Investigate magazine June 08 issue

no onseer >> clo gets

A STORY OF HOPE

The remarkable story of a Down syndrome child

ALL BLACK CRISIS Chris Forster on the brawn drain

XP vs VISTA

Tech looks at the Microsoft dilemma

>>

INVESTIGATE June 2008:

JOHN KEY:

John Key • Financial Crash • Green Fatigue • Cold Cure

The Interview Is he ready to be the PM? You be the judge

The Next Big Crash Pundits reckon the West is teetering on the brink of a major recession. How might it impact here?

Green Fatigue Are you sick of Kyoto yet?

Issue 89

A Cure For The Common Cold

The new herbal extract that scientists are stunned by

$7.99 June 2008

INVESTIGATEdigital This is the Adobe Flash edition of Investigate magazine. To zoom in, simply click the mouse on the page, then use the mouse to move the page.

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Contents 40 32

26 52 46 60

FEATURES

26 The New Great Depression 46 Sick of Kyoto Yet? Is it possible that the US economy is going to tank, and take its trading partners with it? Investigate’s London bureau chief, SELWYN PARKER is about to publish a book on the risk of a major financial crash in the West, and asks whether New Zealand can avoid the backwash

32 Key Questioned

Uncertain economic times make for an interesting and challenging election campaign. IAN WISHART talks to National leader John Key about whether his party is capable of sailing through the stormy waters that may be ahead

40 Crying Poverty

A recent report from the Child Poverty Action Group is damning about the state of New Zealand’s children.

Or is it? MIKE BUTLER argues all is not as it seems

In the US they’re calling it “Green Fatigue”, and with the cost of Kyoto now starting to bite New Zealanders hard, there are questions about the hype. ERIC ADLER backgrounds the growing cynicism amongst US consumers about “Green”

52 A Story of Hope

Back in the sixties, parents of Down Syndrome children were told not to expect much. Decades later, MARY ROGERS reports on Austin the Amazing

60 All Black Crisis

Sports columnist CHRIS FORSTER analyses the looming crisis for the All Blacks caused by brawn drain

Cover: Herald/Presspix/Jane Ussher

54

Editorial and opinion 06 Focal Point

Volume 8, issue 89, ISSN 1175-1290

Editorial

08 Vox-Populi

The roar of the crowd

16

16 Simply Devine

Miranda Devine on Miley Cyrus

18 Straight Talk Mark Steyn on biofuels

20 Eyes Right

Richard Prosser on defence

22 Line 1

Chris Carter on blogging

18

24 Soapbox

A fresh take on Noah

Lifestyle 64 Money

Peter Hensley on wills

66 Education

Amy Brooke on standards

68 Science

Volcanic warming

66

70 Technology

Nuance PDF Converter 5

74 Health

Claire Morrow on bionics

76 Alt.Health

A Cure For The Common Cold

78 Travel Thailand

82 Food

Singapore fling

84 Drive

76

Alfa Romeo GT

86 Toybox

The latest and greatest

88 Pages

Michael Morrissey’s autumn picks

92 Music

Chris Philpott’s CD reviews

94 Movies New releases

96 DVDs

American Gangster

82

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

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> focal point

Editorial

Important announcements

A

s this issue goes to press, we at Investigate are waiting timony of a corrupt cop, recommended to her by Commissioner for two important external rulings to come out regarding Howard Broad, which is under investigation by the IPCA. stories we have an interest in. The first, as some of you Readers will recall the magazine published extensive documay have gathered from news coverage recently, is on our mentary proof of corruption by Howard Broad’s friend Peter story last year about Air New Zealand flying troops up to the Iraq Gibbons. war. The story itself is now a matter of absolute public record. The The revelation in Absolute Power (subsequently confirmed in a flights happened, the government didn’t know, the whole thing State Services Commission investigation) that Broad was caught caused an embarrassing catfight between Labour and its major- drink-driving, but not breath-tested after he and another officer ity-owned airline. had words with the junior cop who pulled him over, has only Air New Zealand, however, chose to take issue with Investigate added to the stench of a disreputable Old Boys Network runvia the Press Council, claiming our cover montage was unfair, ning the NZ Police. We make no apologies for bringing issues that the magazine’s claims of fighter jets “escorting” the Air New like this to light.

Zealand plane were inaccurate, and that the flights were not One final housekeeping issue. We are hoping to soon release a “secret” as the magazine had suggested. major new media product onto the market. If you would like to be The Press Council ruled against Investigate on all these mat- one of the first to see it, email us at publicity@investigatemagazine. ters, taking at face value the word of Air New Zealand, despite com with your name and details and when we’re ready to push the the lack of any supporting evidence from the airline. After lectur- button, you’ll hear about it. ing Investigate about the need to “verify” claims from sources The Press Council appeared (in our case, Air New Zealand staff who were actually on the to have ruled against us without flight and claim to have seen the planes!), the Press Council verifying that Air New Zealand was appeared to have ruled against us without verifying that Air definitely telling the truth New Zealand was definitely telling the truth.

This particular aspect was thrown into sharp relief when the magazine discovered email traffic between Air New Zealand and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the subject of the flights had been slugged “Confidential” by Air New Zealand, so we appealed against this aspect of the ruling by including copies of the emails.

We also disputed the unfairness of the cover montage, given these photos (opposite) also taken at Kuwait Airport, and revelations by Air New Zealand staff that their airliner had been parked alongside a giant US transport plane that dwarfed the New Zealand one.

If we got it wrong, so be it. But there are aspects of whingeing

by Air New Zealand in this particular case that don’t ring true.

The second ruling we are waiting on is from the Independent Police Conduct Authority, which is due to release a decision into aspects of one of our stories last year on police corruption in Dunedin. In this particular instance, it was the revelations in our July issue that Police Minister Annette King had relied on the tes INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

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> vox populi

Communiques The roar of the crowd

RADON GAS EXPOSURE IN HOMES Congratulations on your latest piece of literary insurgency. I look forward to the read.

As you know, I have by now become quite educated in all things Radioactive.

Our current temporary executive has been deliberately keeping the voters of this country in the dark, over perhaps the most deadly and common killer of humans, since man first mixed water with sand and stone.

This government over its tenure has spent literally millions of taxpayer dollars warning people of the dangers to us all from the alarming rise in levels of carbon emissions from motor vehicle exhausts, thus increasing their opportunity to grow their burgeoning tax grab.

The deadly and all invasive emission of strongly radioactive gases from concrete, apparently go unrecognised in this world leading ‘Green’ country of ours.

In a country that is renowned for its ‘turtle culture’ ie; concrete covering everything, Aucklanders in particular are at great risk from prolonged exposure to Radon gas. (Please Google Radon Gas) Well documented and studied throughout the EEC, the dangers of Radon emissions are sending shudders of fear throughout city councils worldwide.

New Zealand’s failure to even discuss or at least investigate our own position in regards to this unseen threat, lays this country bare to huge abuse by those who wish to trade in carbon credits.

Perhaps it is the building industry’s fault for not keeping government informed, but the cost to comply would be crippling to foreign developers. Westfield et al. are getting away with murder, if they have not been building and laying concrete with the correct preventative measures.

Ireland has just passed far reaching legislation in this area, leaving us in their wake.

Helen and the Greens are covering up.

Is there a story here?

Stephen Maire, via email Editor responds:

I suspect I was the first journalist in New Zealand to raise the radon issue, in a news story I did back in 1986. It is true that many cancers, especially lung cancers, are suspected of having an origin at least in part in radon exposure. The US government EPA website says Radon kills 20,000 Americans a year – around the same as the number of Americans killed by guns – and is the second most common cause of lung cancer behind smoking.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

Radon is a by-product of natural uranium and is found in most soils worldwide. In nature, it releases into the air as a gas and dissipates, but when the gas leaches from the soil under your home it gathers in higher concentrations in the home. It particularly enters via water and mixes with the steam you inhale during showering (hence the lung cancer danger). Concrete slabs for new homes can be sealed to minimize radon gas exposure from the ground (http://www.radonseal.com/radon-indoor.htm) but I’m unsure what can be done about town or bore water supplies.

If concrete building slabs can be sealed, you are correct in asking the question: why aren’t we doing it?

TREELORDS DEAL You have the best, strongest and most honest magazine in N.Z. Where other editors run and hide, you have exposed the truth of Treaty corruption for all to see.

May I correct you on one point, James Busby did not write the government’s “Official English Treaty [page 33, half way down left column].” This was written by a Mr Freeman, who included some of Busby’s officially condemned notes, written on the 3rd of Feb., plus content out of his own head. The handwriting has been confirmed as Freeman’s.

Freeman had no authority to draft, or write, our Treaty of Waitangi, therefore, it has no historical standing. Yes, this is the document used to manufacture the “Principles of the Treaty,” to which all political Party’s adhere.

G. Graham, via email

TREELORDS 2 If the Littlewood Treaty is the fourth and final version of the Treaty of Waitangi , which was then translated into the Maori language and then signed by the combined Chiefs and Queen Victoria’s representatives, why then isn’t the signed Maori version just translated back to English to prove that the English version that the Government and the Treaty grievance industry has been using is the wrong one? Then we could put all of this behind us.

Mark Law, Whakatane

ABSOLUTE POWER I have just read your new book Absolute Power and have found it extremely disturbing reading. But what disturbs me the most is that there has been no reaction from anyone in the media! I would have thought someone in the weekend papers would have made some comment or done some investigating of their own.

Is everyone really so afraid of Helen and her government? What

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

sort of feedback have you had?

Perhaps the next thing we need is a play! Nicky Hager’s play “The Hollow Men” based on his book of the same name, was apparently very well done, and has been quite popular. Worth thinking about...

I have never been a Labour supporter, but as a midwife I have benefited from the autonomy midwives gained as a result of changes she introduced to the Nurses’ Amendment Act in 1991. Since that time, however, Helen Clark’s government has drowned midwives in a sea of paperwork and bureaucracy, while GP’s have largely pulled out of maternity care. You will be aware that we now have an acute midwifery shortage in NZ, and this is set to increase.

Thank you for this most illuminating book; I wish you well.

And please keep writing.

Cecile O’Driscoll, via email

NEW ZIMBABLAND? Congratulations on “Absolute Power”. I have not been able to put it down since starting it. This book recognises the professionalism shown by you and your team and combined with the obvious exhaustive research serves as just reward for a job well done.

One thing springs to mind is that perhaps Helen should change her name to Mugabe.

R. Haywood, Nelson

DEMOCRACY THREATENED Democracy, as we know it, is doomed. That is because democratic virtues themselves are the paramount threat to the continuation of democracy. The essence of democracy – freedom of speech and the freedom of belief – allow for, or tolerate certain otherwise seditious elements in Western society that will inevitably rot democracy, or convert it.

Democracy purports to be, above all: a free society, tolerant, unorthodox, and a state with an elected representative government by the people. All other forms of government are supposedly orthodox: communist, autocratic, theocratic, and monarchical.

Whereby what you say, think, believe, what you own and earn, where you congregate, and how you live are either dictated or independently determined by the party, oligarchy, clergy, or king. The orthodoxy of democracy is that a consensus of society (which you may or may not be a part of ) determines these things. Therefore, all forms of government, all thinking is orthodox.

A democratically free society requires, demands, if not dictates that you tolerate other beliefs and ways of thinking; this prerequisite is itself a form of orthodoxy. Even anarchy is orthodox: the stipulation that ‘there are no rules’ is a rule. Only a society that does not stipulate this is truly ‘free’, one without any laws. But a society by definition is based on rules. Therefore, a ‘free society’ is an oxymoron. One must consequently accept that there are degrees or limitations to freedom, within the democratic framework.

Democracy is not a perfect form of government. Dictators like Hitler have made their countries more prosperous; communists like Mao have revolutionised their countries; monarchs like David, Solomon, Arthur, and Victoria have been far more just than some democracies. But democracy is the best form of government to ensure that the people at least have the opportunity to govern themselves and determine their own beliefs and way of life. Democracy is the least oppressive form of government.

The liberal element of democracy disseminates certain doctrines that are either contrary to democracy, diluted forms of commu10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

nism, or inherently hypocritical and in some cases seditious: such as ‘big-government’, which amounts to nothing more than a communist one-party government; or state-housing which is a pre-cursor to communist-government ownership of land and enterprise; or the high taxation of the working and the over abundance of welfare for the unemployed, which is means of breeding mediocrity in a communist classless society; or the enforcing of supposedly egalitarian laws and policies like Affirmative Action and Aboriginal Title which segregate races and divide the nation in what is nothing more than racism; or criminal laws that lack any form of justice, whereby instead of watching her attacker put to death a rape victim will pay taxes that will clothe, feed, and house her attacker for many years while she is left to fend for herself.

Such concern for ‘political correctness’ or ‘human rights’ lends itself to inhumane and unjust legislation that appeases liberals not prepared to execute rapists and murderers but willing to tolerate them. Finally, what of disarmament policies that simply weaken us while other aggressive nations continually augment their military, proliferate weapons, and pursue nuclear capability. These submissive policies serve only as pre-emptive surrender if not calculated collaboration with enemy states – which is treason! Pacifists fail to see that the Hitlers and Bin Ladens do not want to co-exist nor negotiate. Peace is made, it is not found. The liberal-pacifist policy of ‘do not provoke your enemy’ merely translates into ‘do not defend yourself ’ when your enemy attacks. Being democratic is our only provocation.

Liberalism seeks to enforce freedom by excessive legislation (from the smacking of children to extreme work-place regulations), yet consequently achieves a state of autocracy; it accuses conservatism of diminishing citizens’ freedoms when conservatism enforces scrutiny on suspicious persons, but it is the liberal with his litany of petulant government-controlling legislation that diminishes freedom.

Liberal elements would have us tolerate non-democratic ideologies such as Sharia Law. Such proponents of a multi-cultural tolerance, as the archbishop Williams, Barack Obamas, Ehud Olmerts, and Helen Clarks are the Vichy governments of today’s democracy. They offer ‘crusader protection’: issuing charters and edicts declaring our protection and freedom, yet surreptitiously converting us to and colluding with the non-democratic. They forsake democratic culture for the appeasement of the non-democratic. Our freedoms are for sale for their own namesakes. It is this ‘freedom of belief ’ of our beloved democracy that allows the liberal view to exist, a view that will destroy democracy itself.

Liberalism is insidiously subversive to democracy. We do and ought to tolerate Islam, but not Sharia Law; we do and ought to tolerate socialist ideals, but not communism; we do and ought to tolerate extreme political ideals, but not fascism. Sharia Law, communism, and fascism are antithetical to democracy. To tolerate them is to allow them to permeate democracy and eventually osmotically convert it.

Democracy is a way of life, a culture, not an axiomatic philosophy. It is the nature of democracy to tolerate alternative beliefs and even various forms of dissention. But we will wake up one day to find democracy has been eroded away by acquiescing and the rapturous applause of the liberal faithful: the government will be one party, it will own our houses, businesses, and control our income, we will be divided into ethnic groups each allotted specific rights and benefits, criminals will be inadequately punished and protected, and we will be unable to protect ourselves against

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our enemies. The liberal would have us accept or convert to the ways of the non-democratic, so as not to provoke or upset them; the liberal would have us tolerate them to the point that we join them. This is the liberal way. But democracy is not compatible with either Sharia Law or communism. And this is the conundrum, the quandary, the failing, and yet the very essence of democracy.

And this is why democracy is doomed.

Darren Webster, via email

POETIC LICENCE The following is a poem written, in response, to your insightful April edition.

Our National Shame God of Nations at Thy feet, In the bonds of great deceit, Now our own voice we shall seek, To defend our free land.

Let’s scrap ANZAC’s triple star Claiming peace forever more, Make our stance be heard afar, As we defend our free land.

People of a certain face, Gather here, disguise in place, Urging us without a trace, To stop defending our free land.

Now with dissension, envy, hate And corruption in our state, Our home is neither good or great, Who defends our free land?

Peace, not war, shall we boast, But, should foes assail our coast, Let’s make them the might host, Will they defend our free land?

We deceived and full of spite, Send our allies off in flight, Which is neither just or right, Who will defend our free land?

Let your love for me increase, May our blessing never cease, Give us plenty, give us peace, Who will defend our free land?

With dishonor and now so lame, No longer with a spotless name, Will we be crowned with immortal shame?

And who’ll defends our free land?

Will our ignorance always be, Our fortification on the sea, Making us centre: more of me, Who’ll defend our free land?

God, we don’t need your guiding hand, We’ll preach peace to every man, Working out our short-sighted plans, But who will defend New Zealand?

Lucy Anna Moore, Wairarapa

IS THERE SOMETHING IN THE WATER THIS MONTH? A general (and sympathetic) response to your May editorial, for your amusement:

Here’s how you bring a country to its knees and make it vulnerable to takeover (internally or from outside).

1. Destroy faith in the justice system, police, and rule of law, while co-opting them to your own purposes.

2. Decimate the armed forces and render them unappealing as a career option.

3. Constrain freedom of speech, first by political correctness, then by legislation.

4. Muddy the definition of what it means to belong to the nation by opening the immigration and workforce floodgates, creating a potentially explosive, paranoia-inducing, multi-cultural mess.

5. Interfere constantly in normal, capable, intelligent people’s lives to the point where you drive them out of the country.

6. Treat the rest of the population like children long enough for them to become like children.

7. Co-opt the public service to your agenda and people it with idiots who make statements like the one who recently referred to banning pineaple lumps.

Bruce Morley, Auckland Central

WHY VIETNAM VETS ARE ANGRY A unique group of young/fit Tri-Service men and women were ordered by the NZ Government to go and fight a war in South Vietnam. About 3285 men and women were sent during the period 1965 – 1975 (some Veterans doing several tours) in doing this, 39 Veterans lost their lives during the war.

How were these Veterans rewarded on their return to NZ? By returning during the hours of darkness under a cloud of silence and secrecy. Then came the ostracisation and condemnation by the RNZRSA and the civilian population, the failure of the

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Government to give us a proper medical treatment just to name some of the major issues that we had to deal with.

Some 40 years later, the Veteran is still seeking recognition for their unique service carried out on the orders the Government. Why is this happening? Below are just a few brief facts on this matter: 1. The NZ Government refused to recognise that they sent Veterans into a War Zone 2. They refused for 30 years (+) to acknowledge that Veterans were sprayed with Agent Orange and other defoliant chemicals and we lived 24/7 in this Toxic environment. Clothes, food, drink and shower water was all contaminated with dioxin. Phuoc Tuy Province, where the majority of NZ Veterans were based, was the worst sprayed area in Vietnam. Almost the entire province was sprayed with a combination of Agent Orange, Agent White and the Arsenic based Agent Blue, to name some of them. There were 31 chemicals in total, used in Vietnam, many with deadly side effects as well as the experimental use of Dapsone which has synergistic side effects.

3. The NZ Government allowed the manufacture of the herbicide 24D/245T known as Agent Orange which had unacceptable levels of the deadly Dioxin TCCD to be sent by them to Vietnam using their own RNZAF aircraft.

4. The Government knew in the 1960’s how these Dioxins affected people and their future generations. The scientists have stated that the Dioxin TCCD is an unnecessary by-product in the production of the herbicide 24D/245T known as Agent Orange is the most deadly poison known to man and the effects are intergenerational and can last hundreds of years.

5. Government Ministers and high profile Businessmen were shareholders and some were on the Board of the Chemical Companies that made the Herbicides. The Dioxin TCCD is an unnecessary by-product in the production of the herbicide 24D/245T by heating it up and producing it too fast. The German Firm, Bohringer Sohn perfected a method that could produce the herbicide without the dioxin or at least with minute traces. So the Chemical Companies were aware of this and don’t say they did not know the side effects. Dr Mann and Professor Elliot released documentation to the NZ public in 1971 on the birth defects associated with dioxin poisoning.

6. The study done at the Massey University under the Professor Al Rowland’s several years ago confirmed that all the Vietnam Veterans tested had DNA damage and it’s reasonable to assume that all Vietnam Veterans to some degree have genetic damage amongst the many other life threatening health issues. The Majority of reported Vietnam Veterans deaths are either from Cancer or Heart issues. PTSD/suicide accounts for most of the remaining reported deaths.

7. The NZ Defence Department knew about the purging of medical documents from returning Veterans and did nothing about it.

8. NZ was the only allied Country that made their Veterans pay tax.

9. Government admitted that the “Reeves & McLeod Reports were based on false information. There has been continual collusion and cover up between Chemical Companies and Governments to deny the effects of Dioxin (TCCD) poisoning, and it is only very recently because of the overwhelming evidence that is now available that the NZ Government has been forced into accepting that there are many serious and life threatening health issues for the Vietnam Veterans and their families with the Dioxin poi14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

soning. The wives/partners and children of the Vietnam Veteran are being in some cases seriously affected. Too many have died unnecessarily.

10. The Report of the Health Select Committee re inquiry into exposure of Agent Orange and other defoliant chemicals, printed in October 2004, stated an open admission of guilt by the Government.

11. The Government were still allowing the manufacturing of the herbicide until 1987, some 17 years after it was banned in the USA. Why? When there were known serious health issues? VANZ was not promulgated until the late 1980’s.

12. Parade 98, run by the EVSA, was done to try and quell the ill feeling. This didn’t work.

13. Tribute 08 is where the Government and the Defence Dept are to make a formal apology to the Veterans and their families for all their wrong doings. Why is it then that the Veteran has to pay to register to attend Tribute 08? Whose fault is this? The EVSA are according to the Minister Rick Barker are responsible for the entire running of Tribute 08 and the Government only gave $1,000,000 to help as a part of the MOU. 14. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was released December 2006. It was a start, although most of the Vietnam Veterans were unaware of its existence or the signing of same until after it was released. The MOU was kept secret and never discussed with either the Vietnam Veteran membership of both the RNZRSA or the EVSA. This upset many of the affected Veterans and family members who received nothing from the MOU. 15. The worst part of this entire fiasco is that the NZ Government have been fully aware of the life threatening health issues for decades and are only now looking after about 1% of affected persons.

16. It was because of this that it was decided by a Group of disaffected Vietnam Veterans to form the Vietnam Veterans Action Group (VVAG). There are currently over 200 veterans and about 500 family members and the list is growing all the time as Veterans and family members become aware of what VVAG is trying to achieve. As the NZ Government, RNZRSA and the EVSA would not talk to VVAG and discuss the very important health issues it was decided that to proceed any further that we would need to seek legal advice. A Waitangi claim was filed, WAI 1401. Investigation is currently under way by the legal team who believe we have a good case.

17. The Vietnam Veterans and their families have been severely disadvantaged in the fact that we have been Sprayed and Betrayed by our own Government and Ostracisation from the RNZRSA and the New Zealand Public for doing the job the Government sent us to do. These are only some of the facts relating to this matter.

The above information can be corroborated and is available on request or visit the VVAG Website www.vvanz.com or the many websites that deal with Agent Orange/Dioxin poisoningand Toxic chemicals issues.

Bruce Weir, Vietnam Veterans Action Group

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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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 15

> simply devine

Miranda Devine

Achy-breaky tart, or exploited kid?

A

worldwide furore has erupted over Annie Leibovitz’s familiar with 21st century permissive parenting. reportedly “topless” photos for Vanity Fair of hitherto Fathers used to “lock up their daughters” at this vulnerable age. wholesome 15-year-old Disney star Miley Cyrus. The sug- Now some tout them like pimps. The principal of a Sydney boys’ gestive photos, while not actually topless, show the teen- school once remarked at a private dinner how bemused he was at ager draped in a crumpled bedsheet with bare back, tousled hair, the skimpy get-ups of young girls arriving at school dances and scarlet lips and a come-hither look, and have sparked headlines the fact that the drivers of the cars disgorging all these wannabe such as “Miley’s Shame”.

Paris Hiltons were fathers and mothers.

Cyrus, who plays nerdy schoolgirl-turned-singer Hannah In fact, parents barely rate as authority figures to be respected, Montana on the eponymous sitcom aired daily at 5.30pm on if the recent experience of a friend who is the mother of a 13-yearFoxtel’s Disney Channel, now says she is “embarrassed” by the old boy is anything to go by. She was shocked one night when “inappropriate” photos and didn’t realise they would turn out a girl rang to speak to her son. When she asked who was calling so sexy. Her father, the one-hit crooner Billy Ray “Achy Breaky the girl gave her name and said: “I’m the one who got to second Heart” Cyrus, says he left the photo shoot before the offending base with your son last night.” images were taken.

My friend assumes “second base” means the same as it did when The Disney Channel maintains that “a situation was created to she was at school – stage two of a four-stage process, beginning deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines”. with kissing and progressing through foreplay to a “home run”.

Leibovitz issued a statement Needless to say, the girl this month citing the photognever did speak to her son.

Fathers used to “lock up their rapher’s defence that the images But tales of baby-faced were “very beautiful” and had promiscuity and oral sex daughters” at this vulnerable age. been “misinterpreted”. dispensed as freely as a Despite her protestations kiss are not urban myth. A Now some tout them like pimps Leibovitz, 59, is a professional Melbourne child psycholoand would have known exactly gist, Michael Carr-Gregg, what she was doing when she portrayed Little Miss Innocence, told this much to students at a Catholic high school in Sydney role model to six-year-old girls the world over, as a provocative this month. sex kitten. Was the celebrated American photographer setting Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney was one out to trash the family-values Disney image because she doesn’t of the first girls’ schools to attempt to overcome raunch culture. believe in it?

It recommended that parents set limits by, for instance, enforcEvery artist wants to subvert hypocrisy and artifice. And child- ing modest dress codes at school dances, and it has gone so far as hood, after all, is the ultimate artificial construction. It exists only to hold a fashion parade that showed girls what clothes were perbecause responsible adults deliberately set out to protect children missible: no short skirts or spaghetti straps. from predators and situations their young brains are not yet wired Carr-Gregg has slammed the Miley Cyrus photos as “totally to deal with. inappropriate”. “I don’t care what anyone says. It just makes me But in an era in which all taboos must be broken, the reigning so angry,” he said. philosophy is that every truth must be told, every emotion liberAnd he blamed the parents, saying: “Parents are the adults. They ated, no matter how destructive, or unreasonable, because there should have known better.” is nothing worse than repression.

He said the toxic combination of early puberty and a hyperWell – news flash – yes, there are worse things: child neglect, sexualised culture make this “the most vulnerable generation of sexual abuse, childhoods cut short, depression, eating disorders, young people I’ve ever come across”. academic failure, violence against women, and all other manifesPuberty hits children today at an average age of 12, down from tations of the premature sexualisation and objectification of girls 16 in their parents’ generation. This creates a phenomenon that in our culture.

Carr-Gregg called “developmental compression” – physical develThat Billy Ray was present through most of the photo shoot opment shoots ahead of cognitive and emotional development. and even posed for a snap with his daughter is no surprise to those “This is the great misunderstanding,” he said. “They look grown 16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

up but they aren’t.” New brain research is showing that the frontal cortex, which is needed for reasoning, is not fully developed in girls until the age of 23 and in boys until the age of 30.

He said internet porn, with hardcore sites available to children at a mouseclick, “has completely changed the sexual behaviour of young women, [particularly] the obsession with oral sex.” Young girls, he said, have been encouraged to behave “almost as predators, as if [a boy] is some sort of game animal they want to bag”.

Again, he blamed parents for creating “a culture of entitlement and indulgence [in which they] are hesitant to set limits around sleep or internet use. Democracy doesn’t work in families. You have to have a benign dictatorship.”

