Investigate magazine Sep 08 issue

no onseer >> clo gets

REFORMING CHINA

The new wind of change from an unlikely direction

BACK TO THE MOON NASA’s push to get back in space

MARK STEYN

Shaken, not stirred, an ode to Moneypenny

>>

INVESTIGATE September 2008: CFL Bulb Safety • Hidden Agenda • Francesca Martin’s Disappearance

CFL lights

briefing papers show Govt was badly advised on risks PLUS: What did the Greens know?

Labour’s Hidden Agenda Ruth Dyson’s draft polygamy speech raises questions

Her Last Cigarette

The mystery disappearance of Francesca Martin $7.99 September 2008

Issue 92

Treating Autism

A promising new lead

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Contents 42 28

32

48

54

FEATURES

28 Lights Out

Last month’s special investigation into the safety of CFL energy-saver light bulbs has opened a hornets’ nest. New documents released under the Official Information Act disclose how the government got it so wrong. IAN WISHART updates the story

32 Her Last Cigarette

The disappearance of Francesca Martin three years ago after going out to buy a packet of cigarettes has investigators baffled. Now, in an extract from his new book, Still Missing, author SCOTT BAINBRIDGE retraces Fran’s steps

48 Treating Autism

The debate over treating autism continues to rage, with New Zealand homeopath CLIVE STUART reporting on some international developments showing promise

54 The New Face Of China

With the focus on Beijing and the Olympics over these past weeks, international media have noticed the winds of change blowing through China. What they didn’t expect was to find such an unexpected cause behind it. EVAN OSNOS reports

42 Big Lust

Social Development Minister Ruth Dyson’s mysterious speech notes advocating polygamy have caused a controversy. MELODY TOWNS looks at the push to legalise ‘big love’ downunder

Cover: NZ Herald/Presspix

Editorial and opinion 06 Focal Point

Volume 8, issue 92, ISSN 1175-1290

Editorial

08 Vox-Populi

The roar of the crowd

18

16 Simply Devine

Miranda Devine on climate change

18 Straight Talk

Mark Steyn on Moneypenny

20 Eyes Right

Richard Prosser on politics

22 Line 1

Lifestyle

Art Direction Design & Layout

Leon Harrison on defence

Peter Hensley on financial advice

66 Education

Amy Brooke on Maori immersion

68 Science

Back to the Moon

70 Technology

Getting control of kids’ rooms

72 Sport

Chris Forster on Sonny Bill

74 Health

Claire Morrow on bioethics

76 Alt.Health Lyprinol is back

78 Travel

Longyearbyen

82 Food

72

James Morrow goes Indonesian

84 Drive

Heidi Wishart Bozidar Jokanovic

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

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92 Music

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94 Movies

Investigate magazine Australasia is published by HATM Magazines Ltd

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86 Toybox

The latest and greatest

88 Pages

Michael Morrissey’s winter picks Chris Philpott’s CD reviews Tropic Thunder,

78

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24 Soapbox

64 Money

68

NZ EDITION Advertising Sales

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

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> focal point

Editorial

Why we’ve launched TGIF Edition

F

or many Investigate readers, this issue will be the first interactive. Our first issue is available for download for free, from exposure you’ve had to Investigate’s new stablemate, TGIF www.investigatemagazine.com/tgif8aug08.pdf. Ideally you’ll want Edition. Launched on 8 August, TGIF Edition is a weekly, to have a broadband connection, but we are planning to provide national ‘paperless’ newspaper that gets emailed to people a TGIF ‘Lite’, stripped of graphics, for readers still locked into on its subscription list every Friday evening. dial-up plans.

With around 20 A3 pages of news and features in every issue However, when you read through our first issue, try out some of (equivalent to 40 A4 pages), and usually four issues a month, that’s the bells and whistles. The ads, for example, go directly to adveran awful lot of content for just $3 a month. tisers’ websites where you can often find much more information There are several reasons for launching TGIF. One is, we have about a product or service. We’ve also linked up stories to video so many worthy news stories coming across our desks these days reports or other rich media content. but which we didn’t have space for in Investigate. Secondly, pubOver the next few months, you’ll see TGIF Edition break some lishing a weekly newspaper allows us to break more news stories major stories. Personally, we think PDF newspapers, or products and keep the rest of the news media on their toes. like them, will become the most cost-effective and popular means Our first issue of TGIF Edition is a perfect example, with its of ensuring guaranteed newspaper delivery in the future. Unlike a exclusive on a speech published on the Beehive official website genuine paper, which is already mostly 12 hours out of date by the quoting Social Development Minister Ruth Dyson as planning time it reaches your kitchen table, an electronic paper can deliver to look at legalizing polygamy if the Labour-led government gets you breaking news, as it happens. back in.

You don’t have to go lookDyson denies making the ing for it. You don’t have to According to the latest Nielsen speech, apparently vetoing it remember to clock in on a at the last minute, but admits website and wait for endless Media Research figures, Investigate pages to load and refresh. On it was written for her to deliver and it was published broadband, TGIF Edition has somewhere in the region of on her webpage. At the time downloads in literally a matof Investigate going to press, ter of seconds and is fully 75,000 readers of its print edition. she still hadn’t explained why ready to browse. her department and officials We encourage every one of We’re guessing most of you find were looking at policy to recyou reading this to download ognize not just couples but the free first issue, and try us the magazine stimulating and “triples” as part of a planned out for a few months. Every overhaul of social laws. cent TGIF generates is being provocative, even if you don’t Other media picked up plowed back into growing on the TGIF story, which is the paper and providing the always agree with us exactly how it should be. best news coverage we can.

According to the latest Being an independent kiwi Nielsen Media Research figures, Investigate has somewhere in the publisher battling foreign-owned multinationals has its moments, region of 75,000 readers of its print edition. We’re guessing most but it’s a role we enjoy. Thanks for your ongoing support. of you find the magazine stimulating and provocative, even if you don’t always agree with us.

You’ll enjoy TGIF for the same reasons. The more of you who sign up for TGIF Edition, the more articles we can investigate and produce. We exist, at the end of the day, to serve our readers.

The significant difference with TGIF Edition is that it’s a PDF document, designed to be read onscreen. In this way, we can save tonnes of trees. But it also means we can make the newspaper fully INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

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> vox populi

Communiques The roar of the crowd MERCURY LIGHTS Your investigation into CFLs, though depressing, answered a lot of questions I’ve tried to get responses to from several other sources.

A few weeks ago I heard a – so called – debate on Radio NZ’s afternoon show called the ‘Panel’. Some Chick-Lit author who has her own TV show, (which made her an expert apparently), was totally dismissive of all the issues surrounding these nasties.

Interesting to note then that ‘Theatre Lighting’ will be exempt according to the Green Party ‘script’. One can only hope that they fluoro-light the writer for her next TV appearance.

I was so incensed at the triteness of these responses that I emailed the show and copied my points and questions to Jeanette Fitzsimon’s office. But it’s hard to have a proper debate when the issues are ignored. What I got back from the Green Party was a ‘stock reply’ that didn’t address any of the points raised. (Emails attached to verify this.) As you can see I offered to compare the energy used in my incandescent, task-lit office to her fluoro-lit one. That offer was not taken up. The offer remains open.

At all shops selling lamps that I’ve been into recently it is only CFLs that are being displayed next to incandescents. And anyway halogens give out far more heat than incandescents and the light emitted is almost as unattractive – truly harsh.

Yours is the only attempt to put a figure on the true cost of manufacture although, as you say, what are the comparative mining costs involved?

Yet, despite our concerns we can all rest easy because, apparently, at some time in the future “CFLs will be able to be used in dimmers, will be safe and will be able to be sent to a disposal facility”. Eh? Even then these disposal costs, based on your US figures are going to be truly horrendous.

I believe that the whole debate on lighting in NZ has been hijacked by engineers and lighting salesmen posing as designers who chant their mantra about light quality equating to daylight.

This ignores the emotional and health benefits of ‘warm’ light and, indeed, our human history. That history began with ‘firelight’, the physical and emotional feeling we’ve always had at night. Are we really going to allow ourselves to become ‘battery chooks’ – to be cold-fluoro-lit day and night irrespective of the natural cycle?

Seems we are if the radio ‘debate’ is to be believed.

‘Energy Mad’ is a truly appropriate name for the company given front running. Sadly, when this experiment on the people turns to custard, as it must, it won’t be the lighting companies, pro-fluoro engineers or salesmen who foot the bill. As with ‘leaky houses’, it’ll be us.

I for one have no intention of being a guinea pig in this experi INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

ment. I’m buying up incandescent lamps – hopefully enough to last my lifetime. Sadly the next generation won’t know what true ‘warm’ light is.

Barry Read, Wayby, Nth Auckland

HALOGENS: WHERE DO WE GET THEM? Further to your most interesting report on CFL Light Bulbs, I visited Bunnings (Whangarei) to purchase the new generation high efficiency halogen light bulbs.

The staff had no knowledge of this product!

Can you throw any light (excuse pun) on this situation.

Joy Green, Northland Editor responds:

Unfortunately, although the information came in a direct quote from an interview with a lighting industry spokesman, Bunnings have disavowed knowledge of the new generation halogens.

Regardless, the Government has just issued pamphlets advising that the new halogens have just hit the market, so keep harassing your local retailer to get them in.

HAZARDOUS WASTE As a result of reading your article on CFL’s in your latest issue, I wrote about my concerns in our newsletter for the Organic online business I co-own. Since sending it out to our mailing list yesterday I have had one lady ring the NSCC asking about disposing of them to be told to put them in weekly collection. My friend questioned this so the NSCC person went to query it and came back to say they do indeed have to go to Haz-chem, the next one for us being in September.

I am looking forward to ‘official’ response to your article.

Keep up the good work.

Christine Smith Family Organics; Food and More www.familyorganics.co.nz

A SCARE ARTICLE? This scare article on CFL bulbs brings to my mind pictures of the hazardous waste crew in spacesuits with gas masks chasing a milligram of mercury. It has the feel of a major plutonium spill. The bulbs contain on average 5 mg of mercury. When breaking one, we can assume that most of the mercury is adsorbed on the glass and can simply be picked up.

When I grew up in Europe we must have had 50 grams or so of that stuff in our flat, in the form of electrical switches, thermometers and a barometer. That’s about 10,000 CFLs worth of

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mercury. Even today there is mercury in batteries, LCDs and lots of other common things.

Your dental fillings contain 50% mercury. Yes, I know, my dentist always assures me that they are safe. But mercury does leach out, in the order of 5 µg of mercury per filling, per day. Obviously the body can handle that.

Let’s get real. Mercury, like arsenic, lead and cadmium is all around us. Normal soil contains in the order of 0.1 mg of mercury per kg, vegetable and fruit in the order of 0.01 mg per kg. Some fish, like tuna can have 1 mg/kg or more. That is, if you are impressed by large numbers, 50,000 ng of mercury for a 50 g portion of tuna. And that’s sitting right in your body as methylmercury. It would be quite a challenge to get all of the 1 mg mercury left on the carpet from the broken CFL into your body. Mercury is dangerous above certain levels, there is no doubt, especially for children and pregnant women, but CFLs are certainly not going to be our biggest threat.

Your argument of refuting evolution by contemplating a spider and his net is also a masterstroke. Why haven’t we thought about that before – spiders build useful webs, therefore evolution must be wrong! Very simple indeed.

Hans Weichselbaum Editor responds:

Ah, but Hans, the real issue is not the mercury’s impact on adults, but on the developing brains of infants and children where the lights might be broken. Nor is it safe to “assume” that most of the mercury binds to the glass. According to the scientists enough escapes to cause some serious health concern in the most dangerous form available: inhalable vapour and dust.

Because it is a heavy metal, and because it bioaccumulates, the danger is not from one broken CFL, but a household where perhaps several are broken over several years and not cleaned up effectively, ramping mercury levels well and truly up to the point where kids are definitely affected.

Your point about tuna is good, because the 50,000ng of mercury you talk of is less than the spike levels from one whiff of a broken CFL bulb.

Here’s the recommendation from US Consumer Reports on tuna: “Pregnant women. Given the uncertainties about the safety of even chunk-light tuna, we think it’s prudent for pregnant women to avoid canned tuna entirely.”

And don’t forget, unlike your tuna, which is a finite dose, the CFL bulb is the mercury gift that keeps on giving…capable of sending tuna-like spikes into the air for your kids to breathe every time they run across the carpet, for months afterward.

As for evolution and spiders, you’d be referring to Malcolm Ford’s soapbox article. There are many reasons to doubt the claimed mechanisms of evolution. Perhaps one of the most interesting is in the latest copy of TGIF Edition (out this week and avail at www.tgifedition. tv). As a snippet, here’s what one evolutionary biologist had to say at a major conference this month: “Something is missing in our understanding of how evolution produced complex creatures.” He, and others lamented that the most sophisticated computer modeling and lab experiments can’t account for complexity, and natural selection as an explanation is no longer holding water. There’s more on this, as I said, in the 15 August copy of TGIF Edition. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

MISINFORMATION I note that your magazine has presented a huge amount of misinformation about compact fluorescent lamps in a recent issue. I wonder if you have the guts to publish the facts.

Firstly, whilst nobody argues about the toxicity of mercury, but we should note that the quantity in a fluorescent lamp is miniscule, usually around 2 milligrams. When the lamp is cold, the mercury is almost inert; CFLs need a warm up period to become fully operational. Also, readers need to be aware that, depending on the exact source, burning coal to generate electricity releases massive quantities of mercury into the atmosphere. If every incandescent lamp in the world were replaced by an compact fluorescent, over a period of five years the saving in mercury emissions would be more than compensate for that released if every CFL were broken. If the CFLs lasted more than 5 years the saving in mercury emissions would become spectacular. In practice I have personally operated compact fluorescent lamps for more than a decade and have had experienced not one failure. The saving in dollars has been substantial, bearing in mind that an average compact fluorescent lamp uses around 20% of the electricty used by an incandescant lamp.

Secondly, we should note that the Earth is on track for an Abrupt Climate Change event that will render most of this planet uninhabitable, probably within a few decades, as a direct consequence of runaway global warming triggering posiitve feedback mecahnisms. Dr Jim Hansen, physicist and chief climatologist at NASA, the guru of global warming since 1988, recently reworked calculations (in conjunction with the rest of his team) on the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that would enable life as we know it to continue on this planet: the result was 350ppm. Thus we have what is now described as ‘Agenda 350’, the target level for carbon dioxide that humanity should be aiming for if humanity is to have any future on this planet. Unfortunately the current level of carbon dioxide is around 390 ppm, and rising rapidly, which means we are in severe overshoot already and need to powerdown (reduce energy use drastically) immediately. But guess what? -most people have never even heard of ‘Agenda 350’, a huge portion of the popluation refuses to accept that global warming is a problem (even as the ice in the Arctic Sea looks set to disappear completely in a few short years) and a massive portion of the population would refuse to change their highly energy squandering lifestyles even if the facts were commonly known. Worse still, the government’s insistance on continued economic growth fueled by fossil fuels means that this and practically every other government on the pamnet is fully commited to increasing emissions. (Biofuels, carbon sequestration, carbon trading etc. are simply scams and red- herrings designed to keep the populace believing in the current dysfucntional system). Add to that the culture of completely unjustified and unsustainable entitlement that pervades New Zealand society (and most other western societies) and it is easy to see that we are on course for catastrophe.

Thirdly, we should note that many New Zealanders are walking round with mouths full of mercury in the form of dental fillings.

Recent research clearly indentifies that the mercury in amalgum is not fully sequestered and in fact does vapourise, albeit slowly. This

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form of mercury poisoning has been clearly identified as a far more significant form of poisoning than that which may be experienced by occasional breakages of compact fluorescent lamps.

Fourthly, many homes and laboratories have mercury thermometers. Many businesses and some home have contact switches and level switches that contain mercury. Not all of these are air tight and if any of the aformentioned are broken, the mercury is not measured in small numbers of milligrams, but in hundreds of milligrams. The classic story used to be of the ‘mad’ science teacher who had been driven mad by mercury vapour emanating from mercury that had been dropped by students, and had become lodged between the floor boards. The use of mercury and access to it has declined, but we simply do not know how much of the stuff is lying around in the environment.

Fifthy, mercury compounds, or even mercury beads, were used for centuries in the treatment of syphyliss. Nobody disputes that the mercury was/is poisonous: that was why it killed the spyrochetes. But it is clear that humans have had a very long and very close relationship with mercury.

Unfortunately it is not science. but sensationalism and hysteria that sell magazines. As the saying goes, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Kevin Moore, BSc Honours Chemistry EDITOR RESPONDS

Happy to print your letter Kevin, but probably with a suffix that asks the burning question: did you bother to read the studies, or were you so absorbed by the enviromyths surrounding CFLs being a great thing that you thought the science was a trivial afterthought? With respect, your letter reflects the state of knowledge about CFL toxicity 12 months ago, not current knowledge.

The magazine presented the facts determined by two key US studies, accepted as valid by the EPA and state agencies across America.

Stop shooting the messenger, and start engaging with the issue.

PS...two milligrams in a bulb equals two MILLION nanograms.

The toxic effects of inhalable elemental mercury are measured in nanograms per cubic metre of air, not milligrams, so the old canard about “negligible” amounts in bulbs is wasted on me.

As for CFLs saving mercury in NZ...forget it. 93% of our electricity is generated by non-mercury producing plants like hydro. And as Robert notes, it is one thing to have mercury in a landfill...it is entirely different to bring it into your child’s bedroom. It is even more significant for future homeowners whose families will unwittingly be contaminated 20 years from now

I doubt that these are handled and disposed of with concern for mercury release either, and there’s a huge number of them across NZ. However, the same Esource reference quotes a scientific paper (by Lindsay Audin from the 1992 ACEEE summer study) calculating that even if all the mercury from CFLs are released into the environment, this is still less than would be released from using (zero-mercury) incandescent bulbs for the same lighting, because of the mercury contained in and released from burning coal in electric generating plants.

Anyway, thanks for your article. By the way, if you want to look at another interesting topic, why hasn’t energy efficiency made more of an impact in NZ? (Disclaimer: this is the work that I do, so I have an interest in it.)

In the early 1990s, NZ was improving energy efficiency (or energy productivity, in terms of energy used per $ of GDP) by almost 5%/year. Now we’re down to under 0.5%/year. Even the USA, who are laggards, are over 2%.

I put it down to government policy, or bureaucratic ineptitude. My analysis of energy efficiency’s potential ($75B of savings available in NZ by 2020) is published on my website, under “free stuff”. Look at it if you’d like.

Anyway, keep up the good work. Even if I don’t agree with a lot of what you write, I do read it and think about it.

Rob Bishop,Energy Solutions, www.energysolutions.co.nz

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MERCURY CFLS I read your article on compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) with interest. I agree that incandescents shouldn’t be banned, but support using CFLs, and have used them for almost twenty years, with none of mine melting when they fail, like your photos show.

But, you may have underestimated the mercury problem by a factor of 50 to 100, as CFLs are a tiny fraction of the mercurycontaining lamps used in NZ. Almost all lamps used in commercial and industrial situations contain mercury. All fluorescent tubes do, and earlier ones (T12s made in the 1970s) are said to contain 50 – 100 mg of mercury per lamp (according to the Esource lighting technology atlas, 2005 edition). That’s 10 to 60 times as much as the CFLs described in your article! Also, all discharge lamps (mercury vapour, metal halide, sodium lamps) contain mercury.

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I have documents which prove that the High Court in this country is prepared to sanction secret trials simply because a plaintiff wants his day in court.

I have documents which prove that the High Court in this country is prepared to destroy books after setting aside an author’s defence.

