kind of divine right to govern, even when better than process, is not that the individuals who comprise society have so 60% of the electorate didn’t vote for them. little influence over the final outcome, but that we have no influMMP could certainly be improved. Constituency MPs could ence at all over what happens after that. We have one chance and be elected by Preference or STV, rather than the undemocratic one chance only, every three years, to haul on the reins of the plurality system we employ now. Candidates could be required to nation, to apply a well-aimed riding crop to the comfortable and stand for an electorate seat, or be on the Party list, but not both, corpulent rump of Government. After polling day, we are ejected which would remove the paradoxical situation of Party hacks makfrom the saddle again, and the ing it into Parliament on the will of the people parts comlist, despite having been MMP is a dog, and it needs to go. rejected by their constitupany from the riderless nag of the State’s direction. ency voters – though this What most definitely doesn’t need Since 1996 it has become may be a somewhat mute fashionable to blame MMP for point, because once again, to happen, however, is that we be the fact that politicians of all under plurality voting in hues appear incapable of doing the electorates, a candidate returned to FPP as they are told by the people can “win” a seat even when who employ them. This is nona clear and overwhelming sense, of course; politicians were ignoring the wishes of the nation majority of voters wanted someone else entirely. long before we changed the voting system. And MMP, while far from The threshold for Parties to gain seats in the house could be perfect, is still better than the farce of First-Past-The-Post which pre- lowered from 5% as we and the Germans set it, to 3% as it is in ceded it. MMP at least makes an attempt at pretending to be repre- Bolivia, or even 1% if we wanted to ensure that Parliament gained sentative democracy in action, which FPP never did. a sizeable contingent of real nutters to keep the establishment honThe problem with MMP is not that it requires Governments est. I rather like the 1% idea. All sorts of Independents could find to be cobbled together out of disparate Parties with diverging voice and influence in the house, just as an independent candiagendas. That is in fact one of its strengths, and the consensus date in an electorate seat may do today – and who’s to say that the policy-making which it is meant to impose on the nation’s law- fringe dwellers shouldn’t be able to send someone to Wellington makers would be a great step towards the aforementioned repre- just because they’re spread over the entire country, rather than all sentative democracy. living in the same place? An independent MP can currently gain Your favourite commentator is cynical enough to believe that a seat in the House of Representatives by winning a simple pluralMMP was foisted upon us in its present form purely because it ity vote under the FPP system in a single constituency, with the is, in fact, the worst of the Proportional Representation voting support of as few as 15,000 people – or around 0.5% of the total methods; the powers that be, I would suggest, believed we would number of people on the electoral roll. Why should the bar for tire of it in short order, and demand a return to the simple minor- representation be set at ten times that figure for a similarly indeity-dictatorship offered by FPP. pendent-minded group of people, simply because they don’t all We haven’t, but neither have we as a nation learned how to use live in a single electorate?

20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

We would, of course, have a Parliament littered with nutcases and extremists (if indeed we don’t anyway), but by the same token, the “big” Parties would be forced to accommodate the desires and demands of such folk, instead of ignoring them just as they do the majority of ordinary New Zealanders at present.

We shy away from such possibilities because we are, as a nation, rather hung up on the idea of stability. We don’t like the idea that Governments may topple at a moment’s notice, to be replaced with something unknown. In this writer’s opinion, such concern is misplaced. Instability in Government can be a good thing – not ideal as far as the politicians themselves are concerned, but not necessarily bad for the economy either. Italy is a case in point. Despite having had 62 Governments since the Second World War, Italy’s standard of living remains near the top of the OECD. But I am digressing. MMP is a dog, and it needs to go. What most definitely doesn’t need to happen, however, is that we be returned to FPP. That was never democracy, and it never worked.

Its promoters and supporters need to take themselves out for a cold shower and a good slapping. STV, Preferential Voting, 1-2-3 PV, almost anything would be better. But not what we had before.

That was just ridiculous.

And there are other changes necessary. A written Constitution to limit the powers of Government goes without saying. Our unicameral Assembly affords far too great a degree of unbridled power to far too few people, specifically the Cabinet, and in particular, the Prime Minister. Unless we are to recreate the second chamber, the Upper House which New Zealand had for a hundred years until 1951, the office of Prime Minister needs to be a position elected by the people, directly and universally. Giving absolute executive power to a single individual, placed in their role by a small and unaccountable group of invisible Party insiders, and justified by the self-fulfilling lie that voter support for a given Party translates to tacit support for that choice, with no other constitutional checks or balances, is simply insane. If New Zealand’s Prime Minister is to exercise the powers of an Executive President, then the person holding that office needs to be mandated directly by the People.

Further, the person holding that office should be, indeed must be, accountable to the People at all times throughout their tenure, and not, as is presently the case, only once every three years, or alternatively, as the aforementioned group of invisible and unaccountable insiders see fit.

Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California via a process known as Recall. Under this system, a dishonest or ineffective politician may be removed from office at any time during their elected term, by way of a special vote on the back of a petition initiated by a minimum necessary number of registered voters.

Our Prime Minister, and members of the Cabinet, need to have a similar Sword of Damocles hanging over them; they need to know that if they don’t perform, conform, behave properly, and do as We The People tell them, that they’ll be out on their ears, not maybe in three years time, but maybe next month. That should keep the bastards honest.

But perhaps the single most powerful and important tool which needs to be made available to the New Zealand voter is the mechanism of Binding Citizens’ Initiated Referenda.

The Swiss have used referenda for better than 150 years without the sky falling in, and their peaceful and affluent democracy is testament to the effectiveness of having the People keep a direct rein on the politicians.

Naysayers in our own Halls of Power are wont to criticise the use of binding referenda on the basis that it makes continuity of governance difficult, or even that the People themselves don’t want to be running off to the polls every five minutes. Indeed we don’t, but by the same token, if the Government of the Day would only take it upon itself to actually listen to the mood of the nation, and do as the People desire, there would be no need for referenda.

BCIR in New Zealand would mean a very different shape to the policy and direction of Government. We would still have an Air Force. Our dogs would have remained un-microchipped. It is quite conceivable that we might countenance nuclear power via referendum. And Section 59 of the Crimes Act would still be there on the Books, where 80% of New Zealanders still want it to be. That we are to be grudgingly allowed a plebiscite on the completely unwanted anti-smacking legislation is something of a pyrrhic victory, given that the result – which we already know will overwhelmingly reject it – will not be binding on the Government, who will use all manner of lies and subterfuge to avoid taking heed of the wishes of the People.

Whoever makes up the next New Zealand Government, whichever collection of strange bedfellows and expedient friends, there is something that they all need to learn and understand, and it is this; we the People are growing tired of being ignored. This is our democracy, and our word is the Law. We send people to Wellington to represent us, not to lead, and certainly not to follow their own flights of fancy at the expense of our express wishes.

The challenge for the next Parliament is not to overcome the foibles of MMP whilst blaming it for their own shortcomings.

It is to give the People the tools they need to ensure that democracy actually works, regardless of whichever voting system we choose to employ.

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> line one

Chris Carter Rocking the boat

A

s your scribe puts these general thoughts and observa- come into contact with. The Gangs peddle their amphetamines tions together, we are all yet to discover just which political and in short order create victims who, through their addiction to P parties have managed to join in unholy alliance to further fall entirely under the control of their supplier. The Governmental run the Good Ship New Zealand even harder upon the Gang expands the welfare system of old to include just about anyjagged reef of fiscal and moral degradation. Like many others, I’ve one who draws breath, not in anyway to alleviate pain and sufwatched in morbid fascination during the period that rejoices in fering, but simply and cynically, to create dependence and long being named the run up to the election, some of the most appall- term addiction. The P distributors demand cash or stolen goods ing people to have ever drawn breath, engage in an orgy of corrupt for their product, The Labour Party simply needs your vote using practice probably unknown outside of Zimbabwe. our stolen money to get it, and how harmless could that ever be?

We have been bribed, lied to, encouraged to completely over- Perhaps about as harmless as a hidden land mine, unless maybe look serious Ministerial wrongdoings, all in a frenzied attempt we stop and consider for a moment what it is that these out of to somehow legitimise another three years of a socialistic dicta- control power freaks had it in mind to do should power, once torship. Labour, over the last nine years in office perfected the again fall into their grubby little mitts. art of alchemy. Unfortunately however, their particular formula, Then we perhaps should examine some of the Gangs associate like so much that they attempted to do invariably tended to members. All Gangs have them. Black Power, the Mongrel Mob have precisely the opposite outcome that they intended. The etc...Likewise the parliamentary gangs, excepting that they more nation’s previous gold has been usually do the business turned into lead, and such was after an election, choos Who ever it is that has made it the power of their formula that ing the various small parany future gold produced by ties that they need to make over the finishing line in this year’s up the necessary parliamenthe hard working Kiwi for the better part of the next decade, tary majority which is usuit appears, will be suffering a election should quickly become very ally carried out in a not too similar fate. dissimilar way to the drugafraid of us, certainly not as it is at gies in that bribes are both Mismanagement and straight out stupidity comoffered and accepted, with the moment, the other way around the voting public of course bined with breathtaking arrogance had turned the once being kept completely in great workers’ party into little more than a refuge for politicians the dark until the big announcement. This system of forming a with little if any concept of ever working for a living themselves, government owes as much to real democracy as giving the castpreferring instead to continually shoot themselves up with that ing vote on matters of state to a small group of dribbling idiots, most addictive drug of all, P. It’s quite amazing really, the similarity who regardless of being plainly certifiable never the less, are there in symptoms between those addicted to Power and those that have to make up the necessary numbers. Fact of the matter is that we become slaves to amphetamines. Both, demonstrably lie like flat- are altogether too kind or have been sold a bill of goods about fish. They circulate within small, close knit groups that are mind- the need to be “Fair” with regards to the policies and the personlessly dedicated to the pursuit of their next fix. They will steal, or nel that frequently make up the package on offer when it comes tax, from anyone at all that can provide the means to alleviate their to minor parties. cravings. Moral, or actual prostitution frequently becomes simply For instance, how come someone who manages to sneak into a way of life, it being little other than the means to an end rather parliament from a party that frequently has only picked up three than any recognition that they may very well gain the earth, but or four percent of the popular vote, can end up being a Cabinet in so doing, most definitely, they will lose their souls.

Minister in a very important portfolio? Even worse, so important Worst of all, these parallel examples of similar addiction are as to the major party is their vote, that this small bunch of misfits end dangerous to the population as a whole as the Black Death of the up having all manner of lunatic ideas that probably came to them Middle Ages. Highly contagious, these two groups of Pushers roam whilst smoking organically grown jolly weed, actually put through the land, each in their own way slowly corrupting all that they the House as law. Well why not, after all what’s wrong with having 22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

essentially a large German Shepherd being violently wagged by the graftedon tail of a miniature poodle? Should one or other of the aforementioned political fleas get up to untold mischief whilst in receipt of the goodies that come with being a part of Government, well, no matter, “nothing to see here, let’s move on” becomes the officially sanctioned mantra that apparently excuses everything short of murder...well so far that is!

Then we have the Party list that to say it allows for the stacking of parliament with folk that are scarcely representative of the greater part of the voting population would be a major understatement. That Labour over the last decade has managed to include in its ranks, straight off the party list, a high proportion of folk to whom the joys of family life and the production of children will always remain a mystery, but who, nevertheless are wildly enthusiastic in the formulation and the passing of frequently draconian laws in areas that by inclination perhaps they for ever shall remain ignorant about.

This area alone is a straight out perversion of true democracy that long since should have led to a much more satisfactory solution by now than apparently was achieved by a Mr Guido Fawkes a few centuries back.

Speaking of which, surely the ultimate defence for any of the young hoons who persist in the all too common apparent protest of torching their local classrooms, is to simply provide the judge with some examples of their reading, writing and numeracy abilities. That child abuse of the mind is now commonplace as the State persists in the removal of biological parents from the child rearing equation, an increasing number of children, unlike their dopey parents, quite obviously feel it’s time to demonstrate their displeasure. They could of course simply wait until they come of an age to vote, but then again, for the above mentioned reasons, even then, little is likely to change. New Zealand has, for as long as

I can remember in any case, been largely ruled at the behest of vocal minorities.

He or she who is prepared to protest long and loud will invariably make the six o’clock news. The main problem with most of we New Zealanders is that we meekly accept all manner of locally based draconian rules and regulations, the anti smacking law being just one convenient example, and despite a number of opinion surveys that clearly show that over 80% of us didn’t want this law to go through, all we’re prepared to do about it is to meekly sign a petition!

Even the wording of petitions to Parliament is an affront to democracy...“we the undersigned pray...” indeed! Just who do these politicians think they are? Who ever it is that has made it over the finishing line in this year’s election should quickly become very afraid of us, certainly not as it is at the moment, the other way around. We’re not in the business, surely as voters, in just trotting forth on Election Day to elect little more than the personnel to run the next three year dictatorship! Let them know in no uncertain manner that remaining in power at the next election is the least of their worries. That MPs are simply our representatives, nothing more or less, if necessary, this may need to be reinforced by more direct means that both we and they have been accustomed to. With few exceptions most MPs need to be made very much aware that it is indeed time for a change, and that no longer are we prepared to tolerate the blatant arrogance and dictatorial methods of government that they have become used to inflict upon the rest of us.

Like as is often the case in a failing business enterprise, or a country, most problems usually lie with management. To fire such people is really not that much of a problem is it? Certainly not if sufficient numbers of shareholders stand up and simply demand they depart.

From here on in I sincerely believe we should try it.

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

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 23

Dog whistle erage v o c a i d e m skew r u o n? b o a i t L c e d l i e D e

h t n yi of John Ke It’s a story you’re unlikely to see widely reported, because frankly it’s embarrassing to the news media.

However, it’s a story that deserves to be told. A new study has revealed a sizeable media bias against John Key and the National Party during the election campaign.

The question is, was it inherent bias, or the result of clever media manipulation

by Labour?

IAN WISHART has more

24 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

electioneering

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 25

W

hen conservative icon and Aussie newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt blogged the New Zealand election for readers of Melbourne’s HeraldSun newspaper this month, he was using TV3’s election night feed, rebroadcast throughout Australia on Sky News, as his reference point.

Bolt – a frequent critic of the left-leaning ABC network in Australia – practically fell off his perch in disbelief while watching the NZ coverage: “Labour is defeated in New Zealand after nine years. It’s a thrashing 46 per cent to 34. The economic decline under Helen Clark seems to have been too unmistakable at the end.

“Another good result: Winston Peters is out.

“Clark is giving a concession speech that sounds defiant, almost as if she won, with the crowd cheering and clapping her on. Grace is sure missing, as is humility and any McCain-style appeal to bipartisanship, with Clark saying she hopes all her work doesn’t “go up in flames on the bonfire created by the Right-wing of politics”.

Not a single good wish is paid to the Nationals or its leader, other than a congratulations for their win.

“The commentators on Sky News NZ (UPDATE – actually commentators on a feed from TV3) must either have cloth ears or Labour Party membership. They repeatedly declare the speech “magnificent” and “gracious”.

“Clark quits as leader.

“UPDATE “The Maori Party gets just 2.2 per cent and fails to win the balance of power, despite the most extraordinary appeals by ABC news reporters to get out the expatriate Maori vote in Australia. Two reports, one on radio and the other on the TV news on Sunday a fortnight ago, profiled the party in extremely flattering terms and specifically reminded Maoris in Australia they could vote.

“The Greens win less than 7 per cent.

“UPDATE 2 “Now the Sky News TV3 commentators are demanding Opposition Leader John Key be inclusive, humble and conciliatory in his victory speech. Another says he should govern “from the middle. And all this before the man has even begun to speak.

“I thought the ABC was biased, but this lot is farcical. Is the rest of New Zealand’s media like this?”

There’s an old saying that people in glass houses should not throw stones, and on that note Investigate magazine takes a risk in reporting a story of political media bias. After all, this magazine was once claimed to have scored more hits against the Clark Labour government than Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition.

However, there’s a big difference between a monthly magazine with an acknowledged and declared conservative editorial position, and a daily newspaper or TV news show that claims to be objective and independent.

Ironically, however, the question Bolt asked, “Is the rest of New Zealand’s media like this?”, is being answered in a major new study from Canterbury University, due for release later this month.

Entitled, “New Zealand Media Coverage of the 2008 Election”, the study by a three person team from the university’s School of Political Science and Communication is already rocking boats, thanks to the release of provisional results showing a major leftwing bias in the NZ media.

The study examined TV1 and TV3 news bulletins, as well as the 26 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

NZ Herald, Dominion Post and Christchurch Press newspapers, for a thorough analysis of their election campaign reporting between the day Helen Clark announced the campaign, back on 12 September, and election day itself, November 8 – a span of eight weeks.

Whilst the full study results are still being prepared, preliminary results of the first six weeks of the campaign have just been released, covering the period up to October 24.

The results are damning. Analysing the tone of media coverage of political parties, researchers found journalists in the major newsrooms were vastly more positive about left wing parties.

The Greens topped the list, with a full 32% of all media coverage listed as positive, followed closely by the Maori Party on 29% and Labour on 28%.

In contrast, of the eight parties included in the survey, National’s positivity coverage was second from the bottom at 19%, only one percent higher than lowest ranked minnow, Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party.

“Multiply the ABC and Fairfax by 10 and you have what passes for news with authority in the land of the long white cloud. It makes the Australian MSM look halfway credible” Even New Zealand First, at the centre of the Owen Glenn and Vela brothers donations scandal and in a full-on catfight with the media, had a higher positive coverage in news stories than National.

When balanced positive against negative, overall both the Greens and Maori Party had a net positive surplus of 13%. The media had virtually nothing bad to say about them.

Labour’s overall ranking was a net negativity rating of 7%, New Zealand First was a net negativity of 10%, and National’s negative press outweighed the positive stories by a massive 24% – by far and away the highest net negativity rating in the first six weeks of the campaign.

In other words, the University of Canterbury has found a heavy pro-Labour coalition bias in reporting.

The next arm of the study compared the amount of media coverage of the parties, in comparison with their public support as measured by opinion pollsters. In other words, were the parties getting news attention commensurate with the public support they had.

Seven of the eight parties all gained media coverage in excess of their poll ratings. The Maori Party, for instance, was rating 2.4% in the poll average, but received 8.7% of the news coverage. Only INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 27

one political party received less coverage than its ratings suggest it should have: National. And it was massively lower. Despite rating an average of 48.3% in the polls, National was given only 34.7% of the news coverage, a deficit of 13.6%. It was the only party not to receive equivalent coverage to its public support.

As the University of Canterbury notes: “Smaller parties had the support of 14.7% of the people, yet received 28.7% of the media coverage.”

Turning to stories specifically about the party leaders, the analysts found (you guessed it), that “John Key received the most negative coverage amongst party leaders at 38%” – a spot he shared with NZ First leader Winston Peters.

The left wing again achieved glowing coverage in contrast: “Jim Anderton received the largest percentage of positive coverage at 37% of his total media coverage, followed by Helen Clark at 29%.

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gain, when positive and negative stories were balanced off, the right wing leaders, John Key and Rodney Hide, had a net negative rating of 13% and 15% respectively, whilst other leaders in the Labourled coalition – Anderton and Peter Dunne – enjoyed net positives of 19% and 10% respectively.

Helen Clark’s negative stories were almost perfectly balanced by positive stories – just a one percent deficit.

In this scenario, John Key received more publicity than his personal poll ratings entitled him to, but given the news coverage was overwhelmingly negative in tone, the media could be hard-pressed to argue they were doing Key a favour by giving him more publicity. It was, if the University of Canterbury study is correct, publicity designed to knock the National leader out of contention.

These results, it must be emphasised, are preliminary. They are real, but they measure only the first six weeks of the campaign, not the full eight weeks. Nor does the preliminary release identify which news outlets were the most biased one way or the other – that detail will be released later this month (and reported in TGIF Edition when it is).

The Australians were certainly fascinated by TV3’s coverage, with Darwin’s Dave Wane commenting on the aforementioned Andrew Bolt thread: “As for the NZ coverage, I think the media in Kiwiland must be the MOST leftist in the entire world! At least in such uncertain times New Zealanders have a [new] Prime Minister with economic nous. Unfortunately here in Australia we have Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. Bloody Kiwis have won AGAIN!!”

Another Aussie commenter, Maree, reckons New Zealand’s mainstream media are somewhere to the left of Joe Stalin. “ ‘Is the rest of New Zealand’s media like this?’ – Yes, Andrew, most of it is worse. Multiply the ABC and Fairfax by 10 and you have what passes for news with authority in the land of the long white cloud. It makes the Australian MSM look halfway credible.

“I was in Auckland in October, businesses bust everywhere, tourist numbers in the basement, and the Herald & NZBC [presumably Radio New Zealand] were talking up Helen as if she was the only one who could pull them out of it (oh, and the overcooked wine industry was the other arm of salvation).

“At the same time there was murder and mayhem in the Maori/ islander suburbs in south Auckland/Manukau, where hardly anyone has a job or the prospect of one, and everyone has a billy club.

“Helen Clark has been living with the hobbits in middle earth for so long she’s lost contact with the real world, and so have her media boosters.”

28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

The man ultimately responsible for TV3’s news coverage is Mark Jennings, an affable, highly capable journalist who’s been with TV3 since its inception in 1989.

“I’m the sole decider of whether something will run or not,” he told videoblog show Darpan – The Mirror just after Helen Clark and John Key pulled out of the first leaders’ debate.

“We can only invite people on, we can’t compel them to appear, we’re not a court,” Jennings said, before blaming Clark for the withdrawal and calling her move “undemocratic”.

So TV3 isn’t entirely above giving Labour a slap. Nor was it the first – John Campbell’s infamous “Corngate” interview leading up to the 2002 election earned him a Prime Ministerial rebuke as “a little creep”. Campbell held the insult title until 2006 when a magazine editor’s revelation that the Attorney General had signed false company returns provoked Clark into calling that journalist a full-size “creep”.

But regardless of its pedigree in standing up to political heat, there’s been a widespread perception in internet chatrooms and blogs that TV3 and TV1 both leant towards a continuation of a centre-left government.

In TV3’s case, the perception wasn’t helped by the fact that left-wing activist Kees Keizer played the network like a fiddle by selectively releasing portions of secret tape recordings of National MPs to them.

Jennings told Darpan – The Mirror that the network’s job was to publish and be damned.

“We have these tapes, we play them, and it’s the viewers’ job [to assess the importance of them].”

But that’s not entirely correct. What TV3’s exclusives lacked was context – the identity of the secret taper and, in fact the full record-

“Only one political party received less coverage than its ratings suggest it should have: National. And it was massively lower.

Despite rating an average of 48.3% in the polls, National was given only 34.7% of the news coverage, a deficit of 13.6%” ings (which would have revealed whether the MPs answers were being taken out of context). In fact, the network went so far as to claim its source was not affiliated to any political party. Instead, when Keizer’s identity was finally revealed by bloggers Cameron Slater and David Farrar, they discovered his address was also home to a liaison officer for Labour and the Greens, Stephen Day, who turns out to be Keizer’s brother-in-law. Keizer’s social networking pages on the internet reveal his friends include Clinton Smith, one of the men behind Labour’s blogsite, The Standard.

When Investigate first raised this snippet of context with Jennings before the election, he was surprised.

“No, I wasn’t aware of that,” he conceded.

As he campaign dust settled on the Sunday evening after the election, we returned to Jennings for a more general debriefing.

The 3 News director is of the view that the global economic crash played a significant part in the campaign.

“The leaders were mainly mistake free, although obviously Labour made a mistake with Mike Williams in Melbourne pursuing the H-Fee, but I think John Key ruling out Winston Peters was the big call of the election campaign.”

Comparing it to the ‘Big Nuts’ icecream commercial, Jennings believes the isolation of Peters swung the election National’s way.

“I spoke to Key today and I think they were a bit nervous when Peters was moving up over four percent, but in the end it was the thing that gave them such a clear cut victory. Yeah, it was ‘Big Nuts’, but it’s interesting because if he had the big nuts to do that, maybe he’s got big nuts to do other things.”

But such calls were arguably tactical – immediate battlefield – issues, in contrast to political polls showing Labour and the centre-left have been largely dead in the water for a year. How much did the strategic power balance affect the end result?

“The talk around our newsroom was focused a lot around the mood of the electorate in terms of, ‘it’s time for a change’. Most of our reporters were getting that feedback consistently from being out in the field. The voters felt it was time for a change, had seen the American election. The other thing that our reporters in the newsroom got back from people was a fatigue with perceived type PC government, Nanny State. Those were the main issues talked about in the newsroom.”

It’s an interesting qualification by Jennings – slipping the word “perceived” ahead of PC. Did the country’s number one 18-39 news network not see a genuine PC government in action?

“Look, I don’t know. A hell of a lot of people thought it was PC, and it almost culminated in that shower debacle, that was the final INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 29

straw I think,” cogitates Jennings. “I don’t know whether it was PC, but a hell of a lot of the public thought they were.”

Anti-smacking, mercury-filled lightbulbs, low-flow showers – these are issues that hit the electorate head on and built up a huge resentment, what political strategists sometimes refer to as ‘lizard brain’ issues, in reference to things that generate instinctive, almost subconscious reactions.

Did the mainstream media fully appreciate the role of Nanny State meddling, when it came to the election campaign?

“In our one leader’s debate, Cambell did try and put it to Clark, and Key responded strongly, so we did try and inject it into the campaign,” says Jennings. “I don’t disagree, I think those issues do hit home. A key there is whether the reporters are really accurately reading what’s happening in the community. It’s why you always want a mix of reporters covering campaigns to tap into the issues that are really affecting the public. But again, when you have a global economic crisis it does seem trivial to be going on about these issues, but I think you’re right – they can often be the touchstone issues.”