In a new book, Prude: How The Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages

Girls, Carol Platt Liebau writes that “an incremental but aggressive sexualising of [our] culture … [has created] a status quo in which almost everything seems focused on what’s going on ‘below the waist’.”

The emphasis on sexiness for girls as young as 12 means being a “prude” is seen as worse than being a “slut”. The effect on boys is equally troublesome, leading to disrespect for women, which inevitably leads to violence.

On the surface, the saga of Hannah Montana’s digital deflowering is just another pop industry publicity stunt. But the outrage it has sparked around the world may spell the end of tolerance for the efforts by influential culture-makers to destroy childhood. devinemiranda@hotmail.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 17

> straight talk

Mark Steyn

The agony and the eco-status

L

ast month, Time magazine featured on its cover the Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was removed from office iconic photograph of the U.S. Marine Corps raising the on April 12. Insofar as history will recall him at all, he may have flag on Iwo Jima. But with one difference: The flag has been the distinction of being the first head of government to fall victim replaced by a tree. to “global warming” – or, at any rate, the “war on global warmThe managing editor of Time, Rick Stengel, was very pleased ing” that Time magazine is gung-ho for. At least five people have with the lads in graphics for cooking up this cute image and was been killed in food riots in Port-au-Prince. Prices have risen 40 all over the TV sofas talking up this ingenious visual shorthand for percent since last summer and, Deroy Murdock reported some what he regards as the greatest challenge facing mankind: “How citizens now subsist on biscuits made from salt, vegetable oil and to win the war on global warming.” (mmmm) dirt. Dirt cookies: Nutritious, tasty and affordable?

Where to begin? For the last 10 years, we have, in fact, been not Well, one out of three ain’t bad. warming but slightly cooling, which is why the eco-warriors have Unlike “global warming,” food rioting is a planet-wide pheadopted the all-purpose bogeyman of “climate change.” But let’s nomenon, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Ivory Coast to the tortake it that the editors of Time are referring not to the century we tilla rampages in Mexico and even pasta protests in Italy. So what live in but the previous one, when there was a measurable rise of happened? temperature of about 1 degree. That’s the “war”: 1 degree.

Well, Western governments listened to the eco-warriors, and If the tree-raising is Iwo Jima, a 1-degree increase isn’t exactly introduced some of the “wartime measures” they have been urgPearl Harbor. But Gen. Stengel wants us to engage in pre-emp- ing. The European Union decreed that 53/4 percent of petrol and tive war. The editors of Time diesel must come from “biowould be the first to deplore fuels” by 2010, rising to 10 When you divert 28 percent of U.S. percent by 2020. such sabre-rattling applied to, say, Iran’s nuclear program, The United States added grain into fuel production, why be but it has become the habit of to its 51 cents-per-gallon ethprogressive opinion to approanol subsidy by mandating surprised you’ve suddenly got priate the language of war for a fivefold increase in “biofueverything but actual war. els” production by 2022. less to eat?

So let’s cut to the tree. In my The result is that big govcorner of New Hampshire, we ernment accomplished at a have more trees than we did 100 or 200 years ago. My town is stroke what the free market could never have done: It turned the more than 90 percent forested. Any more trees and I would have food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you to hack my way through the undergrowth to get to my copy of divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and artifiTime magazine on the coffee table. Likewise Vermont, where not cially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be so long ago in St. Albans I found myself stuck behind a Hillary surprised you’ve suddenly got less to eat? To be more precise, it’s supporter driving a Granolamobile bearing the bumper sticker not “you” who has less to eat but those starving peasants in dis“TO SAVE A TREE REMOVE A BUSH.” tant lands you claim to care so much about.

Very funny. And even funnier when you consider that on that Heigh-ho. In the greater scheme of things, a few dead natives stretch of Route 7 there’s nothing to see north, south, east or west keeled over with distended bellies is a small price to pay for saving but maple, hemlock, birch, pine, you name it. It’s on every mea- the planet, right? Except that turning food into fuel does nothsure other than tree cover that Vermont’s kaput. ing for the planet in the first place. That tree U.S. Marines are So where exactly do Time magazine’s generals want to plant raising on Iwo Jima was most likely cut down to make way for their tree? Presumably, as in Iwo Jima, on foreign soil. It’s all these an ethanol-producing corn field: Princeton researchers calculate Third World types monkeying around with their rain forests who that to date the “carbon debt” created by the biofuels arboricide decline to share the sophisticated Euro-American reverence for the will take 167 years to reverse. tree. In Time iconography, the tree is Old Glory and it’s a flag of The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The eco-colonialism. first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developAnd which obscure island has it been planted on? In Haiti, the ing countries. For you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good 18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

The western obsession with “biofuels” is causing growing famine, and also, ironically, contributing to global warming as carbonabsorbingjungles make way for biofuel crops.

about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death. On April 15, The Independent, the impeccably progressive British newspaper, editorialized: “The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment. So why on Earth is the government forcing us to use more of it?” You want the short answer? Because the government made the mistake of listening to fellows like you. Here’s the self-same Independent in November 2005: “At last, some refreshing signs of intelligent thinking on climate change are coming out of Whitehall. The environment minister, Elliot Morley, reveals today in an interview with this newspaper that the government is drawing up plans to impose a ‘biofuel obligation’ on oil companies. ... This has the potential to be the biggest green innovation in the British petrol market since the introduction of unleaded petrol.”

And so forth. It’s not the environmental movement’s chickenfeedhawks who’ll have to reap what they demand must be sown.

But we should be in no doubt about where to place the blame – on the bullying activists and their media cheerleaders and weather-

vane politicians who insist the “science” is “settled” and that those who query whether there’s any crisis are (in the designation of the strikingly nonemaciated Al Gore) “denialists.”

All three presidential candidates have drunk the environmental kool-ethanol and are committed to Big Government solutions.

But, as the Independent’s whiplash-inducing U-turn confirms, the eco-scolds are under no such obligation to consistency.

Finger-in-the-wind politicians shouldn’t be surprised to find that gentle breeze is from the media wind turbine and it just sliced your finger off.

Whether there’s very slight global cooling or very slight global warming, there’s no need for a “war” on either, no rationale for loosing a plague of eco-locusts on the food supply. So why be surprised that totalitarian solutions to mythical problems wind up causing real devastation? As for Time’s tree, by all means put it up: It helps block out the view of starving peasants on the far horizon.

Mark Steyn is the author of the New York Times best-seller America Alone and is an internationally syndicated columnist. © Mark Steyn, 2007

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 19

> eyes right

Richard Prosser Eyes in the Sky

W

hen the Lockheed P-3 Orion entered service with the New Zealanders, serving with the British Eighth Army in North RNZAF in 1966, New Zealand became the first nation Africa during the Second World War, created both the idea and outside the US to operate the type, second only to the the reality of the Long Range Desert Group, which became the US Navy. Based on the L-188 Electra, the Orion, our forerunner to not only the modern-day SAS, but to the concept Air Forces’ maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, of Special Forces generally. represented cutting-edge military technology. With regular mainPerhaps this tenacity and creative approach had parallels in New tenance and upgrades, it still does; though it is an edge which is, Zealand’s early history; after all, it was Maori who invented both today, not so sharp as it could have been, or should have been in trench warfare, and the undershot palisade, giving them both to this writer’s opinion, thanks to the actions and untruths of our the British to take back to the World. soon-to-be-outgoing pacifist Labour-led Government.

In any event, from Korea onwards, it became common practice In some ways, we were lucky to get the Orion. Contrary to the for both Britain and the United States, to utilise New Zealand’s belief of those among us who like to paint Uncle Sam as some innate talents as a highly effective and practical way of testing the kind of incurable war-monger, state of the art military technol- efficacy and design of military hardware. New technology would be ogy doesn’t just get dished out to all comers, or to anybody with made available to this country, at bargain-basement prices; our mila sufficiently flush cheque-book. itary would then use and assess it, make observations, evaluations, When the last of the old Sunderland flying boats were due to be and modifications, and then report back to the manufacturer with replaced, the Air Force originally considered purchasing a modi- recommendations. It sounds all very corporate, but the recomfied ASW version of the C-130 mendations made by New Hercules to equip 5 Squadron.

Zealand’s military were very It bothers me that the present It would have been a makeoften subsequently included do option, offering a moderin the updated or finalised Government should deliberately ate capability for considerably designs issued to the mililess than the price of a purtaries of our major allies. seek to remove our Air Forces’ pose-built maritime patrol When buying a warwarplane, and providing comship, New Zealand might ability to detect and counter the monality with the first three pay for the hull; the British Hercules transports obtained and Americans would fit it submarine threat to this country for 40 Sqn in 1965. with engines, electronics, But the US came to the and armaments, at cost or party with an offer New Zealand would have been silly to refuse, below, which we would then test and evaluate on their behalf. and which it didn’t. The order for the first five of our six Orions The results of New Zealand’s findings would be included in the was approved in 1964, for the princely sum of eight million pounds manufacturing changes, from the initial designs, to those which (the sixth was bought from the Australians in 1985 for $19 mil- would see service with US and UK forces; and our own equiplion).This was a hugely discounted price at the time, but it was ment would also be upgraded, at no extra cost. made available to New Zealand for a number of reasons which So it was with aircraft. It is worth noting that those first three suited everybody very well. Back in the Good Old Days, when C-130H Hercules to enter service with 40 Sqn RNZAF, were also New Zealand was an unashamed member of the Anglosphere and the very first three C-130H variants to come off the Lockheed the Western Alliance, our larger partners and allies recognised cer- production line. tain things about their small but feisty cousin. We were bright.

Project Rigel upgraded the Orions’ radar and other surveillance We were inventive. We were innovative, pro-active, and we didn’t and detection capabilities, and resulted in our aircraft being re-desshy away from a fight just because the other guy was bigger; in ignated as the P-3K. Project Kestrel, involving the re-winging of our eyes, he probably wasn’t nastier. New Zealand had a fight- airframes battered by continuous low-level flying, was a world-first, ing quality, a pugnacious streak which, rather than faltering in and became the basis of a similar project for the RAF’s Nimrods, the face of overwhelming odds, thought laterally, and looked for as well as being under consideration for Australian, Canadian, ways to circumvent them.

Norwegian, and US Orions.

20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

But being a test bed wasn’t the only responsibility for a small partner in a large alliance.

Part of the deal for New Zealand, and Australia come to that, in gaining access to the Orion, was that we would play our part, in patrolling and monitoring the Pacific and the Southern Ocean.

We would look not only for lost fishing boats and cargo vessels in distress, but also for submarines. Soviet submarines, specifically.

And yes, this would be to Uncle Sam’s benefit, and we would report said submarines to him. Which we did, quite often, the protestations to the contrary of our present leaders aside; the RNZAF and its Orions are some of the best sub-hunters in the business, and despite official denials over most of the last decade, our waters are quite rich with submarines.

How good are our Eyes in the Sky? Perhaps the answer lies in the Fincastle Trophy, the prestigious anti-submarine warfare exercise contested annually between the Air Forces of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Each year, a New Zealand Orion and its crew go head to head with Britain’s Nimrods, Australia’s Orions, and Canada’s C-140 Auroras (the Aurora is the Canadian-made version of the Orion, license-built by a country which recognises the value of having its own domestic aviation and weapons-manufacturing capacity).

Since 1960, New Zealand’s sub hunters have won the trophy eight times, on a par with Canada, only five victories behind the Australians, and half as often as the RAF itself; not bad, if you consider the odds on a population or airframe-for-airframe basis.

In addition to these successes are the real intercepts, both officially acknowledged and not, of submarines in New Zealand waters since 1970. Official denials notwithstanding, there have been more than thirty of these to this writer’s knowledge, up until the cancellation of Project Sirius by the Clark Government in August 2000 – and this doesn’t count the US, British, Australian, French, and other submarines which we knew were there beforehand.

Former military people will happily recount that the Cook Strait was often used as a passage for both US and Soviet submarines transiting between the Tasman and the Pacific. On occasion they would surface and be picked up by Wellington Airport radar, something the aforementioned technology was not even supposed to be able to do.

If you’ll permit me the indulgence, I will quote from an email from one such former serviceman; I can vouch for Xxx’s comment re Cook Strait and subs operating through there; when we were training on Skyhawks in Florida, the Armourers went downto Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico with VA 44 for heavy weapons training: onenight we “socialised” with the crews off the nuke subs USS James Monroe and USS Dace. During the conversations we learnt that both the US and the Russians used Cook Strait as a “short cut” from the Tasman to the Pacific, no doubt the Chinese will do so as well. So much for the Nuclear Free area around NZ! This is important because Project Sirius was to have upgraded the New Zealand Orions’ anti-submarine warfare capability, along with new communications systems, navigation, a data link, selfdefence ability, and surface surveillance radar.

Instead we got none of that; that we still have any submarinedetection capability at all, is due, as far as your favourite defence commentator is aware, to the innovativeness of a few 5 Sqn techies, who pinched the idea of how to bodge it using adaptations to existing technology, from information contained in the original Raytheon tender documents.

Full marks to them, but an outright fail for the politicians who

Plenty of people, both inside Government and outside it, have told plenty of lies regarding New Zealand’s defensive needs and priorities, these past ten years and more scuttled the contract, at ridiculously short notice and without any good reason. The entire exercise cost Raytheon millions, and lost New Zealand an immeasurable degree of respect, as both a trustworthy nation and Government to do business with, and as a credible player in Defence terms.

It bothers me that the present Government should deliberately seek to remove our Air Forces’ ability to detect and counter the submarine threat to this country, and it bothers me because that threat is increasing. China’s submarine fleet currently stands at 57, and they are in the process of buying eight new Kilo-class boats from Russia, even as I sit and type. It bothers me because of the Maoist leanings of many of the current Cabinet. It bothers me because of the dismantling of the rest of New Zealand’s defensive capabilities and alliances, in conjunction with the aforementioned. I mean think about it; no ANZUS. No strike wing for the Air Force. No four- or six-frigate blue-water Navy. The procurement of the wholly unsuitable LAV3 armoured vehicle, which has no discernable military purpose, but which should be quite good for crowd control against unarmed civilians; and no antisubmarine warfare capacity for the Orions, but a Government full of Commie sympathisers, and a Free Trade Agreement with the world’s single worst abuser of human rights. Is there a pattern here, or am I being paranoid?

Plenty of people, both inside Government and outside it, have told plenty of lies regarding New Zealand’s defensive needs and priorities, these past ten years and more. They have told lies about the costs, effectiveness, and necessity of various core capabilities, lies about the number of times such capabilities have been used, lies about the nature of our relationships with our traditional allies.

There have been lies-aplenty concerning New Zealand’s eyes in the Sky – our Orions – their detection of submarines, and the need for Project Sirius. The idea that an isolated maritime nation dependent on sea lanes has no need for such a capability is ridiculous at best and worrying at worst.

Seventies band The Alan Parsons Project had a bit to say about lies, as well; funnily enough, on an album which featured not only “Sirius”, but also “Eye in the Sky”.

The band makes it seem somehow romantic and acceptable, including in their commentary, the lyric: The sun in your eyes Made some of the lies worth believing Well, this writer, for one, is sorry to have to say, to Helen, Mark, Phil, et al; it doesn’t. I prefer the conclusion; So find another fool like before Cause I aint gonna live anymore believing Some of the lies, while all of the signs are deceiving.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 21

> line one

Chris Carter

Nothing but the facts, Joe blogs

O

ne of the nightmares depriving current Members of and increasingly corrupt areas of Government, both central and Parliament of their sleep would have to be the enormous local, that you should largely flag away the mainstream media, growth of some outstandingly well-written and highly whose very incestuous relationship with those in power almost informative blogs now enjoying community support that’s guarantees little more than a steady stream of regurgitated party close to overhauling that of the mainstream media. Ranging from political propaganda! Apart from which, with a few exceptions highly partisan articles that to their author’s credit do not pretend perhaps, the NZ mainstream media, eager as always to reduce to be anything other than that, to well researched and indeed fre- costs, has long since unloaded the bulk of their hard bitten and quently devastating critiques of Governmental scams and wrong- well experienced journalists, and replaced them with very young doings that traditionally have always been largely overlooked by and largely naive reporters, the difference being that journalists the Parliamentary Press Gallery and their ilk. seek out information, reporters simply report stuff that’s given NZ’s Bloggers have fast become the ginger group of journalis- to them! tic practice. Certainly, time must be spent to sort the wheat from This of course is what has led to a worldwide trend, on the part the chaff as regards some blogs that owe their existence to and of even quite ordinary people, to begin using the Internet and to are probably funded surreptitiously by political parties them- become, as it were, gatherers of information themselves. This exposelves, one example being the now notorious The Standard that nential growth in the use of the Internet for this purpose is quite fortunately was quickly unmasked as being little other than that frankly terrifying both the mainstream media and the political parby its one dimensional and ties that they have always rather pathetic support and been so shamelessly pro The successful concealment of promotion of the NZ Labour moting. Now a few clicks Government. Interestingly of the mouse reveals that enough, National at this stage the truth now having become almost a lot of the crap that they does not seem to enjoy a major have previously printed or impossible because someone always broadcast, is just that, utter level of blind support from the NZ blogging commucrap. An excellent example knows what’s really going on nity, however, I would imagof this is to be seen with the ine they’re quite ecstatic over current state of The New the enormous amount of information now being daily published York Times, the once great newspaper of “Record”, now haemoron the Internet, suggesting that the Clark Government has little rhaging circulation and advertisers so fast that its soon very existo look forward to than the merciful release from its agony at the tence as a newspaper is now seriously in doubt. Why? Well the upcoming election. general consensus being that the NYT tells too many lies, has National, to be sure, most certainly stops a great deal of healthy become wildly left wing, un-patriotic and can no longer be relied criticism on the Net, especially with regard to a seemingly “turn upon to be a newspaper that can be trusted. the other cheek” attitude to the more outrageous Clark governBy the way a quick scan of the latest Kiwi newspaper circulament’s silly attempt to further suborn the electoral process in its tion figures should have some local politically partisan papers favour via the EFA etc. Extremely well researched information as more than a little bit worried as well I would imagine! But to get to the rights and wrongs of the now notorious Electoral Finance back to the joys, and to be quite frank, the advisability of gatherAct that appeared on kiwiblog.co.nz and that hundreds of thou- ing one’s own news and information from the Net. Firstly it’s now sands of Kiwis had read this blog quickly led to the MSM simply quite easy to obtain balance. A few clicks of the mouse will take adopting all the Kiwiblog research and well thought out conclu- you across the widest possible boundaries of opinion. You can seek sions, as their own, and thus it was that a blogger, rather than the specific information in bulk on any topic that’s currently taking rather tired and worn out media, was able to blow the whistle on your interest. Even better, and perhaps more importantly you will a Clarkist rort of epic and disgraceful proportions. quickly discover, after a while, that unlike the MSM, there are very Which leads me to where I now truly believe that if New many news based sites that you can trust, and Bloggers that will Zealanders are at all interested in finding out what’s really going quickly demonstrate an ability to provide background and detail on around the country, and particularly within the Machiavellian of current events that frequently is quite astounding.

22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 23

Cre8ive 4220B

How does this occur so often on the Net based blogs and news sites? Simply because good blog sites have available to them an enormous array of correspondents, whistle blowers, departmental insiders, and via the net, research tools that the journalists of old would have sold their mothers for. End result...it is now relatively easy to get the true story about anything, the successful concealment of the truth now having become almost impossible because someone always knows what’s really going on, and if they are at a computer terminal, very quickly so does everyone else. Similarly, previously quite innocuous news items or maybe bits of legislation passing through Parliament that probably would have passed the most of us by without much comment or interest, will be noticed by one or other of the many smart people lurking away there out on the WW Web. Quickly we are given additional and specialised information that suddenly makes us all aware, that once again we are all about to get right royally screwed by a new regulation, at which point those that seek to deceive have been caught out yet again, before it all becomes too late to stop the bastards in their tracks. Factual information published on any of our NZ blogs can now, in a very short amount of time achieve more to maintain our freedoms and system of true democracy than the MSM has managed to achieve in its whole existence. Reason? Because of the sheer number of New Zealanders who now read and contribute to some of our most respected blogging sites, and the high standing in a news and opinion sense that these blogs have managed to achieve in the community at large. Does this lightning fast system of informing New Zealanders, to gather information, to swap opinions and ideas worry the Hell out of our Lords and Masters? You can bet your life it does.

No longer can, for instance, a politician simply hand over, in effect tomorrow morning’s headline or lead news item to one of the Poodles of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, who, with a minimal re-write turned this frequent twaddle in as actual news. And if you don’t believe me that this has long been common practice, then consider the usually word for word sameness of the so-called press gallery stories and the original Ministerial news release from whence it came. Now take the opportunity to check out the same story as it is dissected on the nation’s blogs along with the accompanying comment and opinion from dozens of interested Kiwi contributors. Then note the eventual effect that all of this spotlighting has on the original news item as it was, say presented, on One’s Ken and Barbie show, earlier the same evening. How about “I was misquoted” or that other great standby “my comments were taken out of context”.

Have any of you considered why so many Governmental scams and rorts have all of a sudden come to light over the last 12 months or so? Well from my observations it now seems overwhelmingly obvious that this same time period of general public enlightenment, matches exactly the establishment of the NZ Blogging network! Maybe you might like to broaden your opinion base. Here are some of my favourite blogs that perhaps you might enjoy. kiwiblog.co.nz wellingtonhive.blogspot.com poneke.wordpress.com whaleoil.co.nz nominister.blogspot.com. pc.blogspot.com monkeyswithtypewriters.blogspot.com stuff.co.nz/blogs/political

> soapbox

Tom McCall

Noah revisited

24 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

Contributions to Soapbox may be emailed to editorial@investigatemagazine.com

I

n the year 2008, the Lord came unto Noah, who was now million payments for rights to sail the Ark on the seas of Aotearoa. living in Auckland, New Zealand, as an illegal immigrant and Other Maori tribes have sued me because they allege the Ark is a said, “Once again, the earth has become wicked and over- Pakeha version of the Maori canoe and they have appealed to the populated and I see the end of all flesh before me. Build me Waitangi Tribunal to declare it tapu. another Ark and save two of every living thing along with a few “Then the Environmental Court ruled that I couldn’t build the good humans.”

Ark until they’d conducted an environmental impact study on He gave Noah the blueprints, saying, “You have six months to your proposed flood. build the Ark before I will start the unending rain for 40 days and “I’m still trying to resolve a complaint with the Human Rights 40 nights”. Noah was dubious about the project, because unend- Commission on how many Maori I’m supposed to hire for my building rain for 40 days and 40 nights is normal in Auckland, but he ing crew and the requirement for separate female toilets in case I hire knew he must bow to the will of the Lord. a woman. Also, the trades unions say I can’t use my sons.

Six months later, the Lord looked down and saw Noah weep“They insist I have to hire only Union workers with Ark building in his revered quarter acre section....but no Ark. ing experience, and they expect a day in lieu if we work weekends “Noah”, He roared, “I’m about to start the rain! Where is the Ark?” or public holidays plus holiday day pay and rain allowances.

“Forgive me, Lord,” begged Noah. “But things have changed. I “OSH has decreed that each employee must be equipped with needed a building consent from the council. I’ve been arguing a life jacket and personal life raft even though we are building with the Fire Service about on the mountain. When the need for a sprinkler sysI pointed this out, they You mean, you’re not going to tem. My neighbours claim that made me provide ice axes I’ve violated the zoning laws by and climbing boots for each destroy the world?” building the Ark on my propemployee and their families, erty and exceeding the height and harnesses because I was “No,” said the Lord. “The New limitations. We then had to go working over three metres to Arbitration for a decision. in height.

Zealand Government “Then the electricity com“To make matters worse, panies demanded a bond be the Inland Revenue has beat me to it posted for the future costs of seized all my assets, claimmoving power lines and other ing I’m trying to leave the overhead obstructions, to clear the passage for the Ark’s move to country illegally with endangered species. the sea. I argued that the sea would be coming to us, but they “At first the Labour government was in favour of my project because would hear nothing of it. it created building jobs on our mountain. Then they were shocked “Getting the wood was another problem. The Greens have by an opinion poll which revealed that 99% of all New Zealanders placed a ban on cutting local timber in order to save the Kiwi. I opposed a devastating flood, and after an emergency cabinet meettried to convince the environmentalists that I needed the wood ing, Helen Clark announced that Labour had never favoured floods to save the birds. But no go! When I started gathering the ani- as a means of solving problems and was totally opposed to the project mals, I got sued by an animal rights group. They insisted that I (unless future opinion polls revealed popular support for the Ark). was confining wild animals against their will. As well, they argued “She said “God should sit down and talk sensibly about the the accommodation was too restrictive and it was cruel and inhu- issues”. mane to put so many animals in a confined space.

“So, forgive me, Lord, but it would take at least ten years for “Maori have forbidden the project to continue unless taniwha are me to finish this Ark.” permitted on the Ark and indigenous tribes own half the Ark after I Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow have designed and built it. I also have to agree to pay $150 Billion for stretched across the sky. Noah looked up in wonder and asked, depriving Maori of traditional lands by means of inundation, which “You mean, you’re not going to destroy the world?” they allege, is simply a case of “holy colonization”.

“No,” said the Lord. “The New Zealand Government beat me “I am absolutely bogged down in further negotiations on multi- to it.”

39417

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 25

NEAR MISS

Can New Zealand Avoid A Major Financial Crash?

While business confidence may be improving slightly, we’re not out of the financial woods yet thanks to the failings of the US economy. Investigate’s SELWYN PARKER assesses the chances of a crash so bad it forces people back into veggie gardens for basic sustenance, and onto bicycles for transport

26 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 27

L

ike a thundercloud, the Depression rolled over New Zealand from the United States in early 1930. Within months companies began to close, throwing people out of work. Exports of butter, lamb and wool – the mainstays of the economy – soon began to decline in a global collapse in trade. Banks shut their doors to borrowers, and some closed them for good.

Commerce slowed almost to a standstill.

Incredulous at what was happening and, in any event, incapable of achieving much in the teeth of a fast-spreading economic crisis, prime minister Joseph Ward did what little he could before resign28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

ing in ill health and dying soon afterwards. As the slump, the worst by far the modern world had known, deepened over the next three years, upwards of 30 per cent of New Zealanders would be out of a job. Women were forced to make their underwear out of flour sacks. Men were put to work building playgrounds, planting forests, digging roads. And a socialist government, the most radical in the western world, would be voted into office and change the life of all New Zealanders for the next half century...

It is surely time to take stock. Just one short, troubled year ago, absolutely nobody predicted what the revered former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, has since described

“And a few weeks ago the International Monetary Fund, not normally a gloomy body, predicted a general recession while pointing out that the mighty United States economy was already in one”

as “the most wrenching [crisis] since the end of the second world war”. There was no reason to be anything less than optimistic.

The western world had enjoyed a decade or more, depending on the country, of an ever-improving material life. In most countries, taxes and the cost of living might be rising faster than wages but things were pretty good.

They were certainly good in the financial sector. Most banks were delivering fabulous profits, largely because they had spent a decade or so mastering the art of selling off their loans around the world in what is known as “originate and distribute”. The practice enabled the banks to make loans almost ad infinitum, mostly to hedge funds and other institutions in the shadowy world of secondary banking, because it cleared the debt off their capital reserves and enabled them to start again. Thus credit multiplied around the world like so much confetti. The rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poors were only too happy to support this practice by anointing most of these billion-dollar packages of “asset-backed paper”, in the jargon, with the much-coveted triple-A rating. The banks could not see any reason why this happy state should not continue. As a result investment bankers pocketed annual bonuses that made them on average easily the highest-paid group of employees in the world.