I have documents which prove that the High Court in this country is prepared to seal files closed to prevent the public accessing information the public is entitled to know.

And finally, I have documents to prove that the High Court in this country is prepared to send somebody to jail for breaching an order the Court has made.

Those facing contempt of court for breaching a court order are denied the right to a jury trial.

The principles of justice suggest that a person may not be a judge in his own cause, and that a person’s defence must be fairly heard.

It is tragic that an American must be sent to jail in this country to demonstrate that New Zealanders do not love freedom enough.

Anne Hunt, via email

WHAT LIES BENEATH Richard Prosser (August 2008) raises good points about our myopic attitude toward wealth creation and the exploitation of our resources. Adding to what he had to say, I draw your attention to the Takaka Hill in the South Island, otherwise known as the marble mountain. There sits a vast resource suitable for making limitless quantities of Portland Cement and building materials, and yet the cement works there closed down. We should be a significant exporter as we sit on all the raw materials yet I have heard of importers bringing in cement from China, the natural end user of the finished product.

I recall having a conversation overseas with an American employed in oil exploration. He described to me the type of area wildcat explorers such as himself liked to drill. What he described sounded like New Zealand. When I pointed this out he added that he liked oil shows to seal the prospect. Like the Beverly Hillbillies theme tune where up from the ground came a bubbling crude, Texas tea. Of course I could describe areas like Murchison known for its oil shows. It has lakes right alongside. Not only that, an oil well used to be producing there many moons ago. When I described this to him, you could just about see the saliva dribbling down his chin. He became gobsmacked when finding out that not only were wildcat drillers not working in the area but that I couldn’t recall an exploration well being drilled in the area in my lifetime.

We don’t just need a state owned Petroleum Corporation. We need a state owned Construction and Mining Corporation. In effect we once had this with the Ministry of Works, and the Departments of Electricity, Railways, Post, and Forestry. Not only did they perform a useful construction function, tackling work that was otherwise unaffordable, but they also served as a social filter whereby young under-educated men were taken into the back of beyond and readied for entering civilisation. Those that survived the ordeal by avoiding the hazards of the work site and camps, returned with money toward their State Advances funded home and a clean record. This human resource we prefer to now sit at home watching Sky TV, while the taxpayer funds their drunken antics which predictably leads to crime.

By harnessing our natural and human resources New Zealand could be a very rich little country. Does anyone doubt that if we 14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

were Australian we would be into it boots and all? Then what is stopping us?

Ken Horlor, Christchurch

ERASING HISTORY Amy Brooke’s concern for the preservation of culture is valid (Erasing History, Investigate, August 2008); however, the rest of her premises for the claim that the education system is failing are hardly convincing.

Brooke asserts that our spoken and written skills have deteriorated, and provides examples of crass terms that are now in common use. A challenge to this notion is that language evolves: while the Orwellian reference is relevant, many words fall into disuse every year and new ones are being created.

Regarding the alleged lack of cursive writing being taught: primary schools teach handwriting, including sloping and linking; yet adults, including Brooke herself, type their ideas now, which begs the question: why is handwriting a crucial skill – for careers in handwriting letters? I know several dyslexic people, who cannot write neatly or spell well; who can write with precision on a computer. The world of typing is not only standard now; it is also a relief for the many fast, messy writers in the world. And who exactly do we have to write neatly for?

Brooke decries the lack of Shakespeare taught in schools, citing it as evidence we are not passing on the best of our past onto the youth. While Shakespeare was a great writer, there are many teachers who believe that reading anything will help improve reading aptitude. Liking Shakespeare is a matter of personal taste, not cultural preservation.

While some aspects of our culture and heritage may be diminishing in our schools, children are being taught a host of new things as well: children use computers for taking tests, research, writing, making movies, pictures and much more; there is a huge focus on competencies such as thinking skills (e.g., de Bono and Bloom), people skills, inquiry and much more.

Brooke is right that we must retain certain knowledge that is deemed important to society; however, times do change, we are preparing children for their futures, and there is no validity in suggesting that children should learn something just because it was taught fifty years ago; there has to be a valid reason for teaching it. Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic will with no doubt always form the core of education; exactly what is taught in these subjects, and how, is prone to changing theories and trends. If people learn to type, and learn to read using texts other than Shakespeare, they still gain proficiency and the necessary life skills. The worst argument for tradition is that ‘we’ve always done it this way.’

Simon Gemmill, Christchurch

DROP US A LINE Letters to the editor can be emailed to us, faxed or posted. They should not exceed 300 words, and we reserve the right to edit for space or clarity. All correspondence will be presumed for publication unless it is clearly marked to the contrary.

Address: INVESTIGATE, PO Box 302188, North Harbour, North Shore 0751, or email to: editorial@investigatemagazine.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 15

> simply devine

Miranda Devine

Great Global Warming Swindle vindicated

T

here is something odd about the ferocious amount ally unscathed. I wonder how a Four Corners episode would fare of energy expended suppressing any dissent from ortho- under such scrutiny. doxy on climate change. After all, the climate cataclysThe two principal complainants, the oceanographer Carl Wunsch mists have won the war of public opinion – for now, at and Sir David King, Britain’s former chief scientific adviser, were least – with polls, business, media and Government enthusiasti- found to have been wronged – but only partially. cally on board.

King claimed to have been misquoted by the atmospheric physiSo, if their case is so good, why try so fervently to extinguish cist Fred Singer, who told the program: “There will still be people other points of view? There is a disturbingly religious zeal in the who believe that this is the end of the world – particularly when attempts to silence critics and portray them as the moral equiva- you have, for example, the chief scientist of the UK telling peolent of holocaust deniers. ple that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the Take the British Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Earth will be the Antarctic. And humanity may survive thanks to Warming Swindle, which aired on ABC TV (and Prime TV in NZ) some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic.” earlier this year with an extraordinary post-show panel of debunkers Ofcom found King had not said the Antarctic would be the assembled to denounce it. The one program which actually ques- “only habitable place on Earth” but “the most habitable place on tioned the consensus on man’s contribution to climate change, it Earth”. Big deal. However, he had not made the “breeding couhas been singled out for condemnation and forensic dissection in a ples” comment, which was the invention of another cataclysmist, way no other program has, least Sir James Lovelock. of all Al Gore’s error-riddled An As for Wunsch, Ofcom It is also wise to maintain a Inconvenient Truth. found the program’s proThis week, the British comducers had not “suffihealthy suspicion of the zealots, munications regulator, Ofcom, ciently informed” him of its published a long report deal“polemic” nature, although ing with 265 complaints about who insist they have all the answers they had told him their aim perceived inaccuracy and was to be sceptical and “to unfairness in Swindle. examine critically the notion that recent global warming is priDespite crowing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate marily caused by industrial emissions of [carbon dioxide].” In any Change, the ABC and others, Ofcom does not vindicate Swindle’s case, after he complained, his interview was removed. attackers. In fact, while it declared itself unable to adjudicate on Ofcom dismissed Wunsch’s more serious complaint that his views the finer points of climate science, it found the program did not on the “complicated” relationship between carbon dioxide and atmomislead audiences “so as to cause harm or offence”. spheric temperature had been misrepresented. But it acknowledged Further, Ofcom defended the right of Channel 4 and the much- “unfairness” to him in the way his comments were placed “in the vilified producer Martin Durkin to “continue to explore contro- context of a range of scientists who denied the scientific consensus versial subject matter. While such programs can polarise opinion, about the anthropogenic causes of global warming”. they are essential to our understanding of the world around us Ofcom also dismissed all complaints about impartiality in most and are amongst the most important content that broadcasters of the program dealing with science. But it found the final secproduce.” Amen. tion on Africa lacked impartiality when it claimed Western govOfcom also noted: “Although the complainants disagreed with ernment policies “seek to restrain industrial development [in the points made by the contributors in the programme, they did the Third World] to reduce the production of carbon dioxide”, not suggest that the overall statements about climate models were thus restricting the availability of electricity in Africa and causfactually inaccurate.” ing health problems.

It identified one factual error – a mislabelled axis of a temperature As for the climate change panel’s barrage of complaints, Ofcom graph – which the program had already changed in later versions found the program makers did not give the UN body adequate and which Ofcom described as “not of such significance as to have time to respond to allegations it was “politically driven”’ and other been materially misleading so as to cause harm and offence”. claims, but the audience was not “materially misled so as to cause Ofcom nitpicked as hard as it could and Swindle emerged virtu- harm or offence”.

16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

There will still be people who believe that this is the end of the world – particularly when you have, for example, the chief scientist of the UK telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the Earth will be the Antarctic

The Ofcom report (worth reading in full at www.ofcom.org. uk) is an embarrassment to the panel.

The fact is that, regardless of the definitive pronouncements made by politicians and economists, the science on global warming is far from finalised.

Dr David Evans, a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office for six years to 2005, is one of many insiders who have reversed earlier positions.

“There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming,” he wrote last month in The Australian.

Ultimately, the integrity of the scientific community will triumph, Evans has said. “The cause of global warming is an issue that falls into the realm of science, because it is falsifiable. No amount of human posturing will affect what the cause is. The cause just physically is there, and after sufficient research and time we will know what it is.”

Until then, open debate is important. It is also wise to maintain a healthy suspicion of the zealots, who insist they have all the answers – and that Australia, which is responsible for one per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, ought to wreck its economy to prove a point. devinemiranda@hotmail.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 17

> straight talk

Mark Steyn An ode to Moneypenny

I

don’t know what a Canadian performer has to do not to get M’s all-powerful secretary,” which suggests that desire arose from into the Order of Canada, but evidently Lois Maxwell man- her proximity to power. There’s something rather crass about aged it. For a quarter-century, she could stake a plausible claim nailing your own secretary but nailing the boss’s is subversive – to have played to bigger audiences around the world than any although, in Bond’s case, it may have had an element of displaceother Canuck thespian. Yet she was something of a prophet with- ment: in Ian Fleming’s novels, 007 spends more timing mooning out honour in her native land, and elsewhere had to make do with over M’s “clear blue eyes” than he ever does over Moneypenny’s. honour without profit. Everybody else on the James Bond fran- Her first name was Jane, but she was addressed as “Moneypenny” chise got mega-rich – Ian Fleming; the producer Cubby Broccoli; or “Penny,” admitted to the boys’ school collegiality of surnames the composer Monty Norman, whose eternal Bond theme is the and nicknames – the real male intimacy which Bond’s army of ravonly reliable earner in a journeyman oeuvre; the other composer, enous shaggers out in the field would never know. And so, instead John Barry, who wrote “Goldfinger”, “Diamonds Are Forever” of bedding her and finding her a gilded corpse or dropped in the and almost all the other decent title songs; and, of course, Sean shark tank or any of the other grim morning-afters that await the Connery and Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan. But, for most of typical Bond girl, 007 did her the singular honour of teasing her, her long reign as M’s secretary Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell decade in, decade out. got a hundred pounds a day for a two- or three-day shoot, and Fleming based Moneypenny on Vera Atkins, secretary to Maurice for the first five movies had to supply her own clothes. From Dr. Buckmaster, head of the French section at Britain’s wartime Special No in 1962 to A View to a Kill in 1985, her total screen time barely Operations Executive. Miss Atkins lived into her nineties, died adds up to an hour. in the year 2000, and, But what an hour. Ninety although a spinster to the She was something of a prophet end, didn’t recognize herper cent of starring roles don’t bring the public recognition self in Fleming’s fictionalizawithout honour in her native land, that a minute and a half of tion. She was one of those Moneypenny bantering with fiendishly smart gals whose and elsewhere had to make do with talents it took a global conher beloved James did. It went pretty much the same way flagration to liberate. It was honour without profit every time. 007 would arrive Vera Atkins who recruited at MI6 headquarters, having and supervised the over 400 been delayed by the usual horizontal encounter (“Sorry I’m late, British agents who parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, standM. I’m afraid something came up,” etc.), to be briefed about the ing on the runway night after night to watch her boys take off and latest global megalomaniac to have caught the eye of Her Majesty’s disappear into the clouds. Like Moneypenny, she was indulgent Secret Service. But, regardless of the urgency – threats to nuke of the Secret Service’s penchant for secret servicing, as long as it major cities every 24 hours and whatnot – Commander Bond stayed brisk and businesslike. Romance was another matter. “Oh, always had time for a little byplay in the outer office. Verbal byplay, the bloody English!” she sighed, after one of her boys, George that is. Had she joined the Mounties, Miss Moneypenny might Millar, revealed he was in love again. “We never have bother of have got her man. But, in the British Secret Service, she stayed this sort with the French. They just copulate, and that is that.” unmounted, a unique distinction among “Bond girls.”

Where Moneypenny was devoted to just one agent, Miss Atkins The character was present at the creation, in Casino Royale, the was devoted to all of them: 118 vanished in the course of their very first 007 novel 55 years ago, right there on the first page of duties, and after the war she demanded to be allowed to investigate chapter three: their cases. She discovered the fate of 117, all dead, and brought “What do you think, Penny?” The Chief of Staff turned to M’s many of their killers to justice. private secretary who shared the room with him.

“Vera Atkins,” like “Lois Maxwell,” sounds as English as you Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for eyes which could get. But Vera was born Vera Rosenberg in Bucharest, and were cool and direct and quizzical.

Lois was born Lois Hooker in Kitchener. She took the name By the second book, Live and Let Die, she’d advanced from “Maxwell” from a gay ballet dancer pal in London, and back in “would have been desirable” to “the desirable Miss Moneypenny, Ontario her family liked it so much they all adopted it, too.(Her 18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

For her 75th birthday party, admission was conditional on guests wearing headgear and lobbing it at the specially replicated civil service hat stand Photo: WENN

forthcoming autobiography is apparently entitled Born A Hooker.)

Her character isn’t a big part of Casino Royale or any of the books.

She’s there, you feel, because Fleming had conceived Bond with a series in mind and wanted to give the impression of a fully populated world. And, of course, he enjoyed the jest of an organization of global assassins who were British civil servants, subject to all the dreary paperwork and penny-pinching of cheerless postwar London. In the early films, Moneypenny’s office is pretty much like any other Whitehall cubbyhole, low on decor, save for the obligatory hat stand to which Sean Connery would wing his trilby.

In later movies like The Man with the Golden Gun, she’d turn up in saucily nautical garb manning the photocopier in a submerged battleship in Hong Kong Harbour, but, in the movie looping endlessly through our minds, like Gene Kelly and the lamppost, Miss Maxwell is never far from the hat stand. For her 75th birthday party, admission was conditional on guests wearing headgear and lobbing it at the specially replicated civil service hat stand.

Fleming conceived Moneypenny in the heyday of secretaries, of office parties, of “Why, Miss Jones, you’re beautiful without your glasses ...,” of Frank Loesser’s “A Secretary Is Not A Toy” in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, of Della Street pluckily holding the fort for Perry Mason. Hallmark introduced special cards for “Secretaries Week,” now renamed “Administrative Professionals Week,” which takes a bit of the zing out of the verses.

When Lois Maxwell, pushing 60, was retired from the service, Cubby Broccoli cast Caroline Bliss, who turned Moneypenny into a giggly Sloane Ranger (as the London slang of the eighties had it), and then Samantha Bond, who was better but definitely more of an “Administrative Professional,” and finally the secretary got downsized completely. They dropped the character from Casino Royale and bragged about dumping the old “formula.”

But the formula – Moneypenny flirting; Q snapping, “Oh, grow up, 007”; the opening titles of underdressed dolly birds floating around phallic gun barrels – is what kept the show on the road.

Take out Moneypenny and Co. from most of the Bond films, and all you’re left with is the usual laser thingy in space and Bond running around a hollowed-out volcano shooting people while he looks for the timer.

As for Miss Maxwell, while loyal to M, she wasn’t above a bit of moonlighting. She was one of the voices on Stingray, the cult TV show of bobble-headed puppets (filmed in “Supermarionation”) that, via Thunderbirds, inspired Team America. In Stingray, Lois Maxwell was Atlanta Shore of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol – or WASP, a somewhat improbable acronym for a transnational agency. Atlanta is very much in love with granite-jawed hero Troy Tempest, but on his top-secret missions he has a bit of underwater tail in the shape of a mermaid called Marina. In other words, it’s the same old unrequited Bond scenario.

Meanwhile, up on dry land, Atlanta would be seen staring dreamily at a photo of Troy, and wondering why he hadn’t come in to the office today.

It was a living, and Lois Maxwell carried it off with splendid brio. Almost everyone connected with Bond turns out to have feet of clay: Sean Connery is a dreary Scottish nationalist offscreen; Roger Moore says he doesn’t like guns; and, when Daniel Craig leapt into his Aston Martin in Casino Royale, it emerged he could only drive automatics. They had to get a stuntman in for the stick shift. But in over a decade of her column in the Toronto Sun, Lois Maxwell revealed a Moneypenny of magnificently robust views. She’d have made a better “Canada’s Thatcher” than Kim Campbell ever could.

She wanted the role Judi Dench got – the first female head of MI6. True, the CIA seems to have dwindled down into the world’s biggest typing pool, sitting around in Virginia monitoring email all day. But even there the stenographer does not get to be boss. And so Lois Maxwell bumped up against the glass ceiling, and never got to be M – the one letter the secretary couldn’t take. © Mark Steyn, 2008

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 19

> eyes right

Richard Prosser The right stuff

I

’m a right-winger. My headline says so, so I must be. But payer and owned by the nation, managed by the Government, what does that actually mean? What really differentiates between and staffed by the People. the Left and the Right in political terms, and more to the point, A sense of community grew from this mutual effort, and an what will be the real differences we can look forward to when egalitarianism little known elsewhere in the New World develwe swap the present Labour Government for a National one, oped alongside it. come November?

We were not like America, where private interests laid the rails Right-winger, to me, means being a nationalist, a militarist, and often the roads, and established industrialists built the utiliand a patriot. But these are not exclusive sentiments; many on ties – gas and electricity, telegraph and then phone, bringing with the Left of the political spectrum share similar feelings, or at least them a class system based on the relative wealth attainable under they did in the old days. a purely capitalist system. Nor were we subject to mandatory colTerminology plays a big part in the way we perceive our politi- lectivism in the same manner as monarchist Britain or socialist cians and their professed leanings. But terminology remains con- Europe; instead, New Zealand fell into a happy medium, where stant, while all too often, the philosophy it purports to describe, private merchants, farmers and fishermen, sawyers, carriers and changes and evolves over time. tradesmen, were free to avail themselves of the infrastructure which This writer is quite convinced that neither National nor Labour everyone had contributed to, and to turn a fair profit in exchange today bears any resemblance to the original Parties whose names for a reasonable tax. they still carry, in terms of purpose, policy, and intention; and And while the definition of “reasonable” may have been subyet We The People still vote ject to individual interprefor them, or not as the case tation and robustly opined Somebody like me, who is may be, as if the last sixty years commentary, it still entitled had never passed, and as if the every citizen to a slice of a comfortably hard right by our contents of the package were pie which included transstill the same as the ingrediport links, power, comdefinition, would be regarded as ents listed. munication, schooling and Being a right-winger, essenhealthcare, in servings which quite liberal anywhere else tially, means that I regard the were more or less uniform, individuals who comprise generally adequate, and othsociety, as being more important than society as a whole; or at erwise free. This was the environment of freedom within comleast, that their rights and concerns should not be subservient to mon purpose, which created the All Blacks, forged the ANZAC those of the collective. alliance, and gave rise to the spirit of Telethon.