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nother factor that may be skewing public perceptions of the news media’s performance and bias is the deadline pressures of daily news. Like it or not, both TV3 and TV1 take their cues from the morning newspapers and news release schedules out of Parliament. It’s no secret that Labour’s media machine was substantially more sophisticated and well resourced than National’s which, when coupled with Helen Clark’s prime ministerial aura, in one sense put National on the backfoot in media eyes.

In a sense, Labour knew how to hit the news media in the journalists’ lizard-brains by subconsciously appealing to biases and fears, simply in the way they wrote news releases or framed the debate.

Clark, for example, famously declared on September 12 that the election would be fought on “trust”. Implicitly, and in fact explicitly, Clark was inviting the news media to test John Key’s record.

We asked the lead researcher on the University of Canterbury media bias study whether this might explain the massive negative coverage of Key and National: that Labour had managed to successfully dog-whistle the mainstream media into attacking Key. Dr Babak Bahador says he’s still crunching that data: “I think to some degree the media sources negativity,” he says, in the sense that the dominant party is giving certain messages, then the media sources those. But to the degree that they filter things out themselves, we’re going to take a look at news versus analysis within the stories, and that will tell us whether the negativity is coming from sourcing the political parties, or from the media themselves.”

Then there’s the issue of how much time reporters have left to be watchdogs rather than, as some bloggers call them, “lapdogs”.

“I think it’s challenging,” admits Jennings. “Reporters are often filing for more than one television programme. Duncan Garner for instance might do Sunrise, then Midday, then file his track for six o’clock, and then he’ll write a blog.”

All of which leaves little time for the kind of deep research necessary to challenge statements made in political news releases. To Garner’s credit, he did manage to fact check on some controversial stories. But deadlines are deadlines, and news waits for no one.

In other words, perceived media bias may arise more from political manipulation of the news cycle, than a conscious desire by a 30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

journalist to plug one party or the other. Having said that, most big city journalists could safely be described as urban liberals in their worldview, and thus be less likely to recognise the validity of the views of rural or suburban conservatives.

“You might be right,” says Jennings. “I can’t think of anyone in our newsroom who would be a New Zealand First voter.”

Which seemed like a good time to raise the University of Canterbury media bias study. Remember, specifics as to the bias of individual media outlets have not been released yet, so our questions to Jennings and his anwers apply to the media generally.

“The further left you moved, says the study, the more gushing the media coverage of the party became. What does that tell you as a News Director?” we asked.

Jennings laughs nervously, appreciating the question. “I think one of the things about the Greens is that they basically tell the truth.

I’m not talking about the debate around climate change or anything like that, but I think if you ask Jeanette Fitzsimons a straight question you get a straight answer. Whereas if you ask some politicians in some major parties you tend to get more trickery. I find Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples are very honest politicians, so I think maybe it’s just a reflection of the true position of these parties.”

But how much does the media really know about the Greens?

They may come across as honest in direct questioning, but is that only because the mainstream media have never asked the Greens or the Maori party the hard questions?

“I guess they’re not scrutinised as hard,” says Jennings, “because they’re not likely to be in a position to lead a government. So the scrutiny is not perhaps as tough.”

But perhaps it should be. After all, the Greens played a dominant role in the last electoral term, helping force the anti-smacking laws and free-speech killing Electoral Finance Act through, and of course playing a crucial role in legalising prostitution and other social engineering initiatives. At the moment, schoolchildren are being indoctrinated about ‘sustainability’ as a direct result of a Greens coalition pact with Labour – in effect helping create a new generation of potential Green voters. Many of the courses are actually taught in schools by people affiliated to the Greens.

So the argument about a lack of influence doesn’t entirely wash.

Last month’s Investigate, for example, lays out extensively how the Green party has been captured by hardline members of the former communist and socialist parties of New Zealand, who are pushing hard-left ideologies hidden behind a caring, “green” image.

“Which ones came out of hardline communist outfits?” asks Mark Jennings as we discuss this.

“Russel Norman’s one,” we reply.

Norman, as Trevor Loudon established last month, was a key member of Australia’s Democratic Socialist Party, previously known as the Socialist Workers’ Party. The DSP in the 1990s embarked on a PR campaign to clean-up its image, and relaunched its “Direct Action” newspaper under a new name, “Green Left Weekly”.

The DSP got into trouble in Australia for trying to infiltrate and take over the Nuclear Disarmament party, and then the Green party of Australia. Whilst they were ultimately unsuccessful, “the Greens movement adopted a resolution banning members of the DSP from membership of the Greens,” wrote Alvaro Recoba in “A History of the DSP”.

The DSP had more success infiltrating NZ, it seems.

The DSP was closely affiliated to the Workers Communist League in New Zealand, which formed the basis for Jim Anderton’s New Labour Party (now the Progressive party).

“Most big city journalists could safely be described as urban liberals in their worldview, and thus be less likely to recognise the validity of the views of rural or suburban conservatives” Jim Anderton, Keith Locke, Matt McCarten, Matt Robson and Jeanette Fitzsimons have all attended DSP functions in Australia, and Locke was the Auckland correspondent for the DSP’s newspaper. McCarten, now regularly featuring as a ‘commentator’ in New Zealand, was on the editorial board of one of the DSP papers, alongside a number of avowed communists.

Fitzsimons told a 1994 conference that socialism needed to cloak itself in “Green” if it “is to survive as a relevant political movement in the 21st century”.

It’s all information on the public record, but how many mainstream media journalists truly understand what a socialist or communist philosophy actually is, and the dangers if such groups end up holding the balance of power?

But instead of asking the Greens hard questions about their agenda, as you’ve seen they scored the highest positive news coverage in the electoral campaign. It’s hard to see how this could happen, especially given the mixed messages sent out by the NZ Greens who’ve straddled a mix of genuine environmental policy and social goals, but with much more focus on social engineering legislation.

“I agree with that,” says TV3’s Jennings. “I think they do send out mixed messages, their social agenda and their environment agenda. But their policy is there to read, so you do know what their agenda is.”

The media, however, regardless of who manipulates them, are seen as setting the news agenda for the public. What leads on TV or in the newspaper is seen as important. What doesn’t, is not.

Rightly or wrongly. So by failing to concentrate in any of the recent elections on the Green party’s socialist agenda, as opposed to the environmental one, the media didn’t give voters the headsup they needed to make a sensible decision about the Greens as a kingmaker. It’s a debate that could go on forever.

What does catch Jennings’ attention in the Canterbury study is the massive weighting of negative coverage against John Key and the National party, in comparison to Labour.

“Yeah, that does surprise me. I don’t think the breakdown will show that on our stuff, to be honest. I just wonder where the secret tapes sit in that, though. You could say it was negative for National, but I think the electorate made it a positive for National and saw it as a dirty tricks campaign by Labour and punished them for it.”

It’s a question historians and political scientists will also ponder in future years, as they analyse not just the pro’s and con’s of negative campaigns, but also the media’s role in influencing elections.

[TGIF Edition subscribers: when the full Canterbury University study is released later this month, we’ll bring full coverage in the newspaper. See www.tgifedition.com for subscription details] n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 31

In Defence of Christmas New scholarship backs up Bible

It’s become traditional each Christmas for news media grinches and bestselling authors to try and pour cold water on the Christmas story, and deny the possibility of virgin birth or even the existence of Bethlehem in biblical times. In this extract from The Divinity Code, IAN WISHART lays out the new evidence that punches holes in the arguments of Richard Dawkins, John Spong and Christopher Hitchens

I

f there’s one overarching theme in the Old Testament, it’s the prediction of a coming Messiah: born of a virgin, in Bethlehem, who will be sacrificed for the sin of the world.

It’s the essence of the Christian story, but unsurprisingly, people who don’t believe God exists are turning over every stone they can to try and disprove the Messianic prophecies.

On the “Debunking Christianity” blogsite, a former Christian pastor turned “committed atheist” named Joe, claims to have nailed Jesus Christ firmly back in his coffin by debunking what he says are key prophecies about him.

His doubts, he said, arose after reading John 19:36, “These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken’.”

According to Joe, who was teaching a bible class at the time, his own Bible helpfully referenced the original prophecy back to Psalm 34:20.

“Ah, here I would be able to show the class one of the ‘astounding’ prophecies of Scripture that ‘proves beyond a doubt’ that Jesus was the Christ. What I discovered was, shall we say, underwhelming: 19 A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; 20 he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.

“This is certainly an inspiring verse of Scripture, but you would have to be a fool to take it as a prophecy of the Messiah. I was left in the truly awkward position of explaining to the class why John took a verse like this and wrenched it so violently from its original context.”

Perhaps. But the danger for many people is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In the ex-Pastor’s case, he simply didn’t know his Bible well enough, or alternatively he needs a 32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 33

Bible with better marginreferences. In actual fact, I would argue Ps 34:20 is not out of context at all. However, I don’t need to go anywhere near it to successfully re-establish the credibility of the passage in John.

The answer he sought is actually in the Book of Numbers, 9:12.

This is a passage about the Passover Lamb, the sacrifice offered at Passover each year by Jews as thanks for God delivering them from Egypt. Passover was the festival that Christ was crucified on the eve of, and in Christian terms he himself became “the Lamb of sacrifice” in place of the Passover Lamb.

Anyway, the verse itself says of the Lamb: “They must not leave any of it till morning, or break any of its bones.”

The context of the verse provides a slam-dunk parallel to the crucified Christ. Just like the sacrificial lamb used at Passover, not only were Christ’s bones intact, but unusually the Romans gave permission for his body to be removed from the cross before nightfall. So this particular verse speaks directly to the crucifixion events hundreds of years later.

Another of ex-Pastor Joe’s challenges is the passage in Matthew 2:23.

“And he came and dwelt in the city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’.”

“I’m sad to say that in my 20 years as a Christian,” writes 33 year old Joe, “I never realized that Matthew makes reference to a prophecy that doesn’t even exist! Try as you may, you will nowhere find a place in the Old Testament where it unambiguously declares the Messiah would be a Nazarene.”

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t one level he is entirely right. There is no direct reference to the future Messiah doing a stint in Nazareth.

But again, Joe needed to drink more deeply at the well of knowledge. Nazareth was an insignificant village in the northern province of Galilee. Quite often in the Bible, provinces and towns are used interchangeably to show nationality or residence.

So we come to a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, 9:1.

Helpfully, this chapter actually carries the title “To Us a Child Is Born”.

Happy with the context? You should be. The verse reads: “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, [my emphasis] by the way of the sea, along the Jordan – The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned…”

The Isaiah chapter continues, with one of the most evocative prophecies in the Old Testament: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

“Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”

Few university-accredited biblical scholars doubt that this is a Messianic prophecy. No ordinary child in Israel could ever be called “Mighty God” without invoking claims of blasphemy. Nor is it just about his name. No ordinary child would “reign on David’s throne…

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forever”. The mission given to this child, as well as the names, are thoroughly Messianic.

Nor was this prophecy tampered with after the fact by a bunch of happyclappy Pentecostal Christians trying to re-write the Bible to suit their belief. Chapters 1-39 of the Book of Isaiah are acknowledged, even by the harshest of scholars, to date to around 700BC. The earliest physical copy we have dates from 100BC, and was found amid the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.

There is no escape from the implications of Isaiah chapter 9. The Messiah would be born as a child, he would eventually rule forever, and he would spend time in Galilee, where Nazareth is. It doesn’t say he will be born in Nazareth, merely that he will “honour” the region – in the same way that a famous athlete brings honour to the country they represent.

Isaiah is a fascinating prophet. He is also the source of the much debated “virgin birth” prophecy at Isa. 7:14.

“The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin shall be with child and will give birth to a son and [they] will call him Immanuel.”1 Christopher Hitchens, in last year’s bestseller “God Is Not Great”, claims Isaiah’s verse is taken out of context. “Saint Matthew [bases] everything on a verse or two from the prophet Isaiah which told King Ahaz, almost eight centuries before the still unfixed date of the birth of Jesus, that ‘the Lord shall give you a sign; a virgin will conceive and bear a son’. This encouraged Ahaz to believe that he would be given victory over his enemies … The picture is even further altered when we know that the word translated as ‘virgin’, namely almah, means only ‘a young woman’.

“In any case,” continues Hitchens, “parthenogenesis [the fertilization of a woman’s egg without sperm] is not possible for human mammals, and even if this law were to be relaxed in just one case, it would not prove that the resulting infant had any divine power.”

Former Bishop John Spong climbs in here as well. His main arguments (unsourced) are that “First, the word ‘virgin’ is not in the original Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14. Second, the Isaiah text in Hebrew implies not that a woman will ‘conceive’, as Matthew quotes it, but that a woman ‘is with child’. Where I come from, that means she is not a virgin!”

Both Spong and Hitchens appear persuasive at first glance, but both get a number of crucial facts wrong. The word almah, which Isaiah used in his prophecy, is used interchangeably in the Hebrew Old Testament to describe both virgins specifically, and unmarried ‘maidens’ – which to the old fire and brimstone Hebrews meant the same thing anyway. A maiden was expected to be a virgin or God help her!

Although modern critics translate almah as ‘young woman’,

with everything that connotes in our modern promiscuous society, this would be a 180 degree shift from ancient Hebrew understanding. As the authoritative Vines Dictionary of ancient Hebrew and Greek words notes: “That almah can mean virgin is quite clear in Song of Solomon 6:8: ‘There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number’. Thus all the women in the court are described.

The word almah represents those who are eligible for marriage but are neither wives (queens) nor concubines [lovers]…

“In Gen. 24:43 the word describes Rebekah, of whom it is said in Gen 24:16 that she was a ‘maiden’ with whom no man had had relations.

“Thus, almah appears to be used more of the concept ‘virgin’ than that of ‘maiden’, yet always of a woman who had not borne a child.” [my emphasis]

Hitchens believes Matthew was merely gilding the lily by using the word ‘virgin’ when he referred back to the Isaiah prophecy.

However, Matthew was using another version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, which had been progressively translated from Hebrew to Greek from 250 BC onward. The Septuagint translators believed the Isaiah verse to be messianic, and they used the Greek word parthenos, which again means a sexual virgin, in their translation.

It is true that the ancient Hebrews had another word sometimes used to describe a virgin, betulah, but this was more often used to describe virility and fertility as part of the expected package. In the Isaiah 7:14 verse, the use of almah makes more sense bearing in mind Mary’s unmarried, virginal state at the time she became pregnant via the Holy Spirit.

For the record, nowhere in the Old Testament, not once, is INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 35

almah used to describe a married woman, which would be conclusive proof that the word could mean a non-virgin. Attempts by some atheist sites to link the prophecy to other women in the Bible fail, because the other women they put forward are all married and had previously borne children (and none had sons that the people referred to as “God with us”). Betulah, incidentally, the alleged real Hebrew word for ‘virgin’ if you believe the critics, is used in Joel 1:8 to refer to a married woman.2 So Hitchens’ attempt to rubbish the virgin birth prophecy on the basis of the meaning of almah fails. You’ll recall he tried appealing to the science on the matter, saying “parthenogenesis is not possible” for human females. In other words, he argues that God could not have made Mary pregnant because, well, that would violate a biological law which shows only a sperm can fertilise an egg. For a God who can materialize the entire universe out of nothing in a nano-second, the task of re-wiring Mary to make her pregnant would be a mere Sunday afternoon distraction. Arguments from people like Hitchens and Dawkins, that deny the possibility of God doing because it would violate a law, amuse me, evoking images of mice that roared.3 We have laws against traffic offences as well, which are violated every day, even by the politicians who make them.

Turning to Spong’s remaining point, an alleged mistranslation of the ancient Hebrew where the virgin is not apparently about to ‘conceive’ but is already “with child”, we find the good Bishop out of his depth again.

There are two very small variations in the ancient Hebrew word

In Micah 5:2, God speaks through the prophet to his people and says: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times….

“He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace.”

The first and last of these three major prophecies about the Messiah, written and published 700 years before the birth of Christ, are too tough for Hitchens to tackle, so he doesn’t. Richard Dawkins – ignoring the virgin birth prophecy – nonetheless tries to give the born-in-Bethlehem prophecy a crack.

“When the gospels were written, many years after Jesus’ death, nobody knew where he was born. But an Old Testament prophecy (Micah 5:2) had led Jews to expect that the long awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem,” says Dawkins.

“In the light of this prophecy, John’s gospel specifically remarks that his followers were surprised that he was not born in Bethlehem: ‘Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?’ ” First things first. I’ve just shown you the Isaiah 9:1 verse that predicted the Messiah would bring honour to Galilee. The fact that some of Jesus’ critics (and Dawkins) were unaware of the

“Although modern critics translate almah as ‘young woman’, with everything that connotes in our modern promiscuous society, this would be a 180 degree shift from ancient Hebrew understanding” harah, centering on the letter ‘r’.

The future tense, ‘will conceive’ (which appears in the Hebrew Old Testament) has a vowel symbol underneath. The present tense, of the word, hareh, “is pregnant” is illustrated withthree dots underneath instead.

Sadly for Spong, that present tense variation is not the version in the book. The problem, on all sides of the debate, is that the ancient Hebrews had no written vowels. The root word for ‘have a baby’ was written hrh in Hebrew, and the context supplies the meaning. When Spong makes assertions that the word definitely meant “is with child” he’s either ignorant or deceiving his readers. The shade of meaning he looks for can only be proven if we know whether the vowel should have been an ‘e’ instead of ‘a’.

And we don’t know that. The context suggests a virgin will conceive because, as Spong correctly deduces, a virgin who is now pregnant is technically no longer a virgin. Thus, his own logic shoots him in the foot.

Don’t just take my word for it. The Isaiah Scroll found at Qumran as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and dated to at least 100 years before Christ,4 is translated by scholar Fred Miller: “[{Behold}] the virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son and he shall call his name Immanuel.”5 So here we have two major messianic prophecies from Isaiah.

The task of naming the Messiah’s birthplace, however, falls to the prophet Micah, a generation before Isaiah, around 720BC or slightly earlier.

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specific verse doesn’t change the reality that it was in there, and that we have a physical copy of the prophecy pre-dating Christ’s birth by 100 years.

Second point. The author of John (believed to be the apostle himself ) is not going to draw attention to something if it is actually a problem for him. Clearly John was comfortable with the Bethlehem prophecy, and reporting the debate that surrounded Christ at this particular time. In many respects, the mention of Bethlehem suggests John is supporting Matthew and Luke’s Gospels on the Bethlehem birth.

Thirdly, Dawkins’ interpretation is misleading. The people who raised the objections were not “followers” of Jesus but those of a mind to stone him. They were only “following” in the literal sense so they could kill him.

To be fair to the atheist websites however, there is an ongoing debate about whether the prophet Micah intended referring to Bethlehem the village, or a particular individual named “Bethlehem”, who is mentioned in the book of 1 Chronicles. Let’s deal with that.

The “Debunking Christianity” site claims that: “Reading the Micah passage carefully, it refers not to a town (Bethlehem as a town didn’t exist in Micah’s day, as far as I know) but to a particular clan that this messiah figure would be related to (see 1 Chron. 4:1-9 for a genealogical listing of Ephrathah, the father of Bethlehem).”

Allegation 1: the town of Bethlehem did not exist in Micah’s day (720BC).

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This passage from the Palestinian municipality governing Bethlehem today should lay that claim to rest:6 “Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, Bethlehem was already known as a Canaanite settlement. Canaanite tribes who settled in Palestine, built small cities surrounded by walls for protection against the attacks of raiders. One of these cities was Beit Lahama known today as Bethlehem. So, the word Bethlehem is derived from Lahmo the Chaldean god of fertility,7 which was adopted by the Canaanites as Lahama. In accordance with the Canaanite practice of building temples to their gods, they built a temple for Lahama on the present mount of the Nativity which overlooks the fertile valleys of the region. Walls, ramparts and other structures in different sites in Bethlehem clearly establish its Canaanite origin 3000 years before the birth of Jesus.

“Bethlehem was mentioned around 1350 BC in the Tell alAmarna letters, from the Egyptian governor of Palestine to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was depicted as an important staging and rest stop for travelers from Syria and Palestine going to Egypt.

The letters also signify that it was a border city of mid-Palestine and an outpost looking out towards the desert. The Philistines had a garrison stationed in Bethlehem because it was a strong strategic point. They entered the land of the Canaanites, mingled with its people and settled in the southern coasts between Jaffa and Gaza.

The Philistines had achieved military supremacy over the greater part of the country around 1200 BC, and called it Palestine.

“The narrative of the Old Testament mentions Bethlehem in the first book of the Bible when Jacob , son of Abraham , and his family were journeying to the city of Hebron passing by Bethlehem (Ephrata) (Genesis 35: 16-19). There, his wife Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin, and he buried her by the side of the Bethlehem Road where her tomb has been a shrine to this day: “And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.” In that time, Bethlehem was a small, walled town erected on a hill in the northern part of the present town of Bethlehem. The name of Bethlehem (Ephrata) “the fruitful” itself suggests a pastoral and agricultural life. The tale of Ruth, the Moabite, and Boaz suggests an atmosphere of idyllic rusticity that is still obvious today (Ruth 2-4). Ruth’s grandson was King David of whose lineage Christ was born.”

Thank you, Palestine, I think we get the message of Bethlehem’s existence loud and clear. What about the rest of the atheist websites’ allegations?

Farrell Till, over at Infidels, writes: “What many people who stand in awe of this alleged prophecy fulfilment don’t know is that a person named Bethlehem was an Old Testament character descended from Caleb through Hur, the firstborn son of Caleb’s second wife, Ephrathah (I Chron.

2:18; 2:50-52; 4:4).”

Important, Till argues, is the use of the Hebrew word ’ lp, which the King James Bible translates as “thousands” and the NIV translates as “clans”.

The Micah passage in question, just to refresh your memory, reads: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans [thousands] of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times…”

This, says Till, is strong evidence that Micah was not referring to the town of Bethlehem at all, but to a clan of that name.

“The fact that the Bethlehem in this verse was described as “little 38 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

among the thousands of Judah” casts serious doubt on Matthew’s application of the statement. In a region as small as Judah, one could hardly speak of a town as one of “thousands,” yet in terms of a Judean clan descended from Bethlehem of Ephrathah, it would have been an appropriate description for an obscure family group that hadn’t particularly distinguished itself in the nation’s history.”

Allegation 2: Bethlehem refers to the clan, not the place.

Farrell Till overlooks a fundamental point here. If you read the Book of 1 Chronicles carefully, you’ll see Till’s assertion “that a person named Bethlehem was an Old Testament character descended from Caleb” probably does not stack up. It hinges on the Hebrew word ab, translated as “father”. But whilst it did mean biological father, the word also meant “chief ” or “leader” and is repeatedly used in that context in the Bible.8 Of the 53 references to Bethlehem in the Bible, 51 refer to the village and only two appear to refer to an individual, prefixed in both cases as “father [ab] of Bethlehem”. But in each case, the supposed “father” of this individual named Bethlehem is a different person. In one case it is a man named Salma, in the other it is a man named Hur. Did the alleged man named Bethlehem have two fathers? Far more likely that the proper translation of “father” in this context is “leader”, which implies that Salma and Hur were both leaders of the town of Bethlehem in their respective generations.

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ften, disputes over the accuracy of the Bible swing on the meanings of obscure words, and the Micah prophecy is a perfect example. You’ll recall in the paragraphs above the significance of the word ’ lp, translated as “thousands” or “clans”. Adding to the problem of translating ancient Hebrew is the fact that the Jews did not have any written vowels or commas before 700AD. Ths vryn vn schlrs hv t gss th mssng vwl nfrmtns th mnng s vbl.

Kenneth Kitchen, a Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and expert on the ancient Near East, sets out a clear example of how this small Hebrew word can confuse:9 “In Hebrew, as in English, words that look alike can be confused when found without a clear context. On its own, ‘bark’ in English can mean the skin of a tree, the sound of a dog, and an early ship or ancient ceremonial boat. Only the context tells us which meaning is intended.

“The same applies to the word(s) ’lp in Hebrew. 1) we have ’eleph, ‘thousand’, which has clear contexts like Gen. 20:16 (price) or Num. 3:50 (amount). But 2) there is ’eleph for a group – be it a clan/family, a (military) squad, a rota of Levites or priests etc…

And 3) there is ’lp, a leader, chief, or officer.”10 Kitchen then spells out the obvious kinds of problems, many of which are cited as “errors” in the Bible: “The question has been asked by many: Are not the ‘six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty people’ in such passages as Num. 2:32 actually 603 families/squads/clans, or leaders with 550 members or squads commanded? Or some such analogous interpretation of the text?

“It is plain that in other passages in the Hebrew Bible there are clear examples where ’eleph makes no sense if translated ‘thousand’ but good sense if rendered otherwise, e.g., as ‘leader’ or the like.

So in 1 Kings 20:30, in Ahab’s time a wall falling in Aphek could hardly have killed 27,000 men; but 27 officers might well have perished that way. In the previous verse (29) we may equally have

record of the Aramean loss of 100 infantry officers in one day (with concomitant other losses?), rather than the loss of 100,000 troops overall.”11 Makes sense, really. And it illustrates the dangers of shouting “Eureka! I have found an error!” prematurely, when in fact you may be relying on the vagueness of a very ancient language written for a culture now dead.

On the weight of the evidence and the fact that Micah was making a prophetic verse, and the later claims of Christ to be that Messiah hailing from Bethlehem, the prophecy appears to have been filled.

So far then, we have seen three major prophecies regarding the future Messiah, written 700 years before Jesus was born. All of which withstand the best efforts of critics to find a hole.