Nor could central banks, the watchdogs of the banking community, see much wrong with all this asset-backed paper because the prevailing theory argued that dispersing debt in this way served to reduce the risks if things came unstuck.

And sailing along on a favourable tide of low interest rates and cheap credit, private-equity firms were trying to buy up every profitable company in sight, including Qantas, with hugely leveraged debt. When these companies were eventually sold, generally after being stripped to the bone, private-equity partners often divvied up massive profits. The numbers steadily became truly stupendous; indeed some buy-out firms were cheerfully predicting the first US$100bn deal.

Well into 2007, house prices across most of the western world were soaring, giving many of their owners a sense of prosperity beyond their wildest imaginations. Never mind that many of these properties were acquired with mortgage loans of record-breaking generosity that could amount to 125 per cent of the property’s value, or that the banks owned these assets in everything but name, whole economies boomed on the back of real estate.

Buoyed by the general mood, consumers were spending like there was no tomorrow. At mid-2007 Britons, kings of the credit cards, had accumulated short-term debts of £1 trillion, pretty much exactly the total annual output of the entire economy. On average Americans weren’t far behind.

But then the unthinkable happened virtually overnight, in fact a lot of unthinkables. As thousands of hopelessly indebted Americans started defaulting on their mortgages, all that globally-traded, triple A-rated asset-backed paper turned sour and banks had to take them back on their books. In fact, somewhere between $400bn – $1000bn worth, nobody yet knows quite how much. To their horror, bankers in both northern and southern hemispheres discovered that dodgy mortgages written in Tampa, Florida, had crossed half the world to blow up in their face. Some of it turned out to be worth as little as ten per cent of its assumed market value. Clearly, the stuff should have been rated C minus.

By now it was all too apparent that, far from dispersing debt in a safer way, the much-vaunted “originate and distribute” model had only served to create a pandemic. It was like tossing unexploded landmines randomly into an open field.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 29

Suddenly an unimaginable thing happened in the global financial markets. It was called panic as the world’s biggest banks turned gun-shy and practically stopped lending to each other in the crucial overnight money markets that lubricate the world’s cash flows.

Central banks around the world and especially the US Fed were forced to pump money into the markets – up to $50bn at a time – to prevent them seizing up with catastrophic consequences.

“We have a collective interest in the whole thing not going into a shambles,” summarised David Dodge, head of the Bank of Canada. Next, they had to soften up official interest rates to stop the financial sector seizing up.

Despite this torrent of liquidity, banks started failing. Britain’s fifth-biggest mortgage lender, Northern Rock, is now propped up with a £100bn government bail-out. And Wall Street’s fifth-biggest bank, Bear Stearns would have failed but for the US Fed engineering an emergency sale to JP Morgan & Co. Meantime private equity has imploded and, most authorities agree, will never recover its glory days. We can forget $10bn deals for a while, let alone the $100bn killer. Put another way, Qantas is off the market.

And a few weeks ago the International Monetary Fund, not normally a gloomy body, predicted a general recession while pointing out that the mighty United States economy was already in one.

As we digest the implications of such startling, totally unpredicted events, it is impossible not to think that this is exactly how the Depression started. That is, with a devastating reckoning in the financial markets.

T

he Depression – or Great Depression, as many historians describe it – was an economic cataclysm that engulfed most of the world. It was triggered by the pricking of a bubble, in this case the American stockmarket boom of the “roaring twenties”, that became known as the Crash of ‘29. However what should have been a mere correction on the exchanges turned into an economic plague with far more than financial consequences.

In the United States alone, it brought the economy to its knees, millions to despair and changed American history for ever. Factory output collapsed, workers of all kinds – even lawyers and teachers – were thrown on the mercy of soup kitchens, whole communities in rural areas were half-starved, and banks folded in their thousands.

Other countries suffered enormous financial and social shocks.

In Britain, most of the big industries on which the Victorian age had built its reputation as the world’s greatest economy slowly ran down, notably coal, shipping, steel, cotton and jute, and only recovered with the onset of war. For the first time in 200 years, trade declined, falling to cripplingly low levels. For a time revolution threatened what had been one of the world’s most stable societies as fascists and communists fought it out in the streets of London.

In Germany there was revolution when a derided rabble-rouser named Adolf Hitler rose to power through the support of impoverished farmers and hungry unemployed. In Japan, militarist empirebuilders used the disruption of the Depression to seize control of the economy and prepare the armed forces for the Pacific war. The percentage of unemployed varied between 10-30 per cent in most countries, with threatening consequences. In Australia society was considered to be on the brink of disintegration in the darkest days between 1930 and 1931 as battles were fought in the state capitals between communists and police.

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Governments fell like nine-pins. Hardly a single administration in the western world survived more than two years after the Crash and some survived less than a few months, like the Canadian government of Mackenzie King. With the obvious exceptions of fascist Italy and Germany, they were replaced by socialists – or at least those of a socialist bent – in most countries including those within the Empire. In the United States, president Roosevelt brought Americans probably the most socialist solution in the form of the New Deal in a total repudiation of the laissez-faire policies of the roaring twenties.

And in the early thirties the gold standard collapsed after Britain was forced to abandon it after a mutiny over pay in the Royal Navy, and other countries had no option but to follow suit. By the mid-thirties, there was not much left of the old order around the world.

The question that is already being asked is: Are we heading for another Depression?

Certainly there are compelling similarities. First and most obviously, it was the excesses – in fact greed – of the wider investment community that laid the foundation for the catastrophe, just like today. The investment trusts of the twenties piled pyramids of debt on a tiny base of capital in the same way that banks, private equity firms and hedge funds did until the middle of last year, in the process seriously weakening the world’s capital architecture.

Also like today, the roaring twenties were a period of general indebtedness. In fact it was the first golden age of borrowing and, inevitably, of low savings. Because interest rates were low, just as they were from the mid-nineties to mid-2007, credit was easy.

Although Americans could not put it on the plastic in the twenties, they could certainly borrow on instalment and so they borrowed fearlessly to acquire automobiles and tractors, radios and pianos, furniture and fridges – all of them glamour consumer durables of the day – in a headlong rush to affluence on the never-never. In an uncanny resemblance to today, a whole new wave of aggressive lenders emerged. When the crunch came in 1930, eighty per cent of Americans had no savings whatsoever. As two of the most respected historians of the Depression, Barry Eichengreen and Kris Mitchener, explain: “In the United States a feature of the expansion [in the twenties] was an abundant supply of credit.”

Similarly a boom in construction projects, especially in the central business districts of New York, Boston and Detroit, wildly overshot demand and triggered exactly the kind of decline we’re seeing now in the big commercial property firms around the world. (The Empire State building would be dubbed the “Empty State” building.) As for residential mortgages, they tripled in volume in the United States in the run-up to the Crash. The result was that many heavily indebted home-owners were stuck with loans on properties whose value was in rapid decline, disconcertingly like the present.

As house prices slide, it is a sobering thought that property slumps last an eternity. As British commentator Wolfgang Munchau explains: “Experience shows that housing cycles are long and symmetrical; downturns last as long as upturns.” If that’s true, we’re in for a 6-10 year fall in house prices. Indeed the process has already started in many countries. It may not be much comfort but there are plenty of bona fide experts in Britain who say the housing market will not reverse its current (and accelerating) decline until 2014.

As the banks rein in lending, bursting the housing bubble, they are also tightening consumer credit. In a complete reversal of the

practice of the last ten years, the latest figures show that western banks are rejecting up to half of all applicants for credit cards. The great age of consumer debt is over.

And also true to the thirties, governments are starting to fall or at least collapse in popularity.

But will the world as we know it change for ever? Well, it already has in some respects. Certainly the banking world won’t be the same again. In April alone, several titans of the banking industry in America, Britain and Europe issued urgent calls for extra cash, some up to US$40bn, to boost their reserves in a tacit admission they got it wrong. Central banks have already signalled their intentions to regulate lending institutions to the death lest the same calamities befall them again. As Mervyn King, the clearly outraged governor of the Bank of England, signalled in late April, even bankers’ bonuses, considered a fundamental cause of irresponsibly short-term lending, will come under scrutiny in this new age of all-encompassing supervision.

B

ut there are deeper changes are afoot, at least in my view, as all these bubbles burst one by one. Just one of these changes is a growing militancy by unions that also invites comparison with the thirties. In the run-up to the Depression, unions were generally weak. In Australia they were repeatedly crushed by hard-headed bosses during strikes of the late twenties, similarly in New Zealand where dissidents were likely to get a crack on the head for “inciting violence”. In Britain unions had not recovered from the collapse of the 1926 General Strike. And in much of Europe, organisations of workers could be regarded almost as treasonable by the authorities. (Hitler solved the problem by abolishing all unions and having the most troublesome union secretaries imprisoned and/or executed.)

The inevitable corollary of weak organisations of employees was powerful bosses. In America sweat shops flourished well into the thirties, long after they had been outlawed in New Zealand, as unions struggled to establish industry-wide bodies. It took pitched battles in the factories of Henry Ford, who treated his assemblyline workers like so much fodder, even to get him to observe the law. As a result of the weakness of organised bargaining power, the average American did not get anything like his fair share of the economic growth during the roaring twenties. Rather like today, the availability of easy credit helped paper over the cracks as a tiny percentage of Americans like banker John Pierpont Morgan pocketed most of the wealth.

Similarly, the general collapse in union membership in Australasia, Britain and other countries has weakened wage-earners’ bargaining power today. One result is that, in a disturbing re-run of the twenties, the majority of Britons, Europeans and Americans have missed out on much of the rapid economic growth of the last 20 years while a few individuals have prospered massively. Evidence is already emerging of a union backlash that does not augur well for workplace harmony over the next few, cash-strapped years.

Despite these similarities, alarming as they are, Armageddon is not however nigh. Today’s economies are much more robust than the highly vulnerable ones of the thirties, weakened as they were by the enormous cost of fighting the first world war. Also, they were systemically vulnerable to drought and other adverse weather conditions because of their general dependence on agriculture. Into the half-full pot we should also throw the increasingly powerful economies of China, India, South America and Eastern Europe, all of which put a floor under the global economy.

Then there’s the over-arching architecture of welfare, itself a direct result of the Depression, which will save people from near-starvation. And if we throw in much lower levels of unemployment, albeit mounting, than those prevailing in the thirties, the prospects definitely look better than they did nearly eighty years ago.

And yet, there’s oil. Could it really soon hit $200 a barrel, as OPEC predicted the other day? If so, we have on our hands a catastrophe with Depression-like consequences. The viability of whole industries would be under threat, prices for most goods would rise, disposable income would collapse, the public finances of many countries could not cope. At even $150 a barrel, oil prices would have the capability of delivering systemic damage around the world, just like United States’ Smoot-Hawley laws did in the thirties.

In my view this was the blunder that contributed most to the propagation of that terrible event. The Smoot-Hawley laws were the brainchild of a xenophobe named Reed Smoot, a Mormon senator from Utah. They erected a blockade of tariffs designed to protect US farmers from foreign producers but instead provoked a bout of copy-cat laws around the world. As a result trade was practically stopped in its tracks with disastrous results, ironically for America as much as for other nations.

Thus over the next year or so, it may all come down to the price of Brent crude.

Selwyn Parker’s latest book, The Great Crash, will be released in Britain in September. n

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 31

Key Questioned The financial storm clouds gathering internationally could play a significant role in New Zealand’s general election later this year. IAN WISHART asked John Key how National is factoring in the international uncertainties, as well as economic pain in this country that’s beginning to bite hard

NZPA / Tim Hales

32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 33

KEY: Well I think NZ really has been a land of missed opportunities in the last nine or ten years. If you really look at it, few finance ministers have had as much opportunity as Michael Cullen to cut taxes, to grow productivity, to drive structural changes into the economy. Instead, really they’ve squandered those opportunities, wasted lot of money and failed to position us so that when the heavier weather comes we can sail through more efficiently.

It’s hard to tell exactly how bad it will get in the US, but the subprime market is only part of the story, and even then, we know the banks are being flushed out but that’s not necessarily the case for the hedge funds and some of the corporate and I suspect the housing market investment has still got some further room to move.

So from NZ’s point of view, irrelevant of what the Reserve Bank does, it’s likely that NZ banks will find it harder to raise capital, that’ll have an impact on their ability to lend and the housing market’s liquidity in general, and I suspect that’s exactly the reason why the Reserve Bank took the unusual step this month to change the liquidity criteria for banks so that if we do run into trouble the industry can withstand that.

We’ve got some challenges ahead – the worst quarter of unemployment data now for 20 years, consumers are under huge pressure. In broad terms, consumer debt has doubled in the last nine years, and the interest rates they pay under Labour have doubled, so that’s a big burden for the domestic household.

INVESTIGATE: Putting on your hat as a former forex man, you’d be familiar with some of the tricks of the trade, the financial wizardry and the massive amounts of money gambled on these things over the past few years. Does NZ have anything to fear from that?

KEY: Well, we do in the sense that what we’ve seen is enormous complexity in the financial markets. Now whether people actually understand that and they understand how toxic some of these instruments are, is yet to be discovered. What we know with things like sub-prime, for instance, is that they looked pretty attractive upfront but they had an escalating interest rate which was crippling over time.

As I said earlier, I think the banks have taken a pretty cautious approach because they know they’re heavily regulated and they really just simply had to flush out the bad news, and certainly the new incoming CEOs at places like Merrill Lynch have taken the opportunity to write down as aggressively as they can. But what we also know is that enormous amounts of these products were sold to hedge funds, and to a certain degree to corporates, and I suspect they’re the sleeping giant out there that no one’s really talking about but which have a lot of instruments on their balances sheets that haven’t been marked down to market and which have the potential to go quite sour for them. So unlike others I’m a bit more cautious about whether we’re out of the woods yet in terms of the US economy.

INVESTIGATE: In terms of an incoming National Government, if that ends up being the case, how much does this impact on the policies that you want to bring in?

KEY: Well we’re taking a pretty cautious approach because we take the principle that we’re working hard to win the election, we think we’ve got every chance of winning it, and we want to honour our promises. So we’re certainly making sure we’re cautious about what we do. There are some short term macro issues, and I think what you’ve seen out of Australia with Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan is the right thing – they’re working pretty hard to cut waste, they’re making sure they build the supply side of the 34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

economy, and they’re focused heavily on reducing the burden on taxpayers by cutting taxes. Despite the fact that their inflation rate is actually a little bit higher than ours, at 4.3%.

In NZ, there’s no sign of that from Labour, but there certainly will be from National. Our Number One focus is to cut taxes and to give some relief to households. Secondly we need to build productivity and build competitiveness and build the supply side of the economy, because NZ doesn’t have a debt problem – New Zealand has a growth problem and a competitiveness problem.

If you lose 79,000 people a year, as we’ve been doing, and all of a sudden Australia continues to cut taxes and NZ doesn’t respond, or we simply respond in such a pathetic way that it makes no difference, then that’s going have enormous implications for our labour markets and for our ability to retain and attract and recruit good people for our economy.

INVESTIGATE: Those job figures that came out, the 29,000 loss for the first quarter, they came as a massive shock to the markets – they’re pretty significant.

KEY: Well they are very significant, and if you look at the US the last thing to crack was the labour markets. It only really showed up in December and from there there was a lot greater concern in the US. I suspect ours is the first tranche, and that actually we’ll probably see economic data around unemployment that’s at least as bad again, if not worse, in the coming months. I was a little bit surprised by the reaction from Ruth Dyson and the government which was extremely blasé – going on about creating 350,000 jobs in the last decade. Well, actually, National created a pretty similar number in the 90s. It’s good when an economy creates jobs, but they did it on the back of a tailwind. Actually, the government should be showing some real concern about those who could lose their jobs in the next six to nine months.

What we do know is that it’s going to take a period of time for these large amounts of consumer debt, coupled with high interest rates and food and fuel prices, to flow through. This isn’t going to be a short run thing, and really the government should be much more focused on that and also that, quite frankly, our wages just don’t reflect the cost of living that the average kiwi now faces.

INVESTIGATE: Given all of these things, would a National government look at any restructuring of the welfare system to better target people who are going to need this assistance if the economy does tank?

KEY: Obviously we’ll be conscious of that. I think the area which will probably pick up is unemployment, and that’s the bit that’s been relatively low recently. Certainly I think it’s fair to assume that while Labour have had a reduction in those numbers they’ve been quite happy, and in some parts have engineered, to have bigger numbers on the sickness and invalids benefits. But I suspect the unemployment benefit will be the one that shows the stress if the economy starts to slow.

From our point of view, we’re committed to a welfare state, we’re also committed to one that has mutual obligation in it. We like the idea that there’s a safety net there to support people. But it’s meant to be short term support and we have concerns about long term implications where people get trapped in welfare and never get off welfare.

So that’s obviously challenging, but issues around skill – particularly literacy and numeracy – and trying to retrofit those skills to the long term unemployed will be an important focus for us.

INVESTIGATE: The asset sale issue, and the statement about not selling any more SOEs, and at that stage of course NZ Rail wasn’t, do you guys still feel bound by that?

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 35

KEY: Yeah, we’re bound by that policy. There’s two reasons we wouldn’t sell NZ Rail – we actively and consciously believe it was a very poor decision by the NZ Government that quite frankly delivered a quarter of a billion [interview recorded before full scale of government payment was revealed] dollar profit to the Australian shareholders of Toll. As one of the Australian newspapers put it, rather succinctly, in relation to Paul Little, the Managing Director of Toll: “Paul Little will only ever get one Helen Clark in his life”.

That sort of says it all, really, doesn’t it?

Their burning desire, driven as I understand it by Heather Simpson and Helen Clark, not so much Michael Cullen, a huge desire to buy Toll at any price, ‘don’t really care’, has just delivered the Aussies a massive windfall gain.

But if we were to sell it we’d crystallize a huge loss, and we don’t want to do that.

Secondly, when we had our SOE policy we were pretty conscious that they were going to buy Toll – those were well-documented discussions – so we’re now going to have to get out there and make the best of it. But that’s going to be challenging when the government of the day – certainly even from our point of view – has no idea yet how they’re going to run it, who’s going to run it, the complexities of that, the capital requirements (except we know it will be huge), and really it shows you the sort of ridiculousness of the situation where we’re buying an operator out who was highly

NZ means that going up or down has a very blunted and muted affect. And at a time when we might actually want to heavily stimulate the economy in months to come – that’ll be difficult to achieve through interest rates because it almost certainly will be that if the Reserve Bank cuts interest rates fairly soon it will have no impact because banks are borrowing at higher rates offshore and passing it on to domestic consumers.

INVESTIGATE: What’s National’s take on the Peak Oil problem, in as much as it was flagged three or four years ago and we predicted back then that petrol would hit $2 or $3 a litre. Granted that the world is not running out of oil, but it is running out of cheap oil, particularly with China and India coming online. How is that going to impact on your policies?

KEY: Yeah, I’m not sure if I entirely buy the Peak Oil argument. I guess, if it’s real and demand is really greater than the world’s ability to supply, then you’ll certainly see technology being invoked that will make things more competitive. At a pretty simplistic level, there are plenty of people downsizing their bigger cars to a smaller car these days and people are looking for more and greater efficiency.

I’m of the view that these kind of sustained levels of oil prices will see all sorts of reserves around the world opened up. From NZ’s point of view I think we all accept that there’s a fair bit of oil around New Zealand but it’s expensive to get out. At a hundred dollars a barrel, however, it’s competitive. We’ve got the ability to potentially develop lig“We like the idea that there’s a safety net there nite plants in the South Island and convert lignite to diesel and to support people. But it’s meant to be short term be self sufficient for hundreds of years. Yes, I accept the argusupport and we have concerns about long term ment that China and India are implications where people get trapped in welfare big demanding sources, but I’m more sanguine than others about and never get off welfare” the fact that this will lead to a doomsday scenario. I think the supply side will respond, and I efficient, when all we wanted to do was subsidise more things on don’t think you can rule out that the world gets a bit ahead of rail – particularly freight – and we could have done that through itself from time to time, and you could see oil prices coming off, a decently designed national rail access agreement. quite aggressively actually.

INVESTIGATE: Interest rates. It increasingly appears the Reserve INVESTIGATE: In terms of tax cuts, has the economy given Bank is really using them as a blunt instrument to control the you any cause for pause? economy. Is there a better way?

KEY: Not really, in the sense that we are totally committed to KEY: I think the blunt answer is ‘no’. It’s easy to be dismissive of tax cuts. I suspect what Michael Cullen will do in this Budget is inflation and be prepared to accept higher levels of inflation in your deliver a tax cut solely at the bottom end, solely for the purposes economy, and from time to time that can be warranted. But longer of saying to National ‘look, there you go, I’ve spent all the money term they’re certainly cancerous to your economy. They eat away and middle and high income earners can go without’. I don’t not only at your competitiveness but for those on fixed incomes accept that argument. We want a fair restructuring programme. it’s a pretty undesirable position to be in. While in the US at the We’ll have to see what he ultimately does, I suppose. moment you are seeing them sacrifice inflation for the stability of But look, we are committed to that tax cut programme. It’s not their banking system. As a general rule I think we do need to be just an economic issue, but it’s about putting the right incentives conscious of inflation. Is there a better way? I don’t know – there’s into the economy. New Zealanders have waited for too long, we’re been a lot of academic work done on that, two major studies in losing too many people. These doctors are earning $150,000 but 2001 and 2006 and the recent select committee work. We’re open we’re losing dramatic numbers of them, and unless we address minded, if they can come up with a better solution, but it’s very those workforce issues through better wages and better after tax challenging and partly reflects the fact that you’re managing inter- wages we’re going to continue to bleed doctors overseas and New est rates in a very confined environment in New Zealand. You’d Zealanders are going to wake up one day and not have a GP force have to say it’s far from the perfect system because you really do they can rely on. have a position now where it not only tends to affect the sector We’ve got to get into the politics of aspiration rather than the you least want to affect, but the fixed rate nature of mortgages in politics of envy, and I think debate those issues heavily. From our 36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 37

point of view, if it means spending less in certain areas and being much more careful then we’ll do that, because at the moment New Zealanders need tax relief.

INVESTIGATE: You mentioned it earlier, 79,000 people a year leaving. That’s a huge amount over ten years, how does that impact on your plans?

KEY: It’s massive. One of the reasons we have wage inflation is because so many people are leaving. I think per capita we have the worst brain drain in the developed world. We haven’t lost that many people to the world or to Australia since the last time we had a Labour government, back in 1988. I don’t think that is a sustainable position for an economy like New Zealand. You cannot educate so many people; I mean, 25% of all people who have been to university now live overseas. In Australia, it is only 2.5%.

That’s just unacceptable. We’re becoming an educational facility for Australia’s growth economy. I have much higher aspirations for New Zealand and much higher ambitions for New Zealand.

If that means we have to address some of the tax issues that have been wrong in the last few years, then we will.

INVESTIGATE: Working For Families, I see employers suggesting it might be contributing to the drop in women in the workforce, is that your take as well?

KEY: There’s no doubt that the impact of New Zealanders facing very high effective marginal tax rates – where both the tax rate and the abatement rate are contributing to large amounts being taken off people if they do any extra work. That’s a real negative of the system and we’ve been worried about it for some time. It’s quite hard to address in opposition because it’s very complex, although we have some ideas around it. Broadly, we support families getting support from the government – particularly young people when they’re going through the stage of having a family that’s the time they need extra income, and we introduced child tax credits ourselves. But when you’ve got people on $140,000 on Working For Families you know the structure of the system is not a good one.

But it’s much more difficult to change than might initially appear just simply because it’s delivering a lot in terms of big income.

INVESTIGATE: There’s a lot of debate too about climate change and the mounting costs of that to our economy. At what point is the government, whether yours or Labour, going to have to blow the whistle and say principle is going to have to be sacrificed to reality?

KEY: Yeah, well I guess in one sense you could say Helen Clark got the reality check this month, having got the gong from the United Nations for her climate change policy, when actually she doesn’t have any policies and her record is terrible. But look, I think climate change is a long term problem, needs long term solutions.

It’s right for New Zealand to play its part in the world, it’s crazy for New Zealand to lead the world if it means a massive drop in jobs and economic growth, and that’s what it does mean.

I think we should be much more sensibly aligned with our major trading partners, playing our part but not being overly zealous in this area. And that’s what we’ve always argued, that you have to balance your economic opportunities with your environmental responsibilities. It’s right to do that. If climate change is the big impactor on the environment that we think it might be, then that has implications as well – you can’t close your eyes to it.

But it’s about balance, and that’s what’s been missing from Labour’s approach so far.

INVESTIGATE: In terms of social engineering, will National be different?

38 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

KEY: Yeah, we’re not going down the social engineering agenda that Labour’s had. I think the last straw was really smacking. While we put up a compromise, and it was the right thing to do because it delivered something that was half workable, I think for a lot of NZers it was the final straw and it showed them that the government’s focus of attention was on a whole lot of law-abiding otherwise very good parents, and really wasn’t on the areas where we have real social issues.

Yes, we have major child abuse issues. Yes, as a country we should address them, but I think the smacking laws, as we all thought, were focused in the wrong place. From our point of view, our agenda is an economic agenda. We care about social issues, we care about environmental issues, but we’re not going to have the focus that’s come out of the hard left wing of the Labour Party and the Green Party that’s dominated our political landscape for the past three to nine years.

INVESTIGATE: Assuming the smacking referendum petition does not get the signatures it needs, would National be willing to look at the whole referendum issue? At ten percent of electors, it’s more people than voted for the Greens at the last election. It’s one of the highest hurdles for a referendum in the Western world.

Is there room for the government to look at giving citizens better access to the political process?

KEY: I haven’t considered the issue in detail yet, but it’s not lost on me that you need 10% of the voting public to get a referendum and five percent to get into parliament, so there’s something interesting in that as you pointed out. My view, just purely from the smacking point of view (and I think the referendum will get the numbers), is that the litmus test is a pretty simple one: If I see good parents getting criminalized for lightly smacking their children for the purposes of discipline, I’m going to change the law if I’m in a position to do so. It’s as simple as that.

It doesn’t matter if there’s a referendum or not, I want the law to work properly. It wasn’t good law in the way it was passed, but the compromise has hopefully provided some proper guidance to police. But if we start seeing that situation breaking down – good parents being hauled before the courts – then I’m going to do something about it.

INVESTIGATE: Finally, what’s the point of difference between you and Helen Clark – what do you offer that she doesn’t?

KEY: I come from a variety of different backgrounds – grew up in a state house but also had a successful business career. I’ve worked internationally and domestically. I’m a family man. But I think most importantly I’ve got a really strong ambition for New Zealand, I’ve got a plan, I’ve got things I want to achieve for New Zealand. It’s not just a matter of wanting to buy one more election. We want to win government so we can make change for the better for New Zealand. It’s a view that says we’re not afraid of New Zealand succeeding, we want to put ‘winning’ back in the conversation, we want to celebrate success.

We’re not going to run around calling people ‘rich pricks’ just because they do well.

I think it’s that sense of purpose in what we want to achieve.

I’m from a younger generation, I bring a fresh approach, I’m not bound up in ideology, I’m not spending my life fighting the battles of 20 years ago – they’ve been and gone – I’m interested in tomorrow, not yesterday. In the end, the voters will decide if that’s the sort of person they want to lead the country. But I’m totally confident if they give me the chance to do it I’ll do it with a lot of vim and vigour and I think I’ll do it well. n

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 39

ESSAY

Crying Poverty A looming recession and planned tax incentives prompted child-poverty activists to sound an alarm again late last month.