Left-wingers, I believe, are those who presume the reverse; it is, It was not all beer and skittles, of course, and there were those for them, the State which is paramount, and the proles who gen- employers, and others in positions of power, who exploited the erate and support it, are but pawns in a greater game. less advantaged; and from this, stemmed the Labour movement, So much for the theory; but this is New Zealand, where, natu- and from it, the Labour Party. The Labour Party became the natrally, things are a little bit different. We are, inherently, a slightly ural home of mainstream leftist sentiment in New Zealand, the socialist country. Even the centre of politics is a little way to the place of refuge for the academics and the wets, as well as for the left. Somebody like me, who is comfortably hard right by our defi- unionists who had created it. nition, would be regarded as quite liberal anywhere else.

But, as appears to be the way with Left-wing political movements Perhaps the reason for this goes back to our pioneering origins. and the human condition, the more extreme elements in the Party New Zealand’s early settlers, finding themselves half a world away moved rapidly to prominence, taking Labour down a more definifrom home and the technical advantages thereof, with no way of tively, and thus demonstrably unsustainable, socialist path. returning, clubbed together out of necessity, collectively buildBecause of this, and in some regards in response to it, there ing the networks of a nation which none of them could achieve came about shortly thereafter the creation of the National Party. separately. Roads, railways, the power grid and the telephone sys- Born of the amalgamation of the United and Reform Parties tem, ports, schools, hospitals and the like were built by the tax- in 1936, National came to be New Zealand’s “Natural Party of 20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

Government” not because it was very markedly different from Labour, but rather, thanks to another quirk of this country’s “collective” psyche, because it was in some ways just a little less radical.

That quirk of course was the inherently moderate nature of the average New Zealander; as unappreciated by the leadership of the radical left of the 1930s, as it is by the radical right of today, is the truth that the ordinary Kiwi in the street is a reasonably mellow and fair-minded soul.

In contrast with the more pronounced differences between the Parliamentary Left and Right in some other nations of the Anglosphere, New Zealand found itself comfortably at home with an economically Conservative Right who were, in social terms, quite Liberal; and a governmentally Socialist Left who were, equally, in social terms, quite Conservative. Almost no-one in the mainstream of the Left was what might be termed a “Progressive” (ie, change for its own sake, driven by dogma, of little use, and generally socially counter-productive); but conversely, very few on the mainstream Right were “Reactionary” either (ie, adherence to tradition for its own sake, driven by ignorance, of little use, and generally socially retarding).

Thus the National Party in Government did not dismantle the Welfare State, nor did it undo the Union movement; but equally, it did not stand in the way of free enterprise, or the ability and right of Joe Bloggs to make an honest buck. New Zealand flourished from the late 1940s through to the early 1980s, thanks largely to Less Government, rather than the More Government prescribed by the Labour Party of the time. But while the Nats of Old interfered less in the private affairs of citizens and businesses, they Governed enough to retain assistance where that was necessary, in the areas of society which struggled to look after themselves.

And through it all, the Government continued to manage, on behalf of the taxpayers who had built them, the assets and infrastructures which every citizen collectively owned; the roads and the railways, the power stations, the Post Office, the schools and the hospitals, Air New Zealand and the Ministry of Works. And despite the ongoing State ownership of these strategic national assets, the sky steadfastly failed to fall.

And then, in suitably Orwellian 1984, the nation went mad, and both Labour and National lost their minds and sold their souls, and the entire concept and understanding of Left and Right was turned on its head.

The economic revolution of Labour’s Rogernomics was not a victory of right-wing freedom over State suppression and control; it was a treasonous act of national destruction. A “Free Market” is not a good solid right-wing idea, it’s insanity. Letting The Market set its own rules, without regulation, is about as clever as letting drunk drivers or street gangs set their own rules, and an inexcusable abrogation of necessary Governmental responsibility.

Having a nation built by private enterprise from the beginning, as was the case with America, is one thing. Selling the nation to private enterprise after it is built, is quite another, and simple logic dictates that it cannot possibly make sense. It is mathematically impossible to save money by selling a “business” which one already owns freehold, and whose services one uses, at cost only, to a private buyer who will then sell those same services back to you (and make a profit), unless the business is sold for less than it is worth, or the services are bought for more than they are worth, or both. Either way, the taxpayer, the former owner of the “business”, can only be, and will be, worse off.

New Zealand found itself comfortably at home with an economically Conservative Right who were, in social terms, quite Liberal; and a governmentally Socialist Left who were, equally, in social terms, quite Conservative

If it needs a better manager, then hire one – but don’t chuck the baby out with the bathwater.

The electricity sell-off is a perfect case in point. The same electricity we still buy, from the same power stations which we used to own, delivered through the same wires which we paid to install, now costs us twice what it did in 1999 – and we’re still having winter shortages – and for what difference? That half the profit now disappears offshore, is about the only one this writer can see.

After the madness of the 1980s, Roger Douglas and Co formed the ACT Party, whose social liberalism I salute and whose economic fascism I despise; National became the “We-Are-LabourToo” Party, and Labour itself was taken over by a bunch of radical minorities, including a large gay contingent, who hijacked the Party and flew it to Cuba.

The Leftists of Labour and the Greens today, who hide behind the label “Social Democrat” because they lack the moral courage to be honest about their philosophical leanings, would have us mirror the liberal democracies of Scandinavia, in terms of universal Social Welfare, high taxation, and State-sponsored diversity, because it suits their Greenie-pinko agenda; but they have cherry-picked from the reality of these nations, and they ignore Sweden’s heavily manufacturing-based industrialised economy, Norway’s State-owned petroleum industry, Denmark’s staunchly nationalistic immigration policies, and the powerful and broadbased Armed Forces of the three, who all, incidentally, still have Compulsory Military Service.

If the National Party under John Key can resurrect something of the philosophy and policy of the National Party of old, last seen under the leadership of the late Sir Robert Muldoon – perhaps this country’s greatest right-wing nationalist Prime Minister, and, ironically, a socialist in practice – then they will be on track to regaining the title of “The Natural Party of Government.”

But if they can’t, then a traditionalist New Zealand right-winger like me, might have to find another home for my vote; one which promotes the nation and supports its people, but rewards the efforts of the individual; which upholds the rights of the farmer, the soldier, and the businessman, but also protects the interests of the worker; which offers me a hand when I ask for it, but stays out of my life otherwise.

Who, of today’s contenders, truly has The Right Stuff to be the Government? Maybe I’ll give the Maori Party a call.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 21

> line one

Chris Carter

Of asps and crocodiles

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ne of the more dubious pleasures that comes with being Speaker can’t be accused of misrepresentation because sure as hell a Sky TV subscriber is that we New Zealanders have an on the chances of ever hearing a straight answer to a question are as again/off again opportunity to gaze upon our Parliament in rare as all the seats in the debating chamber ever being full. Matter all of its glory. Indeed, over the last few weeks, with general of fact I have often wondered where one obtains the sort of training woe and despondency, in a financial sense, having visited most of that will enable you to analyse a perfectly reasonable and importhe population with an almost plague like virulence, naturally, like tant question and then to quickly “answer” it in a manner that in many others I turned to our elected leadership to find out, live no way contains any useful information at all. This of course takes from Parliament, what plans they had to rescue us all from our place in an institution that many refer to as “the highest court in current predicament. Well, I have to report that despite spending the land”, which really is a distinct worry. Imagine oneself before a many hours watching and listening to the House in action that, Judge in the District Court. You’re in the Dock and the Prosecutor not unlike Cleopatra, around about now would be a good time to asks you “where were you on the night of the fifth?”, and your reply import a couple of containers full of asps that we might clasp to – upon some reflection – is “yes”. It is more than likely that the our bosoms. With the lunatics having apparently taken over the Judge would caution you and demand that you answer the quesParliamentary asylum, where, apart from screeching, braying, and tion properly or be in contempt of court. Not so in Parliament continual demonstrations of the dangers of collective self abuse, where the Speaker apparently, and perhaps by tradition, does not nothing of any real worth is to be seen there, and that accord- in fact have the attention span of an ordinary District Court Judge, ingly, our previously prosperand simply allows nonsensious little country may well be cal answers to be acceptable The chances of ever hearing a doomed. as a matter of course. This Not unlike the apparent inevitably allows “question majority of our major finan- straight answer to a question are as time” to simply degenerate cial institutions, this new into a series of very expenrare as all the seats in the debating sive slanging matches, with virus brings with it a seeming need to employ charlatans and the highly paid participants’ chamber ever being full worse to effectively steal mum only sanctions being the and dad’s savings, and is now occasional shrieked call to well in evidence, right within Parliament itself. With absolutely “order!!!” from the ‘Shrieker’ of The House. no shame at all, Parliament on television blatantly provides a conWe then move to General Debate where the politicians enjoy tinual and very graphic display of the political black arts, such as a timed allotment to offer forth their latest party political plans the sublimation of truth, how those most skilled in deception, and achievements, where lest anything of seeming worth is either misrepresentation, and even the actual murder of truth are invari- overlooked or requires underlining, an otherwise completely invisably to be found on the party front benches. It also appears to be ible same party back bencher asks an inevitable “patsy” question. relatively unimportant to be blessed with any sort of an inkling as This is then frequently reinforced with even more intellectually to the day to day problems of the people that they claim to repre- challenging and boring addendums from the Party’s voting fodder sent, indeed most speeches and questions asked in the House are leading inevitably to little more than a fleshing out, of a speech, shamelessly partisan and clearly designed to advance the party and that from its inception, was little better than you would find in members’ future employment hopes, rather than, in any way, to a Waikato paddock. The individual performers in this “hugely address the human wants and needs of the electorate at large. expensive to produce” little farce? Usually they can be ranked by The House leads off each sitting with the Speaker of the House their aforementioned ability to sell common self interest, if not solemnly intoning the parliamentary prayer which, by recent duplicity and the more recently suspected common fraud as an events, should be dropped as it’s quite plain it neither encour- actually desirable state of affairs. The Media, ever complicit in this ages good government nor even pretence at being one. We then well staged Political farce, nevertheless do their very best to make quickly run through a list of bills currently before the House, at it seem to the general public that all is as it should be within our which point the Speaker announces that it’s question time. You’ll democratic process, although recently it appears that the Media’s note here that it’s not question and answer time, so at least the previously cosy relationship with the Government is in some disar22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

ray. Increasingly the nation’s press and indeed the electronic media have taken it upon themselves to begin asking rather awkward questions. Even worse, many of these questions, not having been asked across the floor of the House but rather in the full light of day so that the public at large, rather than just the Speaker of the House, can form opinions as to their validity, this has proven to be a most encouraging turn of events indeed. The Fourth Estate, I believe is due for our heartiest thanks and congratulations for its casting off of the so called convention whereby political statements and explanations used to essentially go unchallenged.

That the Clark Government’s current woes are almost entirely due to journalists simply doing their jobs properly in their almost weekly uncovering of all kinds or rorts and fiddles, is, exactly what they should be doing, a practise that I’m sure that we all hope will continue regardless of who it is that gets to win the next election.

Strangely enough, probably one of the best things that ever happened as far as keeping the bastards honest, as the old saying goes, was the now full on televising of parliament in session. For the very first time, ordinary New Zealand voters can actually see the people we have elected to run this country in action, warts and all. An opportunity to judge the smart from the actually stupid.

Those that appear to be truthful as opposed to those who quite plainly rely on trickery and the obfuscation of the truth beyond all recognition. That we now know that Parliament is well overdue for reformation, is mainly due to the efforts of journalists who are now digging up all sorts of things that individually perhaps are not that bad. Collectively, however, it’s now become very apparent that we have allowed, in our previous ignorance as to what’s been going on, for the tail to enjoy a right old time wagging the dog rather than the other way around.

Even worse, simply from the “right up themselves” attitudes on the part of many senior politicians towards us, the taxpayers and voters can quite plainly see the kind of arrogance that used to be completely out of character as to what we Kiwis once thought was in any way acceptable. The passing of all manner of highly questionable laws and regulations that plainly had little if any real support amongst the population at large seemed largely to fall into the area of “we’re the government and you’re not”. This arrogance further compounded by a sort of ritualistic pattern of abuse whereby anyone offering up opposition to their plans is labelled as a religious nut, a racist, a child beater, a rich prick, a

Politics is the art of gathering up the poor’s votes, using the rich’s money, promising each to protect the one from the other

homophobe, a sexist, to name just a few of the labels these out of control individuals feel quite comfortable in calling many of the people that in fact pay their wages! And then, regardless of party, do those insulated from the public politicians really think that most people can’t see right through their pathetic attempts to keep pulling the wool over our eyes with the same old tired tricks. I’m reminded of the old adage that “Politics is the art of gathering up the poor’s votes, using the rich’s money, promising each to protect the one from the other”, a ploy that has been around for as long as I can remember but that sadly enough people can still be taken in by to sway an election.

Finally, if I may offer a couple of bits of completely unasked for advice to our Prime Minister as she fights tooth and nail to retain her exalted position. Regarding Winston Peters, we are reminded of Peter Pan’s advice, ”Never smile at a crocodile...don’t be taken in by his welcome grin” and perhaps in conclusion from Mr Peters’ number one hero, Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, who sagely observed “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile, hoping that it will eat him (or her) last.”

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

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> soapbox

Leon Harrison Defence matters

24 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

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

D

isturbing, yet equally revealing, is the connection Instead, the motive to help a friendly nation was seen as swaying between so many critical issues of our society and those of to the imperialist whims of the US. In the schoolyard you would Defence. Collectively, individual attitudes of complacency think it good of one child to go to the aid of another in a bully situpermeate throughout the nation and provide the sort of ation. But no, and that is why the bullying continues, because the environment a left wing pacifistic government needs to ingrain its perpetrator knows, more often than not, they will get away with it; ideologies upon the people it supposedly represents. in your home, in your community, nationally and globally.

Richard Prosser’s “Eyes in the Sky” is a set-piece example when It is no mere coincidence that New Zealand is the first Western you consider the Queen’s Birthday weekend Tribute 08 to recog- nation to sign a Free Trade Agreement with China. Many of those nise, forty years after the fact, our Vietnam Veterans – New Zealand involved in it were at the heart of protesting against the Vietnam the last nation involved in the conflict to do so. The double edge War – cursing, spitting and yelling “baby killer” to those who comes in uncomfortable unison with New Zealand’s responsibility were simply doing their job. The irony is, it is the politician who for the production of Agent Orange and successive governments’ signs away the orders to send soldiers to war. Yet it is the soldier denial of its effects on deployed troops. Several hundred veterans who continues to pay the price. have already died since their return from Vietnam, the health of Not so long ago, the Indonesian Air Force, and at least one their families irrevocably affected.

Indonesian submarine shadowed our deployments to East Timor.

A soldier goes where they are asked to go. If a fireman decided Yet today, with crippled Anti-submarine Warfare capabilities and not to turn up to your house no longer any strike capacity fire, or a policeman said he for the RNZAF, it is quite It is no mere coincidence that didn’t want to turn up to your clear where the priorities of violent assault, you’d be justithe current administration New Zealand is the first Western fiably indignant. The impact lie. Maintaining the presis personal – you are directly ent philosophy, it is only a nation to sign a Free Trade affected. When it is another matter of time until New people, another nation, sudZealanders will once more Agreement with China. Many of denly it means very little. It suffer unnecessarily due to shows just how selfish we are, being ill-equipped, ill-prethose involved in it were at the this country that claims to pared and being left in the stand for so much. dark while doing their bit heart of protesting against the The “domino theory” was a on foreign soil. genuine concern of the Cold The results are disturbing War era. South Vietnam did Vietnam War – cursing, spitting and to say the least; a once proud not wish to be communist nation, which, by inaction yelling “baby killer” to those who and received assistance in that and frivolous spending has fight. Sadly, if I came to aid of demonstrated wanton disrewere simply doing their job neighbour in a home invasion gard for its own affairs such scenario and defended them as a dependable capacity for and their property, the consequences I would face in a court of disaster relief, to provide adequate maritime security or full speclaw would ride parallel with the attitudes held against the allies trum force protection for those it chooses to put in harm’s way. of the South Vietnamese involved in that war.

This is a lesson of history taught numerous times over, yet we do Some years ago, a good friend of mine produced the “Bully in not learn. And so, we have even less a capacity to help others in the Schoolyard” analogy. No one is going to deny the horrors of their time of need. war, and that all parties involved must apportion responsibility.

The principles of peace and freedom we claim to stand for, as Yet it seems all too easy to apportion blame to one party, while a supposedly upstanding global citizen, are so easily challenged disregarding others; namely Russia and China and the expansion- when we can ill afford to continue our course as morally bankrupt ist nature of Communism. hypocrite when the chips are down and it really matters.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM  September 2008  25

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26 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

LIGHTS

OUT Public backlash builds over ecobulbs

Last month’s special investigation into mercury leakage from broken CFL eco-bulbs has forced government agencies to urgently review their positions on CFL safety, but as IAN WISHART reports in part two of his investigation, new documents raise more questions than they answer

28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

T

he Green Party is under increasing pressure to explain why it didn’t ask for more research on the dangers of so-called “eco-bulbs” before allowing the Government to ban incandescent light bulbs. Documents released to Investigate and TGIF Edition under the Official Information Act disclose the Greens had red-flagged the mercury problem a year ago, but fell for reassurances from Labour’s Energy Minister, David Parker.

With the Ministry of Health due to issue a statement this month clarifying its position on the mercury risk from broken bulbs, the Labour-led government’s credibility is in the spotlight from even its most ardent supporters.

As reported last month, there are two key studies just published – the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) study, and another from Brown University in the US – that have shown for the first time that mercury levels in a cold broken bulb can be hazardous to humans. It is unlikely the NZ Ministry of Health will find a magic bullet capable of overcoming the incriminating raw data in the US studies.

In its covering letter to the released documents, the Ministry for the Environment’s Deputy Secretary, Lindsay Gow, confirms “that mercury in CFLs is an issue, and the Ministry for the Environment is taking the public’s concerns seriously”.

Gow adds that current NZ government advice to the public that the lights are ‘safe’ could change in the wake of the latest studies.

“Internationally, the scientific research on mercury-containing lamps is ongoing and therefore advice and recommendations may change in the future.”

Gow also defends the Ministry’s failure to evaluate mercury risks earlier (even though it wasn’t difficult for the Maine DEP).

“Research for the product stewardship report used data available at the time and therefore could not take into account the relative mercury contribution lighting products make to New Zealand’s overall mercury emissions.

“In addition the waste models that estimate future mercury waste arisings could not include losses of mercury to the environment prior to disposal at landfill [ie, breakages in the home], the loss of mercury to the atmosphere from lamps once in the landfill and made an assumption on the destination of end-of-life lamps. This is because the data was not available.”

Minister of Energy David Parker handing out free energy efficient light bulbs to members of the public in Aotea Square, to promote the launch of new climate change booklets by the Ministry for the Environment.

Photo: Martin Sykes

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 29

A further complicating factor, based on the documents released to Investigate and TGIF Edition, is that the rosy reports to the Government were based on assumptions that so-called ‘eco-bulbs’ would really last eight to ten years in ordinary household use, and that even the earliest models were still a long way from end of life: “As CFLs have a longer life it is anticipated that the industry, with support from government, has about two years to design and implement the take-back and recycling system needed to manage the imminent increase in mercury containing waste,” notes a MfE briefing note from 5 June 2007, enthusiastically endorsed by David Parker in a handwritten comment, “Looks good”.

U

nfortunately, as many consumers are already complaining, the CFL bulbs don’t last very long under ordinary household conditions, there are already bulbs by the truckload entering landfills. Millions of bulbs have been sold in New Zealand, and burned out or broken ones have simply been chucked in the rubbish in most cases.

“Yesterday, 23rd July 08,” wrote one commenter on Investigate’s TBR blogsite, “I went to the Waitakere City Council Refuse Transfer Station to dispose of my maximum allowable limit of 5 ecobulbs (CFLs) and as I knew they contained mercury and would release very toxic mercury vapour if they were broken, put them in a plastic bread bag with a rubberband around the neck and took them to the proper W.C.C. site to dispose of them properly.