Let’s have a look at some others. In 2 Sam. 7:14, God is recorded speaking to King David about a future descendant of his.

“When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.”

The prophet Isaiah had much to say on signs of the Messiah’s arrival. In Isa. 40:3, he writes that the Messiah would be heralded in advance by a messenger, “A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God’.”

John the Baptist is the character most have in mind here, the wild man in the desert warning people to repent and turn to God. Like Jesus, there is corroborating evidence outside the Bible for his existence and the events of his life. For those unfamiliar with the story, John baptized Christ in the river Jordan and at that moment “the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’.”

Dawkins, and others, don’t deal with flaws in their arguments about the accuracies of prophecies like these.

Instead, Dawkins moves on to focus on Luke’s account of the circumstances surrounding Christ’s birth.12 “Luke says that, in the time when Cyrenius (Quirinius) was governor of Syria, Caesar Augustus decreed a census for taxation purposes, and everybody had to go ‘to his own city’. Joseph was ‘of the house and lineage of David’ and therefore he had to go to ‘the city of David, which is called Bethlehem’.

“That must have seemed like a good solution,” writes Dawkins, “except that, historically, it is a complete nonsense, as A. N. Wilson in Jesus and Robin Lane Fox in The Unauthorised Version (among others) have pointed out.

“Why on earth would the Romans have required Joseph to

“Bethlehem was mentioned around 1350 BC in the Tell al-Amarna letters, from the Egyptian governor of Palestine to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was depicted as an important staging and rest stop for travelers from Syria and Palestine going to Egypt” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 39

Atheists had long argued there was no evidence of a Roman census that would have required Joseph to register at the time of Jesus’ birth. But carved in stone is an ancient Roman document, The Acts of Augustus, which records the words of Caesar: “With consular imperium I conducted a lustrum alone when Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius were consuls (8BC), in which lustrum were counted 4,233,000 heads of Roman citizens…”

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go to the city where a remote ancestor had lived a millennium earlier?”

With the right snort of derision, Dawkins gets away with his question. But not for long. A British Museum exhibit, a papyrus dated 104 AD, describes a similar Roman census requiring citizens to return to the cities of their birth, regardless of where they were now living: “Gaius Vibius Mazimus, Prefect of Egypt: Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing out of their provinces to return to their own homes, that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments”.13 The idea in those times, particularly when people lacked surnames as we know them (you didn’t really think Jesus’ last name was ‘Christ’ did you?), was to identify a person with the location they grew up in, where their family hailed from. Thus, you have Saul of Tarsus, Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph of Arimathea or – if you were a wanderer – you’d be linked back to your father, hence John the Baptist living in the desert was initially called John, son of Zechariah.

The Romans may have been great soldiers, but they were also great bureaucrats. Administering most of the known world required the kind of public servant who took pleasure in inflicting pain and inconvenience – like modern bureaucrats, in other words. Rome could not have cared less whether they were making you go 70 miles by foot through country infested by robbers and lions: the piece of papyrus they were holding said you had to be there or you didn’t pass ‘Go’ and went directly to jail instead.

Dawkins then has a go at what appears to be a glaring error in Luke’s Gospel, the reference to a census under Quirinius as governor.

“Luke screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius – a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole – but it happened too late: in AD 6, long after Herod’s death. Lane Fox concludes that ‘Luke’s story is historically impossible and internally incoherent’.

“In the December 2004 issue of Free Inquiry, Tom Flynn, the Editor of that excellent magazine, assembled a collection of articles documenting the contradictions and gaping holes in the wellloved Christmas story…”

Just to see the quality of Dawkins’ source, we checked out Free Inquiry’s article online, and found this: “Roman records mention no such census; in fact, Roman history records no census ever in which each man was required to return to the city where his ancestral line originated. That’s not how the Romans did things.”

Wake up and smell the papyrus in the British Museum, boys.14 What we do know of Roman censii is this: we have papyrus records of censii taking place in 20 AD, 34 AD, 48 AD, 62 AD and of course 6 AD and 104 AD. The clue here is that they took place roughly every 14 years.

Allowing for the fact that there was of course no Year 0, go back 14 years from 6 AD and you land around 8 BC, which fell during the time of Herod (he died in 4 BC). We don’t have the paper records for 8 BC, but nor do we have them for a host of other years.

Luke talked of the census being an empire one, rather than just local, and there are records of Rome issuing instructions for a census in Gaul around 9 BC, and a similar one in Egypt at the same time. There were no computers, email or telephones back then, so censii usually took a long time to complete; from the time of issuing orders to finalizing counts could be years.

So a census decreed in 8 BC appears to fit the evidence nicely.

It probably took months to organize and took place during 7 or 6 BC. Although technically Judea was not fully Roman, in practice the kingdom was already paying tribute to Rome by this stage, and was a Roman vassal state.15 Herod may have had his own reasons for going along with the plan, including declining health.

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ut what of the Quirinius problem? Both Dawkins and Hitchens make much in their books of the fact that Quirinius was not made Governor of Syria until 6 AD – ten years after the death of Herod – according to the Jewish historian Josephus, therefore Luke must be wrong.

Let’s deal with the Quirinius problem head on. A number of scholars now believe that problem may be solvable, and that Quirinius may have been an acting governor of the region in place of the incompetent Varus – funnily enough – between 10 and 7 BC, and that his appointment in 6 AD was his second crack at the job, albeit his first in full title, as researcher Glenn Miller points out.

“The possibility that Quirinius may have been governor of Syria on an earlier occasion (*Chronology of the NT) has found confirmation in the eyes of a number of scholars (especially W. M. Ramsay) from the testimony of the Lapis Tiburtinus (CIL, 14.

3613),” records one overview of the problem.

“This inscription, recording the career of a distinguished Roman officer, is unfortunately mutilated, so that the officer’s name is missing, but from the details that survive he could very well be Quirinius. It contains a statement that when he became imperial legate of Syria he entered upon that office ‘for the second time’ (Lat. iterum). The question is: did he become imperial legate of Syria for the second time, or did he simply receive an imperial legateship for the second time, having governed another province in that capacity on the earlier occasion?...The wording is ambiguous. Ramsay held that he was appointed an additional legate of Syria between 10 and 7 BC, for the purpose of conducting the Homanadensian war, while the civil administration of the province was in the hands of other governors, including Sentius Saturninus (8-6 BC), under whom, according to Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 4.

19), the census of Lk. 2:1ff. was held.”16 There are a couple more aspects to this census business. Firstly, as scholars on all sides have been forced to concede, Luke has proved extremely reliable in noting down correct historical facts throughout the two books he wrote, Luke and Acts. Much of the information, particularly in Acts, has only recently been corroborated by archaeologists. In other words, he went to the trouble of recording detail, and got those details right wherever experts have been able to cross-check. Given his attention to detail, then, we should not automatically assume he got it wrong about an early census.

Secondly, there is always the possibility that a later scribe copying one of the first copies of Luke’s Gospel added the piece about Quirinius in an assumptive error of their own.

However, I’ve saved the best till last: a very telling document is referred to by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Annals, and it is

The Acts of Augustus17. This document records that the Emperor did indeed order a census in 8 BC.18 “When I was consul the fifth time (29 BC), I increased the number of patricians by order of the people and senate. I read the roll of the senate three times, and in my sixth consulate (28 BC) I made a census of the people with Marcus Agrippa as my colleague. I conducted a lustrum, after a forty-one year gap, in which lustrum were counted 4,063,000 heads of Roman citizens. Then again, with consular imperium I conducted a lustrum alone when Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius were consuls (8 BC), in which lustrum were counted 4,233,000 heads of Roman citizens.”

The case against Luke on the census, then, appears to be closed.

A Roman imperial record, carved in stone around 15 AD, undeniably shows an Empire-wide census ordered in 8 BC which, by the time it reached the subject kingdoms of Israel was probably taking place in 6 BC. The only question left hanging is the exact status of Quirinius, but given Roman reports that he may have been an acting governor at one point we no longer have hard evidence that Luke got it wrong, especially as Luke pointedly used the word hegemoneuontos – “in charge of ”, rather than the official word for Governor, legatus.

Finally, after 2000 years, we are quibbling about an alleged historical mistake made in one paragraph of Luke. We assume we know more from this far away than he did. Perhaps, if it could be shown that Luke was sloppy with his facts we would be right to be sceptical. Sir William Ramsay, however, who spent 15 years trying to debunk Luke as a historian and discredit the New Testament,19 came away singing his praises.

“Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”

The reason for this about-turn? Luke mentions 32 countries, 54 cities and nine islands and makes no mistakes. In Ramsay’s eyes, that’s pretty impressive.

If you wish to read a more detailed destruction of the Robin Lane Fox book that Richard Dawkins relied on, the website is listed below.20 There is more evidence in favour of a 6 or 7 BC birth of Christ. Although there has been much debate about “the star of Bethlehem”, one of the best candidates is a major conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that began in 7 BC and occurs only once every 900 years according to astronomers.21 Being a planetary conjunction, it moves over time, and thus could have been what guided the Magi from Persia in the first place. Secondly, being a planetary conjunction, it is the sort of sign the Magi would have been looking for. A clue to precisely this is found in Matt 2:2, where the Magi visit Jerusalem to see King Herod and ask: “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”22 This sequence of events also explains another reference that Dawkins has problems with in Matthew’s Gospel – the slaughter of the innocents.

According to the Matthean account, around 18 months to two years after Christ was born, King Herod realized he’d been tricked by the Magi, and ordered the deaths of all the boy children under the age of two in Bethlehem and nearby. Joseph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee to Egypt with young Jesus in advance of this slaughter.

A birth in 7 or 6 BC not only fits the timeframe of the expected census, but it also allows time for Herod to be still alive nearly INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 41

two years later and angry enough to slaughter the under-twos in Bethlehem. Herod died in 4 BC, which also fits the timing in that Joseph and Mary would not have had to spend too long hiding in Egypt.

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here is no other historic mention, outside of Matthew’s Gospel, of the slaughter of the innocents, but there is probably good reason for this. Firstly, Bethlehem was not a large town, and the number of children killed may have been few in number. Secondly, Herod was known for frequent acts of random cruelty, murdering members of his own family when it suited him, so an additional series of murders for no apparent reason would not necessarily merit special mention by historians.

Thirdly, given that these events happened two thousand years ago, we don’t have very good archaeological records, and certainly not enough to categorically declare that just because we don’t have them, this somehow proves it never happened. Only a fool would be so brazen.

Christian researcher James Patrick Holding takes a similar line:23 “Although much has been made of the Slaughter of the Innocents – and indeed, any such event would be tragic – there is no reason to assume that it could be considered high on the list of Herod’s atrocities in terms of scope or magnitude. How many boys aged 42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

two and under could there have been in and around the tiny city of Bethlehem? Five? Ten? Matthew does not give a number.

“Josephus says that Herod murdered a vast number of people, and was so cruel to those he didn’t kill that the living considered the dead to be fortunate. Thus, indirectly, Josephus tells us that there were many atrocities that Herod committed that he does not mention in his histories – and it is probable that authorizing the killing of the presumably few male infants in the vicinity of Bethlehem was a minuscule blot of the blackness that was the reign of Herod.

“Being that the events of the reign of Herod involved practically one atrocity after another – it is observed by one writer, with a minimum of hyperbole, that hardly a day in his 36-year reign passed when someone wasn’t sentenced to death – why should any one event in particular have touched off a rebellion, when others in particular, including those recorded by Josephus, did not?

Herod probably died in March or April of 4 BC; the Slaughter would therefore have occurred during one of his last two years on earth, and it is ridiculous to say that the things he did in the previous 34 years – equally, if not more so, a time of political unrest among the Jews – was insufficient to incite rebellion, whereas killing a few male infants in a backwater suburb would be sufficient in comparison. (Also…it is doubtful that Josephus recorded EVERY atrocity performed by Herod; if he had, his works would

be rather significantly larger!)

“The Slaughter of the Innocents, though, is something that fits in perfectly with the character of Herod. (Also, is it perhaps not too far a reach to wonder whether Herod – who had his own son assassinated – hired vigilantes of some sort to perpetrate the Slaughter, and that it was not connected to him until his death which was shortly thereafter, when it was too late for anyone to vent their anger on him?)”

But those prophecies are not the only ones dealing with Christ. Farrell Till, at Infidels, cites what he claims is an error

by Christ: “Jesus claimed another fulfilment of nonprophecy in Luke 24:46.

Speaking to his disciples on the night of his alleged resurrection, he said, ‘Thus it is written and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day’.

“That the resurrection of Christ on the third day was prophesied in the scriptures was claimed also by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: ‘For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.’ In two different places, then, New Testament writers claimed that the resurrection of the Messiah on the third day had been predicted in the scriptures.

Try as they may, however, bibliolaters cannot produce an Old Testament passage that made this alleged third-day prediction. It simply doesn’t exist,” exclaims Till.

Unless, of course, Christ was referring to Hosea 6:1-2: “He has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.”

Another favourite on atheist websites is Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, where he says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”24 The atheist sites claim this is clear proof of a mistake by Jesus, proving he could not be God, because a mustard seed is not the smallest seed in the world.

The clear qualifier in the sentence however is “which a man took and planted in his field”. Christ wasn’t talking about all possible seeds in the world, because again tales of the rare Brazilian tree orchid25 would be a little esoteric to a Hebrew farmer 2000 years ago and might have led to a whole bunch of questions beginning with, “Where’s Brazil?” and “What’s an orchid?”. Instead, he was limiting his discussion to the seeds that a farmer would ordinarily use.

These are examples of some of the objections raised by critics like Dawkins and Hitchens. They can sound dramatic when taken out of context, but don’t stack up when scrutinized more closely.

Of course, as the old saying goes, a lie can be halfway around the world before truth even makes it out the front door.26 [This feature has been abridged from Ian Wishart’s book, The Divinity Code]

Endnotes 1. The Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts suggest the word ‘they’ was inserted in this verse to describe how the people would see the child. “Immanuel” means, literally, “God with us”.

2. The Infidels website wrongly records that betulah is only used to describe ‘virgins’,

anduses this error on their part to try and negate the intent of the prophecy 3. There is an argument from critics that Christianity ‘borrowed’ its myth of a virgin birthdeity from older religions. I refute that in a later chapter of The Divinity Code.

4. http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/dead-sea-scrolls-2.htm 5. http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/qa-tran.htm 6. http://www.bethlehem-city.org/English/City/index.php 7. Hence the more recent association of the word lehem with bread, or food and produce.The word Ephratha means ‘bountiful’ or ‘fruitful’ 8. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, definition of ab 9. On The Reliability Of The Old Testament, K A Kitchen, Eerdmans, 2003, p. 264 10. It is this last translation that may be why Matthew’s version of the Micah prophecydiffers slightly from Micah’s, substituting “small among the clans” with “least among therulers [chiefs] of Judah”.

11. Whoops, there go 50% of the postings on sceptic websites, where critics understandablyhave rubbished some of the seemingly ridiculous numbers in the Old Testament. I think we canconsign that problem to history and move on 12. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, Bantam 2006, p. 93 13. Frederick G. Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, 1907, plate 30 14. This same issue is raised by Spong in JFTNR, p. 22. But we do have evidence of Romans requiring people to return to their towns of origin. Indeed, the Gospel of Luke records that “everyone went to his own town to register”. This is in the paragraph, Luke 2:1-3, that sets out the Roman decree. In the following paragraph we are told that Joseph decided to return to Bethlehem because he belonged to the line of David. It is not suggested in the brief biblical reference that the Romans were ordering Joseph to go to Bethlehem for Davidic reasons – in fact the suggestion is ludicrous because the Romans wouldn’t have known Joseph’s background nor cared. It appears to have been a choice Joseph made because he wished to be counted of that line. It may even be that this was the town of Joseph’s birth, and the fact that Bethlehem and Nazareth were in separate Roman administrative provinces may also have been a factor. We simply are not told, so to argue the point endlessly is pointless, so to speak 15. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in Annals, records that Augustus carried out a census of “the number of citizens and allies under arms, of the fleets, of subject kingdoms, provinces, taxes” etc. Key phrase in there is “subject kingdoms” – of which Judea clearly was.

16. http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html 17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_Gestae_Divi_Augusti 18. http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html (see clause 8) 19. http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html 20. Glenn Miller, http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html Richard Carrier at Infidels has waded in from the atheist perspective http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ richard_carrier/quirinius.html, and James Holding at Tektonics runs a comparison of both arguments at http://www.tektonics.org/af/ censuscheck.html 21. David A. Pardo: A Statistical Solution to the Star of Bethlehem Problem http:// cura.free.fr/xx/20pardo.html 22. The verse is usually translated, “saw his star in the east” but some manuscripts have “when it rose”. A planetary conjunction would indeed rise.

23. http://www.tektonics.org/qt/slaughtinn.html 24. http://dqhall59.com/parable_of_the_mustard_seed.htm (This site contains photos and descriptions of mustard plants growing wild in Israel) 25. Just as an interesting aside to this, Mark 4:31 writes the verse this way: “It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground”. This still carries the focus of seeds normally planted in Palestine, but the distinction “in the ground” is useful because the rare Brazilian tree orchid, Gomesa crispa, does not grow in the ground but in the canopies of rainforests, high above the ground 26. For readers who are interested in further exploring the alleged “errors” in the Bible, see this article for some examples of the mistakes many critics make: http:// www.tektonics. org/af/ebestart.html n

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ESSAY

The Christmas spirit:

Actions vs Words SIMON GEMMILL is a former Christian, turned atheist, now swinging back towards agnosticism as he wrestles with arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’ faith. Both former Prime Minister Helen Clark and her successor John Key denied belief in God during their last election debate, but talked of living their lives according to “Christian principles”. In this essay Gemmill takes a similar line, wondering whether deeds outweigh belief

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s being a Christian defined by what one does, or what one says? Can one practise Christianity without believing it, or believe it but not practise it? Let’s compare it to golf players: who is a golf player – the one who says he plays golf but does not, or the one who says he does not play golf, but does? The same could be said for guitar-playing, swimming, writing, teaching… the list goes on. So clearly, what we are is defined by our actions, not by what we claim to be.

Someone can claim to be the fastest runner in the world. And we will believe them, when we see it.

Based on this logic, there are many assenting Christians who do not practise it. And there are many who practise Christian morality without believing in the doctrines. Of course, there are two other camps: those who claim to follow and do, and those who do not claim to follow, and indeed, do not. However, for those concerned with either the good life, or the afterlife, we should spend some time considering: Three things Jesus said about Heaven and Hell that most Christians ignore and rationalise away: The story of The Sheep and the Goats, The Parable of the Talents, and the rich ruler he told to sell all he had and give it to the poor.

There are many unbelievers who would like to think that if we die and are wrong in our beliefs God will still tell us we have lived the right way. Similarly, even if there is no God, most unbelievers would like to think they have lived a good life, reward or no reward. A well-known flaw of Pascal’s Wager is that he didn’t even consider dying and finding out that Vishnu was the true God, not Yahweh. That makes the betting far more complicated, and suggests we should try to follow all the religions, which is impossible. However, there is another thing Pascal assumed: that believing in God would save your soul. Which is why he said that if you believe and die, and are wrong, you will be fine, however, if you do not believe, and die, and are wrong, you’re bacon.

What if Pascal was looking at it wrong; and many modern Christians are too? What if the safe thing to do to save your soul – rather than believing – is follow what Jesus said you had to do to get into Heaven? It makes more sense. Jesus did not say, “If you accept me as your personal Lord and Saviour, invite me into your heart and ask me to forgive your sins, you will be saved; regardless of how you live your life. And one more thing I ask: that you attend Church every Sunday.”

Jesus told the rich man to sell all he had. For some reason (I can’t imagine), Christians often talk their way out of that one, saying, “God doesn’t mind if we are rich.” Why not? According to that scripture, he minds a lot, especially if we do not give to others. Even while researching this article, looking up some of the following scriptures online, I found many websites that seek to explain to concerned believers that they do not actually have to go out and help people; all the Bible really means is to draw closer to the Presence of God and love him.

What we have here is a religion of convenience: ‘afterlife insurance’. Nothing more. In today’s secular world, many realise that there may well not be a God. However, just to be safe, they go to church, read the Bible, and pray; after being told that is what to do to save your soul.

However, Jesus taught a bit about Heaven and Hell. He said: The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats – Matthew 25:31– 46 (NRSV) ‘When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels 46 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and He will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at His right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer Him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you,

“Jesus told the rich man to sell all he had. For some reason, Christians often talk their way out of that one, saying, “God doesn’t mind if we are rich.”

Why not? According to that scripture, he minds a lot, especially if we do not give to others”

just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”’

‘Then He will say to those at His left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then He will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

The Parable of the Talents – Matthew 25:14-30 (NRSV) “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves

and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.

Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 47

master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Jesus and the Rich Ruler – Luke 18:18-30 (NIV) A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good— except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honour your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing.

Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” So Jesus said God likes giving to the needy, helping the weak, making something out of our lives, and does not like us being greedy of selfish. If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard a Christian talk their way out of the Rich Ruler story I’d be a millionaire; and could then give my money to the poor. How can they say God doesn’t mind us being rich, even with all the poverty and suffering around us? Ben Harper summed it up well: “And Mr when you’re rattling on Heaven’s Gates, they don’t ask, they don’t ask what you saved, all they’ll wanna know Mr, is what you gave.” (In the song Excuse Me Mr.) The common belief that faith alone saves people cannot be justified by scriptures, nor can the claim that God ‘doesn’t mind’ if we horde our wealth.

Furthermore, greed and selfishness are sins: Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV) “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

It is painfully clear that modern-day middle-class Christians, who go to church every Sunday, and spend the rest of the time ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ (hopefully not Bob Jones, that would be tough), are living the materialistic, selfish life that the Bible condemns (people to Hell for).

The average middle-class believer who goes to church on Sunday is merely taking out an insurance policy. If there is a Heaven, they want to go there. They are not worried about sheep, goats or giving all their possessions away.

Jesus was no fan of greed. I think he’d have liked Buddha’s 48 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

teaching that we should not hold onto or get attached to anything, because it is all impermanent anyway. As a believer in the afterlife, I’m sure Jesus felt this way. Perhaps the rich man could not get into Heaven because he was tied down to this world by his love of material things.

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ould an atheist follow Jesus, be happy doing so, and even be a better Christian (remember, you’re a golfer if you play golf, it’s about actions, not names) than many of today’s Christians?

In fact, as someone recently pointed out to me: the Sheep and the Goats story is Humanistic: it is identical to the belief that the buck stops with us; that all the world’s problems are ours to fix.

From the agnostic vantage point, it seems safe to bet on the side of caution, with the newly revised version of Pascal’s Wager, that if one lives the Good Life, particularly with regard to giving to the needy, and helping ‘the least of these my brethren’ as Jesus commanded, if we die and are wrong, all we have done is made the world a better place. According to the Bible itself, if God is real, we will go to Heaven for what we have done. It doesn’t say we will be cast into Hell because we didn’t believe some doctrine or another.

We could all strive to live a good life, in the hopes of a) making the world a better place, and b) in doing so, hedge our bets, so that if there is a God, we stand a better chance (according to the Bible itself ) than those who profess the faith, but whose actions contradict their mouths. Thus, even if (b) turns out not to matter, we have still achieved (a).

The moral: What you do matters more than what you think. Is the Bible really true? Who cares? Too many people kill over Truth.

I side with Bertrand Russell, who said he would not kill or die for a belief, because he might be wrong. You don’t have to think it’s the Truth to do what it says. Stories don’t have to be true to have a good message.

How many of us could say: “If there was a God, he’d be fine with me, because I do a lot to help the world, and actually pretty much do all the things the ‘sheep’ had done in that parable”? If we could not say that, perhaps we are not really practising our own professed Humanism, and are just as bad as the church-goers with our own ‘religion of convenience’: we just believe what we want ‘cause it suits us, and don’t care if the world is a mess.

Anyone who is living like that should think twice, whether they are religious or not, because, right and wrong are determined by what we do, not by our beliefs. And apparently, even the Bible concurs on this point.

Many people are doing their best to help others (including animals and the environment) – people of all faiths, and also unbelievers. This article is not about them; but about the vast unthinking majority who think that the middle-class comfortable suburban lifestyle (of buying more and more things to impress people we don’t even like) is righteous, and daily talk their way out of having to lift a finger to make the world a better place. God or no God, they’re in the wrong. Even if we made up religious virtues, we did so for a reason.

Maybe as some say, Heaven and Hell are states of mind; or places on Earth.

Certainly, if everyone did pitch in, we could create a paradise.

The morals of both the Bible and Humanism are in concordance: that the world is messed up thanks to us, and can only be healed by us. And – as most of my 10-11 year-old class wrote when I asked

“The average middle-class believer who goes to church on Sunday is merely taking out an insurance policy. If there is a Heaven, they want to go there. They are not worried about sheep, goats or giving all their possessions away” them to write an essay arguing that the world is better or worse now that it was fifty years ago – it is getting worse and worse.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if we are right in our beliefs; it only matters what we do. The same indictment of Christians above applies equally to everyone else: sure, you’re certain you are right in your beliefs, and, by the by, well done for that.

But, What matters more – being right, or doing right?

Links read these to see how far people will go to avoid the requirement to do any good.