MIKE BUTLER analyses the problem

40 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

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he Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report – “Left Behind: How Social and Income Inequalities Damage New Zealand’s Children” - shows that the number of children in hardship increased by a third from 2000 to 2004, the latest year Government statistics are available. 1 The report says that, in 2001, New Zealand ranked near the bottom of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development index measuring infant mortality, children’s health, teen pregnancy and immunisation, as well as near the bottom of the percentage of 15- to 19year-olds in full or part-time education.

Between 2000 and 2004, the proportion of all children in significant hardship increased by one third to 26 percent, the report said.

In 2004, there were 185,000 children in benefit families with some degree of hardship, with 150,000 in significant or severe hardship.

The report puts the welfare policies of successive governments in the firing line.

In 1996, under a National Government, the Child Tax Credit was made available to children whose parents were not on a benefit, ACC, or a student allowance. The CPAG alleges this was discriminatory, and is the subject of a case to be heard by the Human Rights Tribunal next month.

The report criticises the current Labour Government’s Working for Families policy, announced in the 2004 budget, for failing to tackle the serious nature of child poverty and allowing inequality to grow. Working for Families is targeted at low- and middleincome working families.

In their report, CPAG objects to efforts to move beneficiaries into work, saying “a work-first policy is not sufficient to eliminate child poverty”, and “leveraging more parents into low-wage jobs is expensive and, in the long-term, largely ineffective.” 2 The additional administration required for Working New Zealand from 2007-2012 would cost $100-million.

Planned tax incentives, which advantage richer members of society, including the retirement programme KiwiSaver, have the potential to make the situation worse. The group describes New Zealand’s tax system, in which the first $9,500 of income is taxed at 16.2 percent, income from $9,500 to $38,000 is taxed at 22.2 percent, a rate of 34.2 percent to $60,000 and 39 percent over $60,000, as “relatively flat”. Flat tax is regressive, the group argues, disadvantaging low-income families. A further burden on the poor was the imposition of the goods and services tax.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 41

Among 33 demands, the group called for:  A pledge to end child poverty by 2020  Designation of an official poverty line at 60 percent of the median household disposable income after housing costs, and set the net income for those on benefits at this measure  Monitoring of major indicators of child poverty and targets for reductions of these indicators  Acknowledgement of the vital economic and social contribution of good parenting  Abolition of the in-work tax credit and add $60 to the First Child Family Tax Credit (formerly Family Support). Universalise $20 of the Family Tax Credit for each child under five  Abolition of the Minimum Family Tax Credit. CPAG wants to raise the first $80 threshold for the abatement of the Domestic Purposes Benefit to $130 a week, and the second $180 threshold to $225, as well as the extension of the 30c in the dollar abatement of net benefit effective between $130 and $225 to all beneficiaries with young children  The removal of all regressive tax incentives for KiwiSaver, especially the tax exemption for the employer contribution. All investments should be taxed at the appropriate marginal rate of the investor  The reform of tax treatment of rental housing investment to remove regressive advantages. (The group’s website advocates a capital gains tax on rental property.)  Provision of free accessible medicines and health care to children to age 18  Provision of breakfast in all schools in decile 1, 2, and 3 areas  The construction of more (taxpayer-funded) state houses  Extension of the Welcome Home Loan Scheme to enable more families in more areas to buy their own home  Amendment of the Residential Tenancy Act to enable longerterm tenancies to reduce transience  Extension of the Government funded 20 hours of childcare to play centres and Kohanga reo  Measures to attract teachers to low socio-economic schools with financial and resource incentives  A ban on the use of gambling proceeds to fund community projects  Amendment of the Gambling Act to remove machines installed before 2001  The use of tobacco taxes to increase quit smoking programmes  A higher legal drinking age The Child Poverty Action Group was formed in 1994 “out of deep concern for the rising level of poverty in New Zealand and its effects on children”, according to the group’s website.

The 16-person management committee includes director Janfrie Wakim, a former teacher, economics lecturer Susan St John, paediatrics professor Innes Asher, associate social studies professor Mike O’Brien, immunisation advocate Nikki Turner, and Public Health Association director and Wellington GP Gay Keating.

Some of their work mirrors a series of report cards from UNICEF. The World Bank defines ‘’extreme poverty’’ as living on less than US$1 per day, and ‘’moderate poverty’’ as less than $2 a day, estimating that “in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day.” For poverty in New Zealand, the main poverty line used in the OECD and European Union is a level of income set at 50 percent of the median household income. 3 New Zealand does not have an official poverty line. There are dif42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

ficulties hindering the construction of an official poverty line here – most notably, how to take account of geographical variation in living costs (particularly housing), how to handle short-term periods of low income, and how to adjust the measure over time. 4 The notion of child poverty is curious since, as dependents, all children would be participating in the relative wealth or poverty of their parents or caregivers, and subject to the consequences of adult spending choices. The term is emotive, created by a political action group, intended to tug at the heartstrings of those they are seeking to influence.

Poverty in New Zealand is a far cry from African style poverty with people living on one or two US dollars a day, although New Zealand does have a number of migrants from one or two-dollar-a-day backgrounds.

Designating an official poverty line at 60 percent of the median household disposable income after housing costs, gives a figure of $18,165. This would establish a net weekly income of $349 for those on benefits. New Zealand’s median household income, according to the 2006 census, was $54,100 before tax, or $40,728 after tax.

The median rent was $201 weekly, or $10,452 a year.

A

t present, a sole parent with two children under the age of 13 living in a provincial area (Work and Income’s “area three”) and paying $200 a week in rent would receive a total of $482.78 a week, according to a Work and Income spokesperson. That consists of the sole parent benefit of $263.78, payments oddly termed “family tax credits” of $82 a week for the first child, and $57 for the second child, and $80 weekly for an accommodation supplement.

Rent takes $200. A moderate food purchase for a woman and two children would total $170, according to the Otago University Food Cost Survey 5, assuming food is bought from a supermarket to cover three meals a day, and is not frittered away on takeaways.

Electricity may cost $30 a week, leaving $82 for everything else.

Hire purchases and the parent’s nasty habits would cut into this – 30 grams of tobacco $18.99, a three-litre cask of wine $17.99, not to mention the pokies, and so on.

By comparison, a minimum wage ($12-an-hour) worker would bring in $480 for a 40-hour week, which totals $384.40 after tax.

The median household income is approximately equivalent to a mum and a dad working fulltime at the minimum wage.

Since the Child Poverty Action group released their latest warning, a number of commentators have noted that a poverty line at 60 percent of the median household disposable income would effectively entrench official poverty, since even if the median income quadrupled, official poverty would continue at 60 percent.

Besides putting a lot of faith in seeking to end poverty by throwing more money at it, the report’s authors are adamantly opposed to moving beneficiaries towards work, despite evidence that working poor fare better than those who depend on government transfers.

Poor children relying on benefits are more likely to be subject to restrictions in key items of consumption than are poor children in families with market income, according to a paper titled “Children in Poor Families: Does Source of Income Matter?” 6 The link between low parental income and a range of negative outcomes for children “arise through complex processes that involve more than just income effect, and partly reflect the tendency of other child risk factors to be correlated with low parental income,” the study said.

“A moderate food purchase for a woman and two children would total $170, assuming food is bought from a supermarket to cover three meals a day, and is not frittered away on takeaways” A critic of Government welfare policies, the former Act Party MP Dr Muriel Newman, noted that “the OECD has identified sole parent welfare dependency as a prime cause of child poverty, stating that the risk of children growing up in poverty is three times higher in jobless single-parent families, than in working families.” 7 “They found that the number of sole parents in New Zealand who were jobless was high by international standards. They attributed this to the financial incentives for beneficiaries to get a job being far too weak. This means that New Zealand spends more than most OECD countries on income support for sole-parent families,” she wrote.

“New Zealand has in place a social welfare system that is failing the very children it was designed to protect by breeding a resentment that underlies the antisocial and criminal behaviour that preys upon the innocent and the young. More money is not the answer to giving these children a better life,” she wrote.

Newman quoted Chief Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft, who says that most serious youth offenders that he deals with are boys who have had no contact with their father, mostly do not go to school, who have chronic drug and alcohol addictions, and most have psychological issues. At least 50 percent of them are Maori, and all of them have been seriously abused as a child.

At the end of March 2008, 256,000 working age people were receiving a benefit, down from 334,000 in March 2003, and 266,000 in March 2007. 8 At the same time, 96,000 working-age people (aged 18–64 years) were receiving a Domestic Purposes Benefit, 1000 fewer than a year earlier. 9 Of those on the Domestic Purposes Benefit, 49 percent were aged between 25 and 39 years, while 19 percent were aged 18–24 years. Nineteen percent had worked within the past 12 months, 61 percent had a youngest child aged six years or under, while 10 percent had a youngest child aged 14 years or over.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 43

The Kirk Labour Government in the early 1970s shaped New Zealand’s current welfare system. Until that time, only those who were “of good moral character and sober habits” were entitled to state support. The “undeserving” poor were helped by charitable organisations, given food and shelter, usually in return for work.

The Kirk government replaced the needs-based, “good character” requirement for state support with a universal benefit entitlement, and also raised benefit levels to be similar to a working wage, undermining the necessity to work. It was the Kirk government that introduced the Domestic Purposes Benefit, which led to the rapid proliferation of sole parenthood.

State welfare can empower, support, and liberate, or it can disable, erode, and oppress, by shielding recipients from the obligations of the ordinary world. In its broad-brush, throwmore-money-at-the problem approach, the child poverty group does not have a solution for the complex issues that beset at-risk, sole-parent households.

One suggestion, that seeks to address those unique issues, is to allocate a mentor to empower at-risk families to bring their children up in a positive way with a goal to free the family from state dependency. 10 Under such a scheme, suggested by former Labour Finance Minister and ACT founder Roger Douglas, funds spent by a number of government programmes, such as CYFS, addiction services, Women’s Refuge, anger management, and so on, could be placed in the hands of a mentor to spend as the mentor and the family think best to help the family from dependence.

Mentors, who would come from diverse backgrounds, would help with domestic guidance, budgeting, education, health, housing and employment. They would analyse what is happening in the family, diagnose the problems, and with the family create a plan.

If the family wants to help themselves, they and the mentor may spend the money with the goal of getting the family independent and self-supporting. If the family does not want to help themselves, then the government would deliver help in kind, rather than cash.

Four of the Child Poverty Action Group’s demands relate to housing, and its claimed lack of affordability and limited availability.

P

ressure on housing increased dramatically when net migration swung from an overall loss of 6760 people in 2001 to overall inflows of 34,580 in 2002, 42,090 in 2003, 20,570 in 2004 and so on. Of course that would exert pressure on housing, not to mention health, welfare, education, and every other service. There has been a deafening official silence on why so many were allowed in during those years – whether it was a deliberate attempt to pump up the economy, or mind-boggling ineptitude.

That large influx brought a host of social problems that shows up in New Zealand statistics. Poor migrants from the Pacific Islands, south Asia, India, as well as various African and South American nations face a language barrier, are separated from familiar family and community supports, and often end up on some sort of benefit. They fend for themselves in unfamiliar houses, in scary, alcohol-fuelled, violent, gang-infested neighbourhoods.

When a child falls ill, non-English speaking migrants join the queue at the nearest medical centre or hospital and try to talk to medical professionals. They face a double barrier to medical treatment – shortage of money and inability to communicate. Maybe they decide it is all too difficult, and hope to get by on their own, 44 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

in which case their sick child could join the infant mortality, and low immunisation statistics.

The influx of poor, non-English speaking migrants has hit the education system with a vengeance. The presence of their language-challenged children requires extra input from English-as-asecond-language teacher aides, and can divert resources from the children of English-speaking New Zealand citizens. The rate of uptake in the new language for migrants is generally slow when the native tongue is used at home.

The migrant bubble of 2002-2004 would not have shown up in the low percentage of 15- to 19-year-olds in full or part-time education. However, migration from the Pacific Islands has been going on for several generations, and the high early dropout rate of Pasifika children is a significant part of New Zealand’s education statistics.

Aside from the children of poor migrants, attention to all children, early in their lives, may be the single best way of giving social, health and economic benefits to New Zealand, says Dr Karen Hartshorn, who is director of translational research at the National Centre for Lifecourse Research, at Otago University. 11 She says that life-course persistent antisocial behaviour burdens health services, as well as welfare and justice systems. “They commit half of the crimes, and their poor physical health as adults eats up a higher percentage of public health monies.”

“Preventing children from starting down the negative pathways means better outcomes in adulthood, and that in turn means less demand on health, justice and social services,” she wrote. “What we’re really talking about is the fence-at-the-top-of-the-cliff rather than the ambulance-at-the-bottom approach.”

An intervention that is accessible, cheap, easy to use, and effective is an online programme created in Australia to fit with the health and personal development curriculum of most schools.

Modules deal with issues such as bullying, stress, alcohol, sex education, cannabis use, and depression, she wrote.

The task of tackling poverty in New Zealand is more complicated than the demands issued by the Child Poverty Action Group would make it seem. A buoyant economy that delivers wages on the same level as Australia, schools that produce young workers who can read, write, and budget, focussed migration, as well as intervention in troubled families, would be a start. n Sources: 1. Alarm raised over child poverty, The Press, April 29, 2008.

2. “Left Behind: How Social and Income Inequalities Damage New Zealand’s Children,” http://www.cpag.org.nz/resources/articles/res1209380220.pdf 3. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty 4. Income Distribution in New Zealand, Statistics NZ, http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/Articles/income-distrib-May99.htm 5. Otago Food Cost Survey, http://nutrition.otago.ac.nz/foodcostsurvey 6. “Children in Poor Families: Does Source of Income Matter?” http://www.msd.govt. nz/documents/publications/msd/journal/issue18/18-pages118-147.pdf 7. Action group, gangs, and welfare, Dr Muriel Newman. http://www.nzcpr.com:80/ 8. Headline benefit numbers at the end of March, 2008. http://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/media-information/benefit-factsheets/march-2008/headline-ben-numbersmar-08.doc 9. Key Facts at the end of March, 2008: Domestic Purposes Benefit. http://www.msd. govt.nz/documents/media-information/benefit-factsheets/march-2008/fact-sheet-dpb08-mar-31.doc 10. “Completing The Circle,” Roger Douglas, Seascape Press, page 53.

11. “Investing in Children,” Dr Karen Hartshorn, http://www.nzcpr.com/guest96.htm

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GreenFATIGUE Cynicism Over Environmentalism Sets In 46 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

I

Here in New Zealand, as the real cost of tilting at climate change windmills threatens to hit voters wallets, there’s a growing feeling that the whole climate change “industry” is more about political “feel-good” stunts than any real hope of reversing global warming.

Across the Pacific in the United States, authorities are reporting a similar “green fatigue”, as ERIC ADLER reports

n so many ways, Mark and Laura Hambrecht are exactly the kind of couple that “eco-friendly” marketers long to lure.

They’re young. They’re smart. And, like so many in their 20-something generation, they’re “green.”

Mark, 25, rides his bike instead of driving to his job in the tech shop of a Repertory Theatre. Laura, 24, turns off her unused lights, recycles and cleans with soap and water rather than detergent. The couple has one car to conserve gas.

“We try,” Laura says.

Yet recently, a few days before Earth Day, the Kansas City couple stood at the center of a midtown market surrounded by scads of new environmentally friendly products, from Lipton’s organic green tea to a “biodegradable degreaser” by Power X. The Hambrechts were buying none of it.

“I don’t like to buy the products that are `green,’” Mark Hambrecht remarks glumly. “I pretty much think it’s a lot of hype. It’s still all coming from the same companies that poison the environment.”

Maybe it was bound to happen. Thirty-eight years after U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin kicked off the first Earth Day in the United States, the nation’s desire and effort to save Mother Earth has never been greater.

Yet among some people it has also created an unintended backlash, what some term “green fatigue.”

As companies respond to Earth’s crisis by sending a tsunami of “green” products into stores (an estimated 328 new products in 2007 alone), a growing segment of the public finds itself looking at the trend with jaundiced eyes.

“I want to believe it, but when you see brands like Clorox going green, it’s hard to believe,” quips Lori Felder, 24.

Felder also says that in the face of such “end of days” problems – from global warming to species extinction to cataclysmic messages about food, fuel and water – it’s easy to question whether her decision to recycle, save paper, buy organic food and not use bottled water really makes any difference.

“I’d like to think my little efforts help. It can’t hurt things.”

But sometimes, when she finds herself standing in the market deciding whether to buy locally grown vegetables sprayed with pesticides or organic lettuce packed in a plastic tub and shipped 2,400 kilometres, she wonders which decision is really better for the environment. “It’s overwhelming,” she says. “It’s easy to think that what I’m doing isn’t going to help at all.”

The sentiment is hardly new to Colleen Ryan, a research analyst and consulting ecologist for Mintel, a Chicago-based firm that follows consumer trends.

In February, Ryan wrote a report titled “Green Living” based on an Internet survey of 3,000 people. The report reflected feelings on everything from organic food and “green” cosmetics to construction materials and hybrid cars. Many results were environmentally encouraging.

Among them: Fifty-six percent of respondents reported being more concerned about the environment today than they were five years ago.

Although 18 percent of people said they agreed with the statement, “I am tired of hearing about all the problems with the environment,” 82 percent said they disagreed.

“What those numbers are telling me,” Ryan said, “is that this movement is still gathering momentum.”

But one number also showed deep skepticism in the “green” market.

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But sometimes, when she finds herself standing in the market deciding whether to buy locally grown vegetables sprayed with pesticides or organic lettuce packed in a plastic tub and shipped 2,400 kilometres, she wonders which decision is really better for the environment

Sixty percent of people said they agreed with the statement, “I often wonder if a product is really `green’ or if the company is just saying that it is.”

“What’s interesting,” Ryan says, “is that it seems that the people who know the most, who are the most interested, are the most skeptical.”

That skepticism only deepens, she notes, when claims come from corporations with dubious environmental records.

“Oil companies and American auto makers,” she says. “When they put those ads on, they’re less likely to be believed.”

To be sure, a vast array of legitimate “green” products come to market each year. Fuel efficient hybrid cars. Energy-saving appliances. Even environmentally friendly cleaners, including one produced by, yes, Clorox.

Environmentalists and others have coined a term – “green wash48 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

ing” – to describe the way some companies either falsely label products as “green” or that tout their meager “green” accomplishments while causing larger environmental problems.

“I don’t think people are really weary of `green,’ but I think people are getting a little weary of those who try to paint themselves as green,” says Lynn Hinkle, a Kansas City consultant organizing the city’s upcoming KC GreenSummit 2008.

“The way I look at it now is that people need to have a healthy skepticism about what is `true green,’. There are a lot of people talking the talk and a lot fewer companies walking the walk.”

“There is a lot of green washing going on,” says Suzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group, a marketing firm that tracks the `green’ market. “Consumers are getting a lot savvier about how to sniff that out.”

Most people, she believes, are deeply concerned about the envi-

ronment. “They do care, but when we put green messaging in front of consumers in focus groups, half the room does a giant eye-roll.

“We hear things like, `I’m tired of hearing about the green thing.’

They’re tired of being guilted into it.”

And they’re skeptical of the market.

For that reason, the key these days to selling the “green” is “authenticity,” says Phil Bressler, partner in the advertising firm of Muller Bressler Brown.

“People are out there doing their homework. Anymore a claim has to be completely believable.”

If a company claims it is environmentally friendly, Bressler says, it can’t just be true for one product, it needs to be true for the company in general and its corporate behavior. Does the company recycle? Does it pollute? Does it support the environment in other ways?

“I went to a green conference in D.C. last year,” says another advertising guru, Susan Shank. “We had a speaker who talked about a hybrid car. Everyone has an image of the company as being environmentally conscious. But they have a lobbyist trying to get rid of the fuel efficiency standard.”

Environmentalists urge people not to allow the deluge of “green wash” to dissuade them from action.

Earth’s problems are enormous, they say. But even small positive personal actions – changing light bulbs, driving less, recycling – do make a difference. Allegedly.

“Multiplied out by millions of homes, millions of communities, factories, stores, you do have an appreciable impact,” claims Francisco de la Chesnaye, chief of climatic economics for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

It is generally believed, de la Chesnaye admits, that even if America stopped all carbon emissions now, the earth’s temperature would still continue to rise for probably the next 50 years.

It is also true that even the most drastic environmental restrictions imaginable would only reduce global temperatures by less than one degree over the same period of time. There’s a niggling, growing suspicion that governments and green lobby groups are, at most, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Real strides in solving the Earth’s problems will require the U.S. and other nations to develop “transformative” energy sources – solar, wind, perhaps even a return to nuclear power.

“It’s important to stress: No one thing is going to solve this problem,” de la Chesnaye says.

So Lori Felder figures she’ll just keep doing her bit, buying organic, saving paper, turning off lights.

“I think it’s going to take a lot more people taking these small steps,” she says. “A lot of people taking small steps means a lot more than just me taking small steps.”

Greener living: Small steps, big savings Edward Eveld reports on the little things that can cut your energy use in the home and save you cash at the same time

Y

our contractor just outfitted your house with an array of solar panels, and soon the windmill will be up and running out back. Hey, you’ll be off-grid by summer.

Not your story?

Then you’re like most of us in terms of energy use, living in a regular house without any highfalutin green amenities.

Still, like most people, you’d rather not spend more money than you must on utility bills – or suck up more energy resources than makes good sense.

Start by reducing home energy use.

Autumn and Spring are a fine time to start making changes, during an energy-use lull between winter’s chill and summer’s swelter.

An estimated 25 percent of the West’s enormous energy bill is attributable to households. That’s a big chunk, so even small changes by a lot of people result in significant overall reductions.

Individually, those small changes often amount to only small dollar savings. But if homeowners make gradual improvements, energy experts say, eventually they could cut their energy bills by as much as 50 percent.

So, start small, plan bigger.

“Do the simplest, low-cost things up front, and get those out of the way,” warns Jennifer Thorne Amann, co-author of “Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings.”

Then put yourself in an energy-savings frame of mind as the bigger decisions come along, from appliance purchases and beyond, Amann says.

AUDIT ME Assessing the situation at your house is Job 1. That could mean an audit by a professional, but this is not like an IRD audit. There are no fines, and nobody’s going to jail. Doing an online self-audit is another good way to start.

A professional house audit will take a few hours to perform and cost several hundred dollars. Get ready to hear about the “building envelope.” (See glossary.)

Sharla Riead is one of those conducting residential energy audits.

She says a professional can reliably identify the highest priority improvements that will save the most in energy costs.

For those with air conditioning or heat-pumps, there might be leaks in your house’s ductwork, for instance. Or the auditor might determine your ceiling insulation is fine but insulation is lacking in the basement.

And safety is a concern, Riead says. While you want to plug up a leaky house, you also want to be certain it’s properly ventilated.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 49

windows but they weren’t installed well. Her solution was a trip to the hardware store for caulk and weather-stripping.

“We did that ourselves,” she says. “That and installing door sweeps are really simple things.”

Now, think smaller holes, such as places where pipes, wires and cables enter the house.

Often those spots aren’t insulated well. Spray foam insulation in such small holes and gaps is the quickest and cheapest solution. The foam expands and fills the crevices.

Electrical outlets, which can also leaky draughts, are worth a look as well. Unscrewing the wall plates, placing thin foam pads from the hardware store around the outlets and replacing the plates, can suppress your heat loss.

If you still think on is on and off is off, you’re living in another era, back when TVs warmed up

PLUG HOLES Ever thought of all the places your house leaks air? A fireplace, for example, is a big hole in your house, and dampers don’t always seal tightly.

A recent remodeling show in the US had on display what looked like a big black plastic pillow. It was a fireplace plug. The stoppers are available there for less than US$60, an inexpensive way to reduce air leakage when not using the fireplace.

Amann says people often jump quickly to the conclusion that fixing a leaky house requires new windows. Actually, she says, because replacing a house full of windows is so expensive, it’s tough to recoup the money in energy savings.

But if new windows are in the budget, she says, spend the extra money it takes to get high-efficiency windows that have earned the Energy Star label.

Amann, who has a vintage home herself, says she has newer 50 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

POWER OFF, FOR REAL If you still think on is on and off is off, you’re living in another era, back when TVs warmed up. And most people owned just one.

Nowadays, our “plug-in loads,” as the experts say, are way up: multiple televisions, video game equipment, several computers with associated contraptions, chargers for personal gadgetry and so on.

One problem is that we don’t turn them off, although it might seem like we do, Amann says with a laugh.

“I’m laughing because I’m looking around my home office, and it’s a mass of wires and cords and little gadgets everywhere,” she says.

“I try to tame the little lights, to make them go away.”

Those “little lights” and remote controls are signs that the machines stay on, if only a little bit. And plugged-in chargers, even if not attached to a piece of equipment at the other end, still draw power.

The solution is to either unplug stuff at the wall or, more practically, plug electronic equipment into power strips and switch off the strip when the equipment isn’t in use.

“You actually can save on your electric bill by turning off all those things when you’re not using them,” says energy consultant Dustin Jensen.

USE IT BETTER With a change of habits, most people can use the equipment they have more efficiently.

But first, experts say, get rid of appliances you don’t really need.

Refrigerators are one of the biggest energy consumers in typical houses, so plugged-in but unused or little-used fridges and freezers should be the first to go.

Stove tops and ovens, like anything that heats up quickly, are also energy-intensive, much more so than a microwave oven. One hour of cooking time in an electric oven, for instance, can cost six times more than 15 minutes in a microwave.

“I try to use my microwave as much as I can for cooking,” consultant Kristin Riott says.

On the cleanup side, studies show a fully loaded dishwasher uses less energy than washing the same amount by hand. Use the dishwasher’s light cycle and air-dry setting to improve efficiency.

When picking out new appliances, electronics and other equipment, buy those that are Energy Star rated, which means they are certified by a government program to be as much as 50 percent more efficient than standard products.

Heating and cooling are a home’s biggest energy expense, so every opportunity should be taken to manipulate the thermostat.

Ceiling fans are a good deal in the summer, allowing homeowners to raise the thermostat by as much as 2 degrees, which saves a bundle on air conditioning.

But don’t forget to turn them off when you’re not in the room, Amann says. The air movement cools the skin but doesn’t actually cool the room, so leaving fans on in an empty room is a waste.

As for thermostats, programmable ones reduce energy use.

“The advantage with the `programmable’ is that when you get back from work or wake up in the morning, it’s already bringing the temperature back to your comfort point,” Jensen says. “Plus, you don’t have to think about it.”

Programmable thermostats offer savings of up to 20 percent in heating and cooling costs.

Most people know by now that compact fluorescent lamps are much cheaper to operate than incandescent bulbs. How much?

On average, 75 percent more efficient. About 90 percent of the electricity consumed by an incandescent bulb is given off as heat and only about 10 percent as light. Compact fluorescents are the reverse. They also last much longer, five years on average.

A couple of caveats: For lights on dimmers and in three-way lamps, look for CFLs that say they will work for those applications. And remember that fluorescents have a tiny amount of mercury in them and so must be taken to a recycling center rather than thrown away.

In fact, there’s enough mercury in one light bulb to poison 6,000 gallons of drinking water. If a fluorescent bulb breaks in your home, or in your rubbish sack, US regulators recommend evacuation of the room involved and sealing it off pending removal of the mercury by experts.

SOLAR, GEOTHERMAL The beginning of this story notwithstanding, quite a few folks are investing in what might be called highfalutin, high-tech energy solutions.