“But to my HORROR, when I handed them in the bag to the refuse worker, when I asked him , ‘is this the correct place to give you these for recycling?’, he simply gave me a sly grin and tossed the plastic bag some 20 yards into the distance in Shed 8 towards a general massive rubbish heap. The bulbs in the bag fell short of the pile and smashed in the bag!

“So much for a proper handling of your bulbs by your local council! And how many consumers are going to use their expensive petrol to drive to the proper council site to dispose of them ‘correctly’ and given what I witnessed firsthand yesterday, why would you even bother? This is a total outrage!!!”

Investigate alerted Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey, who moved quickly to get a dedicated disposal bin set up, but it illustrates the extreme dangers some workers are being exposed to, or exposing themselves to, unwittingly.

The briefing papers released to the magazine admitted that “no studies [on the environmental risks associated with the mercury content of CFLs] have been completed that are specific to New Zealand. All advice is based on overseas studies/conclusions.”

And while the documents show the Government was aware of the Maine breakage that sparked the groundbreaking – and bulbbreaking – DEP study, New Zealand officials were determined to play it down “as we do not want the fear of mercury to hamper CFL take-up by the public”.

To that end, Energy Minister David Parker even sent Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons a letter on 24 July last year, pouring scorn on the Maine case: “An American story has surfaced about a resident in Maine who amassed a clean-up bill of more than $2,000 by breaking a single CFL in her home. This story is one example of the misleading information in the public domain,” scoffed Parker, saying the bill was an amount suggested by a private waste cleanup company, and was not supported by Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection.

“The Department subsequently issued an assurance that this 30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

was not necessary and provided easy step-by step advice on lamp cleanup,” continued Parker. “However, by then it was too late and the misleading, alarmist information had already circulated around the worldwide web.”

What Parker should have known, if his advisors had bothered to pick up the phone and call their colleagues in Maine, was that DEP wasn’t prepared to let the matter rest until it thoroughly tested the risk itself, and that by the time Parker wrote his reassuring letter, the Maine authorities had already made a disturbing discovery about the mercury dangers from CFLs. So when Parker told Jeanette Fitzsimons this - “Another key misconception is that the mercury in the lamp stays in vapour form when the lamp breaks. Mercury cannot stay in a vapour form at normal atmospheric pressures. If a lamp is broken the mercury returns to the liquid state” – he was flying in the face of Maine’s scientific discovery: the mercury from a broken cold bulb (let alone a hot one) existed in vapour form for months!

Among the documents released to Investigate and TGIF Edition is one headlined “Key Messages on Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) and mercury”. This document details the PR spin Labour and its advisors planned to put into effect. The campaign would first brainwash the news media, and through them, the public.

Those “key messages” from the Labour-led Government’s view were firstly to repeatedly compare light bulbs to other items with more mercury content, like volcanoes.

“There are a range of natural and other sources of mercury in New Zealand, such as volcanic activity…”

A search of the NZ Herald’s archives reveals no articles link mercury with volcanoes until January 8 this year, five months after Labour hatched its propaganda strategy to soften up public resistance to mercury in CFLs. Another “key message” from the Government to be used in media statements is that “Mercury can also be found in other household items such as a thermometer or a barometer.”

Two articles in the Herald in June this year used that PR line.

And how many times have you heard the authorities, speaking via the media, say this: “The current average mercury content for a household CFL is 4mg per lamp. This is enough to cover the tip of a ballpoint pen.”

Another key message is the now-proven-wrong claim: “The National Poison Centre in Dunedin states that there is very little risk from the mercury if a lamp should break in the home.

When a lamp breaks, the small amount of mercury will be in liquid form.”

The “key messages” document trots out even more misleading information with its claim that “CFLs and other lamps containing mercury are already defined as hazardous wastes and guidance exists for the bulk disposal of mercury-containing lamps. Collection and recycling facilities already exist in New Zealand.”

Yet, as reported above, the facilities don’t yet exist and are not expected to come on stream for another couple of years.

Additionally, as reported last month, ERMA denied CFLs were covered by the hazardous substances laws.

“CFLs are still the environmentally friendly option!” chirps David Parker’s key messages document.

As TGIF Edition reported, Parker at one point claims in his letter to the Greens that “the level of care the consumer should take [if a CFL lamp breaks] is no more than when dealing with household paint [or] oven cleaner.”

It’s advice that simply isn’t true.

The briefing papers released to the magazine admitted that “no studies [on the environmental risks associated with the mercury content of CFLs] have been completed that are specific to New Zealand. All advice is based on overseas studies/conclusions

TGIF Edition reported skepticism from Jeanette Fitzsimons over the claimed carbon benefits from switching to CFLs. NZ Government figures show the switch will only save two percent of New Zealand’s electricity usage. Additionally, mercury is not a byproduct of hydro power, which makes up more than 90% of NZ electricity generation.

Again, Energy Minister David Parker appears to have been badly misinformed by his Ministry. Parker told Fitzsimons that an Australian study on mercury emissions in Tasmania (predominantly hydro-powered) showed CFLs would still result in less mercury being released into the atmosphere.

However, when TGIF Edition checked the source data, it found the reverse – the Australian study shows switching to CFLs would generate ten times more mercury pollution in Tasmania than sticking with incandescent bulbs.

Parker’s advisors told him to accept and promote the idea that “mercury from fluorescent lamps is not a significant risk relative to the energy efficiency and climate change gains.”

Readers can make their own call on whether a two percent saving in electricity consumption, and a greater risk of mercury poisoning of young children in the home, is “significant” compared to the Labour-led government’s desire to be a world leader on climate change.

Interestingly, the documents show Jeanette Fitzsimons called foul on Parker’s briefing notes. She refused to sign off on a recommendation that she “Note that compact fluorescent lamps are environmentally preferable to incandescent lamps despite their mercury content”.

“No evidence has been advanced for [this],” Fitzsimons scrawled

across the page.

Another recommendation she refused to support in July last year was that she “Note that the environmental and health risks from mercury-containing lamps at waste disposal are minimal and measures are in place to monitor this.”

In her own handwriting she tells Parker, “Monitoring is not enough. There are substantial risks to the energy efficiency programme unless we move fast to address the issues.”

In a typed memo to David Parker, Fitzsimons said the bad publicity around the Maine case “will be a major public relations disaster for CFLs”, and again warned, “You have also stated that their energy and carbon benefits outweigh the risks from the mercury …

How can benefits from energy reduction be compared with harm from toxics? They are incomparable. In my view we must assess the risks of the mercury in their own right and decide whether they are acceptable, and what can be done to minimize them.”

There’s no explanation in the released documents as to why the Greens caved on what was clearly a major public health issue, but they did, and the ban on ordinary light bulbs will take effect next year if the Labour-led government is re-elected.

There are signs the Government still intends to use PR spin from its “key messages” document to fool the mainstream media, because MfE Deputy Secretary Lindsay Gow’s letter to us says his department is currently doing a study to compared CFL mercury with “non-anthropogenic sources of mercury in New Zealand, such as volcanic activity. Initial results are expected to be available before the end of the month.”

Nonetheless, concludes Gow, “The Ministry is taking public concerns on this matter seriously.” n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 31

HER

LAST CIGARETTE The disappearance of Francesca Martin Three years ago Investigate profiled a new book, Without Trace, documenting some of New Zealand’s most perplexing disappearances.

Now, author SCOTT BAINBRIDGE is back with a sequel, Still Missing. In this extract he asks what happened to Fran Martin 32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

I

t’s that time of year which is particularly hard. A week after her disappearance was her brother’s birthday. Her own birthday was only a month away. In between was Mother’s Day. The family had all planned to go out to the cemetery to put flowers on Mum’s grave. When we searched the flat we found the flowers all ready. She wouldn’t have missed that. Although every day is hard, that particular time of year, with all those anniversaries is very sad.’

– Bob Martin, father of Fran.

Fran Martin disappeared in April 2005. The last positive sighting suggests she only intended popping out for 10 minutes to buy cigarettes. Yet the next day her car was found abandoned on a major state highway, 152 kilometres south of her home. There has been no major clue as to her whereabouts and fate, only that the circumstances of her disappearance are described as being highly suspicious.

Bob Martin is one very determined man. Retired and living in Hamilton, Martin has become a regular traveller between Hamilton and Wairakei over the past three years, where he doggedly hunts for the body of his beloved daughter. Martin firmly believes Fran is buried somewhere in the middle of a vast forest area, close to where her car was found. Over many weekends, Martin has dug many holes, sometimes with the help of eager well-meaning volunteers, but mostly by himself.

He half-jokes he has single-handedly changed the landscape of Wairakei in his quest.

Bob Martin remembers there was nothing out of the ordinary about Monday, 18 April 2005, which was the day he had last seen Fran, who lived several kilometres away at a flat in Richmond Street, central Hamilton.

‘We caught up in the afternoon briefly and I reminded her that her car was due for a warrant of fitness. I knew this because mine was due around the same time. Fran said she remembered and was going to book it in. She said that she had just come from town and had closed her Westpac bank account. I think she said that she had about $1600 in cash. I told her to put it away somewhere safe.’

Fran was close to her father and, like her two brothers, would regularly call on him to make sure he was all right, and had done so ever since he was widowed.

On Tuesday, 19 April, Fran telephoned her father and they talked about the usual things: the weather, the family and general dayto-day matters. Fran added that she was planning on going away for a day or two the next day. She thought she might stay with a friend in Hamilton for a night, or they would head out to Raglan.

She would contact him when she returned.

Bob Martin did not think anything more of it until Thursday afternoon, 21 April – two days later. He received a telephone call from his daughter-in-law. She informed him there was a garbled message on the phone from the police – something about them finding Fran’s car. Martin drove around to his son’s house and listened to the message. He then dialled the number and the call was answered

by Taupo Police. Fran’s car, a white Nissan Pulsar, had been found abandoned on the side of the road, 30 metres east of the junction of State Highways 1 and 5, at Wairakei, a small village 6 kilometres north of Taupo and 152 kilometres south of Hamilton.

Martin telephoned his other son, and together with a local constable, they drove around to the Richmond Street flat where Fran lived. The door was locked and they had to contact the landlord to obtain a spare key. Once inside the small flat they noticed several unusual things: tThe lights in several of the rooms were still switched on. In the lounge, the radio was also on, and the tape that had been in the radio cassette player had stopped. Beside her favourite chair was a cup of cold coffee still half-full. The side table was bare, but there was an empty pack of cigarettes and several coins and papers on the floor. It gave the impression someone had just brushed these items off the table to clear a space. tThere was a sleeping bag spread out on the couch. tThere was wet washing still in the basket ready to be hung out, and the washing machine was full, having finished a cycle. tOn her bed was her medication and a set of clothes neatly laid out as if she was planning on wearing them, or packing them.

But there was no sign of Fran.

On first appearances it looked as if Fran had left things as if she had briefly popped out to pick up something and had not intended on being away for too long. Fran often listened to the radio in the evenings and, with the lights switched on and her clothes on the bed for the next day, it gave the impression Fran must have left the flat sometime during the evening.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 33

But which night? Bob Martin had talked to her on Tuesday and she indicated she might be heading out of town the next day. Fran was very house-proud and would not normally leave her house without at least finishing the washing and tidying up.

The three men left the flat and drove to Taupo.

Police reported that around 7.30 on Thursday morning a patrolman noticed a white Nissan Pulsar, registered XY8268, parked 30 metres off the intersection of State Highways 1 and 5. The car was facing in the direction of Rotorua, and only metres from Wairakei Village. The police officer had first noticed two young female hitchhikers milling around the car. He did not think it was anything suspicious because it was a spot where hitchhikers usually stood waiting to be picked up. During the day he noticed the vehicle again and wondered where the owner was. It was an unusual spot to leave a car, and he wondered whether it had either broken down or had been stolen and abandoned.

At some stage during the early afternoon, the patrolman decided to check the car. The front passenger door was slightly open. The contents of a handbag were tipped out on the passenger’s seat, but the bag was in the rear of the car, which was in a filthy condition.

A set of car keys and house keys, and a wallet containing a driver’s licence and several credit cards, some false dentures and several other personal items were located on the front passenger’s seat.

The identification in the wallet matched the registered owner of the Nissan Pulsar: Francesca Juliet Martin of Hamilton.

Taupo Police began an investigation immediately and the case was headed by Detective Sergeant David Beattie, who was at that stage conducting the investigation into the disappearance of June Sowerby in Turangi.

Francesca Juliet Martin was born on 24 May 1962. At the time of her disappearance she was aged 42 years old. She was described as being a Caucasian female of medium build, and around 1.63 metres tall. She had short brown and greying hair, and wore square-framed spectacles.

It was not known at this stage what she had been wearing.

Fran is remembered as being a kind-hearted and much-loved woman. Her father states that she took after her mother in intelligence as she had a photographic memory. Fran enjoyed watching the television programme Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and could have been a millionaire several times over. She was highly 34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

The contents of a handbag were tipped out on the passenger’s seat, but the bag was in the rear of the car, which was in a filthy condition

intelligent and articulate.

Fran was good with numbers, and when she had finished high school she secured a job as a junior accounts clerk at the Hamilton branch of the New Zealand Dairy Company Association in 1978. It was a role she relished and at which she was very successful. She rose through the ranks quickly and in 1985 became the Assistant Accountant for the organisation.

Fran was a devout Christian and respected parishioner of the Hamilton Elim Church, of which she was Treasurer. She enjoyed helping those in need and regularly volunteered for different worthy causes. But in 1985 something happened that would change her life. One Sunday as she was driving home from church, her motor scooter collided with a car, sending her flying head-first into a shop door. She sustained serious injuries.

Many months were spent in hospital recuperating. Over time the physical injuries healed, but the psychological scars ran deep.

She left hospital with prescribed medication, which she would continue to be reliant on.

Although her colleagues and management at the New Zealand Dairy Company continued to be supportive and encouraging, Fran was not able to continue with her employment. She began work in a clerical capacity for Gilbert Law firm, and in recent years as a telephone market researcher.

Privately, Fran kept to herself and was close to her family. She had a few very close friends but knew a number of people through the church. She had continued to help those less advantaged and persons with social problems. It is said she was too kind for her own good, and it was suspected people took advantage of her.

However, Fran always held true to her Christian faith and worked tirelessly on behalf of others.

She had no cause or reason to be in Wairakei.

Bob Martin recounted his conversation with Fran earlier in the week. On Tuesday she informed her father she might be heading out of town with a friend, but indicated she was going to Raglan, 35 kilometres west of Hamilton. This was nowhere near Wairakei, and she knew nobody in that area.

Police and family contacted all known associates. Of the group of people she was known to associate with, nobody claimed to have seen her. Two people independently told police they had

talked to Fran on the telephone during Wednesday but did not notice anything out of the ordinary. There were questions raised over the reliability of the witnesses and these were justified a week later as the case developed.

Police regarded the case as a routine missing persons inquiry and did not form any obvious theories. The circumstances surrounding Fran’s disappearance were certainly suspicious. Her flat was usually in a well-kept state, but she had left it in a condition which indicated she was possibly just popping out to pick something up, or as if she’d had to leave in an emergency. She would never leave it in this condition if she went away for a period of time.

O

n Friday, Fran’s doctor contacted the family. Fran had missed an important appointment on Thursday, at which she was due to renew her medication. She was diligent with taking her medication and never missed an appointment. Her doctor was concerned something may have happened to her. His concerns were justified, as he knew she would have finished her medication, and should not drive without a new prescription.

Then there was the car itself. The contents of her purse were found on the front seat, and her handbag appeared to have been tossed into the back seat, which was cause for alarm.

A 250g bag of Nescafé Special Blend coffee was found on the floor of the back seat. The bag had been punctured and coffee powder was all over the back seat. There were other grease-like substances, which meshed with the coffee in parts and stained the upholstery. On the back of both front seats were numerous dog hairs and these were evident on the back floor of the car along with what appeared to be small pieces of dog food. Fran normally kept her car in immaculate condition, and these stains had not been there previously. Fran had never owned a dog.

Who had been in her car?

Police carried out a routine examination of the Richmond Street flat and interviewed neighbours. Nobody claimed to have seen or heard anything suspicious over the last few days, and likewise nobody at the flats could recall exactly when they had last seen Fran.

There was a possibility something happened at the flat, but there were no obvious signs of a struggle. An empty pack of cigarettes, some loose coins and some papers were found on the

A 250g bag of Nescafé Special Blend coffee was found on the floor of the back seat. The bag had been punctured and coffee powder was all over the back seat. There were other grease-like substances, which meshed with the coffee in parts and stained the upholstery. On the back of both front seats were numerous dog hairs...

lounge floor as if they had been brushed off the table.

This was not regarded as suspicious. Fran had possibly reached for a cigarette as she relaxed in the evening, found she had run out, brushed the items off the table in the search for change and had left the house. It was likely she left the house during the evening with the intention of returning soon afterwards. She had probably intended popping out for cigarettes, and returning straight away.

It was learnt that the tenants in the flat in front were operating a ‘tinny house’, selling marijuana. Perhaps Fran had inadvertently seen something, or maybe she was the victim of a home invasion.

The tenants were interviewed but police will not say whether or not they were eliminated as suspects.

The owner of the sleeping bag found spread out on Fran’s couch was identified and he quickly claimed it back. He was a friend whom she had met when she was volunteering at the church. He did not know where she was. Details of his statement to police have also never been made public.

People in Hamilton could not assist with Fran’s whereabouts.

Many genuinely did not know anything but some were suspected of being deliberately evasive. These people were interviewed and gave conflicting stories about the times they had last seen Fran.

While they were not considered prime suspects in her disappearance, it was felt they were hiding something from police, possibly drug-related.

Potentially the most important witnesses were most likely to be fellow motorists travelling between Hamilton and Taupo on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Family appealed for any sightings of Fran and the Nissan Pulsar. At the same time police made enquiries with all service stations and other businesses along the route.

The car was found abandoned metres from the 24-hour BP service station and diner at Wairakei. This is a popular rest stop for tourists and travellers alike. Fran’s car had a half-full tank of gas, so if she refuelled anywhere in the area it would most likely have been at this point. Security video footage was checked throughout 20 and 21 April but there was no sign of Fran, her car or any suspicious activity.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 35

But it was another service station that was able to provide police with a vital breakthrough. Within days of her disappearance, Fran’s bank accounts were checked to see if she was alive somewhere and making transactions. It was identified the last transaction was an EFTPOS withdrawal of $30 at the Caltex service station on Naylor Street, Hamilton East at 8.55 p.m. on Wednesday, 20 April.

Video security footage was uplifted and this clearly shows Fran Martin dressed in slacks and a dark-coloured striped jersey, walking into the shop and approaching the counter. There is no sound capability on the footage but it appears Fran is purchasing a packet of cigarettes and withdrawing cash via EFTPOS. After she is given her money she exits the shop, but seconds later re-enters, pointing in the southern and then eastern direction. It looks as if she is asking or confirming directions with the attendant. The attendant points in response and Fran is seen nodding her head in understanding before leaving the shop.

There are a number of other cars coming and going on the forecourt, and several people fuelling during this time, but security footage is not able to identify any specific person or number plate.

The sighting confirms at least one thing: Fran had popped out to buy some cigarettes, and was probably intending on heading straight home. It looks like she had quickly thrown on a jersey and headed out. All of her clothes were still at home, so it seems as if she was not intending on travelling anywhere else that night.

Who did she meet and what happened at the service station?

The attendant was shown a still image of himself serving Fran.