You don’t even have a choice to do good or bad, God has predestined you for one or the other! http://www.bibletruthonline.com/PARABLEofSHEEPandGOATS.htm

Good deeds are a result of salvation and ‘my brethren’ means other believers http://www.xenos.org/teachings/topical/parables/gary/parables-8.htm Discourse on the many interpretations of the Sheep and the Goats http://www.religioustolerance.org/salwdjs1.htm Using the ‘talents’ means sharing the gospel, not making something of yourself http://gracethrufaith.com/selah/parables/the-parable-of-the-talents/ The Parable of the Talents is just about knowing God http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-talents.html You don’t have to give things away, as long as you don’t love them http://www.rbc.org/questionsDetail.aspx?id=45872 Being a sheep just means being saved, which will make you want to do good http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-sheep-goats.html You don’t have to give your money away, as long as you don’t love it http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_b_the_rich_young_ruler.htm n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 49

Faith & fact in the era of

Oprah church

How New Agers captured pop culture and the media

Controversial religious scholar ROLLAN MCCLEARY is back with a claim that Oprah is trying to create a worldwide conversion to New Age religion

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A DAY THAT MIGHT HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD

Way back in 1962, on a day of wild weather in many parts of the world, one that saw shops in India closed in case the world might end, prophets and psychics of all stripes were declaring the birth of a world changing leader or avatar. Less sanguine, Jeane Dixon, the late Washington seeress consulted by statesmen and best known for forecasting the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King would subsequently declare the main purpose of her unusual life was fulfilled that day when she had a vision of the birth and career of a “Child from the East”, a false Messiah or Antichrist.

Trained in youth by a Jesuit priest in the astrology denounced, dismissed or even demonized by many Christians, curiously (given she was treating the kind of sensational theme that could always use a few extra recommendations) Jeane Dixon never commented on a phenomenon many others noted and which would have added a suitably mysterious cachet to her peculiar claims. All the visible planets had very exceptionally been clustered within one sign, Aquarius, sign of humanity, of the world and the coming era as popularized by the musical, Hair. Here for many was their promise of an exceptional birth and world change. But a messianic figure? Significantly none of the three outer planets deemed more mystical and including Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius, conjoined the potentially fated super-conjunction. In short, whether Dixon was right or wrong, her vision had corresponded to a time with a symbolic signature as suggestive as possible for 666. That number is biblically “the number of a man” (Rev 13:18) and the all-too-human wisdom never arriving at the sacred 7 everywhere scripturally celebrated and identified with the messianic mystery, the seven spirits of God and perfection.

Even if the often correct Dixon was mistaken in a vision she considered crucial there are sufficient elements of parable in it for it to be worthwhile to recall ideas of an all-too-human wisdom in ’08. It’s a year many regard as vital for attempts to establish a consciousness shift and which, as indicated later, would have to be vital for the subject of Dixon’s vision – if he exists. The Washington Seeress maintained that this person, whom she later saw removing from the Middle East to Italy, would be chiefly promoted through American media. His new belief system, which would succeed an overthrow of the Vatican (and note the present Pope is the last if the supposedly twelfth century Prophecy of the Popes from St Malachy is valid) would have much in common with Asian mysticism. It would however be a form of self worship. People would flock to the prophet intoxicated by the chance to have spiritual highs via what in fact would be an anti God philosophy with unforeseen consequences for the world which this individual would come to dominate almost more politically than spiritually.

OPRAH CONNECTIONS AND AQUARIAN IDEAS

Ideas of a countercultural, people power movement of networkers, social activists and mystics leading the world to higher consciousness was first memorably outlined by Marianne Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980). Ferguson is a friend of billionaire media phenomenon, Oprah Winfrey, who is a natural voice for such New Age visions not least, perhaps, because she herself, like Dixon’s promised prophet, is a utopianist, group minded Aquarian and one perhaps marked out in a way I shall consider.

For many years now talk show host, Oprah, who has a daily audience of 20 million in America and a world wide audience of less easily determined number in 132 countries, has been promot52 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

ing every facet of New Ageism from karma to crystals and privately been dialoguing with the presiding spirits favourable to the movement. The former Baptist has had her fling with Nigerian Yoruba cult and believes she periodically communes with the souls of dead negro slaves who now and again guide her work. Oprah’s influence is such that New Age authors like Marianne Williams who might have remained on the fringes and books like A Course of Miracles that might have become at most underground classics are now mainstream bestsellers through the media queen’s advocacy.

The Course is a huge tome dictated over several years, supposedly by Jesus himself, to a New York university professor, Helen Schucmann. A Jew briefly converted to Catholicism, Schucmann was confused by her channeling which, as witnessed by a priest psychologist friend, she cursed rather than repented of on her deathbed. The Course denies or revises just about every doctrine Jesus ever taught. It declares that we are God, that we are our own salvation, that sin does not exist and much else.

This year Oprah’s promotion of the New Age has been considerably extended with daily broadcasts on XM Radio of readings from A Course of Miracles with additional commentary. Oprah has no monopoly of the new emphasis but she lends it prestige. On April 5th a film, The Moses Code, premiered replete with stars of the New Age offering a re-interpreted Bible and in one case declaring “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”, words supposedly better applied to all of us rather than to Jesus. The film appeared around a time it was hoped millions in meditation vigil would help trigger a major mind shift (We seem instead to have been absorbing tragedies in Burma and China!). Also currently much discussed is Oprah’s latest guru, another of the Aquarians, Eckhart Toller, author of A New Earth. Response to the Toller craze has been so intense, America’s churches, never notably either encouraging or critical of Oprah – who by now exists somewhere almost above criticism – seem finally to have panicked accusing the media queen of misleading multitudes and inventing a virtual alternative Church of Oprah.

Concern has arisen for two reasons. Things have got to a point many Oprah watching churchgoers are reporting crises of faith as they try to absorb the challenges that Toller’s A New Earth and Third Christ (name of the most recent book from Deepak Chopra, another guru friend of Oprah) present to received belief through the media queen’s advocacy. But this crisis is intensified because, almost unthinkably, the new trend has parallels within sectors of the churches including the evangelical normally least prone to welcome new directions. Some now talk in terms like “Christ Consciousness” and the Church as “an information network of Christ Consciousness”. So, if Oprah’s world is anticipating a shift in ‘08 and 09, so too are some established sectors of the American churches that embrace figures like media preacher, Robert Schuller of LA’s Crystal Cathedral who hosted a doctrinal Re-think conference in January – significantly one of the attendees was media mogul Rupert Murdoch – and Brian McLaren of the Emergent Church movement. McClaren hosted a “Deep Shift Re-Invention” conference in April.

REVISIONS, RESTATEMENTS AND RETHINKS

The gospel it seems is up for re-statement and while a New Age Christ like that of A Course of Miracles is not envisaged, a Christ for a new age arguably is so. For Schuller, who doesn’t favour missions (he once said he wouldn’t mind if he returned from the dead to find his great grandchildren Muslims), re-statement should

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be along the lines of “peace, brotherhood and economic equity” with sin defined in relation to self esteem. (Sin denies self esteem, forgiveness regains it). For the non-denominational evangelically identified pastor, Brian McLaren, unofficial leader of the Emergent Church movement, emphasis is on a certain this-worldliness and group responsibility towards a Christ who can attract and influence people of all faiths or none. Associated writers like Phyllis Tickle and Tony Jones speak of the “Great Emergence”. This is interesting since talk of a “Christ Consciousness” and “Emergence” happens to duplicate lead themes and buzz words of something very different namely the international Maitreya cult.

Maitreya is the name of the last of the Buddhas but as object of a new international cult he is a bit harder to define. According to his chief advocate, Benjamin Crème, Lord Maitreya is a gradually emerging spirit who dwells in London’s Tower Hamlets mosque but periodically appears around the globe to perform miracles and manifest himself to individuals and groups or just speak into unsuspecting people’s minds. He particularly labours to loosen up conservative believers of all faiths towards his Day of Declaration.

He is not just Buddha but “the Christ”, an emerging one who can also be seen as Krishna, the Mahdi of Islam and almost any figure the world religions await. Maitreya’s mission is to help people share and realize their essential oneness. But his main task is to introduce “The Master Jesus” to the world.

Since this ‘Jesus’ hails from the Middle East (Syria) and is said to be currently resident in Rome and will emerge after an overthrow

uniquely misrepresented ideas on current Jesus issues.

If you don’t know about Brian McLaren’s beliefs and the sea change they represent, you probably should. Or so many cognoscenti in and out of religion would increasingly assure you in their willingness to treat him, like Oprah, almost more as a phenomenon than an author. What McLaren likes to offer the world is “a more generous orthodoxy”, title of book of 2004, while the phenomenon McLaren himself would like to represent, again in line with the title of one of his books, is A New Kind of Christian (2005).

But whatever McLaren’s aspirations his The Secret Message of Jesus (2006) carries the most extreme recommendations upfront, one critic assuring us it is the last book he needs to read on Christianity – everything else will be just doing the vision offered. Another critic opines this is the true Da Vinci Code for believers it’s so revolutionary.

One could be seriously surprised at such claims especially as The Secret Message appears only to offer for traditional believers its own version of ideas about Jesus’ parables and message much akin to some that have been floating around for some time in more radical circles like those of the late Robert Funk of The Jesus Seminar with his Honest to Jesus study of 1996. Briefly stated the “secret” McLaren claims to reveal, amid thoughts perhaps best appreciated against the background of America’s often very personalized and judgmental kind of evangelicalism (against which Oprah is in representative New Age revolt), is that what is most unique about Jesus is his doctrine of “the kingdom of God”.

“Response to the Toller craze has been so intense, America’s churches, never notably either encouraging or critical of Oprah – who by now exists somewhere almost above criticism – seem finally to have panicked accusing the media queen of misleading multitudes and inventing a virtual alternative Church of Oprah” of the Vatican, theoretically he could be identical with Dixon’s prophet. If there’s any element of truth in this and understandings of the Book of Revelation were to need updating in light of it then Maitreya sounds not unlike the prophet who makes the world believe in the new false ‘Messiah’ (Rev 13:12) through his signs. Which means that modern seekers would have to finish up believing something, since without specific belief there is no real commitment of the will. However for the time being, the ideal of Oprah Church is feeling, not believing, an emphasis which chimes with the modern scientism and materialism which want evidence for the senses.

SPIRITUAL EMERGENCE OR SUBVERSION?

Before I return to and conclude with how Oprah – more than some – could help fulfill Dixon’s forecast regarding American media, I shall digress on the beliefs of Brian McLaren and even my own as they diverge from McLaren’s and have been distorted in media and ignored by Oprah. I can now see that it was completely inevitable they should be ignored by Oprah (or her entourage). However, at a time when I knew less about her than now – little more than that she was famous and that authors like to be promoted by her – I was naïve enough to follow a suggestion I should fill in an internet box to inform the Oprah show about my unique and 54 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

This “kingdom” is more radical, loving, egalitarian, potentially inclusive and socially and politically relevant than anything envisaged in salvation orientated forms of faith that have largely obscured it (a claim which like some others he makes is probably correct ). For McLaren the message is at once terribly clear and deliberately obscure as witness the mysterious parables which Jesus mostly doesn’t explain and maybe, (McLaren thinks), because the aim was to stimulate ongoing question-making that would encourage reliance upon Jesus as teacher/guru with whom one enters into dialogue and relation. But not simply a beyond life salvational relation.

Without denying personal salvation is possible and exists, McLaren doesn’t appear to believe very strongly in the notion, tending to dismiss claims about the beyond, resurrection, judgement, angels etc as “esoteric” and overly literalistic. It’s the present life and Jesus’ life changing messages that count. Doctrine can’t anyway mean that much because for McLaren’s post-modernist, very literary viewpoint – he was trained in literature rather than theology – doctrines reflect the persons who make them, so objective truth is hard to come by. Likewise portraits of the historical Jesus tend to reflect their authors’ own interests so Jesus is best known by confronting whatever he is recorded as saying, in short his message. Jesus is his message, his words. But is that really so?

Campaign posters for Obama deliberately used messianic symbolism, and the media picked up on the theme, finding ‘halos’ in many different places

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JESUS AS MESSAGE OR PERSON?

Arguably such emphasis can finish rather misleading and with much the same subversive effect as more occult re-thinks of Christ and gospel from Schucman and the Church of Oprah. It might even be one of the signs of the times envisioned by Dixon when confusion around the nature of Christ, precipitates the spiritual crises that help propel her antichrist prophet to centre stage.

Especially in the wake of The Da Vinci Code and Judas gospel controversies people today ask to be sure that Jesus truly existed, to know who he was and why, something which if they could know it, they might better understand the mind behind the message that McLaren too willingly allows to elude him.

Post-modernist subjectivity and relativity downplay objective fact in favour of the personal feelings that McLaren, like the Church of Oprah, is keen to privilege – but a few facts about Jesus cannot reasonably be denied. What is most “secret” or simply original about Jesus concerns his own being, how he variously claims or implies he is related to God, his (messianic/spiritual/divine) role. For example, as his contemporaries realized, often to their scandal, to claim to forgive sins was the prerogative of God alone 56 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

even if Jesus didn’t go around publicly stating “I am God” whenever he forgave sins. But apart from this originality of role or function the reality McLaren overlooks is that, from the human standpoint, rather like Shakespeare, Jesus was simply a genius of synthesis who took a lot of existing ideas and rendered them more dramatically memorable. Accordingly there is little in Jesus’ message, no matter how revolutionary or unique it might appear, which simple research will not find anticipated in especially Israel’s wisdom tradition from biblical Proverbs to the less read apocryphal works like Ben Sirach where one can find calls to radical forgiveness or respect for the poverty that otherwise stand outside mainstream Jewish thought.

When Jesus appeared on the scene the days of the prophets were long past. The teacher/rabbi had taken over and Jesus presents himself very much in the role of wisdom teacher, a new Solomon as described in studies like Ben Witherington’s Jesus the Sage, albeit something rather more was involved. Actually Jesus maintained, and early Christians subsequently maintained, that Jesus was “the Wisdom of God” itself – or perhaps herself as per Proverbs and the Apocrypha. Believers didn’t explore the gender problems this opened up, though Jesus himself had somewhat done that by comparing himself to such as a Mother Hen (Lk.13:34). For early Christians it was simpler, and within the gentile world more in line with philosophical fashion, to refer to Jesus as Logos, the Word.

Parallel to realization that Jesus wasn’t completely original as regards his message, we should grasp that, humanly regarded, the character behind the message and which could embrace radical synthesis, is not necessarily the impenetrable mystery McLaren postmodernly feels it is – because each theologian merely reflects his own personality and interests in trying to describe Jesus. (Not all theologians do this but those who don’t, like Albert Schweitzer of The Quest of the Historical Jesus or the present Pope in Jesus of Nazareth, still admit to find Jesus’ psychology almost impossible to assess). But quite simply his was the kind of marginal character that almost spontaneously envisions things differently, and radically so. Like an artist Jesus demands others separate themselves sufficiently from the mainstream to perceive more widely and sympathetically – even if he wouldn’t have agreed with Oprah that we can call God anyone or anything that works for us or with McLaren that he (Jesus) might be better understood by persons who never took the step of becoming his followers.

OUTSIDER VISION

The statement which I suggest perhaps most encapsulates the radical perception theme is the one in which Jesus declares some are born and some are made while others become eunuchs (Matt 19.:12) for that “kingdom” upon which McLaren and the Emergents, place such stress. But what does this really mean?

As with some of the parables it doesn’t have to mean only one thing but we do know it can’t just mean – though it could symbolically include since it follows some statements on marriage – that Jesus’ followers will be celibate/unmarried persons. After all, immediate disciples like Peter and Philip were married men.

We may take it Jesus didn’t mean believers should go and castrate themselves, (they have never done so unless for Origen who subsequently admitted he was wrong) and anyway in Jesus’ time eunouchos didn’t automatically signify any castrated or sexually inactive person as it might have done back in the time of the Persians. It could include anyone who for whatever reason was unsuited to marriage, to family life, and procreation i.e. the loose meaning of the word “saris” to Jews. In terms of Jesus’ highly family orientated society that would mean anyone who was an out-

sider to the system, a role Jesus seems to be enjoining followers not to avoid, or involving a form of perception they could usefully appropriate.

And what kind of person, especially for the Judaism of Jesus’ time, would be a typical outsider? Norwegian theologian, Raghnild Schanke, reminds us that “eunuchs” could be legally equivalent to latin spadones. But as she also realizes if one reads a Latin comedy like Terence’s The Eunuch, it’s pretty clear it can also mean something much like our word, “homosexual”, albeit the ancient world had no precise equivalent for that. The classical world thought in terms of acts and roles so apart from some astrologers, and perhaps Jesus, few people assumed, modern style, that anything inborn was involved though beyond the Mediterranean world in tribal societies there has always been a belief in the potentially powerful spiritual nature of any androgynous or third sex individual. Shamanism especially thrives on their kind of psychological marginality and sexual behaviour needn’t have much to do with it even if we see that across history art often does – the disposition of such celebrated figures as Leonardo and Michelangelo is a case in point. Within Christianity saints and mystics, of which St INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 57

of Jesus are not. Plus in post-modern culture, the facts are no longer at any premium, it’s feelings that count.

While Dixon may have been wrong about her Antichrist literally, he might as well be at the doors where truth and fact are concerned.

RELIGION AND THE VARIETIES OF CENSORSHIP

Aelred of Riveaulx is perhaps most celebrated because it’s accepted he engaged same sex relations before entering orders, bespeak the vision of the alternative mind set.

The first chapter of my A Special Illumination (2005), a cross cultural, trans-historical survey of gay spiritualities, maps a whole alternative psychology and individuation process some have found helpful because thus set out it was rather a novelty. But a vital question is whether such awareness was the kind of thing Jesus was highlighting as relevant to his followers or even himself? There seems little question the mysteriously “radical” Jesus of McLaren’s theology would be far more easily accounted for in such alternative terms. But especially if Jesus was, as claimed, the divine Wisdom, which to be meaningful would need him to be like a female soul in a male body (one of the early modern definitions of the homosexual) again such theories could apply. And how could they not do so? If Jesus were not to some degree androgynous, a partaker in both sexes, how representative of humanity would he be in incarnational terms?

As some guide to this contentious issue – which, whatever one thinks about it, should at least be the subject of open, honest inquiry – I do claim some evidence. But getting this subject honestly reported, or reported at all, is problematic in ways the much published McLaren and other theologians are privileged to know nothing about, while to those of the Church of Oprah a married Jesus is of suitably gnostic interest in ways more outsider images 58 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

Years ago at an Australian Society of Authors conference I attended the audience was informed of something which I might have heeded more before undertaking the kind of researches I did. We were advised any author not the Pope, Billy Graham, a TV bishop or the Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford needs to think twice about writing anything on Christ or Christianity. A number of token Christians pass through the media/ publishing gates but beyond that what’s promoted is mostly Christ scandal and heresies.

Having been on the receiving end of publishing house remarks like “Why don’t you take your Jesus myths to some theosophical house?” or “Not that subject (Jesus) again”, I’m obliged to consider the assessment largely justified. And I haven’t found my qualifications beyond that of writer, i.e. specific religious qualification, count either. Jesus and religion seem a subject rarely of either interest or even polite respect in media/publishing circles beyond the potential for subversive shock. And even the shock should be along approved lines i.e. either radically sceptical or overtly gnostic lines. The by now familiar retort that “our lists are already full” or “that kind of inquiry doesn’t fit our current lists” rings oddly like “no room at the inn”. When truth appears expect a few problems!

I have a doctorate in religious studies whose subject was a world first from any university religion department. It was a survey of gay spirituality that became the mentioned A Special Illumination. Back in ‘03 when I received my doctorate news of its theme got out, initially through a disapproving conservative journalist with an agenda. Then Australia’s Channel 9’s A Current Affair went onto the streets to ask should Dr McCleary have been funded by Australia to research Jesus’ sexuality. Fiction is more interesting than fact so the reality was no such research project was ever in question as I stressed in words cut from what had been a lengthy interview at Melbourne airport which nearly lost me my plane. To my horror one Australian paper even came up with the idea I’d claimed Jesus incarnated to have sex with his disciples. When I protested this – which if Islam were involved could have triggered any extreme – the paper’s editor testily told the Press Council it was absurd to have objected and hopefully he would never hear of Dr McCleary again.

Anyway, in no time what I was supposed to have done, said or written was round the world and it didn’t help that with neither the doctorate nor a book containing relevant statements about Jesus yet published there was nowhere to refer critics for clarification, refutation or authority. Perhaps in apology the journalist who launched the disinformation rang to say she had “sold a lot of books” for me; but creating controversy so far ahead of publication she hadn’t done so but merely frustrated my publisher’s publicity plans. Ironically, insofar as I was understood to be linking Jesus to third sex issues, however defined, I was not the first to

do so – Canon, later Bishop Hugh Montefiore was the first back in the sixties in England – but “Gay Spirituality” with which my opinions had some connection was a different matter. It is a rather American/Canadian category and one that few in Australia were familiar with. Accordingly I wasn’t trusted, nor even heard, as regards any psychological and theological reasoning to my theories or evidence to back them. Just what the evidence was and how arrived at got ignored for the noise of incredulity and scandal.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

So, as regards Oprah and her “Church” what might be so special about her and it this year and beyond? For those who are astrologically-inclined, regardless of whether one approves or not, the stellar patterns are certainly suggestive. First and interestingly the mutual suspicion of Oprah and Church leaders concerning formation of a Church of Oprah is graphically shown by asteroid, Church, at 0 Cancer (deemed a world point) on an angle for Oprah where it’s considered a person has both their audience and open opposition. Oprah has had and will have strong planetary opposition to this point this year highlighting any controversy in the area of alternative belief formation.

As regards possible relation to some false prophet one can merely speculate, but if Dixon’s prophet exists, 2008 has been a special year for him. It’s notorious in astrology that eclipses bring out the leaders when they conjunct that individual’s sun. Any astrol-

oger who failed to realize that Australia’s Kevin Rudd was due to become next Prime Minister was doing a poor job if they failed to note the simple message of the eclipse conjuncting his sun prior to the last election. Destiny called.

In the exceptional case of Dixon’s prophet one would hesitate to declare he must appear on the world stage in response to eclipses no matter how strong affecting his pattern this year. If he exists it’s nonetheless impossible his beliefs (Jupiter), would not be preceding him from this year onwards – as they now maybe are. And if American media were to have the role Dixon envisaged in the prophet’s advancement then an Oprah connection is possible under the usual rules for chart comparison which can certainly be seen working to order in Oprah’s promotion of such as Barack Obama. Her Saturn (important for career and political issues) closely conjuncts Obama’s Neptune so she links to and promotes his dreams. Indeed ironically it’s just possible her advocacy of a person who has subsequently engendered mania could well have produced more consciousness shifts this year than any more strictly mystical promotions, warming a messiah hungry public up to something like Dixon’s false prophet phenomenon.

Fate may not be absolute but it does look as though Oprah and followers could have much to be responsible for at a critical time for the future of human beliefs. The woman who even as a child believed she was in the world to change it, might actually do so. rollanrm@yahoo.com

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think life | money

The retirement files Peter Hensley’s thoughts on life after the last paycheck It was Friday as Jim was doing the light dusting. Moira had been quite insistent when he retired from full time work, if he was going to be around the house, he would have to share the cleaning duties.

For the previous thirty plus years she had toiled quietly with the domestic chores and she finally thought that enough was enough. He was not going to fill his retirement days getting involved with his sporting and community groups while she continued to maintain the family home unassisted.

Jim was a quick learner and soon worked out a roster which suited him. He allocated a major task for each day of the week and did not let himself get involved in his other activities until that was completed.

He was a willing worker and admitted to one of his bowling buddies that he did not realise the effort required to keep a house spick and span. He had always assisted with the nightly dishes and did not consider that should be in the roster, but things like changing the linen and cleaning the ablutions was something that always seemed to get sorted without his involvement. The process had helped him develop another level of respect for his life partner.

Moira was fair and did credit Jim with a lot of their retirement planning. He had a good brain and was excellent with figures.

Between them, they had accumulated a reasonable nest egg and had been prudent 60 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

and conservative with their investments.

Early in their married life Jim worked out that they would be best to eliminate their mortgage as soon a practical. In those days the bank had insisted on a 30% deposit and with the assistance of a small family loan they budgeted their way into their first home. They moved twice more in their lifetime, once to a larger home to accommodate their expanded family and then to a smaller low maintenance complex as they neared retirement. In the interim they had carefully budgeted where they would spend their income.

They had travelled extensively and whilst Jim managed most of their finances Moira always insisted that some of her wages be set aside in a specific travel fund. She said that as she had earned that money she should have some say in what happened to it. Moira’s sister Alison had a similar pact with her husband. As it was a set amount each pay it was easy to identify how much would accumulate over a set period of time.

In the early years the travel fund was usually expensed on camp ground fees with some take out meals being included in the budget. As they aged, airfares become more reasonable and the travel began to include passports and more exotic destinations.

Over the years their holidays attracted a few snide comments from their friends and workmates. These remarks initially took them by surprise as they thought every one

managed their income the same way they did. As they tended not to discuss their personal affairs at work it took them some time to deduce that they were in the minority. They were under the impression that everyone knew they had the power to dictate where their money was to go, but in reality, they found that the majority of the population sat back and wondered where their money went every month.

Sometimes circumstances meant it was just Moira and Alison who went on holiday. This provided some balance as the boys had often been away on work trips and conferences which allowed the girls to argue it was the boys’ time to bond with their offspring. The sisters always took great delight in planning their adventures. They spent countless hours researching and studying the destination of their choice. In the latter years the internet added a new dimension to their preparation. Blogs and comments posted on travel websites allowed them to request specific rooms which only added to the excitement of experiencing another country’s culture.

This addiction to planning could not help itself but spill over into their normal lives. Jim and Moira knew when they moved from their first matrimonial home into the second that they would move house again. This last move was likely to be their last, but they had not totally discounted the idea of moving to a retirement village. If they did they would ensure that the move was meticulously planned. This is what puzzled Jim. Once he had completed his Friday dusting chore he was off to help his uncle George.