Kristin Riott installed a geothermal heat pump system at her home in the US. Such systems use the constant temperature of the Earth to operate and are pricey to install, typically $16,000 to $25,000. But Riott expects to cut her heating and cooling costs by two-thirds. Here in New Zealand, Parex Industries has a much cheaper ($5,000 or so) heat pump that works in your roof cavity to convert ambient heat into hot water, backing up your existing hot water cylinder and saving cash. Best of all, unlike fireplace wetbacks it works with mains-pressure hot water systems.

And energy efficiency retailer Susan Brown, who has expertise in solar installations, notes that people who can’t afford expensive solar panels are drawn to a relatively inexpensive device, the SolarSheat, to help warm their homes in the winter. The panels are placed on an exterior, north-facing wall and cost about $2,500.

Brown has one and likes it.

“It keeps your furnace from having to turn on so much,” she says. “It’s for people looking for something just a little more exciting than the usual efficiency tips.”

More good news – the US websites for SolarSheat retailers reveal they have mailorder customers in New Zealand.

GLOSSARY Blower door: A procedure used in home energy audits. A powerful fan is attached to an exterior door, and air is pulled from the house. An energy auditor rates the house’s leakage or “infiltration” and identifies specific trouble spots.

Building envelope: The house’s roof, walls, windows and foundation, the parts that separate the inside from the outside.

Duct blaster: A test of a home’s ductwork for leakage. An instrument detects leaks as air is forced into the duct system.

Energy Star: A product rating program by the EPA and the Energy Department. An Energy Star designation means the product uses 10 percent to 50 percent less energy and water than standard products. Some builders are constructing Energy Star houses.

Infiltration: Accidental air leakage from your house. The US Energy Department estimates the sources of leaks this way: 31 percent from floors, walls and ceilings, 15 percent from ductwork, 14 percent from the fireplace, 13 percent from plumbing penetrations, 11 percent from doors, 10 percent from windows, 4 percent from fans, 2 percent from electrical outlets.

Phantom power: The electricity used to power light displays and instant-on features of otherwise turned-off computers, TVs and other electronic equipment. It also refers to the lost power when chargers are plugged into an outlet but aren’t charging.

R-value: A measure of a material’s resistance to the transfer of heat through it. R-values describe building insulation. The higher the number, the better the insulation.

DUCTS AND INSULATION Leaky houses waste energy. A home energy audit will check ductwork and insulation in walls, ceilings and basements.

Windows: Replace them? Depends. New windows are expensive, and it’s difficult to recoup the cost in energy savings. Other improvements might be a priority.

Refrigerator: Get rid of that plugged-in but often unused one in the garage or basement. Look for Energy Star appliances and electronics when buying new.

Water Heater: A blanket on an old one could help. As for tankless or demand water heaters, they save energy because they don’t store water. But flow might not be adequate in busy households doing multiple hot-water tasks at the same time.

Electronics: Computers, stereos, TVs and other devices only look like they’re turned off. Most are on, at least a little bit, all the time.

Use power strips to shut them down completely.

Light Bulbs: Compact fluorescents, of course, but get to know Kelvin. The K value on the package tells you the color temperature. For instance, about 2800 K is “soft white,” similar to a 60W incandescent bulb.

Ceiling Fans: They will help in the coming air-conditioning season, allowing you to raise the thermostat several degrees. They work by cooling you, not the room, so turn them off when you leave.

Gas Heater And Ac: Together they’re the energy-suckers in your house – 40 percent or more of a home’s energy use. The myth is the bigger the AC unit the better. Oversized units don’t cool correctly and cost more to operate. n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 51

Austin the Doctors advised Austin Underwood’s parents to expect nothing from their Down syndrome baby. Twenty-nine years later, he has proven them wrong. He’s been to university, lives independently and, best of all, wakes up happy every day, as MARY ROGERS reports

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Amazing

H

e swings into the supermarket, snatches up a small shopping basket, waves to his boss and makes a beeline for the bananas. He has carefully combed his straight, brown hair, shaved his soft, round cheeks and tucked his pink button-down shirt into his jeans – but on this day he is not working.

Instead he is making banana pudding – his grandmother’s recipe – and this, like almost everything else in life,

makes him smile.

At 29, Austin Underwood is the rarest of creatures: a genuinely happy man.

Against all odds, he has grabbed the brass ring of independence and he isn’t about to let go. Never mind that he can’t read, or write, or drive a car, or count to 40.

Forget that sometime during the miracle of his beginning one more chromosome added to the mystery of his DNA. That extra chromosome marked him forever as one with Down syndrome, a disorder characterized by flat features, upward-slanting eyes and limited mental capabilities.

The day Austin was born, doctors told his parents he had no future – would never even be potty trained. “Don’t get attached,” said one. “Put him away.”

But Austin has done what many with average intelligence have not; he has carved out a place for himself.

He pays his way in the world with money he earns as a supermarket bagger combined with a disability check. His parents have made financial arrangements for his future, but his mother says she hasn’t given him money in years.

He shares an apartment with a roommate, cleans, cooks and volunteers at a nonprofit resale shop. He walks to work and to the movies, occasionally takes the train to see a girlfriend and sometimes flies to visit his brother.

He remembers other people’s birthdays, worries about his weight, wants to look good

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 53

in a swimsuit and likes to get dressed up. He would wear a tuxedo every day of the week if he could.

Best of all, he says he gets up happy every day.

Why? “Because I know I’m going to work. I’ll meet people I like and they will like me,” he says matter-of-factly in a lilting lisp. He peers over his wire-framed glasses, his mouth stretched into a perpetual grin. “I always have a big smile on my face,” he declares.

So how did the baby born with such limited potential become this confident young man, this sweet and innocent spirit that exudes hope and happiness – this beam of light?

His story is both amazingly simple and profoundly complicated.

It began with a dream.

DREAM WALKERS High school sweethearts Jan and Joe Underwood had always dreamed of having a big family; and so before their daughter, Sara, turned 2 they planned another pregnancy – but this one would be full of surprises.

“Austin was the only baby we planned,” says Jan, a businesswoman and mother of three. Anthony was born just 19 months later.

At 26, Jan was young and fit, hardly a candidate for complications. “But I remember when he was born, the nurses swept him away. I could see and sense that something was wrong.”

She was right, of course. Something was wrong. Austin was born with Down syndrome. One moment the Underwoods’ dream was coming true, and the next, their world tilted crazily out of kilter.

They angrily rejected the doctor’s suggestions to give up the child. “That wasn’t even a possibility,” Joe says. “No. We were going home with him. You have to play the cards you’re dealt.”

And so the course was set.

When Joe’s job as an auctioneer took him back on the road, Jan took time to cry about this baby the world might never love. She cried hysterically, too. “After that I thought, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not doing all this boohooing over this kid,” she says.

This family had a life before Austin. It would have a life with Austin – and he would have to fit in. She would help him reach his fullest potential, whatever it might be, but she would not sacrifice her own life.

“I always knew that if something happened to me this kid would have to live. He would have to live,” she says.

And that became the Underwoods’ new dream, one not so very different from the first. They wanted all their babies to become caring, mature and independent adults.

But was that an impossible dream?

THE FAMILY PLAN Jan wanted Austin to interact with children who did not have his disabilities. She wanted him to imitate “normal” children. She rejected programs designed only for children with Down or other mental handicaps.

They angrily She started with a mothers’ day out at her church rejected the doctor’s when Austin was only a few weeks old. That was an easy suggestions to give up first step, but as Austin grew, so did the challenges. the child. “That wasn’t even a possibility,” Joe Mainstreaming children with differences was a says. “No. We were rather new concept in 1978 and sometimes not a going home with him. popular one, but Jan was determined. When others You have to play the clucked their tongues or shook their heads, she and cards you’re dealt Joe paid no attention.

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And so it was that Austin moved through the school system, blending special-education classes with hours in a classroom filled with average children. Once a good friend said, “Jan, one day you’ll regret this. You’re normalizing him too much, and he’s not normal.”

Jan shrugged off the concern. She became a pioneer in the mainstreaming approach to education.

At home the Underwoods treated Austin just as they did Sara and Anthony. Yes, he was slower to learn the rules, she says, but she was persistent.

“I remember he spent a lot of time in the time-out corner,” says his sister, Sara, now 32.

As he grew, Austin amazed even his family. He joined a swim team. His grandfather Bob Underwood taught him to play golf.

His granddaddy John Beneventi made a weekly ritual of taking him to Kiwanis Club meetings. They stayed for pancakes afterward.

Austin begged to take piano lessons so he could play the “Aggie War Hymn” for Beneventi.

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“He learned to play something,” says Jan. She laughs.

By then laughter was a familiar sound in the busy house.

SCHOOL DAZE When Austin was about 14, his IQ tested a dismal 41. “He shouldn’t have been able to do anything,” Jan says. But Austin confounded the experts. He could do a lot. The family moved, and Jan got involved in the special-education program.

Austin rode the bus to school each morning while Jan hurried off to the city 25 minutes away, where she owns a shop that sells school uniforms. Austin came home every afternoon, let himself in, called his mom to let her know he’d made it, then drove a little off-road vehicle up to the mailbox.

“He really had to take care of himself out there and make decisions,” Jan says.

When Austin went to high school, he was mainstreamed in physical education, theater, art and cooking classes. As manager

not offer such a program. “Every state should have something like that,” he says. At 27, he focuses on his career, but one day, he says, he might take up that cause.

“I don’t think Austin could be living on his own if he hadn’t gone to college,” he says. “It gave him so much confidence.”

Austin’s university classes were all about cooking. He learned to flip an omelet and worked in the school cafeteria as the stir-fry cook. He learned that he could do something valuable.

Austin flew home for holidays by himself and when it was time for him to return to school, his mother would take him to the airport, walk him to the gate and wait until he boarded.

Soon he wouldn’t allow such coddling. “I had to let him out at the curb,” Jan says. “That was hard.”

The next challenge was even more difficult.

of the basketball team, he even got a letter jacket.

“I was always known as Austin’s sister,” Sara says.

But Austin remembers that it wasn’t always easy. “Some kids make fun of me. It makes me sad, but I get up happy,” he says.

He’s learned to live with his differences in a world that is both accepting and sometimes hostile.

Sara was the first to graduate and go away to college; younger brother Anthony was next. Austin wanted to go, too.

Jan found a vocational program at Eastern New Mexico University. “They had to be able to get up with an alarm clock and do their laundry,” she says.

They went for interviews. “If you could have seen Austin’s face when he was accepted, it would melt you,” says Anthony, now a producer with “Good Morning America” in New York. “When I think of Austin, I think of happiness. It’s infectious. He’s the biggest optimist I know.”

Anthony is dismayed that Texas’ rich university system does

THE NEXT CHAPTER While Austin was away at school, Jan and Joe built a new home in Fort Worth with a room and private bath just for him. After graduation, he moved in but quickly grew restless. He got a job in a supermarket and then announced that he wanted his own apartment.

He would not be discouraged, and so the family found a place less than a mile from their home. His roommate has Down syndrome, too. They met in high school and together they keep the apartment spotless. Austin does the cooking. “I make hamburger, mashed potatoes, green beans, sometimes meatloaf,” he says.

An air hockey game fills a corner of the living room. There is a big sofa, a TV, family pictures on the mantel. On New Year’s Day they had another friend with Down over for hamburgers.

In his bedroom, Austin has stacks of movies: “The Little Mermaid,” “Stuart Little,” “Aladdin.”

“I went to see `Alvin and the Chipmunks.’ It’s a real good movie,” he says. But he and his girlfriend are the stars of his favorite film. He snaps on the video. He wears a tuxedo; she has on a party dress. “This is the best movie ever,” he says. “Her mom made it for me.”

Someday he’d like to marry. “Well, you only live once. Why not have it all?” says his mother. “Marriage for Austin would be companionship ... a soft place to land.”

In the kitchen Austin carefully places vanilla wafers atop the banana pudding. He flips on an Elvis Presley lamp on a nearby table and Elvis belts out, “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog.”

The Elvis doll on the lamp gyrates to the music.

Austin twirls, too, reveling in every man’s dream of independence.

QUICK FACTS ABOUT DOWN SYNDROME 1. One in every 733 babies is born with Down syndrome – about 5,000 in the United States each year (55 in NZ).

2. Down syndrome may be transmitted from either the mother or the father, but women age 35 and older have an increased risk of having a child with Down. A 35-year-old-woman has a 1 in 400 chance; by age 40 the odds are 1 in 110, and at age 45 the risk is 1 in 35. However, 80 percent of children with Down are born to women younger than 35.

3. Today, children with Down syndrome may live well into their 50s and beyond, but in 1910 the life expectancy of a baby born with Down was only nine years.

4. People with Down syndrome are not always happy. Like everyone else, they respond to positive expressions of love and friendship and are hurt when treated unkindly. n

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ill the last W

All Black please left turn out the lights

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O

ne foul week in May called “Carter Clause”. This is a kind New Zealand has a accelerated the issue of rugby sabbatical allowing playdesperate fight on its to a new level. The ers like Dan a short, lucrative stint nation will soon lose abroad while still being contracted the talents of All Blacks first five hands to retain the world’s to the NZRU, meaning they’re still Nick Evans, Highlanders captain available for the All Blacks. deepest pool of rugby Craig Newby and Canterbury stalIt would require the selectors picktalent. Cash-rich clubs wart Caleb Ralph. Even more woring Carter on his form in Europe rying was the very public discussions rather than the Super 14, a seismic in England and France from Dan Carter and Jerry Collins, shift in selectorial policy. doing little to allay fears they’ll soon The ultra-talented Carter has are flashing astronomical be joining the mass exodus. agents looking after his best Suddenly the New Zealand Rugby figures under the noses of interests.

Union’s faced with the biggest crisis After the heartbreak of Cardiff the younger players like Dan next since the game’s switch to professionRugby World Cup was still a alism in 1996. huge goal for the 26 year old, when Carter, who’s in danger of The union stomached a $1-point-7 he fronted a media scrum on the joining the flood of players issue at a Crusaders training session million loss in 2007, the same year the All Blacks failed to deliver at recently. cashing-in late in their the Rugby World Cup. Crowds and “That’s the long term – but there TV ratings are dwindling for the careers. Sports columnist are three or four years to go until Super 14, there’s a convoluted experithen and a lot of life to be lived. I’ve Chris Forster ment to remodel the rules to make got so much going on, on the field – the game more palatable to puntcertain goals I’ve got to achieve”. surveys the damage, ers and viewers, and the provincial He was typically honest and Air New Zealand Cup needs another straight forward over the Carter and what’s being done to drastic overhaul to make it viable.

Clause too. stem the flow.

All of these factors are leading to “Yeah it’s something quite differtop players deciding money first – ent to the norm. I guess it’s a bit of home country loyalties second. It’s a jungle out there and the a surprise, but I’m not sure if players will take that opportunity natives are restless. or not. Yeah – I guess it’s an option”.

NZRU CEO Steve Tew is trying to keep things in perspective.

However the huge money on offer from clubs like the Tana He maintains the number of players leaving is no different to Umaga-coached Toulon, in the South of France, is unlikely to previous years. What is different is the loftier pay packets being come with any concessions for the NZRU. thrown at younger players. These are guys like Dan Carter and Nick Evans will need even wider latitude from Graham Henry’s Nick Evans still in their mid-20s and in their prime. Players who’ll brains trust. The 27 year old understudy to Carter’s committed be a key part of the All Blacks bid to end a 24 year drought when to a three year deal with powerful London club Harlequins, after New Zealand hosts the 2011 Rugby World Cup. one last stint in the Air New Zealand Cup. At a recent International Rugby Board meeting in Dublin, Tew It was a tough call for the affable Evans, who only last year made a pitch for the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest issue. shifted north from Highlanders country to play for the Blues in “I have raised our concerns about players leaving for this part of Auckland. the world a number of times … both formally and informally …

He was involved in talks with the NZRU for a new deal – but and it’s not just us, it’s the Australians who are suffering. To the in the end it was London-1, New Zealand-nil. point of where I’m becoming a bit of a boring bastard”.

“It never came down to margins or anything like that. It came Part of his solution to divert the increased poaching of players down to lifestyle choice and what I wanted to do. from the north is a plot to expand the Super 14 to embrace Pacific There is nothing ‘sabbatical’ about this – it’s a full commitment.

Rim nations, including North America and Argentina.

I doubt I will return to have another crack at the All Blacks”.

“We have a very strong commitment in a tight time frame to If he misses the cut in the first test squad of the season – it’s hold talks with the Japanese, Canadians. Americans, Argentinians likely Evans will enforce an option in his contract for an even earand the Pacific Islanders over the next 4 to 6 months”. lier departure to the UK. However it’s unlikely there’ll be any drastic overhaul until at But he has offered a positive indicator for the future. least 2010, when the current News Corp contract for media cov“The guys who are coming in just under the All Blacks level are erage runs out. the guys they (the NZRU) should be focussing on – they’re the Tew has inherited a shaky foundation from his predecessor Chris future of New Zealand Rugby”.

Moller, and the alarm bells are ringing.

Jerry Collins could well be the next household name lost to the “If the drain on our players continues at the current level – rugby riches of England. The rumour-mill’s circling around the throughout our game – then we are going to be confined to Tier Bath club, and a deal worth close to $2 million.

2 status very shortly”.

Collins recently denied he was seeking an early release from his Dan Carter is the next cab off the rank. The near certainty he’ll NZRU contract which doesn’t expire until 2009, although in his head to Toulon or Toulouse next summer has prompted a so- own obtuse way hinted that may only be temporary.

62 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

RECENTLY DEPARTED

FROM

TO

Nick Evans (27)

The Blues/Auckland, 16 tests

Harlequins

Craig Newby (28)

Highlanders/Otago

Leicester

Isa Nacewa (25)

Blues/Auckland

Leinster

Caleb Ralph (31)

former All Black/Crusaders

Japan

Reuben Thorne (33)

Crusaders/Canterbury, 50 tests

Japan

NEARLY DEPARTED

PAST DEPARTURES

Dan Carter

Luke McAlister

Jerry Collins

Doug Howlett

Greg Somerville

Aaron Mauger

Troy Flavell

Carl Hayman

Piri Weepu

Anton Oliver

Mose Tuiali’i

Chris Jack Rico Gear Marty Holah

27 year old Collins has a family in the UK and clearly enjoyed a post World Cup stint there.

The Hurricanes hard man is part and parcel of the All Blacks forward pack, and one of the top international drawcards in the game. An enforced exit would be catastrophic.

New Zealand Rugby urgently needs to find a tactical and financial solution to keep Collins and Carter involved with the All Blacks.

They must keep the mana and lure of playing in the famous black strip through to their hosting of the next World Cup. It’s the only real way of stopping the flood of professional players – who’ve decided money is a damned sight more important than representing their country. n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 63

think life | money

A key clause in your will Peter Hensley illustrates the dangers of forgetting to add a key clause to your will Jim and Moira were aware of the problem before George and Mildred went around for afternoon tea. Moira remembered it well, it was a Monday afternoon and she had just baked a banana cake that morning and once it had cooled she topped it off with her special lemon flavoured icing.

Although the boys enjoyed a regular beer after golf, their preferred beverage was tea which Moira served to her guests on the deck overlooking the sea. The north facing aspect allowed them to enjoy the view and soak up the late afternoon sun. Moira was exceptionally pleased with the way the cake had turned out. It was soft and moist and the men were not shy to show their enthusiasm for her home baking.

64 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

Mildred waited until George excused himself to visit the bathroom. She confided in a low voice to Moira that she was becoming increasingly worried about George. He was forgetting things. At first George glossed over his mistakes by saying he was suffering from early onset of old timer’s disease. But lately the jokes had stopped as the forgetfulness had increased.

Why, even last week he had to ask Mildred to enter his PIN number when they went to pay for their groceries.

Moira had noticed it and had even discussed with Jim how she could bring up the subject as she was concerned, not only for George but more so for Mildred. The incidents on their own were usually of a

trivial nature, but collectively they suggested something more sinister. The two couples had known each other since childhood and had been enjoying retirement for over a decade. There wasn’t much that happened that they did not share. George and Mildred had never got around to having children, whereas Jim and Moira had two boys and two girls and they in turn had had two children each. Moira ensured that Mildred never missed out on sharing the trials and tribulations that went hand in hand with raising a family.

Moira had a sixth sense when it came to solving problems and her forthrightness had not let her down in her three score and ten plus years. She waited for George to rejoin them on the deck and asked him directly what the problem was. Jim noticed the look of shock and disbelief on Mildred’s face when Moira challenged George about his recent behaviour. George sat in silence then, after a while, a tear ran down the side of his face. Then it all came out. He knew he had a problem but had hoped no one else had noticed.

Mildred’s quickly composed herself and said, “You silly man, of course we noticed, we knew there was a problem, we just didn’t know that you knew”. Normally Jim did not handle these emotional situations very well, but even he could feel the tension start to melt away. He cleared his throat to say something, but after a quick glance at Moira he decided that it might be wise for him to keep his mouth shut. He was pleased he did as George needed an opportunity to share what he was experiencing.

Moira suggested that Mildred take George to seek some professional assistance, not only from their local medical practitioner, but also from their legal adviser.

Jim recalled that George and Mildred had created a family trust prior to their retirement. It was about the same time he and Moira had worked through some estate planning issues of their own. Because George and Mildred never had any children and also due to the fact that both had received substantial legacies from their separate parents they were by most counts, independently wealthy.

In fact they both utilized the services of the same investment adviser. He regularly encouraged his clients to ensure that that they each had appointed a power of attorney, just in case. He also encouraged those clients that had a family trust that their will specifically cancelled any debt they might still have outstanding to the

trustees of their family trust.

Jim recalled that his adviser had told him there were two methods of cancelling the debt owed to he and Moira when they transferred their assets into their family trust, one was by a forgiveness of debt program and the second was to die. By choice everyone selected the first option, however the second option was only available to those who had the foresight to include a specific clause that addressed that issue in their will. Jim had heard of a case where the person’s will did not cancel the outstanding debt and consequently the executors of the will had to lay claim to assets that the family believed were owned by the trustees of the trust.

After taking George back to the doctor Mildred found out that his memory lapses were due to some medication he was taking for incontinence. He was embarrassed about having to take the medication in the first place and it turned out that this particular side effect was a common complaint.

Once George came off the medication his memory improved dramatically.

George was thrilled to have the issue sorted. He and Mildred not only came up with some practical steps and personal routine to manage his ailment without drugs, they also confirmed that the structure they

put in place to manage their investments was as bullet proof as they could make it.

Although Mildred was not looking forward to the time when she would have to manage alone, she was grateful that it looked like George was going to be around for a few more years yet.

She was also grateful that George was able to still travel. She never had a desire to travel and subsequently never owned a passport. However George was quite the opposite. Once they had come to terms with this issue, George found that several of his mates (including Jim) were in similar circumstances, generally brought about by

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either death or divorce. Since he had been retired he had been away at least once and sometimes twice a year. Moira wasn’t sure if it was Mildred or George who looked forward to the trips as much. Whilst Mildred missed George when he was away, she still enjoyed her own company and best of all she enjoyed his stories when he came home.

At least now that he is off the medication he will be able to recall where they went and what happened.

Please note that a copy of Peter Hensley’s Disclosure Statement is available on request and is free of charge. © Peter J Hensley May 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”

www.evesbite.com INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 65

think life | EDUCATION

Lust munth I coodnt spel ‘teecha’…

The barbarians aren’t at the gates – they’ve long been running the education politburo, argues Amy Brooke And on it goes. It’s good that the public is finally beginning to catch on. It’s not so good that for several decades now, those within academic circles who well knew heads should roll because of how appallingly short-changed New Zealand children have been this last half-century, should have done so little about it. Some tried – some still do – but their voices are not loud enough, determined and insistent enough.

And of course, brave souls who did put their heads up above the ramparts experienced the sheer nastiness of the so-called intellectual Left (which in essence, shows lit66 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

tle genuine intellectual capacity) evidenced in discrimination and spite exercised by the inner circles of our interlocking, leftist politburo. These embrace both the educationist and literary in-groups – including the children’s (sub)literary establishment, described recently by one of our very few genuinely talented poets as “lollipop gangsters…whatever we think of what goes on in the world of adult writing is nothing to the viscous and sometimes vicious flat planet of kid’s books…”

Hardly the picture we get of happy everafter-stories, now a booming profit area with guaranteed sales to schools and librar-

ies for those inner circle, aggressively-competing writers for the young, indulging in all the sharp elbow-work of “peer reviewing”; dominated by those obediently obeying the dictaks of the controlling establishment that books written for children are favoured if they follow the prescribed socio-political agenda in “guidelines”. Add in the hype of the dubious awards and the “children’s own choice” (with severely-limited options) and on goes the down-grading of our youngsters’ intellectual possibilities.

The well-planned, long attack on the West, through all the institutions which influence society, particularly our young, has not, of course, been confined to New Zealand. Other English-speaking Western democracies have their own problems.

Back in 1986, the American Secretary of State, William Bennett, exclaimed in dismay when he heard how badly US students were performing. Initiatives such as specialist schools catering for those with different talents, and returning parents’ own taxation payments in voucher form so that they can afford the right school for their child – providing an incentive for individual schools to improve their performances – have all helped – and predictably, been vehemently opposed by the usual suspects. California was also smart enough to do a hotcake drop of the New Zealand-imported, ridiculous Look and Say whole-word language teaching, when its children came last of 48 states tested for reading competence. Our establishment educationists banned phonic teaching, condemning so many of our young to bewilderment and incompetence, deprived of the tools of understanding the meaning of words – and penalizing teachers who gamely fought back. One uncommonly competent teacher at a son’s local primary school was told by the inspectorate to forget any future promotion because of his support for phonic teaching – and his insistence on the importance of grammar and syntax at this level.

No doubt many within what should be a profession – yet, individuals who can’t even parallel the skills of trained tradesmen or technicians – are simply well-meaning, but incompetent. It can be hard to distinguish sheer ignorance, or what can fairly be called stupidity, from actual malevolence. It was simply stupidity that had one decent teacher, programmed after a refresher course, to follow instructions to ignore the raised hand of any keen, enthusiastic pupil, anxious to answer questions.

Bright children, he’d been told, became

bloated if praised, and could fend for themselves. However, if a slow child answered, he was to make a big fuss. If a clever child was the only one who knew the answer and he couldn’t avoid asking, he was to simply nod and say, Uh huh. He ended up inordinately praising inferior written and oral work from average or poor pupils, while dismaying and switching off a group of very decent, clever boys who had begun to think this teacher actually disliked them.

Stupidity or malevolence? There was the call one evening from a senior inspector downright rude to my young son – Go and get your mother! – who worriedly fetched me to the phone. Its background was an article of mine for the Christchurch Press on what was and wasn’t happening in schools. The response from parents was overwhelmingly supportive. About 55 letters flooded in, and the then literary editor of The Press, Naylor Hillary, noted that, apart from the Springbok tour, it had generated more correspondence than any other issue to date. One parent demanded to know what school the semi-literate teacher who attacked the article taught at, to make sure his children didn’t attend there. Two senior lecturers in English wrote, privately agreeing. When I pointed out to one, the wife of a professor, that her support would carry far more weight for the cause of improving the lot for our young if she wrote publicly, she said she couldn’t possibly, because others would be so unpleasant to her in the staffroom… She, added, however, that even left-wing colleagues were now dismayed that the worst of their graduates were going back into the schools as English teachers.

The call that evening was in response to my querying the deliberate withholding of basic skills such as teaching children how to spell; whether to put full stops or commas, and other very necessary groundwork.