He was not shown the actual video footage. This occurred almost one week after Fran vanished. He was unable to remember any details of the interaction as he had served many other people that 36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

A decision was made to commence a full-scale search of the Wairakei Geothermal Area, concentrating initially in the area around where her car was found and extending to Wairakei village.

day. She was just another ordinary customer. If he had been shown the actual full footage of video, he might have been able to remember what directions he was confirming with Fran when she returned into the shop.

One logical conclusion can be reached from this three-minute footage. Fran had popped in and made her purchase and transaction. As she leaves she is confronted by a person or persons who ask her directions to a certain place. Unsure of exactly where they mean, she returns into the service station to confirm with the attendant.

She goes back outside and relays the information. Perhaps they ask her to direct them, or they are hitchhikers who ask for a lift to the edge of town. Being the Good Samaritan, Fran would not hesitate and would have happily obliged.

At some point – probably in the car – Fran is overpowered. She was the kind of person who would have put up a fierce struggle.

This theory is supported by evidence in the back seat. It is found with dirt and grease stains. In the struggle a pack of coffee is punctured and the coffee powder is spread throughout the back seat.

This person, or persons, was most likely to have had a dog, which was also present in the car.

On Monday, 25 April, police arranged with the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) unit to carry out forensic DNA and fingerprint testing of the car. It was thought this should provide some answers.

If Fran had been abducted and killed there was no actual certainty she was in the Wairakei area. Her car could have been aban-

doned at this point as a red herring. The offenders could have travelled to Rotorua, Taupo or even returned to Hamilton.

A decision was made to commence a full-scale search of the Wairakei Geothermal Area, concentrating initially in the area around where her car was found and extending to Wairakei village. Wairakei is situated on an active volcanic line and the region has numerous hot springs and mud pools. In 1963, a large geothermal power station was completed. The general area is covered with thick native bush and rolling hills.

Adjacent to the Wairakei Geothermal Power Station runs the Waikato River, several kilometres south of the Huka Falls. When searching of the village area was completed, the search extended to the banks of the Waikato River in case Fran had met with an accident or was wandering in a disorientated state, as she had now been without her medication for almost one week.

T

he appeal for information went nationwide. The media erroneously reported that Fran had a tendency to accept rides with truckies. The Martin family was outraged. Fran was a shy and quiet person and this was not in her nature. She had accepted one ride many years earlier with a friend, but it was certainly not a leisure pursuit.

If the police believed Fran had driven to Wairakei by herself, it was not an opinion shared by her family, who believed from day one that she had been abducted.

Meanwhile information began to come in. One truck driver told Taupo police that a white Nissan Pulsar followed him as he drove along State Highway 1 around 10.25 p.m. on Wednesday night, 20 April. The car was being driven erratically and made a dangerous passing manoeuvre on a tight bend, almost causing an accident.

Then a few minutes later, around 10.30 p.m., the car turned left onto State Highway 5 towards Rotorua, and abruptly stopped around 30 metres from the junction. The truck driver stated he noticed two people in the car and believed them to be male. It was

dark and the truck driver did not think anything suspicious about the event.

Yet another truck driver told police that he travelled along State Highway 5 an hour later, at 11.30 p.m., but did not notice any white car parked at this spot.

Both reports were considered genuine. But it added more confusing and sinister elements: Who were the two men in Fran’s car? Where was Fran at this point?

Bob Martin believes that Fran was not driving at this stage. Fran was always a careful driver, even more so since her accident years earlier. She would never drive at top speed, let alone perform any dangerous passing manoeuvres.

The timing of the first sighting of the white Pulsar at Wairakei at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday night is consistent with the time Fran walked into the Naylor Street Caltex, at 8.55 p.m. It takes approximately one hour and 45 minutes to drive from Hamilton to Wairakei. It lends credence to the theory held that Fran was abducted by someone she had met outside the service station.

Another scenario is of her being approached at her flat by a neighbour or friend, and asked for a lift to the edge of town on the Cambridge Road. She would never turn down an offer for help and she could pick up some smokes along the way.

Whatever the case, it is doubtful Fran would have willingly driven all the way to Wairakei that night.

The car was not seen by the other truck driver travelling this route at 11.30 p.m., one hour later. Yet it was noticed back in the same spot at 7.30 the next morning by the patrolman.

Police, search-and-rescue officials and volunteers covered an area of 45 square kilometres of bushland and hills in eight different areas in the Wairakei vicinity over the following week. They could find no trace of her body or any other evidence.

The official search was called off after 10 days. Nothing of any substance had been found. Fran may not have even been in the area. It is possible that she could have been dumped elsewhere, and the car abandoned by offenders wanting police to believe she was nearby.

Perhaps the offenders were locals? Police checked the profiles of all known violent and sexual offenders in the Wairakei and Taupo areas. Those persons of interest were looked at but police will not say how many were actually seriously considered or even interviewed. In any case, no arrests have been made.

In May, police made a fresh appeal and offered an amnesty for anyone who could provide information about how Fran’s car came to be left in Wairakei. It was likely her car had been stolen, and the two people observed at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday night were the offenders.

Police now relied on public information, but by July 2005 the flow had all but stopped.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 37

Fourteen weeks after her disappearance, the results of the ESR tests on Fran’s car came back. Incredibly all the test results could conclude was oil from Fran’s skin had been found on the steering wheel.

This was a shock. What about the numerous unexplained greasy stains found in the rear of the car? A coffee bag had been punctured during what is still assumed to be a struggle; and there were dog hairs throughout the car.

The explanation given was that scientists only checked the driver seat. They confirmed Fran had been the only driver of the car because her oil had been found but no fingerprints.

Why was the back seat of the car not checked? There has been

Bob Martin worked hard to ensure his daughter’s case remained in the public eye. As a result, several renowned Australasian psychics offered their assistance. Independently of each other, the psychics individually returned to the spot where the car was found and led Bob Martin and supporters to a spot on a secluded side road.

This side road runs off State Highway 5 but is not properly signposted. However, it does direct travellers to a café and bush walk, which is approximately 1 kilometre away at the end of this narrow and winding road. Just a few metres up this road is the locked gate separating the track from the private property of Contact Energy. Several metres up from the locked gate is a small flat patch

“When one of the psychics mentioned Fran’s body had been placed in a 44-gallon drum, Richards and Sandbrook remembered that a 44-gallon oil drum, which they used as a mailbox, disappeared around the time Fran did” no explanation for this. It is believed the scientists who undertook these tests lacked experience. The majority of experienced forensic scientists were at that time overseas assisting in the identification of victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

No further tests have been carried out on Fran’s car.

For Fran’s desperate family the case was not progressing. Bob Martin had been approached by a Scottish water-diviner who believed he could locate Fran’s body. He pinpointed an area within an 800-metre radius of where the car was found. He was of the firm belief Fran had been killed and had been disposed of in a particular area in thick bush, off a track.

38 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

of land off the track, which is often used by vehicles wanting to turn in and around.

All these psychics arrived at this same spot. They believed Fran had been abducted by two men and murdered on this small flat patch of land. She was then carried through the private gate and along a narrow dirt track adjacent to an open hot-water pipeline.

This hot water is discharged into a lake nearby. All the psychics believe Fran was buried in a 44-gallon drum among thick scrub in this area.

One of the psychics was filmed in action for an episode of the 20/20 TV programme. After the episode was aired, Bob Martin was

inundated with numerous offers of help and support from many well-meaning people. He also approached New Zealand Forestry Service in Rotorua and asked management if he could clear an area of trees so he could dig in the general area pinpointed by psychics. New Zealand Forestry Service gave permission and offered Martin the services of a bulldozing contractor free of charge for an unlimited amount of time. Other contractors came forward offering their services and equipment free of charge, as well as accommodation and supplies for Martin and his family whenever they planned on being in the area.

After the episode was aired, the public provided police with further information; unfortunately little of it was of substance.

Bob Martin met and has become close friends with Cathy Sandbrook and John Richards who operate the Wairakei Café, and Nature Trail, which are set in tranquil and beautiful surroundings at the end of the long narrow road.

This narrow road runs adjacent to steep banks covered in thick gorse and wild blackberry. All along the road there are virtually no gaps or openings in the flora to gauge steepness. The bush would have to be thoroughly slashed, and the banks are so steep in parts that it would acquire someone with abseiling skills to safely search in this area. During the two weeks after Fran’s disappearance, police walked the one kilometre route along the road to see if there were any telltale signs of broken bush or open entrances, where a body or something could have been thrown. There was nothing found.

There was no intention to search below these banks. During this early stage of the inquiry when Fran was merely regarded as a missing person, it was not really an area of particular interest.

Bob Martin had noticed some very unusual things about the landscape when he arrived during the initial search, and again later, with the psychics.

Firstly, the psychics had pinpointed a specific patch of land off the edge of the track where they believed Fran had been murdered.

This was a small flat patch of ground secluded by trees. Barely one metre directly across on the other side of the track was a manmade hole, at the bottom of which was a culvert. This hole was on the other side of the road also surrounded by trees.

When Bob Martin returned to this point, the hole with the culvert had been filled in, and a similar hole had been dug another metre away, but this time without the culvert. Why had the hole with the culvert been filled?

Furthermore the hectare of land behind the hole was now virtually levelled.

M

artin made enquiries and learnt that the open hotwater trench on Contact Energy land fills with mud, dirt and silica. Around once a year Works Infrastructure drains the trench, clearing it of mud and dirt. The minerals and dirt are then usually redeposited in another part of Forestry land in the vicinity of the track. On 23 April 2005, a large section of dirt was cleared from the trench and dumped to level the hectare of land immediately opposite where Martin believes his daughter was killed.

Cathy Sandbrook and John Richards believe there was suspicious activity around the time Fran disappeared.

One night in April 2005, they locked up the café and were walking back to their accommodation around 10 p.m. In the still of the night they heard the unmistakable sound of a woman screaming in terror. The scream was long, loud and continuous for about a minute. It appeared to be coming from the direction of the village. This is also in line with the area of land Fran is believed to have been murdered.

The bushland around the immediate area is away from the main road and general population. It is a perfectly secluded area and therefore attracts criminal attention. It is widely known that tracks within the Contact Energy compound are commonly used INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 39

“Fran Martin was a good person. It is generally believed the offenders asked her for a lift to the edge of town on the night she disappeared. Always willing to help a person in need, she would have willingly agreed”

to dump and strip stolen vehicles. Police have also found numerous cannabis plantations within the bush over the years, and it is also a common area for the transaction of drugs between supplier and buyer.

It was definitely something suspicious Cathy witnessed on the track in April 2005. To this day she cannot recall whether or not this was before or after she heard the terrified screams, but remembers it was around a similar timeframe. At around 9 p.m., she left the café to drive home to Taupo to collect some items. She noticed a red utility vehicle parked up along the narrow track, when a tall man with long reddish hair, wearing gumboots and a bushman’s shirt, walked out of the bush behind a corrugated iron sign. This is at a point several metres down from the spot where Fran is believed to have been killed.

When Cathy returned over an hour later, the ute was still parked in the same place, but she also noticed a small white car parked in front of it. There was nobody in the area. Cathy tried to take note of the number plate but it was too dark. However, she recalls that there was a distinctive pig-hunting dog kennel on the back of the ute.

A connection or not? Fran’s Nissan Pulsar is a small white vehi40 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

cle. There were dog hairs found throughout Fran’s car, yet she did not own a dog. When one of the psychics mentioned Fran’s body had been placed in a 44-gallon drum, Richards and Sandbrook remembered that a 44-gallon oil drum, which they used as a mailbox, disappeared around the time Fran did.

Fran Martin was a good person. It is generally believed the offenders asked her for a lift to the edge of town on the night she disappeared. Always willing to help a person in need, she would have willingly agreed.

She may have already developed some level of trust with her killer, because she was naturally shy and cautious around strangers.

Therefore it seems more likely the offenders may have lived in the area or she had known them through her fellowship and counselling.

Alternatively it is also possible Fran had met these persons at the Caltex service station. She may have taken pity on them and offered them a lift to the edge of town as it was not far away from the service station.

Fran was no threat to anyone. She was possibly killed because she witnessed something the offenders had not wanted her to see.

The area it is believed she was killed in was a notorious spot for illicit drug transactions.

But if the killers had not wanted her to witness anything, why did they not merely steal her car?

Although it has not been forensically verified, it appears there may have been a struggle in the back of the car. This lends suspicion to the theory that the offenders had intended murdering Fran from the outset. Why then take her and the vehicle all the way to Wairakei? That is, if she is in Wairakei.

With regards to the offenders, it is believed there are two of them, though nothing is certain.

Although many place beliefs and credence in the guidance of psychics, all actual investigations need to have a firm evidence base. But consider the likely possibilities: tIt is likely Fran met her killers in Hamilton. She had met them at her flat or at the Caltex service station. So these persons would have links to Hamilton. tIf the psychics are to be believed, the killers know the Wairakei area, in particular the bush landscape, fairly well. tOne or both of them may have been aware there was going to be vast earthmoving levelling to be undertaken within the next few days. This would then have to make one or both of them linked to Works Infrastructure or Contact Energy. tOne of them owned a dog.

A great deal of land has been cleared over the past three years

by Bob Martin, but his daughter has not been found. Martin believes she is in the area and he will not stop searching. One of his hopes is that he locates Fran’s body before strangers stumble upon it accidentally.

One nagging question is how the offenders made their escape.

They had probably murdered Fran in her car or had driven her to a particular spot to carry this out. They had then abandoned the car on State Highway 5. How had they made their getaway?

Bob Martin believes if the two offenders were not local, then the only method of transport to Rotorua, Taupo or Hamilton was by way of hitchhiking. If any motorists travelling on the early morning of Thursday, 21 April 2005 along any of these roads can recall seeing or giving a lift to two hitchhikers, with a dog, please contact Taupo Police.

Still Missing, by Scott Bainbridge, Penguin, $37, available at all good bookstores. n

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L

ess than a few months ago, the Australian news was reporting on Indonesian women lobbying for law reform in their country. Now we are reporting on moves for law reform by Muslim men in Australia.

Sounds world’s apart doesn’t it, until you get to the heart of the matter. Both parties want reform, one for and one against. And the central issue that’s being discussed in both cases is Polygamy.

A similar topic appears to have been on the mind of Social Development Minister Ruth Dyson when she published a keynote speech in May to social policy students at Victoria University, telling them where the government wanted to take them: “Shifting the focus from social welfare to social development is about considering the wellbeing of the whole population, and com­munities within that population, rather than solely focusing on the traditional family group. We must cater for the diversity, we know exists. By this I mean the range of relationships from single, couples, triples, blended, de facto, and so on. That’s where we’re going with social policy.”

When my colleagues at TGIF Edition tried to pin the Minister down on what she meant, the Government reacted by immediately pulling the speech off the Beehive website, and then denying she had said it. Politically sensitive, yes, but as TGIF reported, the Government was caught by Google, which had taken a cache of the page.

So what is this ‘buzz’ surrounding polygamy and its partner polyamory (multiple de-facto partners but without the legal issues surrounding polygamous marriage)?

It’s an issue that seems to span across time, it can be read about in books as old as the Bible or for a modern day version just pick up a recent copy of the Australian Herald Sun. Or if it’s a little more glamour you would like to add to the subject, then try watching HBO’s popular new series, “Big Love”.

In researching this subject, I have to admit, watching the fun (multiple loving) series seemed to be the first option. And why not, when you can have it pushed down, shaken together and running out all over in a format that is not only humorous, but fun loving, thoughtful, playful, sexy and so damn good looking.

Aired originally in America, it can be watched on SBS (multicultural television) in Australia or TV2 in New Zealand.

While the show is based in the notorious polygamy capital of the US, Utah, the fact that Australian television deemed it suitable for multicultural TV speaks volumes about how cross cultural and widespread polygamy really is today.

This topic is so-so big, so let’s just bring it back, to ‘Big Love’, for now. Starring the likes of well-known actresses Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin, the three wives in this 42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

NZPA

series instantly add Hollywood credentials. Add to that mix the husband of the hour played extremely well by Bill Paxton and you have a sensational subject bottled up like pretty pink champagne with bubbles.

It seems to be a quick transition from scepticism to seduction as audiences are drawn to the charismatic smile of the ever-loving husband Bill Henrickson. Henrickson, who can often be seen brushing his teeth in his tighty whities under his three way mirror,

BIG LUST IS POLYGAMY PART OF LABOUR’S HIDDEN AGENDA? The rising tide of Islamic immigration into the West, coupled with frontier changes on gay marriage and civil unions, appear to be strengthening calls for polygamy to be legalised. Now, Investigate’s TGIF Edition has broken the story of a speech by Social Development Minister Ruth Dyson calling for “triples” to be recognised by the State. MELODY TOWNS backgrounds the issue INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 43

is a self made man who after running away from a fundamentalist community in the sticks is able to convert it all into an SUV driving American way of life.

It’s the sales manager’s smile that seems to convince you that these three gorgeous women would not only marry him, but also be willing to share. His sense of charisma is instantly likeable, and you can’t help but see the humour in a recent episode where Bill is seen struggling to keep all his wives happy, actually begging for a night off. Although the show seems to draw you in with its low-key jokes and thoughtful restraint, there always seems to be a question raised about the genuine motives of the situation where Bill is concerned. Like reporter Troy Patterson writes on the website ‘Slate’, “He believes he’s doing God’s will by being fruitful and multiplying but there are also hints that he married the first wife for love, the second for money and the third for sex”.

The show seems to raise the same questions as the Herald Sun did recently when commenting on Sheik Khalil Chami of the Islamic Welfare Centre in Lakemba’s request to have polygamy recognised in Australia. With the headline to the article making no attempt to tone down reporter Andrew Bolt’s opinion on the matter, it reads “Polygamy – the right to put women down’. The issue was brought to the forefront in Australia after Britain passed a law to provide welfare support to multiple wives in polygamous relationships.

Although Australia does recognise polygamous relationships that

ful of preserving his first marriage when he entered his second.

Natalie O’Brien reports, “The 30-year-old had married his childhood sweetheart and had several children when he fell in love with his second wife. He said wanted to keep his first wife happy and not to penalise her in any way because she had done him no wrong. But taking the second wife proved expensive, exhausting and potentially fatal. He now runs two businesses and works long hours to pay for the flats, cars and clothes both families require.

It leaves him little energy to provide equal time and love for two wives. He is now dealing with the aftermath of a fire bomb attack on the apartment of his second wife, perpetrated, he suspects, by his extremely jealous first wife.

So where do women actually fit in to these polygamous relationships? In ‘Big Love’, they “love” to share, but what about in reality? The New York Times decided to find out, asking five women all in polygamous relationships to watch the show. ‘Yuk, was the first reaction to an initial sex scene despite the fact that all agree that the show provides, “a more realistic view of a polygamous family that lives out in society”. ������������������������������ Mary Batchelor, a 37-year-old mother of seven and director of “Principle Voices,” a leading polygamy advocacy group, said the show is “a glimpse of a family that is mainstream (and that) there are hundreds of these families”. Anne Wilde, a widow who was part of a multiple family for 33 years says that, “it can be seen as a viable alternative lifestyle for

“The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the best known of the various polygamist sects surviving in North America. Authorities have targeted it since 2002, when one member, Tom Green, 37, was convicted of child rape. Green, who lived with five wives and 29 children in a Utah trailer camp, had impregnated his 13-year-old ‘spiritual wife” were joined before moving here, it is still not a recognised form of marriage if conducted in this country. Sheik Chami thinks otherwise, stating” There are a lot of Sheiks here…(who) conduct marriage no problem at all.”