Jim and Moira always had a soft spot for George. Whilst he had never married, George was rarely without a girl friend.

He had resisted all moves to have any of them store their underwear in his bedroom dresser. George was ageing gracefully, but lately the years had caught up on him. Even Jim had noticed how his house didn’t seem clean anymore. This in itself said something about how much progress Jim had made in the last seven years since he had implemented his domestic chore roster.

Previously he would have been oblivious to the hygienic state of George’s house.

It was with Jim and Moira’s encouragement that George made the move into an aged semi care facility. They first suggested it five years ago and it had taken them all that time to make it happen. The last three years specifically had not been kind to George as his emphysema had

gone from mild to chronic. Because he was single, smoking had always been part of George’s life until they had started putting those deterrent pictures on the packets.

Like many others he had quit, however the smoke had already done significant damage, not only to him but also the value of his house. Each of the real estate agents had commented on the discolouration effect that his smoking had on the property.

Both Jim and Moira could not understand how George had gotten into this mess. Planning for their future was part of their DNA, their finances, their holidays, where they wanted to live in their retirement was all diligently researched, identified and a plan constructed accordingly. They thought everyone was like that. George had left it too late and was now relying on others to make decisions.

Thankfully Moira has insisted that George make Jim his Enduring Power of Attorney which was now making the transition process easier. George had signed his appointment form before the recent law change which meant all new POA’s had to be signed in front of a practicing lawyer or a legal executive.

As part of the process, Jim enlisted the assistance of their investment adviser.

George’s affairs were complicated and apart from his home the majority of his wealth was tied up in a range of foreign shares and securities he had inherited from various long lost relatives. In order to protect George from himself and various girlfriends, Jim and Moira had insisted that the ownership of his house be transferred to a family trust years ago. To assist in securing George’s fiscal future, the adviser had liquidated the aging share portfolio well before the global markets went into meltdown mode. It had taken in excess of eight months to do so, as many of the share certificates he held were for companies that no longer traded.

Jim’s study of his uncle’s affairs were an eye opener. Over his lifetime, George had operated a zero balance bank account.

What went in went out. There were times when more went out, and every time this happened George seem to receive a legacy or a windfall from some relation he had never met. Apart from the house and some recent inheritances George had spent everything.

Jim knew that George had to make do with what he had left as he had finally run out of ancestors. Changes in Government legislation meant that George could retain

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$180,000 worth of assets, keeping in mind his house belonged to the trust. As George had less than this only the interest from his savings would have to be directed to his upkeep. Jim also made sure that George had the maximum amount put aside for his funeral.

Because planning for the future was part of him, Jim also planned to raise the topic of George’s funeral. He and Moira had been to an increasing number of funerals lately and had been able to identify a number of issues that needed to be clarified.

Over the years Moira had come to realise that not everyone wanted to provide input for their own funeral and warned Jim that George may not welcome him raising the topic, she thought it best that he leave that discussion for another day.

As Jim finished his light dusting duty he quietly reflected that their careful planning had placed them in an envious financial position. He was proud of Moira’s skills in the kitchen as it had saved them an enormous amount of money over the years. His only hope was that he would enjoy them for many years to come.

A copy of Peter Hensley’s disclosure statement is available on request and is free of charge. © Peter J Hensley, November 2008

EVE’S BITE

THE DIVINITY CODE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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think life | EDUCATION

Cartago delenda est – a clarion call needed to topple the education bureaucracy Amy Brooke pings political correctness When a wheel-chair bound woman recently went to access the disabled carpark near her local doctor’s surgery, she found it occupied by a car containing four Maori men. Eventually finding parking space further away she asked why they had taken this reserved space. “We’re Maoris.

We can do what we like,” came the dismissive answer.

Former All Black John Kirwan tells how much safer than here it is to walk in a Japanese city at two, three, or four in the morning. We could learn a lot from the Japanese, he says. Their culture of respect for others produces a courtesy, once far more common in this country, inhibiting violent behaviour. We have become a violent society, and statistically this is 62 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

largely, though not entirely, due to Maori and Pacific Islanders among us. The overemphasis on the importance of a bowdlerized Maori culture – at the expense of the civilized mores and emphasis on individual conscience that British and European colonists brought to New Zealand, underpinned by Christianity’s respect for the individual – has had very damaging social consequences.

Old Lefties like the wily Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples are essentially hostile to their European inheritance and forbears.

Mrs Turia specialises in exaggerating the importance and relevance of Maori culture and its values to young part-Maoris. She is essentially fascist in her demands that new New Zealanders should have to undergo

compulsory lectures in Maori and Pacific history. However, the darker aspects of utu, constant warfare, cannibalism and mindless tribal squabbling leading to never-ending violence were the very reason why the chiefs of the time called for a Pax Romana to protect both Maori and European from the problematic lawlessness of both peoples, fuelled by alcohol.

There was never established, by the Treaty of Waitangi, a partnership between the races. This spurious notion, still milked for all its worth, has been the justification for so many wrong-headed policies mitigating against many young part-Maoris doing far better educationally in this country. Bloated self-esteem, and the deeds of one’s ancestors, have never entitled indi-

viduals to swagger, to centre-stage, and to make constant demands for separate facilities, provisions and justification for preference. They do least of all for those trapped into taking advantage of them, largely ensuring lucrative jobs for those gaining special taxpayer funding to conjure them up, giving lectures, running courses, and hyping up the importance of the essentially apartheid Te Reo schools.

It is true that the education bureaucracy in this country cannot be indicted on the grounds that it fails to provide access to excellence for all. Excellence has long been eliminated as even an aim in this intellectual dystopia of the Left. On the contrary, its policies are designed to withhold excellence, its intent the reductive and absurd notion of equality of outcome.

So Auckland University expects that (part)Maori and Pacific Islanders need not have as high a grade-point average as other New Zealanders when applying for a doctoral scholarship. The second year law quota at Canterbury University demeaningly requires (part) Maori to need only a C grade in Laws 101 as opposed to the B/ B average required from everybody else.

How very insulting to a once-proud people to envisage them as handicapped by this part-Maori inheritance – and unable to do better because of it. And how many New Zealanders would prefer go to a doctor or lawyer envisaged as qualifying at the expense of those performing better – or propped up by special arrangements?

It doesn’t stop. One of New Zealand’s top schools, Auckland Grammar, has been ridiculously urged by the Education Review Office “to develop policies and practices that better reflect the country’s bicultural heritage.” Regardless of the fact that this country’s heritage is far from being bicultural, it had better not: its performance would very possibly deteriorate. Moreover, headmaster John Morris has pointed out what ERO blithely disregards: there is a nationwide shortage of genuinely wellqualified Maori language teachers.

Both history and mythology have important truths embodied in them. The task facing those wanting to wrest back control of education, now so lamentably dumbed down, undemanding, and tedious that most New Zealand schoolchildren are understandably bored in school, and that shockingly, many emerge subliterate from those long years in primary school, can be compared to the task of cleaning out the Augean Stables. National’s pledge to

“Under the present bureaucratic monster masquerading as the Ministry of Education, Hell will freeze over before New Zealand children have any hope of once again being offered a quality education – as usual – tinker with the system won’t work. From history comes this reminder – Cartago delenda est – the tenacious call of Cato the Elder, emphasising that as long as Carthage stood, there was no hope of Rome finally being free from ongoing warfare with this North African city-state.

The parallel? Under the present bureaucratic monster masquerading as the Ministry of Education, Hell will freeze over before New Zealand children have any hope of once again being offered a quality education. Quite simply, the wrong people are in charge, and are deeply entrenched.

The promoting as superior within the education system of the flawed ethos of a mythologised warrior culture of nearly 200 years and six generations ago, politi-

cised by the divisive Maori seats, Maori votes, Maori placements, Maori preferment – rather than equal respect, equal opportunities for all under the law – is contributing to a more violent, ignorant, abusive, resentful and restive society.

The lesson is clear. We have to completely dismantle what we now have, looking ahead to what will work and is working elsewhere – something government is very keen on not doing – because the government that controls education and emerging young New Zealanders’ mind controls the country. With the exception of particular state schools under exceptional leadership, such as Auckland Grammar, keeping alive traditional intellectual excellence with high expectations of both staff and students, quality education is available elsewhere largely through some-only private schools; the home-schooling movement; and the splendid efforts of individuals such as Graham and Joan Crawshaw of Arapohue, presently raising money to build a new reading centre for boys close to Auckland. Their extraordinary success since 1962 in rescuing children failing because of damaging and absurd reading theories long foisted off onto our state school system, including Maori children – equally, if not more disadvantaged, and some identified as high risk – should have them automatically qualifying for state funding and assistance – and for well-targeted, philanthropic aid.

Doubtless, however, their success is envisaged as problematic, setting a dangerous precedence – showing that both excellence, and hope, are available.

Parents are going to have to insist on taking control of a new way forward. A useful guide can be found in a letter of Pliny the Younger from Como, near Milan, in the first century A.D. advising parents on the best way to start schools of their own and to hire the best teachers. It is remarkably close, in theory and suggested practice, to the genuine education revolution now begun by fed-up parents in socialist Sweden, of all places. Let’s check these out next time.

It is right and proper for the State to ensure that each child has access to as good an education system as possible. It is quite wrong for such a highly politicized institution to actually control what is instilled into young minds. © Copyright Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds..co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 63

think life | SCIENCE

Epicentre warning NZ could learn from Japanese quake warning system, as this report from the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper makes clear

TOKYO – A year has passed since the full introduction of an early earthquake warning system advising the public of imminent large-scale tremors.

Though the system has issued several warnings before major quakes such as the Iwate Miyagi Inland Earthquake during its first year, the difficulties of adequately issuing emergency warnings also have become more apparent.

The system has, nevertheless, made the public more conscious about earthquakes.

Companies, such as makers of telephones and multimedia devices are also making various efforts to equip their products with quakewarning alarms in light of the system.

Eight earthquake warnings were issued 64 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

to the public in the past year.

According to nonprofit organization, the Real-time Earthquake Information Consortium, receivers for picking up the warning signals were set up at about 100,000 locations across the nation as of September and this number is expected to increase further.

Together with private firms, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, based in Ibaraki Prefecture, has developed a receiver system that can forecast the Japanese scale of intensity of a quake after detecting an initial minor tremor and issue warnings up to five seconds faster than the Meteorological Agency’s system.

The institute and the companies began selling the device in October last year, and they have been installed at about 450 locations, such as condominiums in the Tokyo area and municipal government buildings.

Sanyo Electric Co., an Osaka Prefecturebased electric appliance maker, began selling in June cordless telephones equipped to notify users of emergency earthquake warnings with text and alarm sounds.

A company spokesman said, “Though it’s possible the system will only be activated once over a period of decades, there are many users who want to have such a system fitted to products in daily use.”

Let’s Corp., a Nagoya-based telecommu-

nications equipment manufacturer, plans to release in December quake warning receivers that are also capable of playing music and viewing digital photos.

Weathernews Inc., a Tokyo-based weather information service company, started a project in September that allows members of the public across the nation to observe how quake tremors would affect their homes.

A company spokesman said, “Following the introduction of the quake warning system, an increasing number of our users have said they want to know what kind of tremor their homes will be subjected to, its intensity and other detailed information.”

Differences in the structure of wooden and ferroconcrete buildings and the number

of floors can affect how a building shakes, and the company aims to enable users to utilize this data for disaster prevention.

Weathernews provided 1,000 of its subscribers with free sensors for measuring quake intensity.

When the sensors detect a tremor, a panel of light-emitting diodes is illuminated and details of the quake are displayed on a personal computer screen connected to the device.

On Wednesday, the company began a new service that sends users the data in the form of an e-mail message in case they are not home.

The company said about 4,500 people applied for the project as monitors, many of them homemakers and company employees in their 30s and 40s.

Weathernews explained that this age group had a high awareness of the need to protect family members, especially small children.

Prof. Hiromichi Nakamori of Nihon University, a research expert on the impact of natural disasters on society, said, “With the public becoming aware of the emergency quake warning system, it seems that an increasing number of people want to utilize the information more practically.”

The Meteorological Agency’s warning system forecasts the tremor intensity of Swaves, the main tremors in an earthquake, by detecting weaker P-waves that can be sensed beforehand.

Issuance of the warnings to the general public started in October last year. The warnings are issued if the maximum intensity of an earthquake is predicted to be at least a lower 5 on the intensity scale.

But some problems have been found with the system. The warnings do not reach nearby people quickly enough in the case of inland earthquakes and some of the sensors have worked incorrectly or proven faulty.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 65

think life | TECHNOLOGY

Fire breathing cured by Dragon Ian Wishart’s technical woes take a back seat when the latest Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is put to the test Working out which portion of this technical review to write first was the easy part.

It has taken some considerable time to get around to doing this review of Dragon’s new NaturallySpeaking 10 preferred edition software. The reason for that is simple. I have suffered three laptop crashes and two desktop failures over the past three months, necessitating a major review of IT security and backup procedures.

The kind folk at Dragon are well aware of some of these failures because they wiped out existing review versions of software, forcing me to seek technical assistance. My previous Asus laptop has been given a new hard drive after earlier suffering a motherboard failure, while an earlier NEC Pentium III notebook has also been stripped back to basics and reset to factory defaults. The NEC is an interesting case study, because I was able to trace the cause of the failure to Microsoft’s annoying update service.

Every night, many computers automatically download Windows updates. We assume, naturally, that Microsoft knows what is doing and our computers will be okay. Unfortunately there isn’t always the case. The NEC Pentium III was purchased in 2002 and runs on XP pro. Somewhere along the way one of the many thousands of updates provoked a hardware conflict inside the machine. The net result is that the NEC is guaranteed to lock-up around 15 minutes after first being started for the day. After resetting to factory defaults – which meant Windows XP pro with no service packs – the machine ran fine. Using benchtop stress test software, the NEC ran happily under a heavy load all day without a hitch.

The moment I loaded Windows XP service pack two however, the gremlins struck.

Once again the laptop locked up, the only solution for which is removal of the battery and power cord for a brutal shut down.

System restore was knocked out, so I had to go to the extreme of resetting the machine again and reloading the original operating system again.

66 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

I have forbidden the NEC Pentium from downloading Windows updates, and the machine is running fine. It is annoying that an update can put an entire laptop computer out of service until its operating system has been reloaded and the hard drive wiped clean. Frankly, that’s worse than any virus I’ve ever endured.

I now have suspicions that one of Microsoft’s other annoying updates may have taken out the Asus notebook as well.

It too had been suffering software gremlins prior to losing its hard drive. It’s now been returned with a 250 GB hard disc and is rearing to go. Unfortunately, despite being a Centrino single core chip, it isn’t grunty enough to run Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, which recommends a minimum 1.6 gig dual core processor or Intel Pentium 2.4 GHz desktop chip.

Hence I find myself with a new laptop, a Toshiba Tecra A9 running a 2 GHz duo Centrino chip. Admittedly I purchased this a couple of months ago when the Asus began playing up, but it is the only laptop capable of running Dragon 10 in my office.

I’d love to tell you the Toshiba is a wonderful machine, and in a way it is, but it is not perfect. It has this annoying habit of running very slowly if there are more than seven or eight Internet Explorer windows open. I’m working with Toshiba to identify the cause of the problem but it is frustrating when a three-year-old Asus can trounce the latest Tecra in some things.

Nonetheless, this entire column has just been dictated on Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, straight out of the box. Readers may remember I gushed over Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 a year or so back but already I can see the latest version is streets ahead. For example I have made only a couple of corrections during this dictation and fixing them was easy as. Version 10 seems to be much faster, and version 9 was already fast. This processing speed has come despite my performance issues on the Toshiba.

One new innovation is Dragon Voice Shortcuts, a series of commands making

total verbal control of your computer even easier. For example you can instruct it to search the web for articles on Google about William Shakespeare or the subject of your choice. This convergence between standard dictation software and effectively computer automation is an incredibly fascinating field.

Some of us use keyboards as a muse, pausing between keystrokes while we think, but I can see how strapping on a headset and lounging back in a chair whilst issuing commands could be an enjoyable diversion.

More to the point, this new Dragon is so fast and so accurate that it types faster than I can think. As a writer, I find the software waiting for me rather than the other way around. For people who are physically impaired Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is a technology godsend. And if you partner it up with Nuance PDF Converter 5 you can actually create documents that speak to you – audio books or reports.

Frankly I’m not sure how Dragon could improve this product any further. With professional versions available for specialised industries like medicine or law, as well as general office requirements the software has sufficient scope to be useful in most homes or offices.

Juggling three different laptops on my desk in various stages of recovery and with this magazine’s deadline looming, I had not genuinely expected to be able to write this entire column straight out of the box using Dragon 10 after just five minutes of voice training. But there you go. Like the previous version, you can use your smart phone or digital recorder to capture dictation on the go and then let Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 decipher it automatically back at the office. In that sense, commuting times in the morning or afternoon can be productive even while driving if you are using a hands-free headset device. If you are already a Dragon user this one is definitely worth the upgrade, and if you’ve never tried Dragon before now is a very good time to try.

I was annoyed an hour ago. My equilibrium has now been restored.

Start talking and watch your productivity soar with Dragon® NaturallySpeaking®

More Speed. More Accuracy. More Features.

The experience speaks for itself™ Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is here, and the world’s best-selling speech recognition system just keeps getting better.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is faster and more accurate than ever, delivering up to 15% more accurate results than version 9. Your transcribed words now appear on the screen in half the time it took in the past. With new Dragon Voice Shortcuts, you can search the Web for information, products, news and more with a single voice command.

Updated graphical icons for the DragonBar are intuitive and easy to see. New Quick Voice Formatting makes it easier to format, delete, and copy words and passages with a single command.

New VersioN! Ţ Up to 15% more accurate Ţ Up to 50% faster Ţ Quick voice formatting Ţ New look and feel Ţ Improved help system and tutorials Ţ Improved natural commands for Firefox Ţ More flexible enrollment for younger speakers and users with certain speech challenges Ţ Regional accent support Ţ One-click option to disable conflicting services Ţ Better control of commands vs dictation on the web Ţ Auto configuration for optimal performance based on system profile Ţ Formatting and word properties interface enhancements Ţ Embedded data collection tool

The Nuance suite of Dragon NaturallySpeaking products is available through your usual computer software reseller.

Please contact sales@mistralsoftware.co.nz or your usual computer reseller for further information.

www.mistralsoftware.co.nz

Copyright © 2008 Nuance Communications. All rights reserved. Nuance, Dragon, and NaturallySpeaking are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the properties of their respective owners.

feel life | SPORT

Action Images / Paul Harding

Bracewell’s last stand John Bracewell couldn’t have wished for a more challenging finale to his five year reign as head coach of the Black Caps. Two trips to Australia, bracketed by challenging tours from the resurgent West Indians and powerful Indians, will push his limited playing resources to the limit. Sports columnist Chris Forster sizes-up the daunting summer that lies in wait Bracewell came into the job after New Zealand’s controversial and ultimately unsuccessful World Cup campaign in South Africa in 2003.

The jaunty 46 year old got the job on the back of a glowing portfolio as successful coach of English county side Gloucestershire.

“Braces” also had a fine playing career for his country as a right arm spin bowler and more than handy lower order batsman, reaching the double of 100 wickets and 1000 runs in test cricket.

One of his biggest achievements was tak68 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

ing a truckload of wickets on both sides of the Tasman in the golden summer of 1986 when a New Zealand side featuring icons Richard Hadlee, Martin Crowe and Jeremy Coney beat the Australians – in two series. Bracewell excelled in the preShane Warne era, when spin bowling was almost a dying art.

How he’d love his charges to come close to matching those feats in the preChristmas tests, or the rapid-fire series of 5 one-dayers in the New Year - especially on Ocker turf.

Remember, this is a New Zealand team

which is fresh off their first ever ODI defeat to Bangladesh, and which needed a heroic all-round display from skipper Dan Vettori to turn around a potentially disastrous test series.

The other two assignments are on home turf and equally taxing and significant.

There’s an immediate change of pace and style against the rapidly-improving West Indian side, who are here for a two test schedule pre-Christmas then the flurry of money-spinning 20-20 matches and One Day Internationals in late December and early January.

But Bracewell’s biggest challenge will be his swansong. India’s flotilla of megastars like Sachin Tendulkar, Harbajhan Singh and Mahendra Dhoni are due in early March. The five one-dayers will be evenly contested.

But it’s the two tests running deep into Autumn’s setting sun that will be the litmus test for the outgoing coach, and the last line on a wildly fluctuating CV. Jacob Oram is a key man in Bracewell’s armoury. He’s rated one of the world’s top 5 all-rounders, with his impressive portfolio of punishing batting, miserly fast-medium bowling and athletic fielding.

But his 30 year old body, all 6-foot-six of it, is prone to injuries. Most recently a strained back forced him home from the unexpectedly tough tour of Bangladesh.

Oram made his own call to bypass the two tests in Brisbane and Adelaide, against an Australian side hell-bent on proving themselves after their failings in India.

“I could’ve toured but it’s not 100%. I want to get it (the back injury) right for the home series. With the West Indies and India here, it’s going to be a huge summer”.

Oram’s reached the stage in his career where he may have to give up the more punishing of his disciplines, his bowling.

When he’s at the top of his game it’s like having two world class players for the price of one in New Zealand’s playing 11. When he’s nursing an injury it affects the entire balance of the team.

‘It’s damned frustrating. We had a good end to our tour of England then 2 months preparing for what’s going to be a massive period in our cricketing calendar.

Unfortunately as an all-rounder parts of my body have almost had enough”.

Jake still wants to set the bar high for the bulk of the 2008-2009 summer.

‘There’s a strong correlation between the workload as an all-rounder and my injuries.

I may have to look at giving up bowling in test matches or whatever.

But I want to give it one last crack – prove I’ve got another summer as an allrounder in me. It’s almost got to the point where I have to make some sort of decision. Because it’s happening far too often.

It’s not fair on the cricketing public, my team mates or myself and it’s damned frustrating”.

If Oram makes it through the smorgasbord of six test matches, four 20-20 exhibitions and 15 one-dayers – it’ll be an added and almost essential bonus for Bracewell’s last stand.

They’ll also be relying heavily on skipper Dan Vettori, who’s injury-free, and has rediscovered the bowling midas touch from early in his career. Not to mention his increasing qualifications as a world-ranked all-rounder.

The fast bowling stocks will be stretched to the limit, with strike bowlers Chris Martin and Kyle Mills both approaching the veteran class. They’ll be complemented by promising young swing bowler Tim Southee. with Iain O’Brien and Mark Gillespie as options for a fourth bowler.

The top and middle order batting – so often the curse of Bracewell’s era – seems brittle.

Much will depend on Ross Taylor firing on all cylinders and Brendon McCullum rediscovering the blistering batting form which made him the top New Zealand cricketer last summer. There’s a former enfant terrible in the mix too.

Talented opener Jesse Ryder is the reformed bad boy given one last chance and determined to prove himself.

And of course there’s Jacob Oram.

It seems a tall order to get these players firing for the duration of the bruising and relentless itinerary of cricket that lies ahead.

Bracewell’s last stand will depend on it.

ME AND ABROAD THE BLACK CAPS SUMMER – HO Stage One | Test series in Australia

2nd ODI u MCG, Melbourne. 6th Feb

1st test u The Gabba, Brisbane. 20 Nov to 24 Nov

3rd ODI u SCG, Sydney. 8th Feb

2nd test u Adelaide Oval. 28th Nov to 2nd Dec

4th ODI u Adelaide Oval. 10th Feb

Stage Two | West Indies visit to New Zealand

6th ODI u The Gabba, Brisbane. 13th Feb

1st test u University Oval Dunedin. 11th to 15th Dec

20-20 u SCG , Sydney. 15th Feb

2nd test u McLean Park Napier. 19th to 23rd Dec

Stage Four | India tour of New Zealand

20-20 u Eden Park, Auckland. Boxing Day, Dec 26

20-20 u Westpac Stadium, Wellington. 6th March

20-20 u Seddon Park, Hamilton. 28th Dec

1st ODI u McLean Park, Napier. 8th March

1st ODI u Queenstown Events Centre. New Year’s Eve 2008

2nd ODI u Seddon Park, Hamilton. 11th March

2nd ODI u AMI Stadium, Christchurch. 3rd Jan

3rd ODI u Eden Park, Auckland. 14th March

3rd ODI u Westpac Stadium, Wellington. 7th Jan

4th ODI u Westpac Stadium, Wellington. 17th March

4th ODI u Eden Park, Auckland. 10th Jan

5th ODI u AMI Stadium, Christchurch. 20th March

5th ODI u McLean Park, Napier. 13th Jan

1st Test u Seddon Park, Hamilton. 26th to 30th March

Stage Three | New Zealand’s return to Australia

2nd Test u Basin Reserve, Wellington. 3rd to 7th April

1st ODI u WACA, Perth. 1st Feb

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 69

feel life | HEALTH

Heart health breakthrough Statin drug benefits people with healthy cholesterol, reports John Fauber

Use of a cholesterol-lowering statin drug resulted in big reductions in heart attacks, strokes and deaths in people with so-called healthy cholesterol levels.

The benefit was so pronounced – a 54 percent reduction in heart attacks, a 48 percent reduction in strokes and a 47 percent reduction in cardiovascular deaths – that the trial was stopped early after two years, or at about the halfway point.

Surprisingly, the benefit occurred in people who were not considered to be at high risk because they did not have known heart disease and their LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) was at a healthy level – less than 130 milligrams per deciliter and an average of 108 mg/dl.