Even cursive writing, for example, was now not being taught. My son’s utterly ignorant young primary school teacher condescendingly told me, a former secondary school language teacher, to “leave it to the professionals”, adding that he “wasn’t interested in my prattling” – when I pointed out that this nine-year-old was being taught nothing at all in English lessons and was worried about it. His reply was that the child “could put what feels right.” My son pointed he didn’t know what felt right. He was being cheated of good teaching.

The aggressive inspector’s problem was my querying the edict that spelling should

...about 90% of his Stage II and III Sociology students lost marks in recent essays for poorto-appalling grammar, spelling, punctuation, or no knowledge whatever of paragraphing… “it’s as if they think these things don’t matter

no longer be taught in primary schools. He had no time for the notion that children could be given words to learn at night; be taught the skills of syllabification to make longer words manageable. His was the Marxist propaganda of unfairness. Some children would already know eight of the ten words. Others would know only two, and have to learn eight. We couldn’t have this. This same son, then a poor speller himself, was incredulous. “But I’d be the one to have to learn eight!” he said. “And that would be good for me because I don’t know how to spell properly.”

Associate Professor Greg Newbold from the University of Canterbury emails that about 90% of his Stage II and III Sociology students lost marks in recent essays for

poor-to-appalling grammar, spelling, punctuation, or no knowledge whatever of paragraphing… “it’s as if they think these things don’t matter.”

They don’t – to the education politiburo, and few teachers now can competently teach these. It must be vastly discouraging for university staff in many instances to be told simply to ignore the egregious incompetence of their students in using English – otherwise so few would pass.

Barbarism is defined by what it loves – but equally by what it hates – a civilized, stable, knowledgeable society. © Copyright Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds..co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 67

think life | SCIENCE

Volcanic warming Does the sea hold ancient climate clues?, asks Faye Flam For years, climate researchers puzzled over a long hot spell around 90 million years ago, when tropical breadfruit trees flourished in Greenland, crocodiles slithered above the Arctic Circle and at least a few dinosaurs roamed Antarctica.

It’s a serious concern because the warmth came at least in part from greenhouse gases, and climate scientists need to understand that period, they say, to better forecast how 68 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

rising carbon dioxide levels will change our climate in the future. Computer models scientists rely on for those predictions can’t quite account for how steamy it got during that ancient period, says Lee Kump, a geoscience professor at Pennsylvania State University.

In a recent issue of the journal Science he and colleague David Pollard propose a possible solution: a radical change in the num-

ber of microorganisms in the ocean that in turn altered the Earth’s cloud cover.

Part of the warming is explained by volcanic eruptions, whose products appear in the geologic record, Kump said. Those would have spewed lots of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – just not enough to allow crocodiles to avoid freezing in the Arctic.

Their climate models did much better, he

“In just the last 100 years we’ve increased the atmospheric carbon dioxide from 280 to 385 parts per million. We’re reaching into the Earth and taking out CO2 by pumping oil and burning it

said, when he factored in a drop in marine algae. The algae influence the climate by excreting a gas known as dimethylsulfide, which reacts to form other compounds that create cloud-seeding droplets. Fewer algae mean fewer and thinner clouds, allowing more sunlight to reach Earth and add more heat.

If such a die-off happened in the coming decades it could make our global-warming situation worse, he said.

“It’s this lurking amplifier of climate change, and so I think it applies to any period,” Kump said.

The ancient heating in question happened during the geological period known as the Cretaceous, which followed the better known Jurassic. The Cretaceous – from 145 million to 65 million years ago – marks the final period of the reign of the dinosaurs.

Today’s familiar continents had separated by then, and had drifted close to their current positions. Antarctica was at the bottom of the world and Greenland near the top, but they had yet to accumulate their current ice caps.

During the warmest stretch – between 100 million and 83 million years ago – the Earth’s temperature was not just hotter, it was much more uniform from equator to poles.

Could the volcanoes plus a change in aquatic life have led to all that? “It’s a novel idea that can explain a lot of observations,” says Richard Norris, a professor of paleobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. But he warns that the idea might prove hard to test.

Norris says it’s also possible that even the most respected predictions underestimate the warming we can expect from a given increase in CO2 – an issue that came up at a recent climate meeting at Harvard University. “Most of us at that conference agreed that the likelihood is we’ve been lowballing the sensitivity of climate to CO2 forcing,” he says.

To make things more confusing, Norris says, the volcanoes in question may have erupted too early to account for the Cretaceous warming. “But that makes it all the more mysterious why we had hottub temperatures at the tropics and breadfruit trees at high latitudes,” he said. “We’re missing something fundamental in our climate models. Everyone thinks clouds have something to do with the problem.”

Others expressed skepticism of Kump’s idea but not of the importance of under-

standing the distant past. “Studying these past warm climates is the only tool we have for evaluating if these models are any good when we tell them to predict what the future looks like,” argues Karen Bice, a climatologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. But she says there’s no evidence for a drop in the ocean’s microorganism populations as Kump proposes.

“In order for their mechanism to explain the tens of millions of years of warmth we’d need a stressed biosphere during that entire time,” she says – meaning a sudden enough change in conditions to kill lots of algae.

To the contrary, she says, the fossil record shows that sulfide-expelling marine organisms adapted to the increased heat and were doing just fine during the Cretaceous.

She believes it’s possible that ocean and atmospheric currents at the time distributed heat differently from today, but that idea is hard to test.

Carbon dioxide-based warming can bring on changes that accelerate the process, she says, as appears to have happened in a subsequent and more sudden heat wave in the Eocene period around 55 million years ago.

Slow warming from volcanic CO2 started melting sea-floor sediments called methane hydrates. That allowed lots of heat-trapping methane to bubble up from the oceans and into the atmosphere.

Everything from the changes in the Earth’s rotation axis to its orbit around the sun have been connected to past climate fluctuations, but Bice said the really long-term changes like the one seen in the Cretaceous period come from changes in the inorganic carbon cycle. The researchers estimated that carbon dioxide reached about three times present levels back then – something they can’t rule out happening in the next century if fuel burning keeps increasing.

In just the last 100 years we’ve increased the atmospheric carbon dioxide from 280 to 385 parts per million, Bice says. “We’re reaching into the Earth and taking out CO2 by pumping oil and burning it.”

Scripps’ Norris claims that while scientists can’t yet predict exactly what that will do to various regions of the planet, they do know we’ve already changed the atmosphere radically, and for all practical purposes, irreversibly.

“We’re going to a world that’s not like today,” he claims. And if it’s true that the predictions underestimate the potency of CO2 to change the climate, he says, “then as George Bush Senior once said, we are in deep doo-doo.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 69

think life | life | TECHNOLOGY

A perfect storm Ian Wishart finds a hardware overhaul provides a unique opportunity to sort out some software issues as well

There are tides in the affairs of men and, in this particular case, technology, and May has been something of a flood tide in the Investigate office.

A “perfect storm” of events converged that made it an ideal time to review this latest piece of kit – Nuance’s PDF Converter Professional 5. The “storm” included a replacement notebook computer, and assorted software issues involved in transferring across data from the old machine. It 70 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

also included the recently reviewed Office 2007 package, and in particular its ability to instantly search your computer for files courtesy of a new desktop search engine.

One of the big features on PDF Converter 5 is the ability to create searchable PDF documents out of virtually anything. In fact, the Nuance media kit makes a point of highlighting the usefulness of this when it comes to old email files.

Perfect timing. The Outlook data file

“The PDF can rapidly be searched, but most importantly it can be happily archived in an easily-read format, unlike the nightmare that remains Microsoft’s .pst file system

at the heart of our system is nearly 7GB in size, and that’s the stripped-down version. Like George Washington’s axe with its endless series of replacement handles and blades, the Investigate email servers have collected baggage via accretion as files were transferred between systems over the past three years.

Like many businesses and individuals, we need to keep data backups of old email traffic. But under the old Office 2003 get up, sans instant search, trawling through old email folders was starting to take longer than driving from Auckland to Wellington on a scooter.

Office 2007 provides for much faster searching, but at 7 gigs, the email file is thoroughly unwieldy even so. How does one avoid creating such a behemoth, without running the perilous gauntlet of Microsoft’s dubious “archive” process?

Enter PDF Converter 5. This latest version draws on its ability to “package” a series of different files into one PDF. All of a sudden, the hundreds of different emails you receive each week and their attachments can now, at the press of a button, be integrated into one mega-PDF, and the attachments can still be read by clicking on links. The PDF can rapidly be searched, but most importantly it can be happily archived in an easily-read format, unlike the nightmare that remains Microsoft’s .pst file system. Harnessed to the Office 07 desktop search, it’s an archive match made in Heaven.

Well, almost. The programme doesn’t automatically record the dates of the emails. The “to” and “from” and “subject” fields are there, but not the date. Instead, the designers include a coverpage for each archive file that records the date of the archive. If you archive your email every week or every month, well and good, but if you want the exact date of a particular item you’ll have to go back to the Outlook

file to find it. Even so, the beauty of having emails and attachments neatly archived as searchable PDFs overcomes, for me, the lack of a date stamp.

The programme prefers folders with fewer than 150 emails in them, so use that as a guide as to how often you need to archive.

On a bang for buck basis, the Nuance product outguns Adobe’s Acrobat software by a considerable margin. Not only is it significantly cheaper (well under half the price), but it has several features that Acrobat doesn’t yet offer. You’ve seen the email archive facility, but another beauty is text-to-speech – a feature that converts a PDF document into a talking book.

In the corporate environment, this can turn the morning and evening commute into productive time, simply by converting reports or other documents you need to read into audio files at the touch of a button, and listening to them while you drive to or from work. While it might not be your idea of fun, you’ll appreciate the feature when you’re running late for a deadline.

Another trick up PDF Converter 5’s sleeve is support for Microsoft’s new PDF alternative, the XPS format, which Acrobat doesn’t offer.

As we’ve come to expect from Nuance, the engineering grunt behind speech-recognition programmes like Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the optical character recognition prowess of the Omnipage software, has come in useful in the development of PDF Converter 5. Omni’s ability to scan a PDF and output it as a Word document with a similar layout has been harnessed here too, and one of PDF 5’s biggest strengths is the way it can take a PDF and convert it to editable text in Word, Excel or a range of other programmes. You can also create PDFs to take full advantage of the online experience, by embedding rich media content and links that fire up on demand.

Expect to see the results of all this in a looming website upgrade for Investigate magazine, with this new capability to reach back into ancient PDF archives and re-output in online text.

For those conscious of disk space, PDF Converter 5 allows you to squeeze existing PDFs into smaller spaces via the MRC PDF compression process utilized in other Nuance products like PaperPort – particularly useful in the case of those large email archives.

At $199, compared with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional at $700, Nuance is clearly gunning for market share and is ideal for

home and business users. Local distributors Mistral Software, (www.mistralsoftware.co.nz) have further details on features and availability.

AND ON THE MOBILE FRONT… Mobile broadband users, and people living in dodgy cellphone coverage areas generally, have more to be thankful about this month. The good folk at wpsantennas.com have come through with an updated range of cellphone booster antennas and adapter cables to fit the latest phones and mobile data cards on the NZ market.

This came about because of Telecom’s new Sierra Wireless 595U mobile broadband card. Telecom provide an optional booster antenna for it at $50, but I wasn’t overly impressed by its performance and browsed the WPS Antennas website for an adapter cable that would hook it up to my existing ARC Wireless Freedom antenna, reviewed two years ago in Investigate.

Readers may recall the stunning performance of that little unit. Well, the good news is that the patch cable for the new Telecom data card is only US$14.95. The even better news is that WPS also have cables at the same price for Vodafone’s Huawei 3G data cards. The great news is that adapter cables are available for virtually

every phone and card, and that the aerials they offer suck signal out of the sky like a vacuum cleaner.

WPS threw in a review copy of their new vehicle based antenna, the AA-012 magnetic mount. This cheap little beastie is designed to use the roof of your car as a baseplate, and it increases your mobile phone or data coverage by a whopping 10 to 15 times. I took it on a half hour drive through a notorious cellular blackspot on the fringes of Auckland and the cellphone call never dropped out once.

The AA-12 is not recommended for indoors use (and should be kept away from credit cards because of its strong magnet) but can be mounted on a corrugated iron roof if you live in a bad coverage area.

Highly recommended, and check out the wpsantennas.com website for details of adapter cables for your particular phone.

The package (AA-12 plus adapter cable) will set you back somewhere in the region of US$45 plus shipping (minimal). Unlike the specific booster aerials sold by Telecom or Vodafone which can only be used for one specific phone or device, the AA-12 or the ARC Freedom units can be used for all phones on both major networks, provided you purchase the correct adapter cable for your particular phone.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 71

think life | TECHNOLOGY “Most expect that 7 will be available in 2010 or later if development falters.

There are some rumbles that it may get out the door in 2009, however, which would allow the majority of computer users to move directly from XP to 7

Civil war in Microsoft Vista and XP square off for users’ hearts, minds, writes Lou Dolinar No wild-eyed Linux hackers, these guys: Now, at a recent conference in Las Vegas, analysts from the respected Gartner Group say Windows Vista is “untenable” and “collapsing.”

That’s a radical position for a mainstream company to take. And indeed, corporate America seems to support the thesis. More 72 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

than a year after its late introduction, Vista has captured only about 6 percent of the enterprise market. XP is still going strong; its corporate market share hasn’t budged.

Vista is merely replacing older operating systems, according to Forrester Research.

Does this matter to home users?

Microsoft can steamroll the individual

customer (after all, virtually all retail systems come with Vista), but not the big guys. They’re capable of dragging Microsoft in their direction. Will the big guys skip Vista altogether and hold out for the next release, known as Windows 7? That would put Vista in the Microsoft hall of shame along with Windows ME and the user-condescending “Microsoft Bob” interface.

The release this month of Service Packs for XP and Vista makes XP look increasingly viable for the long term. Its service pack has good buzz: Besides combining and cleaning up three years worth of piecemeal online updates, some testers report, SP3 for XP will speed up the venerable OS. Vista, meanwhile, is getting negative reviews: Beta testers say that not all problems are being cleaned up. Overall, Vista’s said to be half as fast as XP at running standard office programs. That may change as the code is finalized.

Once the dust from the service packs has settled, the next big Windows milestone is the prospective end of XP retail sales. First set for Jan. 1 this year, XP’s swan song has been postponed to June 30, the last day that major vendors like Dell will be allowed to install XP on new machines. Microsoft this month made a couple of exceptions, however: Small system builders who are doing custom work get a reprieve until Jan. 31, 2009, a potential loophole for those of us who just have to have our XP. In addition, XP will still be available for small, cheap laptops, since it is much less demanding of computer resources. Users have been organizing online petitions and protests demanding that the company continue XP. Chances of a late stay of execution are slim, however.

Moving along, XP will still be viable for

a long time after Microsoft stops selling it, with updates through April 14, 2009.

That will mean, in most cases, that XP will be compatible with much, if not most of new hardware and software released until then. Security updates should continue past that date.

The question is, will that be good enough to get you to Windows 7? Obviously, all these deadlines are artificial and can be pushed back. Most expect that 7 will be available in 2010 or later if development falters. There are some rumbles that it may get out the door in 2009, however, which would allow the majority of computer users to move directly from XP to 7.

Windows 7 promises to be a complete change of direction for Microsoft operating systems. For years, the company has bundled together many functions that could be optional, the biggest, of course, being the Internet Explorer browser that got the firm in hot water for antitrust violations.

The everything-but-thekitchen-sink approach has been a hallmark of a company that uses its operating system dominance to crush competitors and extend its reach into other markets.

The Gartner folks point out that this strategy has probably reached the end of its life with Vista, which suffers, among other problems, from ubiquitous digital rights management that was supposed to turn it into the center of the networked, multimedia home. The OS is too unwieldy for anything but a powerful PC to run it and has become so vast and interlinked that it’s difficult to maintain.

The new look is a compact “kernel” comprised of a mere 400 or so files (vs.

Vista’s 5000) with command line interface.

Modules, like a user interface, would sit on top of this, so that in theory you would

have a “Windows construction kit” where you could only install the parts of the operating system that you need. Compatibility with older programs, for example, would be optional, and by leaving out a lot of baggage intended for home use, the OS could conceivably run on phones and palmtop PCs. The philosophy is similar to Linux, which is winning a lot of fans simply because it’s compact and does not come with Microsoft’s marketing baggage.

Lou Dolinar writes a technology column for Newsday and hosts Lou’s Day, “designed to help normal people unsnarl their computers,” at www.dolinar.com. He can be reached at lou@ dolinar.com.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 73

feel life | HEALTH

We can rebuild her Claire Morrow profiles The Six Million Dollar Woman.

In twenty-four easy monthly installments

Like many readers, I’ve never agreed one hundred percent with simple unadulterated evolutionary theory. There are just too many things that don’t seem to have been explained enough just yet, so one must still keep an open mind. One thing that does come out quite clearly, however, is that it takes pressure or need of some kind to force evolutionary change. Otherwise, species don’t evolve.

Compare your kitty to a feral. Feral cats look cute from a distance. Up closer, the muscular mass of teeth and claws looks like it would eat your sweet-hearted moggy for breakfast. It would. And yet they are the same breed of feline; feral cats have adapted to survive on native wildlife and ill temper and house cats are bred to be sweet.

So too with humans. Because we live in cities we have to artificially create pressure for ourselves so we can still do important human things like move and lift, although many of us city dwellers have little need to. So we “go to the gym so we can get fit enough to go to the gym”. Half of us have natural pressure to maintain the ability to walk from cardiologists, rather that any actually need. We’re sedentary. You’re probably sitting right now. We simulate the 74 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

hunter gatherer existence by running on treadmills while watching TV (rather more like pet mice than mighty, plain-roaming barbarians). Of course, it has been shown that natural running is better for you than treadmill running as all of the supporter muscles and ligaments get a nice workout, as well as improved hand eye co-ordination. Well. In this case foot-eye co-ordination. Our diets are “un-natural”, so is our work, our play and our...pretty much everything. Most of us don’t want to live “natural lives”, we (might) want to continue to improve as a species.

The more pressures we remove, the weaker we become both individually and as a species. Of course what separates humans from most other forms of life is our ability to use our brain to overcome problems more so than our brawn. Which brings us to the topic of….cybernetics. The melding of metal and meat. Some people may remember the Olympic hopeful in the 400m event…who was missing his legs from the knees down. No problem, he had the lower halves of his legs replaced with a very odd looking set of recurve prosthetics…and is now one of the fastest men in the world in that particular division.

The issue the Olympic committee raised was that he may well have an advantage due to his special springy artificial legs. Which at first seems odd, but if we further consider the field of cybernetics and prosthetics as related to health and physical fitness the question that was raised was whether or not people would opt for volunteer prosthetics. It may seem a little weird, but if the artificial gives a greater advantage than the natural, no matter how hard one exercises…then athletes being athletes…they may well choose the metal over the meat.

Currently, somewhere in the world, right now, the following are available: Artificial eyes. Artificial ears. Artificial legs. Artificial arms. Yes, really. Robot arms grafted onto the shoulder construction. True cyborgs already exist, they are no longer the domain of science-fiction, they are here right now.

The lady with the artificial arm is now able to peel an orange and says that with more practice, she becomes more dexterous.

As society has progressed to the point of easy answers, it does make one wonder how long it will be before the metal option, much like Ritalin to children, becomes over-prescribed and wrongly used. Most people would probably like to be able to

HEALTHBRIEFS SURGERY WITHOUT ANAESTHESIA BETTER FOR YOU? u U.S. scientists using a worm model say they’ve found nerves can regenerate up to 12 times faster when they are severed without the use of anesthetics. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin said the experiments with a one-millimeter-long worm (C. elegans) are providing substantial clues on how nerves regenerate. The goal is to identify genes that affect nerve generation and might lead to new drugs and therapies for human neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s diseases. The study, in collaboration with the University of Michigan, discovered that during surgery to sever its nerves, the worm’s axons regrew within 60 to 90 minutes without the use of anesthetics. Previously, with the use of anesthetics, axons -- which conduct electrical impulses from the neuron -- took as long as 12 hours to regrow.

The research appears in the journal Nature Methods.

open a can of spinach like pop-eye, or literally have the eyesight of an eagle, and from one point of view sure. Why not? From another however, this is most definitely taking the easy option which weakens the body as a whole. While the new optical sensor artificial eye implants are a true boon for the blind, how long will it take for this technology to advance to the point where the artificial is superior to the natural? Probably about ten years given current scientific advancements.

Herein lies the real problem….already instead of a healthy diet and exercise people opt for stomach stapling and liposuction. People being people, if they can find a lazy option, they will. People being people…they’ll be those who abuse anything they’re given.

So while the advancements in cybernetics are providing a way for people who have lost limbs to one day lead a fulfilling life, they’re also paving the way for some rather odd implications. There will be people not satisfied with what they have, who would much rather have a cybernetic arm installed for instant super strength, rather than lifting weights for the five odd years necessary to match that. This is the 21st century and if you bother to look, it definitely feels like it.

I do wonder just how much damage we’ll be doing ourselves by playing around with this sort of thing however. It’s already been shown that genetic engineering is by and large a very bad idea, and it won’t be too long before the two fields merge.

Western society has shown one thing quite clearly as regards medicine. When in doubt, we like to go for surgery. Electro-stimulus has been shown to increase muscle mass and density, and there are already people thinking about installing what is tantamount to pace makers in major muscle groups so that effectively, you get a workout every day without ever having to set foot into a gymnasium. This may be beneficial to people who are comatose or have neuro-muscular disorders, but given how often people opt for very unnecessary elective surgery, I have no doubt that in twenty years people will be opting for all sorts of surgery to save them the trouble of actually having to sweat.

ASIAN ATHLETES BETTER PLACED TO CHEAT DRUG TESTS u A Swedish researcher said some men are missing testosterone-metabolizing genes that are key to the accuracy of athlete drug tests. A study of 55 men injected with testosterone found that 17 of them later tested negative in doping tests, The New York Times reported.Molecular scientist Jenny Jakobsson Schulze of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm said about two-thirds of Asian men are missing both copies of the gene, compared to about 10 percent of Caucasians, the newspaper said.The findings were published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.Dr. Don Catlin, the chief executive of the U.S.-based Anti-Doping Research group, said the findings are disturbing. “Basically, you have a license to cheat,” he told the newspaper.

SUICIDES LINKED TO MAGNETIC FLUCTUATIONS u Scientists believe that earth’s magnetic field may be responsible for suicidal behaviour among people. Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia studied earth’s geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found three seasonal peaks, from March to May, July and October. And they discovered a link between geomagnetism peaks and increase in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city of Kirovsk.

Various other studies have also found a casual link between human health and geomagnetism. A review conducted in 2006

by Michael Rycroft, formerly head of the European Geosciences Society, on cardiovascular health and disturbances, suggested that a link was possible and the impact was more at higher altitudes. He said that geomagnetic health problems affected 10pct to 15pct of the population. “Others have found similar things [to Shumilov’s results] in independent sets of data,” New Scientist quoted Rycroft, as saying. “It suggests something may be linking the two factors,” he added.

You can’t stop progress, but not all progress is good. I’m reminded of a comment robotics artist Sterlarc made in 1986 at a conference in Yokohama .

“Evolution ends when technology invades the body.”

That may be a little drastic, but I think I know where he was coming from.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 75

feel life | ALT.HEALTH

A cure for the common cold Few of us thought it would happen in our lifetimes, particularly after the disappointment surrounding Echinacea, but as Ian Wishart reports, an obscure little plant extract has been clinically proven to cure the common cold A new herbal drug that’s probably as close as you’ll get to a cure for the common cold has been released onto the New Zealand market. Unlike Echinacea, which has largely failed in medical studies, this new herbal remedy has passed the scientific trials with flying colours.

Marketed under the brand name “Kaloba”, the remedy is an extract from an African plant called Umckaloabo, a member of the geranium family – pelargonium sidoides to be precise.

The irony is that I’m recovering from a bout of bronchitis and could have used a remedy like this if I’d been aware of it sooner.

On the other hand, if I hadn’t checked out the scientific reports first-hand I’d never have believed the marketing company’s claims.

That’s probably because colds, and their complications like bronchitis, are so ephemeral and difficult to shake that the phrase “a cure for the common cold” has become somewhat of a euphemism for chasing the impossible.

The online medical journal database 76 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

PubMed has put a different perspective on my cynicism, however.

“The common cold is a viral infection with symptoms such as sneezing, sore throat, and running nose,” reports the abstract on one medical study published this year. “It is one of the most prevalent illnesses in the world, and although commonly caused by rhinoviruses, antibiotics are often prescribed unnecessarily. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to evaluate alternative treatments such as herbal medications, whose efficacy and safety is proven by pharmacological and clinical studies.”

To test Kaloba, researchers working in eight hospital outpatient units identified 103 adults with serious cold symptoms which had been present for no more than 48 hours. Half the patients were given a placebo, and the others were given 1.5ml of Kaloba three times a day. After ten days, 79% of Kaloba users were described as “clinically cured”, compared with just 31.4% of the placebo group.

Another study on PubMed, published last year in the journal Current Medical Research & Opinion, focused on its use against bronchitis, which reported a “highly significant superiority” for the Kaloba-treated group, and concluded the herb is a “well tolerated and effective treatment for acute bronchitis in adults”.

So why haven’t we heard much about it? You’d think with results like these that medical clinics, pharmacies and health stores would be screeching about a product that significantly slashes the misery and duration of winter ills. Possibly the answer has more to do with the politics of pharmaceuticals, medicine and the alternative health industry. In Germany there’s a legal skirmish over patents to manufacture the drug. The good news however is that Kaloba works, and for that reason alone we think it’s worth alerting readers to.

If you want to do your own research, Google “pelargonium sidoides” and “pubmed”, and tell your doctor.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 77

taste life travel

One bike in Bangkok…

Carol Pucci discovers Thailand on a cycle, and loves it BANGKOK – The monks who watch over Wat Rajbopit, the King of Thailand’s private temple, are a friendly bunch. We found a few of them relaxing over soft drinks one steamy afternoon when we wandered inside to admire the colored mosaic tiles and gold Buddhas.

“Would you like something to drink?” one of them asked. He said he was 20, a novice and had been in the monastery five years. He asked me where we were from, then handed a glass of Coke to my husband, Tom, to hand to me.

“Monks can’t touch woman,” he reminded me. But they are free to chat and, as Buddhists, share their peaceful surroundings and relaxed hospitality with visiting strangers.

Bangkok’s reputation as the concrete jungle of Southeast Asia is partly deserved, but it’s not all about skyscrapers, sex shows and shopping malls.

From the back alleys of Chinatown to tropical villages five minutes by boat from the central business district, Bangkok’s backstory unfolds.

Travel a few miles in the right direction, and you’re in a corner of rural Thailand where it’s more likely someone will ask you to buy a lucky fish than a fake Rolex.

Escape the traffic. Bicycle through villages surrounded by mango and banana plantations.

Tune out the street noise. Wake up to the sounds of roosters and temple chants.

Seen enough gem shops? Spend a day learning to make prawn soup or slice a chili pepper.

Chill out. Unplug. Take a few hours, a day or overnight, and discover why this city of 10 million was called the “Venice of the East” in the 1850s when the “highways” were rivers and canals instead of clogged streets and double-decker freeways.

Cycling the City of Angels

They call Bangkok the City of Angels, and when I first thought about signing up for 78 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

one of Co van Kessel’s bike tours, I hoped there might be a few watching out for us.

Bangkok bike-friendly? How could this be? This isn’t Beijing or Shanghai. The only people I’d seen riding bikes were pulling fruit carts or hauling sacks of vegetables.