In fact Sheik Kahalil Chami seemed to have quite a few supporters once he let this particular cat out of the bag. Sheik ����������� Isse Musse of Werribee mosque said Melbourne had some 20 polygamous families from Africa, mainly Somalis and mainly refugees.

The second wives deserved to have their marriages recognised so they weren’t seen as having sex outside wedlock but “the Australian law is unfortunate”. The ��������������������������������������������� voice of Keysar Trad (translator for the former mufti of Australia and head of the Islamic Friendship Society) was suddenly in the news declaring that he had even proposed to a second wife. Trad said that he proposed to a second wife because he had fallen in love and thought it sinful to commit adultery. Although his wife Hanifa approved at the time she made her humiliation clear in a later interview when she stated that, “we were having a terrible time...he fell in love and I wasn’t thinking about myself ”. Sadly, the proposal was declined, with the Herald Sun suggesting that Hanifa’s approval of “having sex the right way instead of going to a prostitute”, just wasn’t a romantic enough reason for the second wife to unite to the pair.

The Australian reported on a successful Lebanese businessman in Tripoli, who does not wish to be named, saying he was mind44 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

consenting adults, and Doris* whose real name can’t be revealed because she feared the repercussions this interview might have on her new job states of the character Bill Henrickson, “this is a guy just trying to support his family and the family is just trying to make it”.

The two other women in the group are 53 year old Linda, mother of four and in a ‘plural situation’ with 12 other women and 52 year old Mary, a high school teacher, who has been married for 10 years, has five children and whose ‘sister wife’ and best friend lives up the road. Of the group the New York Times writes, “While the women said “Big Love” had too much skin and not enough religion or humor for their taste, they agreed that it portrayed the Henricksons like any other American family, especially in an era of mixed marriages of all sorts, gay partnerships, single parents and serial monogamy”.

The question is then raised, what is a normal American family, or Australian or English or any family for that matter? The Herald Sun writes, “after all, how can a society that’s moving to give a man the right to marry another man then refuse a man the right to marry two women? Maybe Mary Batchelor said to much when by advocating polygamy by describing its normality still decided to mention, the families in crisis, referring to the media images often seen described the by New York Times, as men being carted off to jail for beating women or children or marry-

Charles has three wives, fourteen children and lives in a polygamist community about an hour from of Salt Lake City, Utah.

He said his family and community members live devout lives and do not abuse children or force women into marriage before they are of legal age. Charles, hand on left, holds the hand of his first wife as her 8 children face away from the camera.

Charles’ second wife, Jenifer, 31, (center) and third wife, Alorah, 23, (right) stand on the family property. Heather Stone/ Chicago Tribune/MCT)

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 45

ing child brides”.

Mention the US State of Utah and a different view of polygamy comes to the forefronts of our minds. Instead of seeing normality, the media had indeed been inundated with images of religious sects where women and children are abused. The Australian recently reported on polygamy in the US, stating, “In the US, polygamy sects and practicing polygamists have continual run-ins with the law. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the best known of the various polygamist sects surviving in North America. Authorities have targeted it since 2002, when one member, Tom Green, 37, was convicted of child rape. Green, who lived with five wives and 29 children in a Utah trailer camp, had impregnated his 13-year-old ‘spiritual wife’.”

Brought to Utah by the Mormons in 1847, it was in 1890 that the practice was outlawed with some sects breaking away and being practiced in clan like compounds ever since. The Leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Warren Jeffs, stole headlines when arrested in 2006 after being included on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. Found guilty of rape charges, 51 year old Jeffs was convicted, as an accomplice to rape due to his part in the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin, against her will.

Believing he is a descendant of Jesus Christ, Jeffs is the leader of the same polygamist ranch where 468 children were removed amid allegations of systematic sexual and physical abuse. The sect

not only is a threat to the way we view women in Australia and New Zealand but it is also a threat to our downunder way of life.

Bolt writes, “���������������������������������������������� Women have slowly, painfully won the right to be considered equal to men in status and freedoms. Do we betray that ideal now by approving a form of union in which women are inevitably subservient? That isn’t a reaction the Left can simply dismiss as plain bigotry, to be ignored or tackled with some “awareness” campaign. There is actually a moral issue here: should taxpayers support relationships that necessarily make women the underlings of men?

“But there is also this to consider: here is yet another wedge to split us into tribes. After all, communities are formed by a shared morality, and a sense that we may each expect from others what others expect from us.

“But what if those others expect from us help we feel is wrong to give, and which we would never dream of demanding ourselves?

“That doesn’t just break down trust and a sense of community, it destroys our support for the welfare state that needs our cash to exist. Is that what the Left really wants?

“No, multiculturalism is cute when it’s all souvlakis and fiestas, but here is one ethnic custom that must make way for our own.

Marriage is between one man and one woman, people.

“For your own good, and ours, and above all the children’s, we must insist on that.”

With polygamy being a probing issue in the news and on our

“The Leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Warren Jeffs, stole headlines when arrested in 2006 after being included on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. Found guilty of rape charges, 51 year old Jeffs was convicted, as an accomplice to rape due to his part in the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin, against her will” was alleged to have groomed young girls to have sex with middle aged ‘spiritual husbands as soon as they reached puberty, and Utah journalist Andrea Moore Emmett states that “women are vessels to be worn out in child birth and girls are having children at age 14, 15 and 16”. Polygamy may have been embraced by popular culture but images like this are not easily forgotten.

While it’s seems to be the Muslims having their say regarding polygamy in recent Australian headlines, Silma Ihram, an AngloAustralian convert to Islam and one of the pioneers of Muslim education in Australia, believes it is time the issue of multiple partners is debated in Australia. Ihram says it is not just a Muslim issue. “Take away the Islamic tag because that is irrelevant,” she says. “There are many people whose marriages are not registered and there are a large number of people having affairs.” She says there are very few people who have polygamous marriages and believes most women are smart, educated, financially independent and don’t want it.

Still, she believes the issue should be talked about openly. “Where are we going with the family structure? Where are we going on relationships? We need to ask the questions: How important is it to have a one-on-one relationship and is it acceptable to have more than partner?”

Andrew Bolt of the Australian Herald Sun suggests that these questions have already been answered. Bolt suggests that polygamy 46 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

television screens in campaigns both for and against, Bolt raises an issue that cant be forgotten when it comes to multiplying families, and that is something that nearly everything seems to come down to; cash. Keysar Trad, who was declined in his proposal to a second wife, had then already had nine children and no steady job, yet that didn’t stop him asking another woman to join his family. In Britain taxpayers are now supporting second wives and Bolt writes, “given the poverty of such families, this means British taxpayers will now be funding marriage arrangements many will think are unhealthy, if not immoral or even alien”.

With so many issues probing polygamy, ‘Big Love’, seems to be so much bigger than HBO’s mainstream show would like to admit.

The issue seems to just get bigger and bigger, with the question of Big Love downunder yet to be answered.

Bibliography: ‘Polygamy the right to put women down’, Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun, June 27 2008 ‘Probing Polygamy’, Natalie O’Brien, The Australian, June 26 2008 ‘Big Love’; Real Polygamists Look at HBO Polygamists and Find Sex’, George Frey, The New York Times, March 28 2006 ‘The Merry Wives of Bill, HBO’s triple-headed Big Love’, Troy Patterson, Slate, March 10 2006 Labour’s Hidden Agenda, TGIF Edition 8 August 2008, http://www.investigatemagazine.com/tgif8aug08.pdf n

Jennifer, 31 (Charles’ second wife-left) and Alorah (Charles’ third wife right) serve ice cream and birthday cake to the kids.It was Alorah’s son, Joseph’s fourth birthday. Heather Stone/Chicago Tribune/MCT)

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 47

ESSAY

Vaccines & AUTISM HOMEOPATHY FIGHTS BACK

Despite doubters in the medical profession, homeopaths are claiming success in the battle against autism, argues Bay of Plenty homeopath CLIVE STUART

48 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

T

he latest figures from the United States estimate that 1 in 150 American children are affected by autism. The Autism Society of America states that the incidence of autism is growing at the rate of 10–17% per year.

In the UK last year a study from Cambridge University headed by autism expert Professor Simon Baron-Cohen concluded that as many as 1 in 58 British children are affected. Just ten years ago in 1998 the British Medical Association described autism as “rare” and that it affected two to four children in every 10,000. In New Zealand the figures are approximately one in 100. With such growing prevalence it is no great surprise that autism has been labelled an epidemic.

Speculation abounds as to the cause of such a marked increase

in cases. Some in the medical world believe that this is due to improved diagnosis and awareness. It seems unlikely that this theory alone can explain why autism has risen so dramatically in the last ten years. This is notwithstanding the fact that the classic symptoms of autism have remained unchanged and are just as recognisable to professionals as when the condition was first described by Harvard psychiatrist Leo Kanner in 1943.

As to the cause of autism, a popular hypothesis is that an inherent genetic susceptibility can be triggered by an exogenous insult such as multiple vaccinations, pesticides, solvents, or electro magnetic radiation (EMR) caused by Wi-Fi devices and cell phone

masts, all of which have increased dramatically over the past decade. These theories however remain speculative until scientifically verified. Whatever the cause, parents have been forced to self-educate to find the best care for their children, often exploring more non-conventional methods of treatment after limited assistance from mainstream approaches.

Autism facts Autism is a neurological/brain disorder that affects communication and social interaction. It typically becomes apparent within the first three years of life. While many autistic children will exhibit INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM  September 2008  49

different characteristics there are a number of core symptoms common to the vast majority of cases. These include: tDelay or lack of verbal communication tLack of eye contact and difficulty with non-verbal communication skills tRepetitive use of same words tRitualistic behaviour tDifficulty understanding other peoples feelings tStereotypical behaviour such as hand flapping, rocking or spinning tSensory integration issues such as hypersensitivity to touch and sound tFour times more likely in boys than girls Regressive autism is where a child is seen to be developing normally to approximately 18 months and then begins to regress into an autistic state. There are also milder forms of autism known as “HFA” (High functioning autism) or Asperger’s syndrome. In these conditions intelligence and language are generally normal but there is autistic type behaviour along with deficiencies in social and communication skills.

While some improvements are possible through speech and occupational therapy, autism is classed as an incurable condition.

Homeopathy: More than just Arnica One parent of an autistic child who had difficulty accepting the “incurable” label was Amy Lansky, a Stanford educated computer scientist from California.

In 1995 Lansky’s son Max started showing signs of autism at 2½ years old while she was a research team leader at NASA. Finding that traditional medicine had little to offer other than speech and language therapy she and her husband Steve, a fellow scientist embarked on a search for more effective ways of helping their son. Lansky read an article in “Mothering” magazine about how ADHD and other behavioural issues could be treated successfully with homeopathic medicine. Eager to explore any means of helping her son she made an appointment to see local homeopath John Melnychuk in Palo Alto, California.

The treatment that Amy Lansky chose for her son is one of the most widely practised natural therapies in the world today. More in demand now than ever before in its 200 year history, homeopathy has enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in recent times. In the UK it is recognised by Act of Parliament and is available on the National Health Service through various homeopathic hospitals. Practised by professional homeopaths and medical doctors in many countries it is seen as one of the safest forms of treatment available. The reason for its safety is because homeopathic medicines or “remedies” are manufactured by a special process called “potentisation” which renders them highly dilute and thus free of any toxicity. They are mostly derived from naturally occurring substances such as minerals and plants. It has been postulated that homeopathic remedies work by activating the body’s homeostatic or self-balancing mechanism. Symptoms are viewed as signs of the body trying to heal itself and homeopathic remedies are chosen according to these symptoms in order to gently augment the process.

Because the remedies are so dilute, sceptics have proposed that homeopathy can only work by power of suggestion or the placebo effect. This theory is however contradicted by two groups of placebo resistant patients, namely babies and animals. Both have been seen to benefit greatly from homeopathic treatment. There 50 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

are also a large number of high quality scientific studies showing positive effects for homeopathy (See resources).

Max’s treatment Amy Lansky’s describes her son’s descent into autism as “drifting away”. At 2½ years old he had stopped talking and manifested self-stimulation (stimming) techniques such as spinning in a circle. His eye contact was poor when spoken to. As the months passed Max deteriorated further, becoming even more distant and disconnected. He was not disruptive, just locked in his own world. He learned to repeat certain words through speech therapy but progress was very slow. Lansky vowed to do everything in her power to help her son. In her own words “I was a mother on a mission”.

After the Lansky’s initial appointment with John Melnychuk, Max was prescribed a liquid homeopathic remedy to be taken on a daily basis. Within 2 days of her son starting the remedy Lansky and her husband began to notice changes. Max began using phrases he had never used before and he also started to become more socially aware. Before homeopathic treatment, Lansky described what little speech Max had as “cogwheel” but now there was much more fluidity to the way he spoke. Five days after starting the remedy Max had a session with his speech therapist. The therapist was unaware of the homeopathic treatment but she quickly noticed that something had changed in him.

Max’s homeopathic treatment continued with the same remedy for 2 years. Whenever the dose was changed on a monthly basis to a higher potency, he would make a significant jump developmentally. As scientists, Lansky admitted that she and her husband had viewed the treatment with some scepticism but found it impossible to deny the miraculous improvements in their son. Today Max is nearly 17 and no longer autistic. He is a gifted graphic artist and animator.

Amy Lansky’s homeopathic odyssey did not end with the successful treatment of her son. She went on to train as a professional homeopath and has since written a bestselling book about homeopathy called “Impossible Cure, The Promise of Homeopathy”.

It is widely seen as one of the best introductory texts to homeopathic medicine and also gives a detailed account of Max’s treatment and cure.

Lansky’s book has catapulted the homeopathic treatment of autistic children into the spotlight. As a result of this fact John Melnychuk’s services are in such high demand that he now devotes a large part of his practice to treating autistic children. The following accounts are from Melnychuk’s case files and are printed with the full cooperation of the children’s parents.

Tommy’s story Tommy Dollins was five when his parents Jennifer and Jeremiah made the ten hour drive from Southern California to bring him for treatment with John Melnychuk in San Francisco. Jennifer described how Tommy was before and after treatment. “At six months of age all Tommy’s speech had disappeared. He would scream and be afraid of things we couldn’t understand. His rigid body movements looked like he was squirming in pain all the time and he hated to be touched. We had tried so many therapies to try and reach him. At two years he was finally diagnosed as autistic and by then his tantrums were so severe that we just wouldn’t go out in public anymore. His language was very limited and he would not answer when directly spoken to. After five years of try-

Tommy Dollins

Gabby Liotta

ing to reach him we realised that this was the way it was going to be. We accepted it and loved him anyway.

My sister recommended homeopathy to us. She had read a book about John and how his heart was in helping children heal from within. I didn’t think it would work but it was worth a try.

We met with John and he gave us a homeopathic remedy. Within twenty four hours we noticed a change in Tommy. We had called him “Linus” because he carried a blanket everywhere. After the first day on the remedy Tommy was leaving his security blanket behind. John said that this would happen but we couldn’t believe it. He also became more relaxed and aware. Potty training had been a three year struggle. Within 2 months of Tommy being on the remedy he was completely potty trained. I remember calling John in tears and telling him that Tommy had said he loved me for the first time. We didn’t realise how much we were missing Tommy and who he was until he started to come out from the veil of autism. His tantrums have decreased considerably and his academic progress has skyrocketed. These are things we never thought we’d see. He plays well with other children. He has become a social butterfly and is very affectionate. He was even the greeter at my sister’s wedding. It’s like we’re seeing a brand new Tommy and the real Tommy for the first time”.

Jennifer, who is finishing her training to be an occupational therapist considers Tommy to be 80% recovered from autism.

“There are still some deficits but he is so different compared to how he used to be”.

brother cried or when the vacuum cleaner went on.

As Gabby’s symptoms became more pronounced, her parents Alma and Chris took her to a doctor who prescribed “complex” homeopathy (combination homeopathic remedies where several remedies are mixed together to treat a particular illness). This was unsuccessful. However they saw some good progress when a single remedy was chosen to match her symptoms. Buoyed by the improvements they had seen in Gabby with the single remedy “classical” approach they decided to find a practitioner who specialized in this method. After reading Amy Lansky’s book they got in touch with John Melnychuk when Gabby was 5½. Alma described the first 2 remedies Melnychuk prescribed as “on target”.

There were noticeable improvements such as less hyperactivity and Gabby’s bowel function returned to normal. It was not however until a 3rd different remedy was chosen that the deeper symptoms began to improve. Her social interactions improved greatly, as did her eye contact. Within 2 weeks her language had also advanced dramatically. Gabby is now 8 and continues to improve. She has been awarded “The President’s educational award for academic excellence” at her school and her parents estimate that she is now 80% recovered from autism. Alma describes homeopathy as an essential part of Gabby’s treatment. “We have adopted homeopathy for our family and it has become a way of life for us”.

Gabby’s story Gabby Liotta from Houston, Texas was 3 years old when she was diagnosed with autism. Her medical history was unremarkable up to the age of 12 months, apart from a reaction to a Hepatitis B vaccine at 2 weeks old where she cried for long periods of time afterwards. She developed early and reached her milestones quicker than expected. Shortly after receiving a triple vaccine shot at 12 months she began to regress. There was a marked deterioration in her speech and eye contact and she developed chronic bowel problems. Gabby’s mother Alma, an occupational therapist described how the fact hit home when she saw Gabby compulsively opening and closing doors at home. This was the same behaviour she had observed in some of the autistic children she worked with. Gabby would also express stereotypical behaviour such as lining up toys and she experienced a high degree of sensory sensitivity. She had frequent tantrums and became extremely agitated when her baby

Marcelo’s story Marcelo Campos from Los Angeles was diagnosed with autism at 3 years 8 months. At 17 months of age his behaviour and physical health deteriorated after receiving 2 triple vaccines in the same day. His mother Ana describes his symptoms. “Marcelo immediately developed diarrhoea and started hitting his head off the kitchen floor. He became hyperactive and would be up till 3am in the morning whereas previously he slept through the night at 3 months old. Also, he became aggressive to me and would scratch, hit or kick me. His health was getting worse every day. He developed all kinds of infections starting with a fungal infection on his tongue, blisters on his fingers, recurrent ear infections, eye infections, severe gingivitis, diaper rash, upper airway infection and a skin rash similar to chickenpox”.

Four months later Marcelo’s paediatrician transferred him to the immunology department of the Children’s Hospital. Here he was diagnosed with neutropenia, an immune system disorder where white blood cell levels are too low to fight infection. After two months most of his physical symptoms apart from severe INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 51

Marcelo Campos

gingivitis had improved considerably. Soon after this Marcelo was diagnosed with autism. Immediately Ana started looking for information and read about Amy Lansky’s book on the internet.

She got in touch with John Melnychuk and brought Marcelo to his Los Angeles clinic in January 2007 The first change that Ana noticed after Marcelo started his remedy was in his speech. It improved so much that he went from not talking to soon becoming bi-lingual in English and Spanish.

He also became much more social and adept at recognising facial expressions. Then the gingivitis that had lasted for 3 years got better. The improvements continued with Marcelo becoming toilet trained and his sleep patterns returning to normal. Twelve months after starting homeopathic treatment Ana describes Marcelo as a typical child in many ways. “He can go to Disneyland and McDonalds and behave normally whereas before he would shiver in fear at the play area and would crash his body from one table to the other. I’m so proud of Marcelo’s progress and I’m so happy that we found John”.

Vaccines under the microscope Medical doctor and homeopath Dr. Tinus Smits is well known in his native Holland for his work with vaccine damaged children.

In his experience, susceptible children can develop a number of chronic health problems after vaccination, one of which is autism.

His many patients see him as an advocate and one of the few doctors willing to engage on the subject of chronic vaccine damage.