However, they had higher than normal blood levels of a substance known as C-reactive protein, or CRP, which is a marker for inflammation in the body and 70 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

an emerging risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

“Now we have hard evidence that these people will live longer,” said lead author Paul Ridker, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Doctors not associated with the research said the landmark study could have important implications for the treatment and prevention of heart disease, expanding statin therapy from high-risk groups to a general population of otherwise healthy people.

The trial involved 17,802 people, men 50 and older and women 60 and older, who got either a placebo or a daily 20 mg dose of rosuvastatin (Crestor), made by AstraZeneca, which funded the trial that was published online this month in the New England Journal of Medicine. It also was presented at the annual meeting of the

American Heart Association.

Just how many people in the general U.S. population fit the description of having low LDL cholesterol and high CRP is unclear.

However, an analysis presented at the meeting by two cardiologists from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health suggests that at least 7 million people who otherwise would not be candidates for statin therapy could benefit from going on the drugs because of their elevated CRP. That could mean nearly 30,000 fewer heart attacks, strokes or deaths each year, according UW cardiologists James Stein and Jon Keevil.

But the benefit would come at a substantial cost, about $9 billion a year, based on a $100-a-month cost for rosuvastatin.

Put another way, it would cost $203,000

to prevent each heart attack or stroke and $480,000 to save one life. However, if a cheaper generic statin, calculated at $5 a month, were used, preventing a heart attack or stroke would cost $10,200 per event and saving a life would cost $24,000.

AstraZeneca, the maker of rosuvastatin, which was approved in 2003, has been looking to show that its drug did something more than simply improve cholesterol levels. Unlike other statins that were approved years earlier, rosuvastatin had not been shown to reduce heart attacks, strokes or deaths.

But with the new research, Crestor, the newest statin to hit the market, becomes the star of the statin universe. Not only did it reduce cardiovascular events in people who normally would be considered at low to moderate risk, the reductions also were considerably more than what had been seen in earlier clinical trials of other statins. Those trials generally showed about a 30 percent reduction in heart attacks and strokes.

The study also showed that the benefit was slightly greater in women, who for years had been under-represented in such clinical trials.

Still, while a 50 percent risk reduction in both men and women seems large, it needs to be taken in the context of the actual number of heart attacks and strokes, which was low, doctors said.

It’s still unclear what caused the benefit.

Was the reduction in heart attacks and strokes due to cholesterol lowering, or was it caused by a reduction of inflammation in arteries, one of the so-called pleiotropic effects of statins?

One theory is that as a species, humans did not evolve to live with the high levels of LDL cholesterol found in modern society. Stein noted that hunter-gatherer societies and non-human primates have LDL levels in the 50s, and they do not get coronary disease.

“We need to stop using our own society as a benchmark and recognize that even an LDL cholesterol of 100 mg/dl can be too high if you have other markers of risk like being overweight, increased age and increased blood pressure,” he said.

The study likely will change practice for many doctors, especially primary care physicians, said Tim Woods, a cardiologist at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee and associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa.

He noted that half of first heart attacks occur

“Not only did it reduce cardiovascular events in people who normally would be considered at low to moderate risk, the reductions also were considerably more than what had been seen in earlier clinical trials of other statins in people with normal cholesterol levels.

“We definitely are having a hard time predicting who is going to have a first heart attack,” Woods said. “Cholesterol is not the whole story.”

High-sensitivity CRP testing is likely to become the standard for people similar to those in the study, he said.

One concern about the trial is a finding that more people who got rosuvastatin developed diabetes than those who got a placebo.

There were 270 cases of diabetes, 3 percent, among the rosuvastatin users, compared with 216 cases, 2.4 percent, in the placebo group. The authors said that newly diagnosed diabetes cases were found in clinical trials of three other statins.

However, they said the finding in rosuvastatin trial could be due to chance.

Woods said the diabetes issue is “a little concerning.” He said that it would be a good idea to monitor the blood sugar levels of anyone who is put on the drug.

Another concern is the unknown longterm safety associated with lowering the LDL cholesterol of healthy people to about 55 mg/dl, essentially cutting it in half.

“Long-term safety is clearly important in considering committing low-risk subjects without clinical disease to 20 years or more of drug treatment,” Mark Hlatky, of Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.

Still, UW’s Stein said the results suggest that the medical community needs to

change its concept of assessing cardiovascular disease risk and the use of statins.

Doctors now will call for widespread CRP screening, he said.

However, he noted that 52 percent of adults have CRP levels that are above the threshold used in the study, 2 mg/l. And 65 percent of Americans older than 60 have levels greater than 2. So it will take more work to determine whom to test, he said.

Another problem is that an individual’s CRP can vary substantially over a short period of time, said Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Since it is a measure of any inflammation in the body, it can go up if a person has a cold or an infection.

“If somebody has a haemorrhoid their CRP will go up,” he said.

And, he said, there are other ways to lower inflammation rather than immediately putting someone on a statin, such as losing weight, exercising, quitting smoking and eliminating transfats from the diet.

“If that doesn’t work and they still have elevated CRP, than it might be reasonable to consider statin therapy,” he said.

In addition to the study being funded by AstraZeneca, lead author Ridker received lecture and consulting fees from the company.

He also is co-inventor of patents on the use of CRP to evaluate cardiovascular disease risk that have been licensed to AstraZeneca.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 71

feel life | ALT.HEALTH

Battle of the bugs Scientists create ‘good bugs’ to fight ‘bad bugs’, reports Robert S. Boyd

For years, you’ve been able to walk into a drugstore or health food outlet and buy a host of “probiotics” – natural dietary supplements such as Acidophilus or Lactinex – off the shelf to treat conditions such as children’s eczema or traveller’s diarrhea.

Unlike antibiotics, these self-help products don’t kill germs, but they supposedly confer health benefits, the way vitamins and certain minerals do. Existing probiotics haven’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration or subjected to rigorous clinical trials. When tested, their effectiveness has been mixed, medical researchers say.

Now scientists are trying to design “good bugs,” novel forms of bacteria created in the laboratory to prevent or cure specific diseases, including HIV and cancer.

“Perhaps the only hope of winning the war against ‘bad bugs’ will be achieved by recruiting ‘good bugs’ as our allies,” 72 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

e-mailed Roy Sleator, a microbiologist at University College in Cork, Ireland. Sleator is the editor of a forthcoming scientific journal called “Bioengineered Bugs.”

He said his laboratory had engineered a new generation of “designer probiotics,” which are tailored to target certain disease-causing microbes or toxins. His “good bugs” mimic receptor proteins on the surface of harmful bacteria and block their ability to infect healthy cells.

“Designer probiotics bind to bacterial toxins in the gut ... thereby preventing disease,” Adrienne and James Paton, researchers at the University of Adelaide, Australia, reported in the journal Nature Microbiology.

In a e-mail, James Paton said his lab had designed a probiotic that works against E. coli O157, a notorious microbe that’s caused serious, sometimes fatal, outbreaks of intestinal disease.

The need for more effective antibiotics is widely recognized because of an alarming increase in the ability of bacteria to resist standard medicines. A special concern is the virulent MRSA – methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus – a bacterium that infects and sometimes kills hospital patients.

“It is becoming increasingly apparent that alternative approaches to conventional antibiotic therapy are required to control infectious diseases in humans and animals in the 21st century,” Paton said.

“Increasing incidence of antibiotic resistance ... has forced clinical research to explore alternative therapeutic and prophylactic avenues,” Sleator wrote in a British microbiological journal. “Probiotics are finally beginning to represent a viable alternative to traditional drug-based therapy.”

Sleator said his laboratory had genetically engineered a harmless strain of E. coli to secrete a substance that might be useful against HIV. He’s also working on probiotics that may assist in the prevention and decreased recurrence of certain cancers.

Researchers caution that designer probiotics are still under development, need further testing and government approval, and suffer a number of shortcomings.

The “good bugs” are fragile and shortlived, Sleator said, and scientists don’t understand very well how they work.

Paton said there was also “substantial public mistrust” of genetically modified organisms, such as good bugs, “which may lead to marketplace resistance even to potentially lifesaving products.”

Nevertheless, scientists have faith that designer probiotics eventually will outperform nature’s products.

“If designed carefully, and with absolute attention for biological safety in its broadest sense, the development of GM (genetically modified) probiotics has the potential to revolutionize medicine,” Lothar Steidler and Sabine Neirynck, researchers at University College, Cork, wrote in a 2005 book on probiotics.

“Scientists and clinicians alike are only now beginning to realize the significant medical applications of probiotic cultures,” Sleator said. He said useful applications might include novel vaccines and ways to deliver drugs to where they were most needed.

He predicted that the work ultimately will lead to the development of “artificial microorganisms ... tailored to fulfill all the requirements of an ideal therapeutic agent.”

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taste life travel

John Bordsen/Chalotte Observer/MCT

Lost city of the Jaguar The amazing Mayan city of Ek Balam has been pulled from the jungles, writesJohn Bordsen EK BALAM, Mexico – The view from near the summit of The Tower is pure Yucatan.

Even with humidity as heavy as a grandmother’s afghan, it is breathtaking: low and level scrubland as far as the eye can see, though studded here and there by small, tree-covered mounds.

The Tower has an unsurpassed view because it is one of the taller ancient Mayan ruins – a six-level palace and religious compound 100 feet tall – the equivalent of a 10story building. It is larger than the famed Temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza, 70 km southwest.

Look down from The Tower. You won’t see the warren of souvenir booths that surround Chichen Itza. You won’t see hundreds of tourists, either.

Now turn to face The Tower. Ek Balam 74 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

– Mayan for “Black Jaguar” or “Star Jaguar” – was abandoned and covered with dirt and vegetation long before the Spanish conquistadors looted the Mayan heartland. It was only in the last two decades that archaeologists carefully peeled back the earth to expose an untouched limestone metropolis decorated with stucco grotesqueries – 1,000-year-old bone-coloured statuettes that could scare gargoyles from the spires of Notre Dame.

In 1986, a 34-year-old grad student named Bill Ringle began to awaken Ek Balam. He was wrapping up his work in anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, and visited Valladolid, a market town in the middle of the Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, in connection with his dissertation.

Ringle today is a professor of anthro-

pology at Davidson College, in suburban Charlotte, N.C. Here’s what happened on that visit: “An explorer named Charnay had been there in the 1880s and even took some photographs, so it’s not like we ‘discovered’ Ek Balam. Still, it had pretty much been ignored.

But I was interested in seeing it because of what light it might shed on how much control Chichen Itza had on the rest of the Yucatan.

My wife and I went out to take a look.

“Ek Balam was difficult to get to, and was completely covered with trees 60 to 80 feet tall. You could tell a huge mound was there only when you walked up this big hill. We ate lunch right on top of it – unaware we were literally on top of a beautifully preserved building.”

“I could see bits and pieces of things on

the ground – stone covered with plaster.

You could see walls in the vicinity, and a shaft that went down into the heart of something large.

“Again, keep in mind everything was overgrown: It was an adventure just to get from one building to another.”

And it was a financial stretch to get much done: Ringle’s war chest was somewhere between $700 and $1,000 – enough to map the site for a couple of weeks.

Much of what he sought was truly underfoot. There’s not a lot of soil in the Yucatan flatlands, but the centuries covered the site with 6 inches to a foot of dirt.

Still, Ringle had seen enough.

In 1986, a year after his dissertation, he and George Bey, a colleague from Tulane, received a grant from the National Geographic Society to explore Ek Balam.

“We kind of built on that,” Ringle says, “and we worked there most years until 1999.”

Ringle and Bey – now with Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. – were the principal investigators. They recruited some

isn’t crowded, ask for a guide – there are up to 11 present – and you’ll get one right away. We paid 400 pesos (close to $37 U.S.) to engage Francisco Cupol, a 33-year-old Mayan from the vicinity who studied tourism at the tech school in Valladolid. He knew his stuff, but spoke only Mayan and Spanish.

Tom Jones, who lives part of the year in Asheville, N.C., and part in Valladolid, translated Cupol’s running commentary.

A cleared area dotted with limestone boulders leads to the main complex. The Mayans were big on raised roads – parallel rows of limestone “curb”; the width between them was filled with dirt and topped with crushed limestone. Small wonder they were called “white roads.”

Soon you reach the three rings surrounding Ek Balam. They’re made of different-size rocks mortared into walls just under 5 feet tall and 7 feet thick. While not daunting to us, Cupol said that the people of Ek Balam were about 5 feet tall (even modern-day Mayans are short in stature). Further, the walls may not have been created to defend

are called The Twins.

Most identifiable is the Ball Court, which resembles those at Chichen Itza and other Mesoamerican sites – a rectangular ground-level sports venue whose long sides are marked by steeply sloping smooth walls.

Mac and Lida Bonner, tourists from Philadelphia, were relaxing on its grassy playing field with their kids – Mollie, 6, Abigail, 4, and Jack, 2. They’d already been to Chichen Itza and felt Ek Balam compared well. “On its own, Ek Balam is pretty impressive,” Mac said. “And for us, there’s another plus – the entire site is compact when you compare it with Chichen Itza.

Physically, this isn’t as overwhelming for people with kids.”

The family hadn’t yet made it to the vistacommanding Tower – toward the back of the public area. The Tower’s steps are steep, and scaling them can be daunting if you’re out of shape or are very young.

And at the top, the kids will face all those scary monsters.

“A cleared area dotted with limestone boulders leads to the main complex. The Mayans were big on raised roads – parallel rows of limestone “curb”; the width between them was filled with dirt and topped with crushed limestone. Small wonder they were called “white roads of their students to come and help. They also hired farmers from around Ek Balam as the excavation crew, anywhere from 10 to 90 of them.

“They were subsistence farmers, and this was a chance for them to make a little extra money in summertime,” Ringle recalls. “It was pretty much the same crew summer to summer. Some began as young teenagers; they were adults by the time we finished.

They learned the ropes and learned what we were trying to do.”

What emerged from the jungle was an impressively intact Mayan city-state: 4 to 8 square miles – perhaps 10 times the size of Monaco – holding several hundred buildings, walls and causeways.

It is a revelation in progress; only 17 buildings have been restored.

Ek Balam is government owned. It feels like you’re entering a state park in the remoteness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

A gravel road, not a fancy sign, leads to its parking lot. Last fall, the lot held a halfdozen cars and a couple of small vans.

Admission at the rustic ticket booth is a steal – roughly $2.25 U.S. Because Ek Balam

their city. There were five entrances to Ek Balam, roads linked it to other cities, and the jungle immediately outside the walls is dotted with limestone platforms that once held houses built of palm leaves.

From the walls, you can see the preColumbian ghost town. The public entrance is where a sacabe, an ancient raised road of crushed limestone, (“white road” in Mayan) goes through a gate – a chapel-size affair with a Mayan arch. It has no keystone; the stones are merely strategically piled with great craftsmanship. Beyond and to the left are seven or so substantial buildings, all made of mortared limestone often darkened by moss or tinged red dirt minerals.

Walk among the ruins of Ek Balam – and into some – for the lost-world sensation.

The purpose of some buildings isn’t immediately clear. The so-called Oval Palace clearly had a live-in role, with 15 exterior doorways leading into individual, windowless rooms with remarkably smooth and flat floors. Each room is the size of a small car.

Ruins of matching, side-by-side temples

It’s clear that 2-acre Tower was the nerve centre of the monarchy. Some guidebooks refer to it as the Acropolis, but The Tower, is the direct translation from what Spanishspeaking locals call it: “La Torre.” Research indicates The Tower is where kings ruled, where at least one king was buried, and where community worship services involved some degree of human sacrifice.

A total of 72 rooms at The Tower have been restored. Most artifacts unearthed there and elsewhere at Ek Balam are now at the Anthropology and History Museum in Merida, the provincial capital. The upper reaches of The Tower are draped with a heavy canopy of cut palm fronds. They protect the elaborate, often delicately executed stucco statues of kings, gods and monsters. Researchers have learned that their bone-white exteriors were once painted in bright colours.

When in big-time construction mode, Mayans would simply build new monuments and palaces atop existing ones, carefully covering earlier structures with protective dirt and rubble. The Tower is where archaeologists found pay dirt. The INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 75

top layer, sheathed in dirt, protected from erosion and Spaniards, is visually breathtaking, particularly around the entrance to the royal tomb, halfway up its southern side.

Wall ornamentations that look like angels are actually humans decked in the fancy bird feathers (those of the social flycatcher, no less) favoured by Mayans of high rank. There are warriors whose triumphs are noted by the skulls hung from their belts.

In the midst of this is a large doorway is dressed with stucco shapes to resemble the open jaws of a gigantic serpent: Its upper incisors dangle above the top.

It is thought to represent the entrance to the Underworld. Behind it is a crypt built for a king.

The Mexican government became involved at Ek Balam around 1994.

“Initially, there was some overlap,” Ringle says. “They’d work when we weren’t there, and when we were there, government officials would come out to inspect what we were doing. The governor became interested in developing tourism at Ek Balam.”

The serpent tomb near the summit of The Tower was unearthed five years later, after Ringle moved on.

Several archaeologists were working on The Tower’s stairways when I visited last autumn. None spoke English, but they indicated they were removing an earlier protective glaze they learned was actually harming the limestone.

Most of the current archaeological work is along those lines: keeping the past from disappearing.

“There’s not much active research there because digs are expensive – and also raise maintenance costs,” says Ringle. For the past nine years, he’s been working at sites farther west in the Yucatan, at Uxmal and Labna. Those sites are smaller than Ek Balam, but their sculptures and architec76 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

ture reflect his current research needs.

Ringle: “It’s not like you go out looking for lost cities – that’s not how serious archaeology works.”

Still, he has a soft spot for the city of the Jaguar.

“Nobody was interested in the site before we mapped it. Somebody would’ve gotten there eventually, but the fact remains that we mapped it and showed it was an important find.

“And the opportunity to be the first at a site so huge was a magical experience.

There aren’t many the size of Ek Balam left these days.”

Yet there’s no telling what’s underfoot in the neighbourhood. Of Ek Balam’s 52 close-in structures, only 17 have been restored. Awaiting research are 600 housing platforms in the jungle immediately circling the site. And there’s the roadway system that Ringle estimates could total 5.75 square miles. So far, only one of those “white roads” leading out of Ek Balam has been excavated. Ringle’s team mapped them; most lead to pyramids or palace-like structures.

And then there are the small tree-covered mounds you see when gazing at the jungle from up on The Tower. Archaeologists believe that each cloaks pieces of the Mayan past.

EK BALAM VS. CHICHEN ITZA Chichen Itza, a world heritage site, has always been an attraction. Though past its prime as an urban center by A.D. 1000, its reputation was such that Francisco de Montejo made a bee-line for Chichen five centuries later, when the king of Spain gave his OK to the conquest of the Yucatan. Chichen Itza ended up a cattle ranch. In Victorian times, amateur scientists from the U.S. and Europe began poking around the place. American consul Edward Thompson bought the site, discovered artifacts the conquistadors somehow missed, and shipped his loot off to

Harvard University. The Barbachano family eventually acquired the land with an eye toward jump-starting tourism – and they succeeded. Chichen is now just minutes off the four-lane divided toll road inland from Cancun. The Mexican government owns the ruins, but the Barbachanos own the land – as well as a handful of adjacent resorts.

The public-private arrangement frays at the gates of Chichen Itza; going on the grounds means navigating a battalion of souvenir stands.

Ek Balam is wholly owned by the government of Mexico. It is, however, still in the boonies – 12 miles north of Valladolid, via two-lane Highway 295. You pass a farm growing blue agave and drive through Tizimin, a hamlet known for making cedar furniture.

EK BALAM – THEN AND NOW It’s hard to say when Ek Balam (“ek baLOM”) was built. Radiocarbon dates go back to 700 BC – though its heyday seems to be Late Classical: A.D. 700-950. The compound contains a stele – a gravestonesize marker – that shows two kings decked out in feathered headdress. On the back of it are markings that have been translated to reveal a date: Jan. 22, 840. Around that time, said Cupol the guide, 15,000 to 20,000 people lived in this area.

It’s clear that the 2-acre Tower was the nerve centre of the monarchy. Some guidebooks refer to it as the Acropolis, but The Tower is the direct translation from what Spanish-speaking locals call it: “La Torre.”

A total of 72 rooms at The Tower have been restored. Most artifacts unearthed there and elsewhere at Ek Balam are now at the Anthropology and History Museum in Merida, the provincial capital.

TO THE BLACK JAGUAR Best way to get there? Keep your eye peeled for Cancun packages or deals on nonstop flights. In Cancun, you can rent a car, or take a bus to Valladolid. The Yucatan has a highly developed bus system, and the trip is under three hours, one way, via motorcoach. Book your bus through your hotel – some offer direct-to-ruins excursions – or do it yourself at the downtown Cancun (Centro) bus terminal. There are also Mayan ruin tours offered on the Internet.

In Valladolid, you can take a “collectivo” (passenger van) to Ek Balam; get details at the small tourist office on the town square.

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taste life travel

An Irish summer Traditional green and quaint Ireland still exists, but it’ll cost you, writes Ellen Creager

CAMP, Ireland – This was the place, or close enough. “Can you imagine, your grandfather grew up near here!” I shouted to my husband, waving my hand around vaguely in the dismal rain.

“I mean, his house could have been on this very spot!”

Expectant, we stood upon the naked peak of the N-86 road as it fell away toward the distant villages. My husband gazed over the spread of hilly fields, stony houses and soggy sheep. He looked at the gray whipping sea that took his grandparents, Patrick and Nellie, to America 105 years ago.

And I think he was waiting for some78 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

thing. A spark of recognition. A lurch of the heart. Some distant O’Donnell relatives popping out of the bushes, perhaps, with open arms and a pot of tea.

But the wind kept blowing. The rain kept raining. We got back into our tiny scratched-up Ford Focus and drove on to Dingle Town.

“Legs, Bums and Tums” – Irish aerobics class poster There are millions more people of Irish heritage scattered around the world than there are in Ireland itself, and Ireland is always near the top of dream-trip lists for travellers

– it was No. 2 on the “best family vacation” survey conducted by Virtuoso Life luxury travel company this year. And it can be that place you dream about, bedecked in green and roguish charm.

What Ireland can no longer be, however, is a quaint little brother destination where your dollar goes a long way. Long gone are the days where jolly tourists could disperse a few bucks and live it up in Ireland amid genteel poverty so charming when you visit, so harsh when you’re living it.

The truth? Ireland has flipped the tables on the United States and the rest of the Anglosphere.

Photo: Eric Feldman

with Shauna’s Naughty Adult Fun Store?

However, I’ll try to be kind.

I won’t say much more about Dublin, a tense, traffic-jammed place whose major redeeming virtues are its bright-painted doors and Trinity College. (Also off the to-do list is Carlow, a suburb where I got stuck in a “car park” when the exit gate arm wouldn’t go up, only to be saved by a pharmacist, after which I witnessed a car wreck.)

I won’t dwell on the fact that the land of emigrants has turned into the land of immigrants, with workers from Poland, Latvia and Africa, not Ireland, waiting tables, bartending at pubs and staffing hotel desks.

And I promise not to mention all the rainy days, although there were at least three in a week.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the Ireland travellers want to believe in.

Tourists will feel poor and even desperate when they get hit with US$5 coffee, US$14 tomato sandwiches and US$800 car rentals.

Fuelled by a huge increase in its citizens’ standard of living and paychecks in the last 15 years, Dublin is now the fourth most expensive city in the world after Oslo, London and Copenhagen, up from 13th in 2006, according to the annual survey by Swiss bank UBS. The Euro-trendy boomtown has nightclubs and sex shops along with its cathedrals and books – and, really, how can the 1,000-year-old Book of Kells illuminated gospel be expected to compete

“Slow – Loose Chippings” – Irish road sign So it’s another day, and I’ve found my way to Killarney, 300 km southwest of Dublin.

After a big breakfast of Wheatabix shredded wheat, and bacon so substantial several pigs must have donated to the portion, I take a peek outside. The blazing sun reveals bright green mountains just outside the hotel, perfect for a pretty 5-km walk through the magical Killarney National Park to Ross Castle, whose history dates to the 13th century.

Can this be the same moody, grumpy Ireland of a couple of days ago? The blue lakes of Killarney glisten as boats glide across. Equestrians trot horses down quiet lanes. Cyclists ride trails and a little girl feeds the ducks in the castle pond.

When the sun shines in Ireland, it’s like a big smile. Flowers bloom ardently in small

gardens and public parks. Historic castles are clean and shining. Everything is green, green, green.

The 10,000 acres for the Killarney National Park was donated to Ireland in 1932 by an American, William Bowers Bourn, and his son-in-law, Irish Sen. Arthur Vincent. It was Ireland’s first national park, and a good gift it was, too.

Ross Castle, one of the most photographed spots in Ireland, shimmers with Gaelic good cheer. After touring inside the castle, tourists can ride back to town on a traditional horsedrawn “jaunting car,” an open-air cart that jostles along with the auto traffic on narrow roads. After a nice tea break with apple tart and thick clotted cream, things in Ireland are starting to look up.

Killarney is the start of the “Ring of Kerry,” a 180-km scenic loop south toward Kenmare and beyond to the west. It’s a picture postcard. Sheep wander across mountain roads.

Vistas that even Queen Victoria’s ladies-inwaiting found astonishing spread below.

Kenmare, a jewel of a tourist town, is tiny and neat, with brilliantly coloured gift shops as bright as a dancing girl’s closet. Inside, they are chock-full of heavy Irish sweaters, blankets, crystal, lace and souvenirs. It’s from Kenmare that Nellie, my husband’s grandmother, emigrated.

“Did she ever talk about Ireland?” I asked as we strolled the streets. “About Kenmare?