Yet here we were at 8 a.m. on a Sunday inside the parking garage of a hotel in Chinatown, adjusting the seats on one-speed bikes with hand brakes. Van Kessel, a Dutch expat who’s lived here nearly 30 years, put the finishing touches on a plan for how eight of us would spend the next five hours together biking through Bangkok.

“It’s like a movie,” he said. We wouldn’t be cycling in traffic. We’d stay off the main roads. We’d ride at walking speed, and spend part of the time aboard river ferries and long-tail boats. Don’t worry about being too hot or tired, he said. “Bangkok is completely flat.”

Then we were off as he led the way across a busy street into an alley filled with vendors selling everything from flip-flops to moon cakes.

The only traffic we had to worry about was human. A few times we got off the bikes and portaged them though the crowds, lifting them over piles of limes or around women sitting on the ground surrounded by baskets of basil and chili peppers.

It was like a movie, just as van Kessel promised, with split-second scenes, one blurring into another. Turtles swam in buckets. Incense burned inside a back-alley temple. A group of men stood over piles of nuts, crushing them with wooden mallets, adding honey and cooking the mixture into brittle over a wood fire. Dogs barked. Oil sizzled. All in just the first half-hour.

Van Kessel, 57, a mountain biker and topographer, started his tours 20 years ago, mainly for locals. Work brought him to Thailand. He fell in love with Bangkok but was discouraged by its reputation as a polluted, gridlocked city.

On his bike, he began exploring the footpaths, alleyways and canals between

the main thoroughfares. What he found was a world hidden from most outsiders, neighborhoods where life goes on the way it has for decades, much of it in peaceful surroundings more akin to rural villages than a modern city.

Leaving Chinatown, we peddled along backstreets until we reached one of the piers along the Chao Phraya River, the 370kmlong waterway that divides Bangkok’s commercial district from its quieter suburbs.

There a small wooden ferry waited to take us and the bikes on a five-minute crossing to Thonburi, a residential area where houses are hidden among canals and inlets connected by miles of raised concrete paths shaded by banana and mango trees.

“Hello, Hello!” people called out to us.

Everyone smiled. A woman doing some washing in the water gave us the thumbsup sign. A man patted the back of my bike, indicating he’d like to get on.

“Floating markets,” small boats filled with fruits and vegetables, pulled up to houses whose front doors faced the water. Signs tacked on wood shacks advertised lucky fish, not to eat, but as offerings to the gods.

Before we set out on our ride, van Kessel urged us not to talk, but to soak up the sights and sounds and save our questions for rest stops.

Now I was beginning to understand why. Most of the paths were no wider than three or four feet, surrounded by water or swampland on both sides. The other riders on our tour were Dutch, and were used to this kind of biking. But I was riding cautiously, braking and touching my foot to the ground every few seconds as if I were driving along a mountain pass with no guardrail.

“Does anyone ever fall in?” I asked one of van Kessel’s assistants.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Sometimes.” How often? “About four times a year. They’re talking, not paying attention.”

A few minutes later, someone remarked that we had lucked out with the weather.

The sun wasn’t beating down, and it wasn’t raining.

I reminded him about the no-talking rule. The movie wasn’t over yet, and so far, it was turning out to be one of the best I’d seen in years of traveling.

Cooking in the countryside

Growing up along the canal villages a few miles from Bangkok, Pip Fragrajang didn’t walk to school. She rowed her own boat an hour each way.

Today, an eight-lane highway connects the village of Tambol Bangmaung to modern Bangkok just 23km away, but Pip still prefers that her guests come by boat to the Thai House, a bed-and-breakfast inn with seven rooms and a cooking school nestled among the mango trees and gardens of her family compound.

Tropical Thailand is in reach within minutes of leaving the Chao Phraya on a longtail water taxi for the canals, or “klongs,” as they’re called. Here tin-roofed shacks, bungalows with picket fences perched on stilts and elaborate Buddhist temples front the water instead of roads. Need morning coffee? Blow a horn, and the local coffee boat will deliver. There’s a noodle boat and a 7-Eleven boat stocked with soft drinks and snacks.

We rode with Pip’s nephew, Peerapong, in a hired boat to reach the Thai House for a one-day cooking class and overnight stay. When we arrived, we found Pip in her outdoor kitchen, ready with cutting boards and a platter of vegetables and herbs. Behind a row of earthen jugs used for collecting rainwater was the villa her

family built 16 years ago on a rice and mango farm started by her grandfather 80 years ago.

Built from teakwood, the house was built in a style popular around the Ayutthaya region in central Thailand 150 years ago. Our second-floor room opened onto a tile courtyard. There were two twin beds, bolsters for sitting on the floor and a ceiling fan overhead, but no air conditioning.

Pip, 55, hosts up to 10 students at a time at her late-morning and early afternoon cooking sessions, but today it was just us and a woman from Australia who had come to relax at the end of a five-week, aroundthe-world tour.

We set to work on a lunch of sour and spicy prawn soup, Thai noodles and a cold chicken salad.

“They teach me English, I teach them how to cook,” Pip said of her students as

Wat Pho, Bangkok’s oldest and largest complex with more than 1,000 Buddha images, is a five-minute walk from Ta Tien

she began explaining the differences among various chili peppers, herbs and vegetables on the platter.

She brewed lemongrass tea, and we practiced new techniques such as tearing the stems from the leaves of kaffir limes and cutting a chili pepper, leaving the stalk and seeds in one piece.

While we worked over hot woks, Pip passed on tips such as how to counteract the burn of too much chili (chew on palm sugar or a piece of chocolate) and how to say “less spicy” in Thai (Ped-Nid-Noi).

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 79

I gained a new appreciation for the convenience of Seattle’s ready-made red curry paste when I sat down on the floor with Pip and she taught me how to grind the peppers, garlic and spices from scratch with a mortar and pestle.

Sitting down to lunch and dinner on her outdoor veranda, of course, was the highlight, but as it often turns out with these types of activities, cooking was only one reason to come. Just as interesting was the chance to learn a bit more about life in the klong villages. After dinner that night, we sat and talked to Pla, one of Pip’s 28-yearold twin daughters.

Don’t expect a quiet morning, she warned. With three temples nearby, the monks start chanting at 5 a.m. At 6 a.m., someone puts the radio near the temple’s loudspeaker and broadcasts the news for the farmers and others who don’t have time to read the paper before they go to work.

A monk floats by the house in a canoe each morning around 6:30 to beg for alms.

We rose early and watched as he glided by in an empty boat, then returned a half-hour later with his bow piled high with bags of fruit and rice.

“Things are changing,” Pla said. More people from Bangkok are buying up the farmland along the klongs to build houses and escape the city. Pla still rows her grandmother to the doctor’s, but many of the younger monks never learn to put a boat into the water, she said.

No doubt the Fragrajang family could have sold their land for a good price. Lucky for visitors, they decided instead to build a business out of maintaining their family traditions.

Staying put

Can’t ride a bike? Don’t care about cooking?

Stay put then. Take a clue from the monks 80 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

We rode with Pip’s nephew, Peerapong, in a hired boat to reach the Thai House for a oneday cooking class and overnight stay

wandering the streets at dawn with their begging bowls. Even here in the oldest part of Bangkok known as Rattanakosin, home to the Grand Palace and most of the ancient temples, chilling out comes easy.

A few suggestions: n Check into a waterside hotel and take a break from taxis and traffic. Calm yourself instead by getting around via one of the public ferries that ply the Chao Phraya River.

Riverside-hotel options used to be limited to luxury properties such as the historic Oriental, where rooms are US$300 and up.

Now travelers on more modest budgets can go first-class in one of the new Europeanstyle boutique inns popping up among the old Chinese shophouses along the piers at the north end of the river, within walking distance of the historic sites.

Ta Tien, as this district is called, is a little slice of the way most people would like to remember Bangkok. There’s a school of traditional medicine nearby, and many of the shopkeepers make their living selling massage oils and medicinal herbs. It’s a nice place to call home for a few days, especially in the morning when the Aurum and the Arun serve breakfast a few feet from passing river traffic. n Visit a wat, as the monasteries and temple complexes are called. Wat Pho, Bangkok’s oldest and largest complex with more than 1,000 Buddha images, is a five-minute walk from Ta Tien. A gold-plated 50-metre-long image called the Reclining Buddha is to Bangkok what the Leaning Tower is to Pisa.

Thousands come to have their pictures taken at its feet of inlaid mother-of-pearl. It’s not exactly a scene suited for quiet meditation, but the rest of the complex can stay surprisingly deserted. Find one of the other temples

devoted to impressive gold images, take off your shoes, sit a while on the red carpet and enjoy some quiet time. n Go for a massage. One of the oldest schools is on the temple grounds at Wat Pho, but it’s not air-conditioned, and with the 35-degree-plus heat and humidity, we took a young attendant’s suggestion to visit the air-conditioned annex a few blocks away.

Staffers Mai and May, both in their 20s, sat us in blue lounge chairs, propped our feet up on stools and told us to roll up our pants. They went to work, rubbing our feet with cream, pulling on our toes, slapping our calves and massaging our soles with tools carved from teak.

“No problem in the stomach,” Mai concluded as she rubbed my arches. They ended the session by wrapping our legs in hot towels, and serving us cups of iced tea. Then we rolled down our pants, thanked them and went back out into the heat where our feet stayed happy for the rest of the day.

IF YOU GO Co van Kessel Tours u Co van Kessel and his assistants lead daily bike tours through Bangkok. The cost is 950 Thai baht, US$30 per person roughly, and includes boat transportation, drinks and snacks. Biking distance is about 16km. See www.covankessel. com, or phone 00-66 (0) 2688-9933.

Tours leave from the Grand China Princess Hotel, 215 Yaowarat Road in Chinatown.

The Thai House u Rates at the Thai House are 1,600 baht (US$50) for a double with breakfast and 1,400 baht (US$45) for singles. Toilets and showers are shared. One- a Seven-Eleven boat stocked with soft drinks and snacks day cooking classes are 3,500 baht (US$112).

See www.thaihouse.co.th, or call 00-66 (0) 2903-9611.

Aurum The River Place u Twelve rooms. Rates start at 3,400 baht (US$108) including breakfast. See www.aurum-bangkok.com or call 0066 (0) 2622-2248.

Arun Residence u Five rooms.

Rates range from 3,100-3,500 baht (US$99-$111) including breakfast. See www.arunresidence.com or call 00-66 (0) 2221-9158.

For tourism information, see www. tourismthailand.org.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 81

taste life FOOD “Because of the presence of so many cultural groups – Malaysians, Chinese, Javanese, British, and so on – Singaporean food has a life of its own.

Singapore fling James Morrow comes clean about his mystery disappearance from the magazine’s food pages last month: lunch in Singapore And for all these years I thought Manhattan was my spiritual home. Turns out that, as with most things in life, I was completely and utterly misguided. You see a few weeks back my day job asked me to go take a slew of meetings in Singapore, that marvellous, rich and historic island city-state at the tip of the Malay penin82 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

sula. Even before I got on the plane I had a feeling I would like the place. Friends all told me, “mate, it’s like they built a city just for you”. And there is something charming to the very concept of a “city-state”.

The phrase conjures up images of Medicis and the Italian Renaissance and money and culture.

Thus when it comes to building a sovereign city on a little island barely 42 kilometres wide from stem to stern, I am pleased to report that the Singaporeans have absolutely nailed it. Formally founded in 1819

by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, whose name is stamped on the best hotel on the island and much else besides, Singapore was from the start a multicultural city.

After the depredations of Japanese occupation – the fall of Singapore was accurately described at the time by Churchill as “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history” – Singapore would become independent in 1963. Since then, it has become one of the “Asian Tigers”, with its capitalism nourished by heavy doses of Confucian and Protestant culture – two imports which have taken to the local soil like a weed and which have fused to create a particularly dynamic and entrepreneurial culture. On the ride in from the airport all one sees are cranes and all one hears about is the upcoming F1 race – two signs of a country on the upswing. Yet despite this it still retains a somewhat louche, colonial happy hour sensibility.

And boy do they know how to run a city.

The beer is cold, the women are gorgeous, the food is fantastic, taxi rides cost about six bucks anywhere you want to go, and the architecture (that which hasn’t been knocked down for 80-story skyscrapers) is a charming mix of the British and Asian.

Having never suffered the hideousness of Mao’s cultural revolution, in Singapore I saw more Chinese temples in better nick than I would see later in the week in Shanghai.

The best part? No junkies, no graffiti, no crime that I could see. Instead of injecting rooms, disability pensions, tea and sympathy, the only twelve steps junkies are asked to take are the ones up to the long-drop platform at Changi Prison.

And instead of “diversion” programmes where spray-can wielding cretins are taught to hone their “art” at “youth centres” under

Singapore Chilli Crab You’ll need 3-4 large crabs, about 1.5 kg (3 lb.)

180 ml (3/4 cup) boiling water 2 medium onions, chopped 2 1/2 cm / 1” piece fresh ginger, grated 2-3 bird’s eye chillies, finely chopped 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped 1 stalk lemon grass (tender inner leaves), chopped 1 tsp. shrimp paste (optional) 3 green onions, chopped 2 tsp. cornstarch 3 tbsp. oil 1 tbsp. sugar 1 tbsp. tomato paste or ketchup Method 1. Clean the crabs. Cook them in a large pot of boiling water for about 4 minutes.

Singapore Sling Although the above recipe should be washed down with nothing more than an ice-cold beer, the Singapore Sling is a classic local cocktail and is perhaps to Singapore what the daiquiri is to Havana or the martini is to the Manhattan: history in a glass. For obvious reasons the origins of cocktail recipes tend to get lost in the mist of time, but the general consensus is that the drink was invented at the Raffles Hotel (natch) sometime in the 1910s. On the plane the Singapore Girls pour a pre-mix version which is acceptable; to make the real thing, might be best to wait until Christmas at the grandparents when a liquor cupboard with all the required fiddly ingredients is ripe for the picking.

the tutelage of Commonwealth employees who really should know better, anyone who dares deface a wall with a sub-moronic “tag” is picked up for a date with the bamboo cane.

I kid you not, I am smiling as I type this.

Certainly my local council will be hearing from me the next time they open their latest graffiti management plan to public comment.

But we’re not here just to discuss crime

Drain and cool slightly. Chop the crabs into 4 to 6 pieces with a large cleaver, leaving the legs attached. Crack the claws with a mallet or pestle.

2. Mix the cornstarch into a little cold water. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet and stir fry the onion, ginger, garlic, lemon grass, shrimp paste (if using) and two-thirds of the chillies for two minutes.

Add the crab and boiling water, reduce the heat and cook 3-4 minutes longer. Transfer the crab to a plate.

3. Add the sugar and tomato paste or ketchup to the wok and combine well. Add the cornstarch solution and continue stirring until the mixture thickens. Return the crab to the wok, stirring until well-coated with the sauce.

4. Place on a serving platter and garnish with the green onions and remaining chillies. Serve hot.

(Recipe adapted from WorldWide Gourmet).

You’ll need 1 1/2 ounce gin 1/2 ounce Cherry Heering brandy 1/4 ounce Cointreau 1/4 ounce Benedictine 4 ounces pineapple juice 1/2 ounce lime juice 1/3 ounce grenadine dash bitters Method Shake with ice. Strain into an ice filled collins glass. Garnish with cherry and slice of pineapple.

and punishment, we’re here to talk food.

And Singapore has that in spades. Sure, Sydney and Melbourne might be locked in a death fight over who can lure the latest hot international restaurateur to open an outpost in its casino complex. Tokyo may have its Iron Chefs and Tsukiji Market.

But Singapore, well, Singapore has it all – including chilli crab.

Because of the presence of so many cultural groups – Malaysians, Chinese,

Javanese, British, and so on – Singaporean food has a life of its own. Exploring markets one sees it all, including one stall I saw whose sign advertised “Pig’s Organ Soup”.

Amazingly, it was doing a roaring lunch trade. But Singapore Chilli Crab is deservedly the most famous dish on the island, and is perhaps one of the oldest and most famous “fusion dishes” of the modern age. It even includes ketchup, the great contribution of British colonials to local cuisine.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 83

touch life > drive

Alfa sprouts a manual box Alfa Romeo’s GT has been given a few tweaks After launching a whole new range of self-shifting gearbox versions of its key models, Alfa Romeo has added a manual gearbox to the one model that lacked one, the stylish Alfa Romeo GT JTS, and, in doing so has provided its sports coupe with a highly accessible new price of $59,990.

“With the arrival of the Alfa Romeo Brera, we needed to provide the Alfa GT with a new position in the Alfa Romeo range, one that emphasises its differences from the Brera and which enhances its value for money,” explains Lawrie Malatios, General Manager for Alfa Romeo in New Zealand. “To this end we have made some minor changes to the equipment in the JTS version and added the manual variant, the combination of which is to provide an exciting new entry level price for the Alfa GT and to modify Selespeed price to make it even more attractive.”

The Alfa Romeo GT compliments the Alfa Romeo Brera, in that the GT is Coupe in the range, offering five seats and a spacious boot, while the Brera is very much the sports car of the range, with its 2+2 seating and snug interior.

“Following the launch of the Brera we have actually seen an increased interest in the Alfa GT,” says Malatios. “The excitement created by the Brera has brought more people into Alfa Romeo showrooms, but quite often the additional flexibility of the five seat GT, plus its irresistible style, has led customers to leave the showroom with an Alfa GT. With our new manual version and repositioning, we wish to build on the renewed interest in this model in the Alfa Romeo range.”

The 2.0 litre 121 kW engine used in the Alfa GT JTS is a variant of the lean burn, direct petrol injection engine seen in the Alfa Romeo 159 and like that car, this powerful, light weight unit use its supreme efficiency to provide the Alfa GT with strong performance, excellent economy and low emissions. Top speed with the JTS engine in both manual and Selespeed versions is 216 kmh and it dispatches the dash to 100 kmh in 8.7 seconds and to a kilometre in 29.2 seconds. It achieves a combined fuel consumption figure of 8.7 litres per 100 km; a remarkably low figure for such a stylish performance car.

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The new manual version of the Alfa GT uses exactly the same gearbox as the Selespeed, minus the robotised actuation system and with the addition of a clutch pedal and conventional gear stick.

Fitted with the optional Selespeed gearbox, the Alfa GT combines the excitement of changing gears manually in the same fashion as a racing car, via paddles on the steering wheel, or the convenience of letting the system change the gears itself. But, unlike a conventional automatic, because the Selespeed is based on the manual gearbox, it offers the performance, economy and emissions of manual gearbox even when changing its own gears.

The Alfa Romeo GT JTS is, like its V6 brother, is spectacularly well equipped, even with the equipment changes. Naturally there is the equipment you would expect in this market position, such as power windows, remote central locking with remote boot opening, dual zone Climate Control AirCon, full leather interior and a powerful sound system, trip computer, and cruise control.

But each of these items has been honed to match Alfa Romeo’s

“The 2.0 litre 121 kW engine used in the Alfa GT JTS is a variant of the lean burn, direct petrol injection engine seen in the Alfa Romeo 159 and like that car, this powerful, light weight unit use its supreme efficiency to provide the Alfa GT with strong performance, excellent economy and low emissions

requirements. Hand crafted, fine Italian leather is used on the elegant shaped and styled seats that offer both comfort and the lateral grip required in a sports car; the central locking includes auto-lock to ensure security; the readout on the trip computer to be changed to suit individual requirements.

The key differences between the JTS and 3.2 V6 versions of the Alfa Romeo GT are that the six cylinder version gains heated front seats, a Bose audio system, Xenon headlights with headlight washers, a vehicle alarm, alloy pedals and 18 inch multi spoke alloy wheels, compared to the new Sport GT 17 inch alloy wheels used by the Alfa Romeo GT JTS manual and Selespeed.

Performance is nothing without safety and security and here, once again the Alfa Romeo GT has all the features expected of a car in the exacting class. Active safety features include the full range of electronic safety features, such as electronic stability controls (VDC, ASR and MSR) tuned to provide safety but without dampening down the driving experience, as well as the latest generation of ABS antilock brakes. Naturally, a responsive chassis aids accident avoidance, as well.

Passive safety features are led by six air bags, crumple zones and an occupant safety cell.

Styled by Bertone, the legendary Italian styling house, the Alfa GT takes all the Alfa Romeo elements that have lead to the Alfa Romeo sports cars, the 147, the 156 and the 166 be lauded for their unique elegance, style and eye-catching beauty and added their own unique additions to produce a car that is, quite simply a new byword for beauty. The Alfa Romeo GT has been named the most beautiful Coupé in the World in annual awards that recognise excellence in car design and styling and which are awarded by a jury of the world’s leading car designers, artists, architects and engineers.

But practicality has not been sacrificed for all its beauty. This is a coupé that is also remarkably practical. There is comfort for four people, space and seat belts for five, matched by a spacious boot of 320 litres, which may be enlarged to 905 litres by folding down the split rear seats and a through loading device only adds to the load carrying options. But there are also excellent detail features, such as the lockers on either side of the boot, the 12 volt power point located on one side of the boot and the polished chrome – who says practicality can’t also be beautiful – tie luggage down points.

“When the Alfa Romeo GT was launched, it was clear that it offered a remarkable combination of style, performance and value for money,” says Lawrie Malatios. “With the launch of the JTS manual to complement the Selespeed version, we have boosted value for money and lowered the cost of ownership with out having any affect on the beauty of this fabulous car!”

The Alfa Romeo GT range now comprises three models, the newly launched Alfa Romeo GT JTS manual with a recommended price of $59,990, the Alfa Romeo GT JTS Selespeed with an RRP of $62,990, and, topping the range, the Alfa Romeo GT 3.2 V6 with a $74,990 RRP. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 85

touch life > toybox

Epson’s EMP-400W projector With its ultra short throw wide screen lens, positioning of the projector is no longer a problem as the EMP-400W can be mounted on a boom attached to the wall and the presenter can stand close to the image and interact with the whiteboard without shadows interfering with the audience’s view, and without lamp glare in the presenter’s eyes. Connecting cables can be run through the boom, reducing installation costs and also leaving the front of screen clear to allow more seats in the audience or audience members to sit closer to the screen. Even in a small room the EMP-400W can project a large image without interfering with audience space.With multiple EMP-400Ws connected to a LAN, each one may be individually operated and monitored from a remote PC. If a lamp or temperature anomaly is detected, a notification will be sent via e-mail from the projector to the PC. When used in a corporate or school environment for example, each projector may be turned on or off via the network and any abnormalities monitored from a central facilities management office. The EMP-400W has an RRP of $2350.00 ex GST. Please visit www.epson.co.nz for further details

BenQ E800 BenQ has announced the launch of their latest digital camera, the 8-mega-pixel E800 featuring a 2.7-inch display, 3x optical zoom and ISO 1600. A suite of intelligent features – including “Smile Catch” mode, Auto Face Tracking and 13 optimized settings – further distinguish this everyday-use camera with pictures that are automatically sharper, clearer and brighter. Introduced as an affordable, entry-level camera, the E800 nonetheless offers users numerous convenience and performance features beyond expectation. An ingenious “Smile Catch” mode enables users to effortlessly capture every elusive smile by automatically shooting in rapid succession, stopping only when the shutter button is pressed. This function is especially useful for taking pictures of young children or of spontaneous moments. A Shake-Free mode complements for blur-free pictures Faces will consistently appear sharp, focused and in optimal color with the E800’s Auto Face Tracking, which can fine-tune up to eight faces in one frame – perfect for action scenes with many people. Professionallooking pictures have never been easier than with the E800’s 13 settings, each customized to distinct scenarios. The E800 will be available worldwide end of May. www.benq.com

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SELPHY CP730 The Canon Compact Photo Printer SELPHY CP730 produces brilliantly colored, long lasting prints that rival the appearance and durability of images created by a professional photo lab. And it takes just 73 seconds† to create Wide size (4” x 8”) prints. Postcard size (4”’ x 6”) images print in just 58 seconds,† and credit card size pictures require only 31 seconds† to print. Using 300-dpi dye-sublimation technology with 256 levels of color, this compact photo printer renders skin tones, shadings and fine details with trueto-life accuracy. A transparent water- and fade-resistant coating offers added protection against the damaging effects of sunlight and humidity. The high-quality photos last up to 100 years. The SELPHY CP730 features an Automatic Dynamic Range Correction function that optimizes the print image information sent from your PictBridge compliant camera. The benefit? You get brighter, sharper, better-looking prints. To activate this function, simply turn on “Image Optimize” before printing. www.canon.co.uk

Samsung G800 The Samsung G800 brings features common in most digital cameras into a mobile phone.

These include features such as Optical Inner Zoom, Xenon Flash, Power LED, Image Stabiliser, Red Eye Reduction, Panorama Shot as well as the very latest digital camera enhancements Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and Face Detection. Wide Dynamic Range means better photo quality by preserving image data in bright spots to reveal more detail in shadows or backlit areas. Face detection adjust photo quality by focussing on faces in photos. These features together with 5 Megapixels, 3x Optical Inner Zoom and Xenon Flash combine to ensure the Samsung G800 delivers close ups and exceptional photo detail with no parallel amongst other camera phones. Stylish as ever, the Samsung G800 comes in two colours that demand red carpet attention. A sleek camera phone, the Samsung G800 looks like a digital camera on one side and a fashionable mobile phone on the other. Visit samsung.com.au

Asus Eee 900 The Eee PC 900 is here, bringing a whole new, highly mobile Internet experience. For starters there’s no technical manual.

Buy it, take it home and the Eee PC works right out of the box!

It’s so user-friendly, even a Newbie can get started right away.

Mobility is another key feature of the Eee PC. It uses Solid State Disk (SSD) technology which provides for energy savings and quiet, shock proof, stable computing. The Eee PC is therefore the perfect tool for the outdoor enthusiast or any active person on-the-go. http://eeepc.asus.com/global

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see life / pages

A literature smorgasbord Michael Morrissey gorges on the latest new releases 50 FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW: USA

By Stephen Fender Icon Books, $35 America – love it or hate it – remains the world’s largest economy. Its culture is replete with surreal contrasts and odd lifestyles.

Many readers will know that the largest migration in history occurred in the late nineteenth century – an expanding European populace that helped build the American work force and the economy. And there’s a famous photograph by Alfred Steiglitz, often reproduced, which show what looks like a scene from this event. All the appropriate images are present – women in shawls balancing children on their hips with washing hanging out to dry in the rigging. There’s just one problem – these people were leaving America to return to Europe. On average, a third of migrants return from whence they came, Fender informs us.

Fender’s book is an intriguing mix of the unexpected, the well known and facts that verge on the banal plus missed opportunities. How many of us non-Americans care that of the 239 elected mayors in the state of Oregon, only two draw a salary? On the other hand, you might be morbidly fascinated to learn 65 million Americans own handguns and they use them to shoot 35,000 fellow Americans every year. [For what it’s worth, 195,000 Americans are killed in hospital every year by doctors and nurses making mistakes – Ed.] The facts about Wal-Mart make for uncomfortable reading.

More than any other entrepreneur, Sam Walton made the commercial discovery that low prices increase the volume of sales.

Forget quality or quantity, if the price is low people will buy. A jar of pickles retailing for $2.97 was so large that the pickles would go mouldy before you could use them – which didn’t deter people from buying them. The market didn’t create this bargain product, Wal-Mart did. They pay their employees on average less than half the average wage, unions are banned. There are no health ben88 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

efits or pension rights. Posters advise employees on how to apply for food stamps.