Smits has developed a treatment protocol whereby homeopathic preparations of vaccines are used to detoxify any ill effects after vaccination. His method has shown itself to be extremely successful and he describes the protocol on his website. (See resources).

His work is more extensively documented along with cured cases in a forthcoming book entitled “Autism, beyond despair”.

Along with detox treatment, Smits uses classical homeopathy and supplementation with minerals and fatty acids. He suggests that the mere fact his patients improve dramatically after treatment with a homeopathic version of the vaccine shows the original vaccine to be causal in their illness.

The case of Siem, one of Smits’ patients is illustrative of the method. Siem was described by his parents as a happy and normal baby but by the age of four his development had stagnated.

He became unable to carry out tasks that he could previously do 52 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

Zachary Ballard, 5, was diagnosed with autism in 2005 and his mother Deanna Ballard has developed DVD’s to help other children with Autism. Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/MCT

and he would display stereotypical behaviour such as staring at the washing machine for long periods of time. He would not notice anyone or anything around him. He developed fears and stopped sleeping through the night. His sensory system was affected with labels having to be removed from his shirts and he refused to walk in the rain because the drops hurt him. Siem was diagnosed with autism and the family were told not to have much hope because things would not get better. His parents had later found out that he had been given the “stereo” shot which consisted of one quad vaccine and one triple vaccine together in one jab.

As homeopathic treatment with Dr. Smits commenced, Siem steadily improved. It was not however until his vaccines were detoxed that there was a more dramatic change. After being sick with stomach pain and nausea for two weeks after the detox he asked to go outside and play with other children. Siem describes his new found freedom “It’s like I’m in a second life. It’s so different from before. Up until now I only sat in front of the computer and did nothing else. Now I like playing outside”. Siem’s case can be seen in a documentary about Dr. Smits work called “Who’s afraid of Tinus?” (See resources) Smits has stated that as a doctor he would never tell a parent not to vaccinate their child and insists that vaccination can be made safer. He remains frustrated by the intransigence of the medical profession in recognising the fact that vaccines are causing chronic health issues in susceptible children.

Tim Hull, 22, of Grass Lake, a senior at the University of Michigan, sits in a lobby on campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 3, 2008. Hull, who has autism, is to graduate this year with a double major in history and computer science.

Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press/MCT

Conclusion The children’s cases detailed previously serve to demonstrate the ability of homeopathic medicine to treat and greatly ameliorate the symptoms of a so-called incurable condition. Hence the title of Amy Lansky’s book “Impossible Cure”. One of the keys to maximising success with homeopathy is not just choosing the correct remedy but also proper case management. Therefore it is unwise to try to treat one’s own child. Even after successful prescriptions, the road to recovery from autism can sometimes be a long and arduous one. For this, the parents, siblings and carers as well as the children themselves deserve enormous recognition.

Homeopathy is not a “take this for that” treatment. Every prescription is tailored to the individual physical and emotional symptoms of each child meaning that ten different children with autism will likely receive ten different remedies. Some children will be helped more than others according to the severity of each case. Also, it can take a number of prescriptions before the best match remedy is found.

Homeopaths around the world, myself included, have witnessed marked improvements in our autistic patients from this gentle yet effective treatment and we hope that homeopathy can offer hope and play a part in stemming the tide of such an allencompassing condition.

As far as vaccination is concerned, no scientific study has as yet

found a link between vaccines and autism. However, it still remains one of the hottest media topics of recent years.

Homeopathic treatment of autism resources www.impossiblecure.com Amy Lansky’s website contains a “cure stories” database where parents of autistic children have given their accounts of successful homeopathic treatment.

Her book can also be ordered here. www.paloaltohomeopathy.com The website of classical homeopath John Melnychuk. www.recoveredfromautism.com The highly informative website of Erica McPhee whose son Kaiden recovered from autism after homeopathic treatment. Erica also gives details of helpful dietary changes such as removing gluten and casein (wheat and dairy). www.tinussmits.com Dr. Tinus Smits’ homeopathy and vaccination site. www.ppdocu.com A documentary DVD of Dr. Tinus Smits’ work can be ordered here. www.homeopathy4autism.com The website of Australian homeopath Fran Sheffield containing case studies. www.homeopathy.co.nz The website of The New Zealand Council of Homeopaths.

Contains a list of qualified and registered homeopaths in New Zealand. www.drugfreeasperger.com Dr. Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman and Dr. Robert Ullman are experts in the homeopathic treatment of children with Aspergers syndrome. They have authored many books on homeopathy including A Drug-Free Approach to Asperger Syndrome and Autism www.homeopathy-soh.org The ‘UK Society of Homeopaths” website. Click on “research” to download a list of positive scientific studies of homeopathy.

Clive Stuart is a registered classical homeopath practising in Tauranga .n

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 53

The new face of china

IN GOD THEY TRUST

54 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

Forget the Olympics, Tiananmen Square and Falun Gong – something much bigger is rapidly transforming China. There are now more Christians in China than there are in England, Australia, New Zealand and Canada combined.

EVAN OSNOS reports on the incredible force for change that’s emerging from Asia’s conversion to Christianity

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 55

B

EIJING – The Rev. Jin Mingri peers out from the pulpit and delivers an unusual appeal: “Please leave,” the 39-year-old pastor commands his followers, who are packed, standing-room-only on a Sunday afternoon, into a converted office space in China’s capital. “We don’t have enough seats for the others who want to come, so, please, only stay for one service a day.”

A choir in hot-pink robes stands to his left, beside a guitarist and a drum set bristling with cymbals. Children in a playroom beside the sanctuary punctuate the service with squeals and tantrums. It’s a busy day at a church that, on paper, does not exist.

Christianity – repressed, marginalized and, in many cases, illegal in China for more than half a century – is sweeping the country, overflowing churches and posing a sensitive challenge to the officially atheist Communist Party.

By some estimates Christian churches, most of them underground, now have roughly 70 million members, as many as the party itself. A growing number of those Christians are in fact party members.

Christianity is thriving in part because it offers a moral framework to citizens adrift in an age of Wild West capitalism that has not only exacted a heavy toll in corruption and pollution but also harmed the global image of products “Made in China.”

Some Chinese Christians argue that their faith is an unexpected boon for the Communist Party, because it shores up the economic foundation that is central to sustaining party rule.

“With economic development, morality and ethics in China are degenerating quickly,” prayer leader Zhang Wei tells the crowd at Jin’s church as worshipers bow their heads. “Holy Father, please save the Chinese people’s soul.”

At the same time, Christianity is driving citizens to be more politically assertive, emboldening them to push for greater freedoms and testing the party’s willingness to adapt. For decades, most of China’s Christians worshipped in underground churches – known as “house churches” – that avoided attention for fear of arrest on various charges such as “disturbing public order.”

But in a sign of Christianity’s growing prominence, in scores of interviews for a joint project of the Chicago Tribune and PBS’ “Frontline/World”, clerical leaders and worshippers from coastal boomtowns to inland villages publicly detailed their religious lives for the first time.

They repeat a seemingly shared belief that the time has come to proclaim their place in Chinese society as the world focuses on China and its hosting of the 2008 Olympics, underway this month.

“We have nothing to hide,” says Jin, a former Communist Party member who broke away from the state church last year to found his Zion Church.

Jin embodies a historic change: After centuries of foreign efforts to implant Christianity in China, today’s Christian ascension is led not by missionaries but by evangelical citizens at home. Where Christianity once was confined largely to poor villages, it is now spreading into urban power centers with often tacit approval from the regime.

It reaches into the most influential corners of Chinese life: Intellectuals disillusioned by the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square are placing their loyalty in faith, not politics; tycoons fed up with corruption are seeking an ethical code; and Communist Party members are daring to argue that their faith does not put 56 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

them at odds with the government.

The boundaries of what is legal and what is not are constantly shifting. A new church or Sunday school, for instance, might be permissible one day and taboo the next, because local officials have broad latitude to interpret laws on religious gatherings.

Overall, though, the government is permitting churches to be more open and active than ever before, signaling a new tolerance of faith in public life. President Hu Jintao even held an unprecedented Politburo “study session” on religion last year, in which he told China’s 25 most powerful leaders that “the knowledge and strength of religious people must be mustered to build a prosperous society.”

This rise, driven by evangelical Protestants, reflects a wider spiritual awakening in China. As communism fades into today’s freemarket reality, many Chinese describe a “crisis of faith” and seek solace everywhere from mystical Taoist sects to Bahai temples and Christian megachurches.

Today the government counts 21 million Catholics and Protestants – a 50 percent increase in less than 10 years – though the underground population is far larger. The World Christian Database’s estimate of 70 million Christians amounts to a 5 percent share of the population, second only to Buddhism.

At a time when Christianity in Western Europe is dwindling, China’s believers are redrawing the world’s religious map with a growing community already exceeding all the Christians in Italy.

And increasing Christian clout in China has the potential to alter relations with the United States and other nations.

But much about the future of faith in China is uncertain, shaped most vividly in bold new evangelical churches such as Zion, where a soft-spoken preacher and his fervent flock do not yet know just how far the Communist Party is prepared to let them grow.

“We think that Christianity is good for Beijing, good for China,” Jin says. “But it may take some time before our intention is understood, trusted, even respected by the authorities. We even have to consider the price we may have to pay.”

The neon signs at Sauna City, a nightclub-and-massage complex in northern Beijing, offer little promise of spiritual comfort.

But the rent was good and the landlord sympathetic, so Jin and his partners signed a lease in May 2007 on their improbable new home, a fifth-floor office large enough for 150 chairs, a choir and a band. Then Jin took a step once inconceivable for a non-sanctioned church in China: He printed business cards.

In proclaiming his name and number and the location of the newly christened Zion Church, he spurned the label of “underground” church. He describes his group as “open and independent.”

Jin, a bespectacled father of two with a shock of gray hair, has embarked on his experiment with equal cause for confidence and caution. Despite continuing arrests and crackdowns, Chinese churches have attained a more prominent role in public life than at any time since the founding of the People’s Republic.

The Rev. Jin did not set out to be a religious pioneer.

The son of a secular ethnic-Korean family from China’s coal-choked industrial northeast, he was an earnest high school student who won a coveted place in the freshman class at elite Beijing University. Soon, like other strivers, he joined the Communist Party.

But it would take a turning point in China’s history to push Jin toward the church. In his junior year, China’s top leader ordered the People’s Liberation Army to end weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The crackdown left hun-

U.S. evangelist Franklin Graham, right, preaches in the Chongyi Church in Hangzhou in east China’s Zhejiang province Sunday May 11, 2008. Graham said Friday he is opposed to missionary work at this summer’s Beijing Olympic Games.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 57

dreds dead, shaking the faith of young intellectuals like Jin who had placed their hopes in the state.

“It affected my generation of university students very deeply,” Jin says of the crackdown that is known in Chinese as “6-4,” for the date, June 4, 1989. “The university students in the ‘80s were groomed by the country. Our fees and living expenses were paid for by the country. The 6-4 event left many students hurt. ... Like all my other university peers, I felt an immense sense of hopelessness.”

Christianity offered an alternative to China’s political orthodoxy. To those in search of something new in which to believe, the church promised salvation, moral absolutes and a sense of being part of an enterprise larger than China.

“We [had been] taught not to learn from God, that God is a fake,” says Wang Qingying, a 37-year-old member of Jin’s church who grew up the daughter of a Communist Party member. “After I started to believe, I realized that everything that happens is a part of God’s design.”

In a range of interviews, many Chinese Christians described Tiananmen Square as a turning point in the rise of religion. Jin is among them: During that summer, he discovered Christianity through a friend. He soon converted, baffling his parents, who had no experience with religion.

“They thought I’d gone crazy,” he says.

In 1992, Jin joined the state-controlled church known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, named for its commitment to “self-governance, self-support, self-propagation,” a credo designed to limit the influence of foreign missionaries. For more than 10 years Jin ministered to churches mostly full of elderly worshippers. The church was most active in the countryside.

B

ut as China’s economic engine roared through the opening years of the 21st century, something was changing.

Migrants streamed into cities. Students explored new ideas. Communism drifted ever further out of view, leaving a spiritual vacuum. After a stint of studying in the United States, Jin returned to China last year but felt constrained by the official church.

“Originally, we used to have a huge government that controlled everything, but now the government is gradually shrinking and civil society is growing stronger and larger,” he says. “I felt that churches should make good use of that opportunity to expand and spread the word of God.” Authorities were wary – “Officials tried to persuade me not to go down the illegal path” – but Jin reassured them that he had no interest in conflict. “They asked me to write reports to explain what I’m doing. I complied and explained who we are, what we want to do and gave them a schedule of our activities.”

The Zion Church opened its doors in May 2007 with just 20 people. Within a year its membership had surged to 350 worshippers. He preaches a nondenominational but relatively conservative brand of evangelical Christianity. Jin’s urbane services, full of contemporary references to the economy and education and pop culture, tap a well of fervour among young, successful Chinese.

“Most of our members are highly educated – master’s degree holders, Ph.D. holders, university professors,” he says. There also are executives, entrepreneurs and other professionals. Nine out of 10, he estimated, are younger than 40.

From the balcony outside his spacious office, tycoon Zheng Shengtao surveys a vast factory clanging with workers producing 58 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

Christians listen to the Rev. Zhang Mingxuan at a house church in rural Yutai county in Shandong province, China.

This is an unofficial church that has turned to the courts in its struggle with local officials to practice freedom of religion. José M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/MCT

high-tech printing equipment. It is one of the plants that have made him rich. At 56, Zheng has worked his way up for a quarter-century, from a no-name supplier to CEO of a manufacturing giant, the Shenli Group, and head of the chamber of commerce in the prosperous eastern city of Wenzhou. A chauffeur squires him around town in a silver Rolls-Royce.

But like a growing number of other business owners, he believes China’s sprint to the free market – the very process that created his wealth – has weakened his countrymen’s sense of ethics and imperiled future growth.

“So what happens if I am trustworthy, but others are not trustworthy?” he asks. “Wouldn’t I end up the loser?”

Indeed, many of the church’s new adherents profess a common belief that 30 years of ungoverned capitalism, amid the fading of communist ideology, has opened a yawning spiritual gap.

A public debate in China over ethics in business has bloomed in recent years from an unlikely source: the same unsafe products that have bedeviled U.S. consumers. In the most infamous case, 13 Chinese babies died and 200 were sickened in 2004 when a manufacturer skimped on the ingredients in infant milk. The case became a symbol of an economy so out of control that people could no longer trust their countrymen to adhere to the most basic ethical standards.

Since becoming a Christian five years ago, Zheng has launched

“Christianity offered an alternative to China’s political orthodoxy. To those in search of something new in which to believe, the church promised salvation, moral absolutes and a sense of being part of an enterprise larger than China” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 59

a campaign to raise ethical awareness and revive a “system of trust” among his colleagues. “For example, we do not evade taxes,” says Zheng, who serves on the provincial government’s advisory body known as the People’s Political Consultative Congress. “We do not make fake or substandard products. We will not change the contracts and promises made to customers.

“We are not only doing business for man,” he adds. “We are doing business for heaven.”

This awareness is taking root not only in the trenches of China’s new free market, but also among those who are helping to shape the country’s economic reforms.

Professor Zhao Xiao shuttles between the private sector and officialdom, giving elite management seminars to CEOs and advising government cadres on the economy. “If eating Chinese cuisine will make me stronger, then I’ll eat it, and if Western food makes me stronger, then I’ll eat that,” says Zhao, a 40-year-old Communist Party member and economist.

Zhao’s interest in Christianity began when he embarked on a study of how economies in predominantly Christian societies differ from non-Christian ones. He visited South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. To his own surprise, he began advocating that Christianity could offer China a “common moral foundation” capable of reducing corruption, narrowing the gap between rich and poor, promoting philanthropy and even preventing pollution.

In lectures and writings, Zhao now argues that promoting the 10 Commandments would cultivate “a civilization based upon rules.”

Likewise, providing business owners with “a motivation that transcends profits” might keep them from seeking shortcuts that have fouled China’s environment or cheated workers. And encouraging tycoons to donate some of their wealth would develop China’s civic institutions, Zhao argues, just as early American Christians founded Harvard and Yale Universities.

When Zhao took his theory public in lectures to political elites, he braced himself for criticism; as a party member, discussing his newfound faith could stymie his career. Instead he was stunned to discover that many people agreed with him.

He is no political heretic. On the contrary, he thinks permitting Christianity to play a greater role in society could help guarantee the party’s survival at a time when communist ideology is no longer visible in daily life. He believes it is comparable to the party’s decision, a generation ago, to embark on economic reform.

“We see that the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and all of Eastern Europe have collapsed, and their countries have collapsed with them,” Zhao says. “But the Chinese Communist Party survives ... precisely because it continues to change.”

Influential Christians such as Zhao have expanded the role of religion to where it is today in China. For a preview of the future, though, visit the fervent members of the generation that soon will inherit this country.

Down a narrow market street lined with dumpling vendors and vegetable stands, a rutted road in Henan province leads to a home that echoes with what sounds like a party. Men and women in their teens and 20s are packed into a room, dancing to a live guitar, piano and drums. The boys, jumping as though in a mosh pit, shout: “It’s the power of the holy spirit! Nothing can stop it!”

A banner on the wall reads “Beijing belongs to God” – a provocative sentiment in a one-party state.

After their performance, they lower their heads and clench their eyes shut. Some have tears streaming down their cheeks, and a woman prays: “China will be a Christian nation.”

60 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

The 50 young men and women use this house as a dormitory and practice ground for a Christian performance troupe. The songand-dance group survives in a legal gray area: Officials usually let them perform discreetly for other churches, with only occasional threats of arrest, says the group’s leader, Wang Guiyin.

U

nlike their parents, these young Christians are coming of age at a time when Christianity is slowly shedding the stigma of illegality. Western religion even has a touch of glamour because of high-profile converts in recent years.

Retired Olympic soccer goalkeeper Gao Hong is a Christian, as is television actress Lu Liping and pop star Zheng Jun. Moreover, young Christians are more accustomed than their parents to life outside the official church. The notion that a pastor would need official approval in order to preach puzzles Ma Junyan, a 25-year-old singer in the troupe.

“Jesus tells us to preach to everyone, so they all can follow his words,” she says. “He never said, ‘You have to have this certificate in order to preach.’ I disagree with that practice. Why follow people, not God?” Chinese authorities are gambling that Christians will agree to follow both people and God. And at the Rev. Jin Mingri’s Zion Church, compromise has been the key to success so far. If the current rate of growth continues, it eventually will be a megachurch of 2,000 members. Jin is determined not to let that happen; he wants to limit the congregation to 600 people, to guarantee that he can provide enough individual attention.

Even so, he plans to rent more space. Eventually he wants to move out of the office and build a brick-and-mortar church. But he doesn’t know if that will happen. So far, religious authorities have let him leave the state church, they’ve let him rent office space and set up his own church, and they’ve even let him build a thriving independent congregation with a band and a choir in hot-pink robes. But a building of his own?

“Right now, we’re not allowed to do so,” he says. “But I’ve brought the subject up with the government officials on numerous occasions. We will keep trying.”

Just what kind of relationship his growing Christian church seeks with the state will help determine whether the church and the Communist Party can learn to share China’s soul. Jin is optimistic.

“The power enjoyed by each individual person has grown,” he says. “Naturally, that person will gradually be empowered to exercise his rights to religion. So maybe that’s our future.”

A VOICE FOR TRUTH

JINAN, China – At a highway rest stop just after dawn, the Rev. Zhang Mingxuan answers his cell phone and resumes looking for trouble.

“Did you contact the lawyer I mentioned?” Zhang asks the caller, a rural church leader under pressure from his local government. “He will help you.”