About her childhood?”

“Never,” said my husband, whose grandmother lived with his family until her death.

“She wanted us to be Americans.”

Most people in the United States with Irish ancestors have their roots in western Ireland – Kerry, Cork, Clare and Mayo counties, which were poor areas near ship ports. Luckily, this is also the most beautiINVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 79

Dingle Town: This touristy but picturesque seaside village has great shopping and is the gateway to a drive to Slea Head, the wild southwestern edge of Ireland. You can visit an “Irish Famine Cottage,” which explains why a land that once had 8 million people shrank to less than half its size as the potato famine struck in the 1840s. If you don’t feel too guilty to eat afterwards, try dinner at a tiny restaurant called Out of The Blue, which serves amazing fish.

Adare: Lovely if somewhat manufactured “traditional” thatched roof Irish village in County Clare. Gorgeous tourist shops.

Photo ops abound. Back home, gullible Americans can easily be fooled into thinking this is what all of Ireland looks like.

Bunratty Castle, near Shannon Airport:

ful section of the country – and the closest to being old-fashioned.

Notice, however, I did not say cheap.

“Accident Black Spot Ahead” – Irish road sign In the past three years, tourism to Ireland has grown at a hearty pace, and was predicted to jump again in 2008, but firstquarter data reported by Central Statistics Office Ireland shows visits from the United States this year are flat, while they are down for European visitors and up for the British.

In mid-June, I saw not a single line anywhere – not even at the Blarney Stone or the Wedgwood factory. Hotel rooms were available at the last minute.

Local merchants confirmed it was quiet.

Their logic? The dollar is down in value because of President Bush’s unpopularity.

After President Obama takes office they expect the dollar will rise and Americans will be back.

“I’ve seen a big drop-off in Americans, but I hope after the election, business will get better,” says Sarah Stuart Trainor, marketing director for Adare Manor resort in Adare in western Ireland.

80 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

“It’s slower this year,” says Joan O’Connor, supervisor at Keynes Bistro in Killarney.

“It may be the dollar, but it’s slower overall, even with European tourists.”

“It’s so expensive, it would serve Ireland right if no tourists come,” says Mary Tobin, a US expat who has lived in County Kerry for 10 years. “I’m past sticker shock. I think there is profiteering.”

But Mary, Mary, how could there be such a thing in our friend, quaint little Ireland?

I prefer to think of it as a temporary misalignment of prices.

I’m hoping that when they realize we are missing, they will immediately lower their rates and welcome back their hardscrabble cousins from overseas.

“Traffic Calming Ahead” – Irish road sign I hope I haven’t scared you off. If you are still dreaming of Ireland, go. The classic sights are still there, waiting to be discovered by you.

All of these sights are on the well-trod tourist path that tour buses and rental cars chug on around the country. Have a week or 10 days? You can see them all:

The ultimate in touristy destinations, it’s also a ton of fun.

The hook? A real, restored 13th-century tower castle hosts medieval dinner parties.

Sure, it’s corny – you eat with your hands, drink mead and sing with serving wenches – but the true talent of the singers, violinist and harpist is first-rate. Perhaps the only place in Ireland you will hear “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “Danny Boy.” Next door is Durty Nelly’s, the oldest pub in Ireland. Worth dropping into, but a major tourist trap.

Blarney Castle: An even bigger tourist trap, but who can come all the way to Ireland and not kiss the Blarney stone?

We took a back road from Kenmare to Blarney, which is northwest of the big town of Cork, and enjoyed every minute of it.

Many Americans might imagine it’s a big rock in a field, but the Blarney Stone is atop the castle, and you need to climb about 100 steps up to get there.

Lie down on your back, stick your head out over a drop-off to the ground, and lean back and kiss a stone. One kiss, and you’ll forever have the gift of gab.

Waterford: A surprisingly nice town in southeast Ireland that is headquarters of the Waterford Crystal company.

I highly recommend the well-run tour of the factory, which shows how every single piece of crystal is hand-blown, moulded and made. This is the real factory, not a visitors’ centre version. The gigantic gift shop ships free for large purchases. Although prices are not significantly cheaper, the factory has some crystal not sold anywhere else, and it has good sales that can get you up to 50 percent off on discontinued pieces.

Book of Kells at Trinity College, Dublin.

700-year-old illuminated gospels are worth a look, but I enjoyed the tour of Trinity College even more.

The Cliffs of Moher. Spectacular cliffs on the Atlantic Ocean in County Clare.

Appreciate this place for its intransient nature, even if the rest of Ireland has changed so much that if the angels of Nellie and Patrick O’Donnell came back to Eire, they would be astounded to the tips of their brogues.

TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT IRELAND 1. Men’s bathrooms are called the “Gents” room – and most of them have urinal troughs.

2. Ask an Irishman for directions, and he’ll help you – if you can follow him. An actual example: “Go to the small roundabout, then a large roundabout. Take the first left. Then go through another small roundabout and then at the next roundabout, take the second left, then the third left, then you’ll be on the dual carriageway, then follow the signs to Tralee.” He was right.

3. Guinness beer is delivered in stainless steel delivery trucks as big as gas tankers.

4. You can spend your time reading the newspapers – five national newspapers in a country with the population of Sydney.

One, the Irish Independent, recently featured a fascinating story called “The Fate of Hill Sheep.”

5. When you drive into Killarney, that chirpy Bing Crosby song, “Christmas in Killarney” will immediately spring into your mind, whether you want it to or not.

6. If you are driving, bring CDs. The radio stations outside of Dublin are not, to put it kindly, up to standard; it seems to be all B sides.

7. A three-bedroom house in Ireland’s cities can cost more than US$1 million.

8. The signs are worth photographing, especially my favourite, “Acute Bends Ahead.”

9. In Ireland by law, you can’t get married outside. You have to marry at a city registry office, in church or indoors.

10. Even nondrinkers likely will drink more beer and whiskey when visiting Ireland than at any other 10-day stretch in your life. Why? I wish I could say it’s because beer is cheap, but it’s not; you’ll pay about 4.50 euros per pint. It’s just that beer and whiskey drinking is common, even at lunch. I didn’t see anyone drinking iced tea.

IF YOU GO GETTING THERE u Fly into Shannon if you will be mostly in western Ireland; it’s far less busy and easy to navigate.

Dublin’s airport is overcrowded and under a ton of construction.

MONEY u Ireland uses euros. For best exchange rates, use a debit card to draw cash from an ATM in Ireland.

PASSPORT u You need a passport to travel to Ireland.

GETTING AROUND u If you’re not on a tour and you don’t mind driving, rent a car for use outside the Dublin area. Train and bus service isn’t comprehensive in Ireland. Try not to drive in Dublin’s crowded streets. It is possible to rent a car at one Ireland airport (Dublin or Shannon) and drop it off at the other.

HOTELS u Hotels have encountered the least inflation, so you can still find a decent small hotel or bed and breakfast for about US$120-$200 per night.

I like the larger B&Bs that are really like small hotels.

In Killarney, try Earl’s Court (about US$185 double, www.killarneyearlscourt.ie). In Waterford, try Hotel Granville (from US$154 double, www. granville-hotel.ie/); in Kenmare, try Rockcrest House (US$118 double, www. rockcresthouse.com).

If you are lucky, you might find a good Internet rate of US$146 double at the luxurious Dunraven Arms in Adare (www.dunravenhotel.com). A good Dublin airport hotel is Bewleys (US$146, www.bewleyshotels.com).

For the best deals, check the price on Orbitz, then directly with the hotel. If Orbitz is the same price, book and pay in advance in dollars; you’ll save on the exchange rate.

If you get to a town and you do not have any idea where to stay, stop at the local Tourism Ireland office. Staff there can help you book a room on short notice.

FOOD u In the land of $5 coffee and $13 sandwiches, you will get sticker shock no matter what you eat. Strategies: Most hotels include breakfast, so stuff yourself in the morning. For lunch, have soup or seafood chowder and bread at a local pub, and maybe you’ll spend only US$20.

For dinner, it’s tough to get by for less than US$50 per person.

ATTRACTIONS u Here are four I like: Bunratty Castle Medieval Night

(US$85, www.shannonheritage.com) Waterford Crystal factory tour (US$12, www.waterfordvisitorcentre. com) Book of Kells/Trinity College tour (about US$19, purchase at Trinity College the day of tour; www.tcd.ie/ Library/heritage/tours.php) Blarney Castle (about US$15, www. blarneycastle.ie) For more ideas on attractions in Ireland, see www.discoverireland.ie TOUR PLANNING u If you don’t mind a group tour, Ireland is a good place to take one. You don’t have to drive, and you save money by paying for lodging, attractions and some meals in advance.

(All prices in this story were calculated using the exchange rate US$1.48 to 1 euro. Exchange rates have fluctuated since the summer.)

DRIVING IN IRELAND u Here’s a scary statistic: One in seven drivers in Ireland doesn’t even have a license. Until June, they had been legally driving on learners’ permits. For years.

So in a land with roads narrower than most American driveways, tourists who rent a car should be super careful. Here are tips: •If you like independent touring, you really need a car. Ireland’s trains and buses aren’t extensive enough to get you everywhere you want to go.

•Book before you go, and shop around.

Major rental agencies have offices in Ireland, but prices vary wildly.

•Unlike in nearly every other country in the world, you need to purchase collision and theft coverage for car rentals in Ireland. Book ahead of time if possible. Do not decline the coverage just because you pay with a credit card. Most credit cards refuse to cover rental insurance in Ireland (call yours to make sure of its policy).

•Unless you regularly drive a stick shift, get an automatic car in Ireland, even if it costs more.

•Regardless of how jet-lagged you are, read the rental agreement carefully before you sign, and make sure your total costs are put in writing in advance.

•Budget travel times double what you would imagine based on mileage.

Try not to drive more than about 50 kilometres a day (about 33 miles; plan lots of stops along the way.

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taste life FOOD

I don, he dons, Udon!

James Morrow discovers the joys of Japanese noodles There comes a point in every man’s life when he realises that he is what he eats.

For me, that point came a few weeks ago when I was on a lift and, when I turned to look in the mirror, realised I cut approximately the same profile as an upright stuffed zucchini flower.

Only there was a pair of sticky legs where the courgette bit would have been, a big belly full of cheese where the flower full of cheese would have been, and a twist of hair on top representing that little bit tasked with holding the whole concoction together.

I realised that something had to be done, and done fast. But what?

Now I’ve never been one for self-denial. I’ll never forget hearing, as a youth, a prominent Catholic conservative intellectual of the age explain that during Lent he took his evening cigar before, rather than after dinner – which is when he really wanted it – and “thus was the flesh sufficiently mortified”.

Given that my problem was temporal rather than spiritual, however, it would not do me much good to simply have dessert before the entrees.

And the immediate alternative, exercise, was something too horrible to contemplate.

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The only solution, then, would be start eating foods that were satisfying and packed with flavour. And one marvellous solution to this problem has been the discovery of the wide and wonderful world of Japanese noodles. Even better, one does not need to go to a noodle-ya to find them – though in my neighbourhood, with its incredible concentration of Asian students, one can

with the help of the humble anchovy: a key base ingredient in Britain’s Worcestershire sauce, countless Italian tomato sauces, and of course Thai fish sauce. Interestingly, molecular gastronome extraordinaire Heston Blumenthal adds a few drops of the nam pla to his fantastically complicated recipe for a broken down and reconstructed classic, Spaghetti Bolognaise. I haven’t had the eight-hour block of time his method calls for to try it out, but I imagine that it has the same effect as my use of a shake of Lea & Perrins in similar contexts.

Likewise it is the same with noodles. I don’t really care much for arguments over who “discovered” pasta first any more than I do for contentions that Catherine de Medici “stole” the native cuisine of Italy – and all the indigenous inventiveness that gave birth to it – and took it with her when she married Henry to become Queen of France.

And that, in our roundabout way brings us to this month’s topic, Japanese noodles.

Forget about the horrifying cups of microwaved ramen that probably featured all too prominently in your undergraduate career.

Japanese noodles are every bit as interesting, and almost as varied, as their Italian counterparts. Unlike Italians, they routinely serve noodles in some sort of souplike concoction, with a broth rich in the aforementioned umami. While these days we think of sushi – a relatively late invention in the history of Japanese food – the apex of that country’s cuisine, noodles are a far more ancient thing. Among the various types are soba, which are made from buckwheat flour, and udon, which is made from wheat flour.

Even better, pre-made noodles are now widely available and require only a mini-

“Forget about the horrifying cups of microwaved ramen that probably featured all too prominently in your undergraduate career. Japanese noodles are every bit as interesting, and almost as varied, as their Italian counterparts barely walk thirty metres without stumbling across a ramen bar.

It is interesting to think how so many cultures, so far apart, have discovered the same gastronomic concepts, and then run with them in so many different directions.

The savoury flavour that the Japanese finally put a name to, umami, is provided in many ways in many cultures. Often, as has been noted in these pages before, it is done

mum of preparation. They can be served hot, which are particularly satisfying on a brisk day, or kept cold in the fridge for a great summer snack or meal. And they are healthy as anything – along with green tea, Japan’s consumption of heart-friendly foods such as this is likely one of the reasons why so many Japanese can smoke like fiends yet enjoy one of the longest lifespans in the world.

Japanese Noodle Broth (adapted from Japanese Cooking: A simple art by Shizuo Tsuji) For the Dashi broth You’ll need 1 litre cold water 25g dried kelp 25g bonito flakes

Cold Soba Noodles with Sesame Seeds (adapted from Nigella Lawson) You’ll need: 1/3 cup of sesame seeds kosher salt 225g soba noodles 2 teaspoons rice vinegar 5 teaspoons soy sauce 2 teaspoons honey 2 teaspoons sesame oil handful of garlic chives Method 1. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over high heat until the start to look golden. Remove and put in a bowl.

2. Cook soba noodles in boiling, salted water as per directions on your package of noodles. When finished, plunge them in ice water to stop cooking, or just rinse them quickly in a colander under cool water.

3. In a bowl that you are serving them in, mix vinegar, soy sauce, honey and oil. Slice the garlic chives and add them and the noodles and stir together thoroughly. Add the sesame seeds and toss again.

If you can, let the noodles sit for about 30 minutes for the flavors to blend.

Method 1. Place the cold water and the kelp in your soup pan. Heat the water, uncovered, to just barely boiling. Cook the kelp until you can break the fleshiest part of the kelp with your thumbnail. This should take between 10-12 minutes.

2. Remove the kelp, and pour in an additional 100ml cold water.

Immediately add the bonito flakes. Allow the stock to return to a full boil. Once full boil is obtained, remove the stock from heat immediately. Allow the flakes to settle on the bottom of the soup pan. Filter off any foam, and then strain the flakes out of the stock.

For the soup You’ll need 2 litres Dashi 2 tsps salt 3 tbsps dark soy sauce 3 tbsps light soy sauce 2 tbsps sugar 2 tbsps mirin 2 cups shitaki mushrooms (optional) chopped green onions 400g Udon noodles (previously cooked as per packet instructions) Method Bring your dashi to a rolling boil, and add the salt, soy sauces, sugar, and mirin. Reduce heat and allow the broth the get to a simmer. The broth can sit on the stove all day if you desire. Add the mushrooms.

Place a serving of your noodles in a bowl. Pour the broth over the noodles, and top with the green onions.

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touch life > drive

Little red Corvette Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is at pinnacle of engineering, style, reckons Mark Phelan

Sometimes you know you’re in the presence of something special. A few thousand owners will get the same tingle – this is the real deal – when they start the 638-horsepower V8 under the carbon-fibre hood of the new Chevrolet Corvette ZR1.

In days of economic unease and unpredictable gas prices, a supercharged V8 supercar may not be your idea of the right car for the times, but there’s no denying the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is a triumph.

The fastest, most powerful and most expensive car in the Corvette’s celebrated history is even better than I expected.

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Better in nearly every way: More comfortable, prettier, easier to drive and endlessly, unfathomably more powerful.

The 2009 ZR1 has the style and performance of cars that can cost two or three times as much and bear legendary badges like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche. Chevrolet plans to build about 1,750 ZR1s annually, making the car a match for those exotics in rarity as well as speed and looks.

Prices for the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 start at US$102,450, excluding gas-guzzler tax. I tested a ZR1 that stickered at US$114,150.

All prices exclude destination charges.

That is, of course, a stunning amount of money for a Chevrolet.

The ZR1 may be a bargain compared with US$200,000-plus cars like the Ferrari F430 Scuderia or Lamborghini Gallardo, but the economy is down. Critics will say what Chevrolet really needs is an affordable 45-mpg compact, not a 330 km/h supercar.

Chevrolet does need a great compact car, of course, but this is not an either-or proposition. General Motors’ biggest and most important brand can and should have both. You can pillory them for underachieving in some segments, but anyone who appreciates great engineering and design must also celebrate a triumph like the ZR1.

The Corvette ZR1 matters not just because it’s a work of art, but because it shows that GM can build a magnificent car when it focuses on the job. There’s also the fact that GM makes money on every Corvette it sells, an achievement not to be sneezed at these days.

Expect greatness from Chevrolet’s next small car, because the ZR1 proves that GM has greatness within it.

The ZR1’s heart is a rumbling supercharged 6.2-litre V8 mated to a six-speed manual transmission. The engine produces 638 horsepower and 604 pound-feet of torque to create a well of power that seems as endless as the pull of gravity.

The manual transmission is light and easy to operate. There’s no automatic. That used to be acceptable, even expected, in supercars, but transmission technology has improved vastly. The high-tech ZR1 would have been a good place for GM to showcase its first dual-clutch gearbox. We can hope one of those smooth and efficient transmissions is in the works for the Corvette soon.

Chevrolet upgraded virtually every mechanical system to handle the ZR1’s power. Changes include carbon-ceramic brakes from Brembo – just like Ferrari, only the ZR1’s brakes are bigger – high-performance tires Michelin developed specifically for the ZR1, and strong but light carbon-fibre body panels for the roof, hood and front fenders.

The hood features a clear polycarbonate window to show the cover of the Eaton supercharger that boosts the V8’s power and torque to stratospheric levels.

Despite being tuned to the max and then some, the engine is easy to drive. Throttle response is fast and smooth, and the V8’s broad torque curve provides plenty of power at low engine r.p.m.

The ZR1 matches that power with pretty good fuel economy.

With EPA ratings of 14 mpg in the city and 20 mpg on the highway, it falls prey to the federal gas-guzzler tax. It’s a miser compared with the Ferrari F430, rated at 11 mpg city and 16 mpg highway, the Audi R8’s rating of 12 mpg city/19 mpg highway and the Lamborghini Gallardo’s 12 mpg city/20 mpg highway.

The 530-horsepower Porsche GT2 sets the pace with EPA ratings of 16 mpg in the city and 23 mpg on the highway.

The ZR1’s adjustable magnetic-ride suspension absorbs bumps well and clings to the road in its standard setting. The stiffer setting is really stiff, best suited to driving on a racetrack.

The ZR1’s interior is roomy and comfortable, with plenty of cargo space in the rear. The contrasting black and brick-red leather and trim in the car I tested looked and felt elegant and upscale.

Some interior features you should take for granted for a lot less than $104,000 were missing or optional, however.

The steering column has two different controls for tilt and telescope, power telescope is an option, and the range of adjustment is limited.

Heated seats and memory for seats and mirrors are optional, as are side-impact air bags.

The current Corvette body style is the best-looking since the 1963 Stingray, to my mind. Its wide stance and shorter overall length provide more appealing proportions – not to mention easier parking – than the infinite-hood look of the last few Corvettes.

The ZR1 builds on that strong design with vented and widened front fenders to accommodate the sticky Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires, a raised hood to showcase the exposed supercharger and a full-width body colour rear spoiler.

The sum of those parts is a rare and special car, the ultimate expression of the style and performance that have always distinguished America’s greatest sports car.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 85

touch life > toybox P-7000 Multimedia Storage Viewer Epson has released the next generation multimedia storage viewer for professional and semi-professional photographers, the Epson P-7000 Multimedia Storage Viewer with an enhanced Photo Fine Premia 4 inch LCD screen displaying approximately 16.7 million colours and supporting up to 94% of the Adobe RGB colour space. The enhanced Photo Fine Premia screen displays images at a higher pixel density for smoother gradations and better colour transitions, revealing subtle details with unsurpassed clarity and, using advanced LCD technologies, enables clear viewing under different lighting conditions and from different angles. Users can view their image in full screen, zoom and rotate, or view the Exif file along with the image histogram and rating information. The P-7000 can also be used to watch movies on the Photo Fine Premia LCD screen or listen to music. Supported file formats include MPEG4, MOV and .avi for movies, and for music MP3, MPEG4-AAC. Transfer from memory cards to the P-7000 (160GB hard drive) is quick and easy, with users able to choose between copying entire memory cards in one action or, with the new differential backup option, choose to transfer only new or changed files. www.epson.co.nz

PowerShot G10 With a 14.7 Megapixel sensor, a 5x wide-angle lens and the ultra-rapid, advanced imaging power of Canon’s DIGIC 4, the PowerShot G10 pushes every boundary. A 14.7 Megapixel sensor provides rich detail for large-scale prints and creative cropping, while allowing you to make the most of the camera’s Safety Zoom and Digital TeleConverter functions. Capture more in your frame with a compact, high quality 5x wide-angle (28mm, f/2.8) lens.

Canon’s optical Image Stabilizer technology counteracts the effects of camera shake, for crisp, blur-free images throughout the zoom range. RAW shooting gives complete control over all image parameters in post-shoot editing. Support for Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software allows Digital SLR users to integrate the PowerShot G10 into their workflow. The latest in image processing technology, DIGIC 4 delivers extraordinary noise reduction. The result is richly detailed, cleaner images, even at high ISO speeds. DIGIC 4 also drives exceptional processing speeds and responsive operation. The PowerShot G10 combats blur with High ISO Auto and Motion Detection Technology, which ascertains movement of both camera and subject to set the optimum ISO, whatever the shooting situation. www.canon.co.uk

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Toshiba Portégé A600 The ultra-portable Portégé A600 gives users a non-compromise, affordable yet powerful notebook. Packed with sophisticated features such as Intel Core2 Duo Processor, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD, this stylish addition weighs in at less than 1.5kg proving size does not matter. The lightweight Portégé A600 has up to five hours of battery life making it the perfect laptop for the demanding mobile professional. The new range is available from November at Toshiba Authorised Resellers.Please telephone 13 30 70 or visit http://www.isd.toshiba.co.nz for more information.

Olympus E-30 Positioned between the mainstream E-520 and the professional E-3 models, the new 12.3 megapixel E-30 incorporates the outstanding imaging quality and highspeed performance of the E-3, as well as sophisticated new features designed to expand the enthusiast photographer’s range of creative and artistic expression. Capturing the shot is fast and easy with the E-30’s direct and intuitive user interface, live preview of both exposure and white-balance, Perfect Shot Preview, Face Detection and Shadow Adjustment functions. The E-30 offers a choice of nine aspect ratios for image capture, including the popular wide-screen 16:9 and medium-format film 6:6 ratio formats. Live View photography with the HighSpeed Imager AF enables auto-focusing with compact digital camera ease. The versatile flip-out variable-angle LCD screen makes both horizontal and vertically oriented Live View shooting easy displaying the live scene in the format chosen. www.olympus.com.au

FlyThru laptop case With the new Belkin FlyThru laptop case, you no longer need to remove your laptop from the bag in the airport security line, making it a painless, stress-free experience. FlyThru isolates your laptop on one side, allowing TSA agents to easily identify it through a clear window. Accessories are kept organized and secure on the other side of the bag, sending you through security faster. Belkin developed this checkpoint-friendly bag, which meets the guidelines set forth by TSA, with the business traveler in mind. Just unzip the case and lay it flat on the screening belt. Thoughtful design elements like the zipper position lets you grab your bag right off the belt and head off to your gate, without anything falling out. www.belkin.com

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see life / pages

Stabbed by the blade of a Ngaio leaf Michael Morrissey begins on the trail of a tiger, and ends with New Zealand’s most successful author THE WHITE TIGER

By Aravind Adiga Atlantic Books, $38 Adiga is a writer to be both envied and admired. At the ripe young age of 33, he has scooped the prestigious Man-Booker prize with his first novel. (And notice how this year’s award has gone off quietly without yesteryear’s media brouhaha?) Other Indian writers who have also won the much sought after prize include V.S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.

When one considers such other notable contemporary Indian novelists as Vikram Chandler, Vikram Seth, Hari Kunzru and David Davidar, a good case could be made for regarding Indian writers as being the leading practitioners of the contemporary novel.

Excellent as the novels are by the writers listed above, they are often about the middle and upper classes – Adiga’s novel explores the lower depths of Indian society.

The White Tiger is a savage roaring romp of a read with searing emotional climaxes on nearly every page. Told in the first person, this equivalent to a white water grade 5 experience is the story of Balram Halwai, the son of a rickshaw puller who is determined to claw his way out of the Darkness (as his impoverished locale is known) into the presumed light of wealth and success. He succeeds but at a terrible cost – enormous amounts of humiliation at the hands (though mainly mouths) of his employers and eventually murder is the moral and immoral price he has to pay in order to haul himself up to the top of his social pyramid. He moves from Delhi coal crusher to Bangalore mini-mogul with the ruthlessness and ferocity of the white tiger after whom he is nicknamed. In this barbed satire, neither the polluted Ganges nor the caste system is spared.

Halwai’s big break comes when he is taken into the household 88 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

of a landlord gangster known as the Stork. Though the aging Stork is his ultimate master, his immediate superiors are his two sons, the relatively benign Ashok and the thoroughly nasty Mukesh Sir (known as the Mongoose) and Ashok’s frightful shrill-tongued wife, Pinky Madam.