Readers may be surprised (though maybe not) that 2.9 million Americans claim to have been abducted by aliens – or is it a case of ET migrating back home? In an interesting analysis, Fender makes the point that America has always been fond of stories of captivity and transformation and refers by way of parallel to Mary Rowlandson who was abducted by Indians. Surprisingly, Fender does not mention – though he should have – the famous film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a 50s alien takeover movie commonly interpreted as indirectly expressing the then current anticommunist paranoia, and which prefigured the “actual” abduction of more recent times.

No surprise to learn 65 per cent of Americans are overweight but it may be news to read that violent crime has fallen by more than half since 1993. No one is sure why – theories include collapse of the crack cocaine market, a stronger economy, more police on the ground, innovative police strategies such as New York Mayor Giuliani’s “broken window” policy. But no one can figure it out.

Maybe overweight Americans are so busy watching TV and eating junk food they’ve lost the urge to hit the streets and kick ass.

Fender disappoints by including virtually nothing on Hollywood – or Hollyweird – surely a ripe hunting ground for an essayist looking for odd facts about American culture. Though patchy, and at times wallowing in the obvious, the book is still worth reading.

THE GOOD LIFE ACCORDING TO HEMINGWAY Edited by A.E Hotchner Ecco, $29.99 Regardless of whether one either likes Hemingway as a man – and many in today’s politically correct world do not – or admire him as a writer – his posthumous reputation has both soared and plummeted. He is undeniably the most influential stylist of the

and hunting big game had a glamour it has subsequently lost and was considered almost as a rite of passage. He amusingly describes a scene where an Englishman decides to hunt a lion with a bow and arrow – the arrows hits the lion, which bites off the arrow and proceeds to maul one of the party.

Several of Hemingway’s famous works were filmed but he regarded Hollywood with consistent contempt. He once answered the powerful Darryl Zanuck’s request to alter the title, with the f-word. He also commented acidly on the movie version of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” that he had heard, “there was only one minor alteration – the man is rescued and lives instead of dying – a very minor change, don’t you think?” Ernest, for such irony, all is forgiven.

HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOU HAVEN’T READ

By Pierre Bayard Granta, $35 If this book had been by an American I would have assumed there would be plot summaries of the world’s great 100 books.

Thus equipped, you would be able to bluff your way through any dinner table conversation that turned literary.

But it is by a Frenchman. That means we enter the rich field of intellectual game playing. Most statements about a book, Bayard argues, are not about that particular book but “about the larger set of books on which our culture depends at that particular moment” – he calls this hidden mass of book the collective library – the first of several comparable terms that he invents to support his more or less preposterous thesis. The idea has a grain of truth but I would estimate its gravity at no more than that.

By page twenty, after a deft quote from Valery, Bayard reaches this staggering conclusion – “that abstaining from reading Proust’s work is the greatest compliment he (ie Valery) can give him”. My feeling is few, if any, writers would prefer this kind of compliment to the actual fact of reading. And I suspect, though can’t quite prove, this whole exercise is a wonderfully Gallic example of intellectual leg-pulling – albeit done with great panache and wit.

Bayard has a code of abbreviation that runs thus – UB = books unknown; SB = books skimmed; HB = books heard of; FB = books forgotten. This list made me feel uncomfortable as it might other readers. It is certainly true that as one reads one is also forgetting,

twentieth century. John O’ Hara took this a step further when he wrote, “I can’t think of any other writer who influenced so many writers in history.” Many other prominent writers have echoed these sentiments.

Prior to the arrival of his clear blunt direct syntax and his spare understated descriptions, the English language tended to be used in a more ornate way. The Victorian style – the orotundity of Dickens – was a long time dying. Contemporary writers like Raymond Carver and Cormac McCarthy write like Hemingway clones. Newspaper writing itself – and Hemingway was a journalist – has become less circumlocutory because of his influence.

The world of writing contains a plurality of styles. And while the influence of Hemingway began to make itself felt, there were plenty of writers who stylistically were Hemingway-proof – James Joyce or Marcel Proust, for instance. Or today’s magic realists. Interestingly enough, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, often considered the world’s greatest living author, began by first imitating Hemingway – though in his own special Latin way – then shifted to that other very un-Hemingwayesque writer, William Faulkner. “In the end, it’s a bravura performance, though I am still wondering Edited and introduced by friend Hotchner, this is if I have been had – but in an exquisitely clever learned French way of a work of unabashed admi- course. Read and decide. Or, alternatively, skim and decide. Better still ration, one might say it has a touch of the hagiographi- (by Bayardian and Valeryian logic), don’t read it at all – yet still decide cal. Divided into ten chapters that span writing and war, sport and Hollywood, hunting and However, I did not accept his view that most of the time most of exploring and concludes with life and death, this book assembles us skim. I do skim now and then – I skimmed Monsieur Bayard’s quotes, anecdotes and accounts that illustrate Hemingway’s magic book (confession!) but then I felt provoked into so doing by his ability to succinctly summarise in a phrase what others would need assertions (and by its sporadic dryness). Perhaps I was paying him – by his own logic – the supreme compliment Valery paid a ponderous paragraph to express.

Like many successful writers, Hemingway has plenty of advice to Proust – the act of reverently not reading him.

Bayard is no fool. In fact, he’s very clever in a back to front sort to offer on the pitfalls that await the would-be writer -”A book you talk about is a book you don’t write.” In today’s ecology of way. Just as you might be ready to dismiss him as an intellecconscious world, Hemingway’s delight in hunting large animals tual charlatan (quite possibly) he kicks in with some very interlooks atavistic and unattractive. But I don’t think we should be esting examples. One such is Rollo Martins in Graham Greene’s too sanctimonious. Hemingway was of course a man of his time The Third Man. Martins writes westerns under the pen name of INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 89

Buck Dexter. The group to whom he is asked to speak thinks he is Benjamin Dexter, a more literary kind of writer. When asked about his influences he mentions the famous Zane Grey and his cultured host assuming this is a joke thinks Martins means Grey, the English poet. Crabbin then condemns Zane Grey to the rubbish bin – even though he hasn’t read him. Case proven, Pierre, you wily French fellow! Wittily, Bayard calls this encounter an example of the dialogue of the deaf. But I heard it.

So on the one hand I was ready to dismiss Bayard as a trickster, but at the same time he kept tripping me up with wonderful examples to illustrate his arguments. In the end, it’s a bravura performance, though I am still wondering if I have been had – but in an exquisitely clever learned French way of course. Read and decide.

Or, alternatively, skim and decide. Better still (by Bayardian and Valeryian logic), don’t read it at all – yet still decide.

A PARTISAN’S DAUGHTER

By Louis de Bernieres Harvill, $34.99 Louis de Bernieres’s literary career has taken a few interesting turns. He began by vigorously and unashamedly pastiching Gabriel Garcia Marquez, then wrote his masterpiece Captain Correlli’s Mandolin which enjoyed a much deserved world success.

He followed this with the enormous Birds Without Wings, a searing account of World War One – well-researched, powerful but patchy. His latest book is a somewhat slighter work.

The book begins with a misunderstanding – Chris, a burnt-out late 70s Londoner, deeply unhappy in his marriage (he unflatteringly refers to his wife as the Great White Loaf ), notices an attractive young woman standing by the roadside and assumes she is a prostitute. She is not (though once was) but she gets into his car anyway – an improbable beginning perhaps. Like a compulsive Scheherezade, she begins telling wild shocking stories of her past including that she seduced her father. Like a cat playing a mouse, she watches Chris for his reaction. The narrative switches back and forth between the two main characters. Just as Roz might convince us her father is a violent man who shoots guns into the air, it turns out to be another story. I have on occasion run into people of this type in real life and in the end you believe nothing they tell you – which doesn’t stop them continuing to invent fresh myths. Sometimes this type of personality becomes a con man and that’s what Roz seems to be – an emotional conman playing on Chris’s heart strings.

The story is set in East Europe, a terrain that English-born Bernieres handles with great confidence. As befits his name, de Bernieres seems bent on ransacking continental Europe rather than England for his story material. The story, like all of Bernieres’ work, has a strong political dimension – here Roza is the daughter of one of Tito’s partisans. De Bernieres gives us a shakeup about our view of prostitutes – Roza is well-educated and writes poetry – not to mention doing her own laundry. Importantly, at this juncture, the two protagonists have not become intimate – it’s all talk as they share their pasts whether real or invented. De Bernieres always writes well and this must be one of the most unsatisfying “affairs” in literature – it’s about as anti-romantic as you can get.

So a melancholic sombre air hovers over this book – real violence, political silence creeps in and you feel the lives of the characters rest on uneasy ground. The novel has received mixed reviews and though it has moments of intensity as well as war of the sexes 90 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

games, it’s curiously flat and unengaging. It has a slow fizzle out ending. It is also characteristic of the rather short and curiously thin novels that have been emerging from England of late – are they running short of paper or has the sometime complaint that Booker Prize winners were indulgently complex and too large having an effect? I am sure a gifted writer de Bernieres will return to full exploding nova form anytime soon.

THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF EASTERN JEWEL

By Maureen Lindley Bloomsbury,$ 37.99 The outpouring of books on China continues unabated.

Relatively few of the fictional works are written by western authors but here is a fine example. And just who was the Eastern Jewel?

She was a Manchu Princess, the fourteenth daughter of Su Qin Wang, a descendant of the younger brother of the Emperor, and this is her fictionalised life story. At the age of eight, she was caught spying on her father making love to a young concubine. For this “crime” of curiosity and precocious voyeurism, she was banished to Japan in the care of remote relatives where she was re-named Yoshiko Kawashima.

Her new Japanese family provides a different world from her original Chinese one. Unusually, her new rich master does not keep concubines. And unlike the Chinese, the Japanese do not smoke opium. And just to allay a possible myth: “It is a fallacy that Japanese women are happy for their husbands to have geishas”.

Yoshiko loses her virginity to an older man – the first of many to pass through her life – all expertly analysed by Lindley. Her Japanese master also enjoys her embrace and is rough in his ways.

When she is introduced to a handsome young Japanese officer, she falls in love. But like so much – everything one might say – in her life – it was not to last. Hurtfully, it is Yamaga who informs her she is to marry Kanjurjab, a Mongolian prince. Before long, despite her dismay, she is on the Mongolian steppes – married against her will. And this is just the beginning of a wild and colourful life that culminates in her being a Japanese spy.

This rollicking hectic true life story is a bit like Reilly: Ace of Spies Goes Geisha or James Bond Become an Oriental Spy. It’s hard to believe that one person could pack so much into a life. The escape from Mongolia is breath-taking stuff, as good as any thriller.

Shanghai with its brothels and opium dens, its jazz and gangsters is evoked. The last Chinese emperor is someone who she must charm as part of her spy mission. The odd thing is an American journalist called Jack – one of the few men to treat her well – offers her a way out of her disastrous rollercoaster life but she doesn’t take it.

Lindley’s sumptuous yet clear style is filled with lavish descriptions of clothes, customs, food, jewellery, adding a rich texture to her well-written prose. A sample quote: “Sorry set a dried sea horse over the door as charm against evil. She burnt orange incense to invigorate the air and made me sip strong black tea.” With considerable skill, Lindley gives enough of this sort of detail in order to culturally and historically educate us without slowing up the narrative or becoming tiresomely descriptive – she has the balance between narrative, incident and such descriptions just right. Every chapter is given poetic name hinting at domestic contrast to the point of surrealism – eg Snake and Chrysanthemum Soup.

This wild, yet sad, brilliantly vivid life, ultimately ending in predictable tragedy, would make a marvellous film.

Short Takes NGAI TAHU – A MIGRATION HISTORY Edited by Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson BWB Drawn from “The Carrington Text”, a history of the Ngai Tahu compiled in the 1930s by journalist Hugh Carrington, this beautiful hardcover from Bridget Williams Books retraces the steps of the Ngai Tahu tribe from the Wellington region spreading through the south as far as Stewart Island. History, as many have famously observed, is almost always written by the victors; and this is unquestionably Ngai Tahu’s take on their discovery of the South Island. Archaeology reveals the South was quite extensively populated by a more ancient race who were vanquished over a period of hundreds of years. This book is extensively documented and accompanied by reproductions of 200 year old paintings of early Maori life. The only criticism I would make in that area is a design one: more use of full page art would have heightened the experience. Overall though, a valuable and important manuscript. Reviewed by Ian Wishart Muqtada – Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and The Struggle For Iraq

By Patrick Cockburn Scribner (Simon & Schuster) An excellent work, Muqtada ends off right where current events pick up with the recent Iraqi army attacks ordered by Nuri al -Maliki in southern Iraq, Basra in particular. The media view that this was purely an Iraqi effort is put into place with one of author Patrick Cockburn’s closing comments that Maliki “had limited real power” and felt “that he could not move a company of troops without American permission.”

Patrick Cockburn has written a fascinating account of Muqtada al-Sadr, with his departure point being the long history of Shiism in the Middle East.

Muqtada neither extols the virtues of his subject and the heroic valour of his resistance, nor does it denigrate the Shia beliefs or the man himself. There is a fully balanced perspective and a good deal of critical analysis which allows the reader to place Muqtada accurately – or as accurately as can be given considering his elusive nature - within the overall historical context of the war in Iraq. Reviewed by Jim Miles

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 91

see life / music

A perfect score Chris Philpott doles out the first jackpot of the year and two high-flyers to boot Portishead Third How many acts can, after a lengthy break, create something so faithful to their original sound, so fundamental to what the group is about, that it’s like they never really even took that break?

The answer is: not many. Yet Portishead have emerged with one of the early contenders for album of the year by keeping faithful to their sound, despite being completely off the radar for more than 10 years.

Still retaining the services of singer Beth Gibbons and instrumentalists Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, Third is an almost literal blast-from-the-past that sounds like it could have been released as a double-album with Portishead’s 1997 eponymous second release, their last till now.

While the group is famed for its melancholic vibe and a canvas of truly minimal musical strokes, it’s hard to deny the beauty inherent in what they create. Third is no exception, with Gibbons’ dreamy vocal dripping over the top of a wide range of keyboard and guitar sounds, and trippy, almost electronic, beats.

Highlight tracks like “Hunter”, “Nylon Smile” and “Machine Gun” also show a wide range of styles and influences, and together with the unique sound of the group they ensure that Third is the first real don’t-miss album of the year.

Samuel F Scott and the B.O.P .

Straight Answer Machine There are few truly great Kiwi bands – they of the Split Enz or Crowded House ilk – but The Phoenix Foundation would have to be one such group. So when the latest release from Foundation frontman Samuel Flynn Scott came across my desk, I simply had to check it out.

To get straight to the point, Scott, the son of legendary cartoonist Tom Scott, has managed to put together a solo record that is up to the same level of his groups’ releases; a rare thing in this 92 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

day and age. Drum beats that will have you tapping your toes in no time and smooth, crisp guitar lines that simply melt over the rhythm of each track are the norm with Straight Answer Machine, topped off with Scott’s typically Kiwi, easy-to-listen-to vocal, like a cherry on ice-cream.

Quirky track titles like “Raver on Probation” and “Llewellyn” don’t do justice to the sheer musicality that is contained within.

Machine is truly a pleasure to listen to, and entertains from start to finish.

Scott is truly one of the great talents in this country, and finally seems to be getting the recognition he deserves. For that reason, I would recommend this album to both casual listeners and fans of his group alike.

The Black Keys Attack And Release Another contender for album of the year comes surprisingly from the streets of Akron, Ohio, in the good old US of A, in the form of a throw-back blues rock album reminiscent of the pioneering style of Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple.

The Black Keys have been around for a few years now, with Attack and Release constituting their fifth full length release, yet it is only with this latest album that they’ve really managed to breakout internationally, charting both here and in Australia.

Made up of just 2 members, the group managers to entertain throughout with simple songs that display the skill of guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, who could quite possibly be the reincarnation of late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.

Tracks like “I Got Mine” and “Remember When (Side B)” show the raw passion in the Keys’ tracks, making one want to jump around the lounge, strumming an air-guitar and posturing like any great rock star.

The biggest surprise is that all this is produced by Danger Mouse, who is better known as the DJ/producer for chart-topping hiphop act Gnarls Barkley (of “Crazy” fame) – perhaps the lesson here is that greatness can truly come from anywhere.

HARNESS THE RENEWABLE RESOURCE OF AIR TO HEAT YOUR WATER. The new Stiebel Eltron Air to Water heat pump is poised to revolutionise the way we heat our water in New Zealand. This Air to Water heat pump converts the ambient temperature of the air into thermal energy and uses this energy to heat water.

Because the system harnesses the renewable resource of the air temperature it uses only one third the energy of a conventional water heating cylinder. So the cost to the environment - and to your pocket - is considerably less. Used and perfected in Europe this technology is ideally suited to the New Zealand climate, and the system is easily installed into new and existing homes and buildings. Everyone is talking about the need to look to renewable resources. Here is an opportunity to do something about it now which will benefit you and the environment.

For more information call 0800 200 510 or go to www.parex.co.nz

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM  June 2008  93

see life / movies

The name of the game Two games hit the big screen – gridiron and blackjack. Clooney doesn’t quite pull it off in Leatherheads, but 21 hit top spot on the US box office Leatherheads Starring: George Clooney, Renee Zellweger Diected by: George Clooney Rated:TBC 114 minutes Slapstick meets screwball in Leatherheads, an amiable valentine to an era of breakneck repartee, bathtub booze and anything-goes gridiron warfare.

The setting is 1925 Duluth, Minn., home base of the Bulldogs, a rough-and-ready pro football team in an era when pay was low, glamour was nil and rulebooks were rarely consulted. The only audience at the Bulldogs’ practice field is a bemused cow, and the turnout for their games is scarcely larger or more enthusiastic.

Dodge Connolly (George Clooney), the team’s irrepressible quarterback and manager, boosts the game’s entertainment value with bizarre plays like the Rin Tin Tin: The left wide receiver howls like a scalded hound while you snap the ball right.

Still, the crowds are thin, and the team is so cash-strapped they shower in their uniforms to save laundry fees. When Princeton football star Carter “‘The Bullet”’ Rutherford (John Krasinski) plays his final college game, Dodge entices him to join the teetering Bulldogs for a percentage of the gate, promoting him as the sport’s first superstar. Not only is he a lightning bolt on the field, he’s famed for capturing a platoon of German infantrymen single-handed.

Following Rutherford is Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a feisty Chicago Tribune reporter ostensibly covering “The Bullet’s” career, but actually investigating his story of battlefield heroism. Soon the 94 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

Ivy League golden boy and the aging roustabout are romantic rivals, grappling for Lexie’s heart like a mud-slicked pigskin.

Clooney radiates rakish charm, making himself the butt of jokes about his advancing age and including a comic stunt that echoes his recent motorcycle accident. And those endless comparisons to Cary Grant are deserved. Look at the way he uses his eyes in the scene when he first catches sight of Zellweger in a hotel lobby. They have a great rapport; their sharp-tongued comic banter feels effortless. There’s a hint of Marx brothers madness in one scene as Dodge and Lexie, squabbling in a double-berth sleeping car, snap the curtains open and shut as they try for the last indignant word.

Krasinski is solid as a straight arrow with troubling memories, although he never measures up as serious romantic competition.

Jonathan Pryce adds suave menace as Carter’s unscrupulous agent, and Stephen Root makes off with most of his scenes as a tippling sports reporter.

Leatherheads, Clooney’s third outing as a director, extends his range beyond the showbiz absurdism of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and the political drama of Good Night and Good Luck.

Clooney, who co-wrote the film, is unabashed in his affection for period Americana and old-school filmmaking, and recreates it with impressive technical polish. He fills the screen with quaint Tin Lizzies and raccoon coats and paces his chat-a-tat-tat dialog scenes with Roaring Twenties momentum. The score is an upbeat blend of vintage tunes and new ragtime from Randy Newman.

Still, Clooney missed one crucial lesson from 1930s comedies: Keep it short. At an hour and 54 minutes, Leatherheads often lopes when it should race, with dead-weight scenes and extraneous subplots. The anachronistic dialogue sometimes feels exhumed rather

than adapted for modern audiences.

Drawing from movies rather than life, “Leatherheads” often feels like a likable exercise in retro style rather than a film with a compelling reason to exist on its own Reviewed by Colin Covert 21 Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne Directed by: Rob Luketic Rated: M for some violence, sexual content and nudity 123 minutes It’s glitzy. It’s suspenseful. It’s a wallow in get-rich-quick ambition.

Of course it’s also largely uninhabited. But at least the empty vessels are attractive.

21 is the highly fictionalized movie version of Bringing Down the House, the factual best-seller about six MIT students who developed a system to beat Las Vegas’ blackjack tables.

We witness the story through the eyes of Ben (Jim Sturgess of Across the Universe), an MIT math whiz who has been accepted to Harvard Medical School. Unfortunately there’s no way Ben’s job at a haberdashery will provide the $300,000 needed to continue his education.

Still, Ben refuses to get involved when math professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) invites him to join a team of brainiacs who have perfected a card-counting system. They need somebody with Ben’s superhuman ability to mentally crunch numbers while outwardly appearing to be just another nouveau riche high roller.

Isn’t that cheating? Ben protests.

(In fact, casinos have long regarded card-counting as cheating – although keeping track of which cards have been dealt and which remain in the deck would seem to be a smart strategy for winning any card game. That must be why they call it cheating – it’s smart.)

Eventually Ben comes around after luscious team member Jill

(Kate Bosworth) pays him a visit. He gets to work learning the system. Ben portrays a money-flashing power player. The other students, posing as small-time gamblers and often in disguise, signal to him which tables are hot or cold, when the house is getting suspicious and other information that will put a half dozen high IQs at his disposal.

Half of their winnings go back to Professor Rosa, who was long ago banned from the tables but now bankrolls the students’ effort.

The kids divvy up the rest, and despite his vow to quit when he gets his $300,000, Ben is sucked into the glamour and excitement of beating Vegas at its own game.

He gets so wrapped up in the con and in his flashy new gang that he ignores the two nerds (Josh Gad, Sam Golzari) who have been his closest friends all through college.

Eventually, though, he’ll get too cocky for his own good.

Then he’ll make the acquaintance of Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), a casino “loss prevention” specialist whose old-school style often involves brass knuckles.

Scripted by Peter Steinfeld and Alan Loeb and directed by Rob Luketic, 21 is fun as far as it goes – but it doesn’t go very far.

Though inspired by a real story, it’s crammed with Hollywood elements – like Spacey’s college prof, a preposterously tough-talking sleazeball who’s as much gangster as educator.

Director Luketic, whose best films (Legally Blonde, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton) have found emotional truth inside nearly cartoonish characters, seems uneasy with the essentially serious world he’s presenting here. He gets the details of the Vegas experience, all right, but it’s hard to care what happens to any of the characters.

With the exception of Fishburne’s casino enforcer – weary of fighting new face-recognition technology that will soon make his hands-on style obsolete – the film is uninhabited.

Leading man Sturgess seems bland and unremarkable for all of Ben’s alleged genius, and his young cohorts make practically no impression, each having been reduced to one broad character trait.

Still, 21 is a bright and shiny bauble. Enjoy looking, but don’t expect it to tell you much.

Reviewed by Robert W. Butler INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008 95

see life / dvds

The world’s two best actors…

Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington shine in Gangster American Gangster Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Ruby Dee, Lymari Nadal, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Josh Brolin Directed by: Ridley Scott Rated: R (violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality) 158 minutes American Gangster is 2 ½ hours of pleasure with a guilty aftertaste. It starts with the casting of Washington as Frank Lucas, the reallife drug kingpin who ruled Harlem in the early 1970s. Washington brings a moral authority to whomever he plays, even a criminal.

And American Gangster doesn’t even portray Frank as that bad of a guy. Rather, he emerges as a savvy entrepreneur who, along with reinventing the drug trade, gave back to his community and bought a fabulous house for his mother (Ruby Dee).

Somewhere in the film lies a commentary on the elusiveness of the American dream for African Americans of Lucas’ era. But it’s buried beneath the filmmakers’ obvious admiration for Frank’s acumen, charm and distinction as a comparatively class act in a world of scumbags.

Crowe’s character, New Jersey cop Richie Roberts (also based on a real guy), gets his own trajectory, battling crooked fellow cops while seeking big fish in the drug-trafficking trade. But even though Crowe and Washington’s screen time together is limited, just seeing two of today’s finest actors in the same film offers fascinating opportunities for comparison.

Frank and Richie’s parallel and then converging story lines hold interest partly because Scott lends such authenticity to the period setting. The clothes and cars and attitudes seem organic to the times, with cops and hoods alike outfitted in leather jackets and probably, if you get close enough, smelling of Hai Karate.

Richie angers fellow officers when he finds a million dollars in 96 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June 2008

a car trunk and actually turns the money in. Ostracized by the dirty cops, he accepts an offer to head a special drug task force composed of officers he gets to hand pick. His investigation takes him into New York City, where he bumps heads with a band of very dirty cops headed by Trupo (Josh Brolin), the sleaziest law enforcer in the Tri-State area.

Richie gets wind of a new brand of heroin that’s cheaper and purer than what the Mafia is peddling. That’s because Frank went to the source in Southeast Asia himself, thereby eliminating middlemen.

Though it rivets throughout, American Gangster doesn’t resolve itself in a satisfactory way. Frank’s homicidal temper gets explored mostly in sensationalistic fashion, and the deadly effect his pure heroin must have had on New York City’s addicts is barely touched upon. Worse yet, the film’s final minutes and post-script introduce aspects of the case that are so interesting and surprising that you wonder why they weren’t explored earlier or more fully.

Mr. Brooks Starring: Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Dane Cook, Demi Moore, Marg Helgenberger, Danielle Panabaker Directed by: Bruce A. Evans Rated: R (strong bloody violence, language, sexuality, nudity) 120 minutes Earl Brooks, the successful businessman played by Kevin Costner in Mr. Brooks, is a serial killer. But his avocation is more symbolic than anything, since the film really is concerned with secrets people keep from loved ones.

Or at least that’s what you tell yourself in order to continue to appreciate a creepy, clever thriller in which a serial killer is also the likable, if tortured, protagonist. Make that two likable protagonists – Mr. Brooks and his alter ego, Marshall, played by William Hurt. The all-American Costner and the insinuating Hurt form an intriguing pair.

Mr. Brooks, who seems truly to care about his wife (Marg Helgenberger) and college-student daughter (Danielle Panabaker), keeps Marshall as the devil on his shoulder. Or rather, the devil in the back seat of his nondescript sedan.

And theirs is not the only buddy pairing. Dane Cook plays a neighbor of a couple Mr. Brooks kills and then poses for provocative postmortem photos (remember, he’s a sicko). In a rare slip-up, Mr. Brooks leaves the drapes open, allowing the neighbor, who calls himself Mr. Smith, to witness the crime. But rather than out the killer to the police, Mr. Smith has other plans.

Cook, whose appeal can sometimes be elusive, is highly effective here. His character, full of false bravado, is a goofy counterpoint to cool customer Mr. Brooks and a stand-in for the audience. Or at least the segment of the audience that’s seriously bent.

Mr. Smith is on to Mr. Brooks, and Detective Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore) is nearly on to Mr. Smith, who she suspects has information about the killer.

Charming killers aren’t exclusive to Mr. Brooks. What does seem unusual is the film’s lack of mitigating factors. In The Silence of the Lambs, for instance, Hannibal Lecter was allowed to charm because he was helping catch a more immediately dangerous killer. Mr. Brooks lacks such an out, which makes it not just a guilty pleasure but a truly queasy one.

Reviewed by Carla Meyer