With the latter two, it is almost a competition to see who can heap the most humiliation on their faithful driver-servant. I had to keep reminding myself that this is now, the twenty first century, and not the nineteenth. For in Halwai’s horribly hierarchal world, the “aristocrats” still grope in the back seat of the car while the driver is expected to stare straight ahead. They discuss personal matters in front of him as though he was not present, for he is, after all, nothing more than a servant. They may abuse him for his geographical ignorance of a city he has never previously visited; they can open a letter from his grandmother and jeeringly read the contents aloud; and grossest of all, as a good servant, he is expected to go to jail for a crime that the drunken Pinky Madam has committed – running over an urchin child in the middle of the night. No wonder murder broods in Balram’s heart. And yet, anticlimactically, it is the feckless Pinky Madam who escapes from the pages of the plot and the much more considerate Ashok who pays the price of Halwai’s rage, greed and ambition.

Adiga uses the narrative device of having Halwai address the premier of China in the form of a letter. This allows Adiga to slip in some satirical shafts against both countries. Having recently been to India, I can now see it through Halwai’s desperately sharp survivor’s focus. More than ever, I know why beggars and street sellers are so difficult to shrug off – they are part of the biggest inverted economic pyramid in human history. And like poor humiliated Honda Civic driver Halwai, they will do anything to get a leg up above either starvation or degradation.

Call me old-fashioned but I like to see crime punished and the bad guys go to jail. So I didn’t feel comfortable when Master Halwai murders his master Ashok for a huge cache of cash, assumes his identity and prospers. For decades, I have seen movies and read books where justice is done. It is sad that life, even a fictional version of it, is no longer a morality tale. If this is realism, can I please have my morality fable back as soon as possible?

HELLRAISERS

By Robert Sellers Preface, $37.99 In an age when biographies are large enough to require a forklift to budge them, it is refreshing to discover that the lives of four of Hollywood’s noisiest rabble rousers can be knocked off in a mere 286 pages. The four elbow benders and smashers of furniture are Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed.

And the most rambunctious and hard-drinking of the quartet was the burly, circus strongman-powerful Oliver Reed.

Before we get stuck in the ebullient mire of the scandals and the drinking that made them notorious – and the object of this tabloid-style romp – let be it said they were all magnificent actors.

Some of my favourite roles acted on the silver screen by these riotous lads include Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, and The Lion in Winter, Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse and Oliver Reed in Sons and Lovers and The Devils. They all deserved Oscars but such was not to be. Burton was nominated seven times and O’Toole eight times, the Irishman being eventually thrown a compensatory lifetime achievement award. Director Michael Winner, who made eight films with Reed, notably said, “The Oscars were for acting not sobriety”. These men all oozed machismo – footballers, boxers, scrappers, drinkers, seducers, arm wrestlers, window smashers, restaurant wreckers. Being famous (or infamous), rich (sometimes) and handsome was scarcely a drawback.

Sellers’ format strategy is not to deal with them separately but in bunches of four. While some readers might enjoy this quick compare and contrast switchback method, I found it dizzying and elected to start with Burton, read through all of his mini-episodes, then switch over to Oliver Reed’s story and so on. While all were lethally heavy drinkers, there were perceptible variants.

Harris would delight in having reached the point of oblivion then reading about his exploits in the paper the next day. Reed was a binge drinker who seemed to know what he was doing and Burton enjoyed his hell-raising reputation – as I suspect they all did.

There’s not a lot about hangovers in this rollicking account but there is mention that Harris (or was it Burton?) took two days to recover from one bender. In terms of more permanent damage, Burton led the way by completely wrecking his liver and to the doctors’ astonishment when they operated on his back, they found his spine was coated with a film of crystallised alcohol. The wonder of it is, that these alcoholics (Burton preferred the term drunks) lasted as long as they did. Reed popped off at 61 but not before besting several young Navy lads at arm wrestling and no doubt drinking them under the table, or whatever piece of furniture was loitering in the vicinity.

As Harris – and Reed in particular – aged, or rather drink aged them, the effects on their faces became all too visible. Have a good look at Reed’s mug in Gladiator (his last film) – you don’t get features like that without an Olympian amount of boozing.

By repute, Reed’s most epic effort was to quaff 126 pints of beer in 24 hours and then perform a horizontal handstand on the bar while grinning his head off. These are faces, one could say, that have been lived in to the max. Miraculously, the gouged-looking O’Toole is still with us but living more quietly now.

Here’s another Reed gem – one evening when he was not getting any attention at a restaurant he hurled a chair through a window and when the responding bevy of alarmed waiters appeared, he thoughtfully perused the menu and said, “Ah yes ... I’ll have some fish soup please.” How could you dislike a guy with that kind of class?

All jokes aside – and there were plenty to find in this book – these guys must have been hell to live with. Apart from their wanton behaviour, they could be bad-tempered, destructive, abusive and yet always able to produce impressive acting performances while drunk (or sober). Do such fellows exist today? Some might say, hopefully not. Russell Crowe, who has been known to toss the odd telephone at a bothersome desk clerk, is a boy scout by comparison. And dare I utter a heresy – is he as good an actor as any of the hellraiser four?

INDIGNATION

By Philip Roth Jonathan Cape, $49.99 Philip Roth has fair claim to being America’s leading contemporary novelist. He has won all the major awards – National Book Award (twice), PEN/Faulkner Award (three times) and a host more. Plus he is the only living American to have his work published in a complete definitive edition by the Library of America – the only thing left, one might say, is the Nobel. Not a year seems to pass without a new Roth hitting the shelves. It has been crudely said that in recent times, especially with Exit Ghost (which I enjoyed immensely – see review February 2008) and Everyman, that Roth has traded in sex as his major subject/ INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 89

theme for death. Understandably perhaps, since he is now in his seventies. In Indignation, he interweaves the two themes – the novel is narrated by a dead man and there is a lot of worrisome guilt about sex – and after all didn’t that old Jewish maestro of the mind Sigmund Freud say they were never far apart? Arguably, a male and European perspective.

Roth’s twenty-ninth book has all the passion, verve and agonised emotional confusion that we have come to expect from the Newark virtuoso. And yet compared to American Pastoral, The Human Stain and Exit Ghost, there is something that fails to compel us into caring about this novel’s anti-hero. Marcus Messner, the sophomore protagonist, is a studious non-joiner attending a suitably conservative college – Winesburg, Ohio (also of course the title of a famous short story collection by Sherwood Anderson).

Messner is a serious fussy young man who easily and exaggeratedly finds fault with those around him, particularly his room mates. When he is hauled before the Dean, there ensues a long philosophical almost Dostoyevskian wrangle in which the Dean is determined to prove Messner is a social misfit (which assuredly he is) and Messner is equally determined to demonstrate that he is a perfectly normal young man who wants nothing more than to be left alone to study. There is also an intense dialogue about Christianity much inspired by Bertrand Russell’s trenchant views on the subject. This is interesting in a mildly warmed-over sophomoric sort of way but the exchange is over-prolonged and in the end borders on the tedious. It seems both parties are making much ado about little.

In counterpoint to the slug-it-out philosophic dialogue, is Messner’s private life which has been turned upside down by the unusual sexual favours bestowed by Olivia Hutton, a neurotic young woman – who has earlier attempted suicide – an unstable woman of whom Messner’s mother naturally disapproves. And there is an anxious overly protective father. We are in familiar Roth territory – stormy family squabbles with emotions agilely tripping over the top of each other and with the father taking the role more usually given to a mother. Just when interest in the young woman is rising, she exits the book’s pages and we are treated to a long and pointless diatribe by the President of the College on how the students have disgraced themselves in a tasteless pantie raid escapade plus homilies on the Korean War and Russian atomic bombs. All somehow irrelevant to the book’s initial engagement. Poor Messner, alas, signs up for Korea (which has hovered behind the book like a dark motif ) and is killed. And that, as they say, is that.

In the end, I found it hard to care that young Messner had signed off from Winesburg, Ohio gone to Korea and got himself killed – and I should have been made to care. That I failed to grieve is Indignation’s failing. For the supremely gifted Roth, this novel is more like a set of exercises which America’s leading novelist can perform with half his mind tied behind his back. At this point, Roth, like Dostoyevsky, should be attempting some major work which will put the crowning seal on his career. Try harder next time, Mr Roth please, time is running out.

CALYPSO

By Bob Orr Auckland University Press, $21.95 For New Zealanders in general and Aucklanders in particular, the sea is a constant and unable to be ignored presence. Bob Orr, 90 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

boatman on the Waitemata, has not been avoiding the briny – he has been sailing on it for decades. And writing about it. Orr is an established and accomplished poet and this latest collection is quite likely his best and most substantial to date. It is divided into five sections, and with names like ‘Purple Octopus’ and ‘Seven Songs and An Anchor’, the sea remains ever in mind and in view.

Perhaps the greatest sea voyage celebrated in poetry is that of the Odyssey. The first poem in this collection is entitled ‘Captain Odysseus’. It begins with a lovely image: My skipper an old schemer by the name of Captain Odysseus whose ginger beard reminds me of a map of Greece and concludes with another: The Mediterranean is an open mouth about to speak ...

Other places poetically celebrated for their marine proximity include Bali (where fisherman/at dawn/on boats that fly like birds) and San Francisco (where the Pacific Ocean/ brims like a blue tear). And the title poem of the Purple Octopus section is a longish lyric about Helen of Troy.

Part of Orr’s strength as a poet is his ability to breathe fresh life and renewed vividness into themes and images that have already been well worked. I may have missed one but there must be at least seven poems that include a pohutukawa, that emblematic tree, in their lines. And my favourite (though it’s really hard to choose) is: Three swaying pohutukawas all hairy arms and bent elbows shoot the breeze but what about: Its dreams all afternoon spin easily beneath the green and red spinnaker of a giant pohutukawa And my most loved images in the entire book are when Bob goes shopping: the nervousness of celery the cold sweat of onions tomatoes that each contain a lost sunrise the weird wisdom of capsicum For many readers who may feel alienated by contemporary poetry’s obscurity and find scant lyricism in the chopped up prose that younger poets are passing off as poetry, Orr’s work is a timely – or should that be timeless? – reminder that poetry can still deploy imagery of great beauty, sounds that delight the ear and emotions that move the mind. Bob Orr’s poetry is full of lyric fire, and a warm and open heart backed up by a shrewd intelligence Why not buy a copy of Calypso, take a ferry voyage across the harbour and read a poem to the waves and the birds – I’m sure they’ll be listening.

NGAIO MARSH

By Joanne Drayton HarperCollins,$59.99 Who is New Zealand’s most successful writer? If the question is asked locally, the answer is probably Barry Crump. A case could be made for Katherine Mansfield who has a permanent place in the canon of world literature. Janet Frame is moder-

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 91

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ately known in the United States and her work translated into ten languages. Keri Hulme won the Man Booker prize and has lived off the success ever since. Margaret Mahy is top of her field. And in recent times, Man Booker runner up Lloyd Jones’s Mr Pip has sold to 36 countries.

But probably top of them all was Ngaio Marsh. She was to became part of that famous quartet – the four Queens of Crime, the others being Agatha Christie, (surely the Empress), Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham. The four were all very well-known internationally, or as they used to say, “on both sides of the Atlantic”. It was not immediately so – Marsh originally trained as a painter and was a founder member of the Christchurch’s famous The Group and her first novel was not published till she was 39. The four Queens were all upper middle class, and in Marsh’s case lead a scandal-less life, which can make her biography seem a little on the dry side.

A vital aspect of Marsh’s “secret” of success was her powerful Anglophilia. She loved everything about London and she loved the notion of the isolated splendid English houses in which her murder stories were elegantly set, though on occasion a train, theatre or hospital could serve as a backdrop. Miss Marsh became renown not only for their ingenuity of her murders but her meticulous research.(and the same could be said for biographer Drayton). When researching one of her more famous novels, Surfeit of Lampreys, she asked surgeon Sir Hugh Acland what was the quickest and cleanest way of dispatching a victim. He told her a skewer pushed through the eyeball into the brain should do the trick. Marsh’s primary fictional creation, Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, was as thoroughly English as the rest of her sometimes stock characters, though Drayton observes that when her novels are set in New Zealand (just four of the 32), Alleyn was the outsider looking in – as indeed so was Marsh, in relation to her beloved English society.

While The Times Literary Supplement could sometime praise her characterisation and humour, she was criticised for throwing in a love interest for her hero – “romance is not Miss Marsh’s metier”. And in the genre of detective fiction, romance was often disapproved of. After all, it slows up the linking up of clues and the identifying of the murderer which are the essence of the ratiocinative [look it up or Google it, I had to! – Ed.] beastie. Drayton also gives an illuminating account of the evolution of the detective story from Edgar Allan Poe onwards which serves to emphasise the importance of Marsh in this demanding genre.

The tall contralto-voiced Marsh was a commanding figure, striking rather than beautiful, and she put her hegemonic abilities to good use in the production of Shakespearean drama.

Thus Marsh had two successful careers – or three? She also acted successfully for a few seasons. Her particular brand of success seems to belong to an era when England was truly Home, and all the best things in life were English.

Lloyd Jones represents the new style of international recognition available to New Zealand writers – choosing an exotic and war-torn country in which to locate fictional locales rather than a sedate and orderly one. When Ngaio Marsh died in 1982, she was a towering figure who had out-lived an era. In all probability, we shall not see her like again. And though I am sure she would have disliked the term, it could be said that with her cigarette holder, swishy designer clothes, and her “patrician manner” she was the essence of cool.

see life / music

The ghost of ‘Herbs’ Chris Philpott gives high marks to a new release by a former ‘Herbs’ kingpin House of Shem Keep Rising Sometimes the New Zealand market seems flooded with reggae and dub acts who mostly follow the same pattern and offer very little to distinguish themselves from their peers.

House of Shem could be easily dismissed as one such band, but for several important factors.

First of all, the group is lead by former Herbs member Carl Perkins, a 30 year veteran of reggae songwriting and one of the minds behind classic tracks like “Slice of Heaven”, “Sensitive to a Smile” and “French Letter”. Perkins leads House of Shem expertly, and his experience and presence runs through every track on Keep Rising.

Secondly, like a Shem show, Keep Rising abounds with a seemingly endless supply of energy, bobbing and bouncing to familiar yet refreshingly contemporary reggae beats augmented by subtle dub sensibilities that never overpower the innate style of the group.

The gorgeous vocal work on “Thinking About You” sounds at home next to the near-blues guitar breathing life into “Cries of the Youth”, yet never seems forced – Keep Rising simply sounds like a band having fun and doing the best they can do. Luckily for us, the result is an exceptional local reggae album that will provide the perfect soundtrack for the coming summer.

Parachute Band Technicolor It’s not very often that Kiwi bands who achieve moderate success overseas slip completely under the radar in New Zealand, yet for several high profile, local Christian artists such as hip-hop star Rapture Ruckus and rock group Magnify, this seems to be exactly the case.

Another example is the Parachute Band, who have successfully toured internationally, playing to crowds of 50,000+ people at several major music festivals worldwide, as well as seeing Technicolor, their recent second release, debut at #10 on the US 92 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

Christian/Gospel Charts.

Yet, outside Christian circles, they are almost unknown at home.

Musically, Technicolor carries a fresh, contemporary sound, taking its cues from the current alternative rock trends – smatterings of ska- and indie-style guitar work give way to underlying synth movements that provide a backbone to tracks like “Shout It Out” and “No Eye Has Seen”.

Sadly, the album lacks overall cohesiveness, however this could be due to the way it’s put together – the album is a collection of songs submitted by a number of different writers, causing the consistency of the sound to suffer.

That said, this is an above-average showing from some of New Zealand’s unsung musical heroes, and definitely worth checking out.

TV on the Radio Dear Science After releasing one of 2006’s most acclaimed albums in the curiously titled Return to Cookie Mountain, a truly unique experimental-rock album that took more than a few listens to come to terms with yet still ended up at the top of many critics’ Album of the Year lists, TV on the Radio emerge this month with this astonishing follow-up.

Far from merely repeating past success, Dear Science is unique in its own way while improving in nearly every way over its predecessor – the surreal, trippy vocal work of singer Tunde Adebimpe is as quirky as ever, and the group doesn’t waver on their commitment to creating interesting soundscapes for him to work with, drawing on any number of instruments, from congas to extensive horn and string arrangements, in any number of styles.

The fantastic, slow-building opener “Halfway Home” seamlessly blends into ballads like “Family Tree” and funk-rock first single “Golden Age” providing testament to the accessibility of Dear Science, despite an experimental tendency that would normally put casual listeners off.

At the end of it all, Dear Science is an almost perfect collection of songs from one of the most creative groups in existence, operating at the peak of their powers. Highly, highly recommended.

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see life / movies

A quantum of spooks Not just a James Bond spy flick, but also a comedy ghost flick QUANTUM OF SOLACE Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Olga Kurylenko Directed by: Marc Forster Rated: M (medium level violence) 144 minutes

When Casino Royale opened in theatres around the world in November 2006, producer Barbara Broccoli – daughter of original James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli and keeper of the 007 movie flame – was a little nervous.

Not only were she and co-producer Michael G. Wilson introducing a new Bond, actor Daniel Craig, but they were also rebooting the entire 20-film series, taking the character back to the beginning of his career as a globe-trotting, not-yet-suave MI6 agent.

Fortunately, audiences liked what they saw. Casino Royale grossed nearly $600 million worldwide – more than any Bond film before it – and Broccoli exhaled.

“Casino Royale exceeded our expectations, really,” Broccoli recalled during a recent press day at Miami’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. “It was exciting and fantastic when it did so well. And then it was time to start work on the next one, and it felt like the day after New Year’s Eve, when all the balloons come down. Now we had to deliver something that was just as good – if not better.”

What they came up with – the action-intensive Quantum of Solace, which opens in NZ this month – marks a series of firsts for the venerable franchise. Quantum is the first 007 movie to pick up immediately where the previous one ended – specifically, around 15 minutes later, according to Broccoli.

“At the end of Casino Royale, we felt there was a lot of unfinished business,” Broccoli said. “Bond had fallen in love with the government agent Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green, who died at the end of the film and had his heart broken. He was in denial 94 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

and emotionally shut down. He understood that Vesper kind of gave up her life for him and he wants to go after the people responsible – the hand that holds the whip, so to speak.”

That hand turns out to belong to a top-secret organization known as Quantum – so secret even Bond’s boss, M (Judi Dench), has never heard of it. Bond’s quest for revenge sends him around the globe, to places including Austria, Bolivia and Haiti, where he meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who happens to be searching for some payback of her own.

When Craig’s casting was first announced, many diehard Bond fans complained that the blond, blue-eyed, ruggedly handsome actor did not match the traditional 007 mold of the sophisticated tall, dark and handsome agent.

But Craig’s surprising approach to the role in Casino Royale – playing Bond as a still-brutish, quick-tempered, trigger-happy diamond in the rough – earned the fans’ respect and revitalized the character, who had sailed far beyond the verge of becoming a cartoon.

Craig said he took the same approach to Quantum of Solace, constantly coming up with bits of business – like the way Bond’s eyes quickly dart around his surroundings after he’s killed an enemy on a hotel balcony, to make sure nobody saw him – that keep the viewer tuned into the character’s inner thoughts.

Even during the film’s big action blowouts, Craig never coasted.

For the hair-raising car chase that opens Quantum, the actor practiced by driving an Aston Martin on a test track while stunt drivers nudged and bumped his vehicle, so he could get a feel of what the impacts would be like. That experience helped Craig sell the illusion of the filmed sequence better: There’s never a moment in that opening chase when you don’t believe it really is Bond getting banged up behind the wheel of the car.

“There are two ways to go as an actor with Bond: You can either use your performance to comment on the whole genre, or you can put touches of reality into it, even though it’s a complete fantasy,”

he said. “I wanted to do something different with the character: I wanted to refresh things and earn the right to ask for a martini the way Bond does. We had to strive for realism, because Austin Powers blew the whole thing apart. We have Mike Myers to blame for the fact that we couldn’t do the way they used to anymore.”

Reviewed by Rene Rodriguez Ghost Town Starring: Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, Greg Kinnear, Kristen Wiig.

Directed by: David Koepp Rated: M (offensive language) 102 minutes Ghost Town serves as a very nice vehicle for the comedy stylings of Ricky Gervais, the Brit originator of The Office and showbiz savvy (not really) star of Extras. Gervais does clueless, wounded misanthropy well, and his Ghost Town character, Dr. Bertram Pincus, is that in spades – lonely, needy, but so hostile to the rest of the human race that you’d never know it.

Dr. Pincus is a Manhattan dentist whose work “suits” him.

Chatty patients he can silence with a simple stuff-something-intheir-mouth. Talkative colleagues and the other “babbling idiots” of the big city, he dismisses or just insults. Office-mate having a little cake to celebrate his new baby?

“Start without me.”

But one day Dr. Pincus has a minor surgical procedure.

Something goes amiss with the anesthesia and he dies – for seven minutes. When he wakes, he sees dead people. And hears them.

When they realize he can see and hear them, they won’t leave him alone. They need favors from him, but he isn’t having it.

Greg Kinnear is a heel who needs Pincus to look in on the widow (Tea Leoni) he left behind. He’s the one who sticks to the good doctor like glue until Pincus agrees to help keep the lady from marrying her latest suitor. Trouble is, Pincus sees the

lovely Egyptologist and he’s smitten. Pity he doesn’t know how to charm a woman.

Gervais is something of a genius at the accidental put-down, the friendly “Don’t be an idiot” that serves as his pick-up lines to Gwen. He does great “What fresh hell is this?” takes at every new challenge to his comfy, solitary life.

But the terrific thing in this romantic comedy is the way Hollywood’s best and brightest lift their games to match the formidable Gervais in witty exchanges that often involve both characters talking at once, at cross-purposes, hilariously interrupting, avoiding and connecting. This is mere practice for Gervais, spitting out lines to live people while dead people are distracting him with their whining.

Kinnear gives us both cocky smarm and pathos.

“You are a sad little man.”

“And you are a lying bigamist corpse!”

“I’m an adulterer. There’s a difference.”

Leoni is her sassy best, and takes a moment here and there to break our hearts at her loss. (She is a widow, after all.)

Best of all is Kristen Wiig, the Saturday Night Live comic who plays a surgeon who can’t quite bring herself to admit that something went wrong with the possibly litigious Pincus’s surgery. Their banter is the comedy of frustration incarnate. She won’t spit it out, or let him blurt out a question that will force her to lie.

Director David Koepp re-worked a John Kamps script into a movie that is very close, in plot, themes and tone, to an old Robert Downey Jr. comedy, Heart and Souls. The dead have “unfinished business.” Pincus is an incomplete person. Each can make the other whole.

It’s a mild-mannered movie that may leave some waiting for the explicit sex, raw language and outrageousness of most Hollywood comedies these days. But as he did with the TV show that Hollywood adapted, to great effect, Mr. Gervais shows he has a few PG-13 tricks to teach this R-rated business, if we just let him.

Reviewed by Roger Moore INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008 95

see life / dvds

The winners took it all ABBA’s lyricists are singing all the way to the bank this summer, writes Colin Covert MAMMA MIA Starring: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Stellan Skarsgard Directed by: Phyllida Lloyd Rated: PG (low level offensive language) 108 minutes Sunny as its Greek island locations and its attitude, Mamma Mia! earns its exclamation point. The adaptation of the long-running stage hit is a crowd-pleasing gusher of escapism, not the least of which is respite from summertime teen action fare.

How refreshing to find a cast in their 50s kicking up their heels, belting out corny Europop and revelling in every campy moment.

The ABBA songbook gives me hives, but in a context this joyous, there’s no resisting it.

Meryl Streep plays Donna, a onetime singer/single mom who runs a B&B on the Greek island of Kalokairi with her 20-yearold daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). Sophie, who has never known her father, searches Donna’s diary for clues and learns of three men who might qualify.

As her wedding day approaches, she secretly mails invitations from Donna to New York businessman Sam (Pierce Brosnan,) London banker Harry (Colin Firth) and globetrotting adventurer Bill (Stellan Skarsgard). The men, strangers to one another and unaware that they might have fathered Sophie, mix it up with Donna and her free-spirited friends (Christine Baranski and Julie 96 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM December 2008

Walters), and multiple romantic crossroads are crossed. Square ABBA songs are repeatedly pounded into round plot holes.

The setup is frankly weak, and there’s not much wit in the dialogue. It’s the cast’s willingness to take the silly material and run with it that makes the whole thing work. Believe it: This is a celebration of musical exhilaration, not a case of well-known actors slumming for a check.

Streep is a natural actress and a talented singer. When she tears into “The Winner Takes It All,” you feel as if you’re looking past the song and experiencing the actual life of her warm, vulnerable, womanly character. Her costars labour a bit harder to sell their characters and the ABBA tunes. Brosnan sing-speaks his songs so awkwardly that my companion asked, “Is this supposed to be funny?” “Probably,” I said.

Even when the film has the farcical feel of movie stars’ karaoke night, its sense of fun is infectious. The dance scenes are edited in rapid bursts of movement, no shot lasting more than a couple of seconds, so the stars don’t get out of synch with the surefooted chorus.

But there are clever ideas on display. One scene puts a squad of dancers in swimsuits and flippers, prancing like a flock of highspirited ducks. Walters and Skarsgard sing “Take a Chance on Me” as they crawl along perilous rooftops, and the finale puts the cast in KISS-style monster boots and spangled jumpsuits for a blissful curtain call.

Mamma Mia! is uneven, as such jukebox movies inevitably are, but at its best moments it could reduce even a hardened movie critic to helpless laughter.

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