The caller is another addition to Zhang’s unprecedented experiment: an alliance of Chinese church leaders, worshippers and public-interest lawyers who share the goal of winning greater rights and recognition for their faith.

With China in the throes of a religious awakening, Christian clerics and worshippers have emerged as an unexpected voice for reform and pluralism. From remote villages to elite universities, Christians form a diverse lobby that is rare in a nation split by class, opportunity and geography.

Christians pray during a house church service at Zion Church in Beijing, China. José M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/MCT

“Christianity has probably become China’s largest nongovernmental organization,” says Li Fan, a leading reform advocate in Beijing who is not a Christian.

Their drive for reform has proved particularly persistent because many Christians consider themselves bound by an authority higher than the government, and their beliefs inspire them to demand greater rights of expression and organization.

“Only by uniting all [unofficial] churches can we preach to all 1.3 billion Chinese people,” says Zhang, a retired barber and grandfather.

Traveling by train and bus from church to church, he serves as a combination pastor-legal adviser. Such activism comes at no small risk. By his count, Zhang has been detained 14 times – most recently, just last week.

As China’s Christian population has climbed to an estimated 70 million, a growing number of lawyers and scholars have converted to Christianity and turned their skills to the issue of religious freedom. They are teaming up with churches to challenge the government in court, suing for the rights they believe are guaranteed under China’s constitution.

They take inspiration from the American civil rights movement and the ideals symbolized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And they hope that holding the country to account for its pledges of religious freedom will nudge China toward greater respect for its citizens’ other rights as well.

China’s Communist Party is wary of independent-minded move-

ments. When the spiritual group Falun Gong agitated for greater recognition a decade ago, it was declared a cult. Its members have been routinely arrested ever since.

The Christian movement is unlikely to face the same fate.

Christianity is permitted under China’s constitution, and the government has long supported a network of official Christian churches. But the future of activism is unclear for those who choose to worship outside the state system, in what the Chinese call “house churches.”

There is unmistakable new freedom to press for religious rights in court, but activists who push too far face arrest. The lines around what is legal are unclear because they hinge largely on how local bureaucrats interpret the nation’s laws on religion. Two churches of the same size and openness, for instance, might face very different fates, because one pastor has sought compromises with local authorities while another has rejected official intrusions.

The laws allow freedom of expression – and wide latitude to curb it.

“The country protects normal religious activities,” says Ma Yuhong, a senior official in charge of Christian affairs under the government’s State Administration for Religious Affairs. “On the other hand, you can’t make use of religion to interfere in the country’s administration.”

Clamping down on the drive for religious rights would not be easy. The government is confronting an uncertain new player: a vast movement for change in the name of God. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 61

“I can accept your leadership,” says Li Jianqiang, a Christian lawyer in the eastern city of Qingdao. “But if you, the Communist Party, directly violate the laws of God, then Christians can only listen to the will of God. They cannot listen to your will.”

Bumping along in the back of a mini-bus, Zhang Mingxuan cuts an unlikely profile as an agitator. At 57 years old, he still has the fastidious wardrobe and coiffure from his days running a beauty salon in rural Henan province.

In his new role, he has been charged with everything from “disturbing public order” to distributing improper religious materials.

A couple Thursdays ago Zhang was aboard a public bus, bound for a meeting in Beijing with a delegate from the European Parliament, when police stopped him.

He said he was detained for 36 hours, then released without explanation. Police declined requests for information about the case.

Zhang and his family move frequently from apartment to apartment on the fringes of Beijing because, they believe, landlords are pressured by police to evict them. Lawyers familiar with his case say police have warned them to rein him in, but he continues to organize churches and preach the need for uniting to demand greater rights.

“I am an honest citizen. Everything I do is legal,” Zhang says.

“But in the eyes of the Communist Party, everybody in my family – me, my wife, my two sons and daughter-in-law – we are dangerous people. Our phone is bugged. We are followed everywhere.

Wherever we stay, we are thrown out.”

Zhang was born in a poor village. He grew up through years of famine in the countryside and, while still a teenager, he concluded that living off the land would forever put him at the mercy of the harvest.

“But I found that barbers were the freest people,” he says. “In summer, they could work in the shade under a tree. And in winter, in a warm room. No barber ever died of hunger.”

He married a preacher’s daughter, who introduced him to Christianity. But it wasn’t until Zhang’s business foundered that he decided that religion would be his future. He began evangelizing wherever he could: to customers in his barber’s chair, to passengers on the bus. In 1998 he spent four months bicycling from province to province, meeting church leaders and hearing tales of fights over religious expression. Local preachers, he concluded, were being treated “like drug dealers.”

“During that time, I saw ordinary people complaining of injustice everywhere. No one spoke up for them,” Zhang says. “I realized that nobody but Jesus can save this country and save the people.”

He moved to Beijing and, in 2005, he and others established the House Church Alliance. The alliance is the first of its kind, says Bob Fu, president of China Aid Association, a US-based advocacy group for Christians.

“They are the first group willing to stand up and operate aboveground,” Fu says. “Traditionally, they would have been underground. But they took a public role, educating churches and pastors on how to protect themselves with existing laws, and to use lawyers to protect their rights.”

The alliance claims followers in provinces across the country, representing 300,000 Christians, but those figures are impossible to verify. Still, it was enough to draw the concern of the government. When Zhang tried to get official approval, his application for registration was denied.

He kept working anyway, and he has emerged as a pivotal link between urban intellectuals and rural believers.

62 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

After eight hours on the road from Beijing, Zhang’s minibus turns off the paved two-lane road in eastern Shandong province and down a strip of dirt. He is on his way to see another local church in a standoff with authorities. He pulled up before a metal gate, which opened to reveal the modest brick home of Cheng Zhangan, a construction worker with the tanned face of a life in the sun and the worried expression of a man unsure of what he had gotten himself into.

Cheng, 43, once helped construct the local village church, part of China’s officially sanctioned Christian system known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Over time, however, he grew disenchanted with the state church, so Cheng and roughly 50 of his neighbors decided to use an empty building beside his home to build their own unofficial church, joining an estimated 50 million Chinese Christians who have chosen to worship outside the state system.

L

ast August, Cheng and his neighbors organized a summer camp for local students in rural Yutai county to teach them, as he puts it, “to take the right road, fear God, listen to their parents, obey various rules and regulations of the country, and respect teachers.”

Camp was still in session when police arrived. They searched his home, confiscated books and photos and detained him, he says, for running an illegal religious gathering. They also cited him for violating a national regulation that bans anyone younger than 18 from receiving formal religious education, though that regulation is not uniformly enforced. Cheng challenged their authority to arrest him, not only on the letter of the law but on the basis of the law. “[The officer in charge] said, ‘You have to follow what we say.’

I said, ‘I should worship you? I won’t get everlasting life if I worship you! I won’t get into heaven. I won’t get anything if I worship you!’ “ Cheng was fined 1,000 yuan, he says, the equivalent of $200.

But he didn’t stop complaining. He praised top leaders in Beijing for adopting a greater tolerance of religion, but he blamed local bureaucrats for failing to heed that change.

He did what his parents’ generation rarely would have done: He struck back. He contended that authorities lacked a search warrant and failed to provide a receipt certifying that he had paid his fine. He formally requested that the local government review the decision, but it was upheld. He appealed to the county court, and, again, the verdict was upheld. He appealed again to a higher court, and his case is pending.

“Whether they will solve it, it’s up to the court,” says Cheng, a father of two. “But I wanted to let them know we are all good citizens. We love the country, we love the people.

“We do no harm to the country,” he adds. And as night settled over his courtyard, villagers filtered in through the front gate, once again, for an evening church service.

Li Baiguang pulls from his briefcase a recent issue of a magazine with a cover article titled “Chinese Human Rights Lawyers.” He slides his finger across 14 small photos of China’s most progressive legal scholars.

Many of them are under intense pressure from authorities, but Li, whose photo is among them, is illuminating an overlooked part of the story: “One, two, three, four ... “ he says, ticking off the lawyers who have converted to Christianity. “Many of those who are seeking democracy and freedom in China have found God.”

“In the eyes of the Communist Party, everybody in my family – me, my wife, my two sons and daughter-in-law – we are dangerous people. Our phone is bugged. We are followed everywhere. Wherever we stay, we are thrown out”

The Christian current rippling through China’s humanrights circles is an important part of the rise of Christian activism in China. Li, a 44-year-old lawyer in Beijing, is typical of the trend: highly educated, disillusioned with China’s political system and determined to reform it.

Li was arrested in the past after trying to register a new political party. In 2006 he was one of three Chinese Christian activists invited to the White House to meet with President Bush. That high-profile visit afforded Li a measure of protection, he believes, so he pushed his activism a step further. He embarked on a nomadic six-month trip through eight provinces, gathering evidence of religious persecution and dispensing legal aid.

He began teaching rural Christians basic legal tactics, such as recording the badge numbers and names of any police officers who confront them, demanding receipts for materials confiscated in raids and checking search and arrest warrants for the legally required stamps.

“Wherever I go, I teach them laws,” Li says. “The churches all faced the same problem: The police and the religious bureau would arrest them when they gathered. The police considered them illegal and would either detain them or send them to re-educationthrough-labor [camps] or sentence them” to jail time.

Li helped the churches file for administrative review and appeal in court. But he faced failure after failure – until he took on the city of Wendeng in Shandong province.

Church leaders had challenged local police for detaining them improperly after a raid that netted more than 30 worshippers and left three of them under arrest for 12 days. But instead of the usual victory for the city, police settled the case last year by abandoning the charges and issuing a rare apology, accompanied by compensation of 460 yuan, about $95.

The case made history as one of the first in which an underground church succeeded in challenging local police in court. Li has never pinpointed what was different about this case – he suspects sympathetic local officials intervened – but it sent a shock wave through China’s religious-rights movement.

Li suddenly found that more churches were willing to sue than before. And local authorities, even if they won cases, seemed to give churches more room to worship without harassment.

“Although we failed on paper in another seven or eight provinces ... I found that, wherever we sued the government, the local police were no longer arresting Christians,” says Li, a portrait of the overworked lawyer with his thinning black hair and wardrobe of dark, baggy suits. “It seemed our administrative reviews and litigation were educating local government officials to learn to respect citizens’ liberty and freedom.”

But Li’s activism could bring him problems of his own. After another Christian lawyer, Li Jianqiang, helped a house church pursue a protracted legal appeal against police, the 43-year-old found that authorities abruptly refused to reregister his law license.

“They gave no official reason at all,” he says at his office in a residential compound in the eastern city of Qingdao.

Though he no longer files them in his own name, Li Jianqiang continues to take on churches’ cases. He once was a city official, so he sympathizes with the government’s concern about the Christian legal movement. He is determined to demonstrate that Christians have no interest challenging the government politically, only in hastening the rule of law.

“Christians just want freedom to believe. They don’t want to rebel,” he says. “They don’t care who is in power: Caesar, Mao Zedong, the Communist Party. Whoever is in power is in power.

But don’t hinder my belief in Jesus.” n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 63

think life | money

Cap in hand Helping the kids doesn’t always require money, writes Peter Hensley It had been a while since Jim and Moira had heard from their nephew James and they were pleased that he and Janet had taken the time to call in and have afternoon tea. James and Janet did not often have the time to catch up with their favourite relatives. Over the years their kids activities tended to soak up what spare time they had. Now that the kids had finished school and were starting out on their own, they seemed to have more time to themselves and were quite enjoying their new found freedom.

James had a financial matter he wanted to discuss with his uncle Jim and so the seemingly innocent catch up had been planned for a while. Not long after they arrived, and 64 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

before Moira had a chance to serve up afternoon tea, James suggested that he and Jim take a walk down to the beach to take in the sea air. This did not surprise Jim as Moira had already guessed the purpose of the visit and had forewarned him what she thought was the reason behind the outing.

With the dog straining at the end of the lead they left the girls behind to prepare the table. Moira was renowned for her home baking and this was reflected in Jim’s ever expanding waistline. She had tried to cut back on the cooking but since they had both been retired, she seemed to spend even more time in the kitchen. She loved recipes almost as much as she loved

the grandchildren and she could always be counted on to have at least four different types of biscuits in her cupboard.

Moira was never one to beat around the bush and once the boys were out of earshot she surprised Janet and asked why James wanted to borrow money. Janet sort of coughed and spluttered a little before she burst into tears. Moira quietly offered a box of tissues which she had kept close at hand and made some soothing sounds, all the time saying nothing and waiting patiently for Janet to compose herself.

Janet said that they were broke. The mortgage had recently come off its fixed rate and the recent spike in petrol prices meant that they had too much month left at the end of their money. They were at their wits’ end and did not know what to do or who they could turn to for help.

They had discussed their bleak situation and thought they would come cap in hand and ask for help.

Moira said that Jim and herself had already discussed it and they were prepared to assist, but they would not give them any money. Well, Janet was not only upset but she was now confused. How could Jim and Moira help them financially but not give them any money?

James and Jim returned from their short walk with the dog and when Janet saw James she knew that his discussion had gone the same way. This was not what they had expected. James had been named after Jim and they had thought that this would count for something.

Moira busied herself with the afternoon tea and left Jim at the table with his favourite nephew and his flummoxed wife Janet.

By this stage Jim had sourced a pad, pencil and calculator.

He made it very clear that they were not about to write them a cheque but he and Moira were going to help them bring their finances under control.

He asked James how much he earned as a senior accounts clerk with a large multi national. His response of approximately $80,000 pa stunned Jim a little. James then confirmed that Janet earned $58,000 as head of English at the local secondary school she taught at. He asked how much they had saved and James told him that not only did they have a zero bank balance, there were many months where their outgoings exceeded their income.

Jim scratched his bald head and asked how big their mortgage was. James looked at Janet and said quietly, $385,000. The recent

government valuation for their house had come in at $550,000 but they were aware that many similar properties to theirs were now selling for at least 10% under GV. Moira, who by now had joined them at the table, did some quick calculations in her head and said, “Let me get this right. In the past 15 years you have earned over two million dollars and all you have to show for it is $115,000 equity in your home which is basically your initial $15,000 deposit and inflation. What happened to the rest?”

Janet and James sat quietly, not knowing how to respond. They were aged 45 and 46 respectively and had no concept of how money worked.

Over Jim’s lifetime he had always worked on a series of priorities and right now his first priority was to tuck into the wonderful afternoon tea that Moira had prepared for their guests. In between mouthfuls he went on to explain to Janet and James that if they were struggling to live on an income of $138,000 every year, how did they think they could retire debt free and live off the government pension of $20,000.

Jim and Moira had spent a lifetime teaching their four kids that they had to live within their income. From the time of their first job Moira had insisted that

the kids each open a bank account and set aside at least 10% of their after tax income and she would religiously go down to the bank with them and ensure it went into their savings accounts. There was not a lot of difference between teenagers and forty year olds saving money, the only difference now was that banking is done on the internet with a computer.

Janet was close to tears again as she explained that they had tried budgeting

Jim suggested that they consider fast tracking their mortgage and potentially save thousands of dollars in interest by doing so.

Now Jim and Moira knew that James and Janet’s financial worries could not be solved over a quick afternoon tea. They set a few simple tasks such as writing down their expenses and quantifying known household costs such as phone, power and rates etc. They also arranged to meet again at their place in a month’s time to review their progress.

“In between mouthfuls he went on to explain to Janet and James that if they were struggling to live on an income of $138,000 every year, how did they think they could retire debt free and live off the government pension of $20,000 and it didn’t work. It turned out that James had compiled the budget and she was not allowed any input. Jim gave James a stern look and said that for it to work successfully they both had to buy into the concept.

Moira asked if they had signed up to KiwiSaver. James sheepishly shook his head and said he did not think they could afford to. Moira quickly outlined the benefits and now James realised that they would have to make it a priority.

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As James and Janet left to find their way home, they realised that Jim and Moira were wise enough to give them a hand up instead of a hand out. They made a commitment to each other that they would work their way out of their financial quagmire and end up with money left over at the end of each month.

A copy of Peter Hensley’s disclosure statement is available upon request and is free of charge. © Peter J Hensley August 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 September 2008 65

think life | EDUCATION

The politics of resentment Amy Brooke explains why we’re overdue for education to be removed from political control

I confess recently laughing aloud at the conflation of self-importance, of sheer hubris by so-called Maori language experts now claiming – on behalf of the Maori language institute Te Panekiretanga a o te Reo – status comparable to a Harvard of higher learning. I shouldn’t have. The outcome for Maori as a people as a result of constant braggadocio surrounding all things Maori is essentially tragic, rather than comic. However, it is richly ironic that native speakers can’t understand what its 66 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

academic re-inventors are saying, accusing the new creative gurus of making up their own version of Maori.

In spite of these claims being rejected, the absurd process of stretching a language of limited vocabulary and consonants to insist on part-Maori youngsters’ immersion in it, attempting to defend its capacity to teach academic subjects including physics, chemistry, higher mathematics and esoteric concepts quite beyond its genuine capabilities, disservices them. Within the universities,

the creeping insistence is that all courses should have “relevance” to Maori. Those of Maori descent are envisaged in contradictory and confused perspectives as “special” – with a potentially superior, unique perspective on subjects totally unrelated to traditional Maori learning. However, simultaneously, they are also seen as needing extra consideration – being underprivileged, incapable of higher learning in their own right without special crutches – without funding or courses to explain how to “facilitate access” for Maori students in areas revolving around university subjects, health, education, the sciences.

This treating of those of Maori descent as automatically needy, to be segregated or shielded from the requirements those of all other races and cultures have to meet – is not only divisive and unnecessary : it is deeply patronizing to a once-proud people. Probably 99% are now only partMaori – many overwhelmingly genetically European after generations of intermarriage, and two centuries of European settlement. Essentially, of course, it is very much part of the jobs-for-the-boys-and-girls syndrome. Auckland University, for example, with strong neo-Marxist infiltration of its education courses, constantly issues notices of new meetings, courses, study areas – all to “help” this apparently envisaged stillStone-Age race. No such luck – provisions piled on provisions – for those disadvantaged immigrants who come here to study, without even English as a first language, but whose dedication to learning has them duxes of their schools within a few years of arrival.

The disservice done by targeting Maori as having more special status, greater than any other people in the country – and therefore to be kept apart from mainstream learning, their language reinvented to the point of sheer silliness, to encompass both needy and superior perspectives simultaneously – began in the sixties, with the radicalization of young Maori sent to indoctrination courses overseas, then returned to their own country as part of the process of destabilizing Western democracies. It’s all very well now for the acclaimed writer of the Left, 88 year-old Doris Lessing, raging at “the bloody Swedes” who awarded her the Nobel Prize after a lifetime’s support of the similar propaganda fed to young activist Maori, to view with horror the result of the fake glamorization of Black races. The history of Africa has always been of tribe against tribe in bloody warfare. Obvious

parallels in New Zealand’s own history embrace today’s neo-tribes denigrating colonization to bludge on taxpayers with manipulative counter-claims of land ownership – land historically with no legal title until British law, in good faith, granted this permanence to tribes.

The propaganda of the Left, vilifying those of European descent, rather than acknowledging the capacity for good and evil in people of all races, has been a large part of radical Maori activism, responsible for much of the confused, damaging, “special” arrangements made by shallowthinking Liberals, self-serving lawyers, and vote-chasing politicians. Belatedly, Lessing believes Communists are “murderers with a clear conscience”, acknowledging taking a long time to realize this. Originally regarding Marxism as “the sweetest dream”, she now describes it as “ a load of old socks. It seems incredible now that quite intelligent people believed it at all.”

Supposedly quite intelligent people still do, their motivations murky. Given communism’s extraordinary cruelty, its oppression in the name of a movement that ostensibly aimed at equality, but is still happy to kill or torture dissenters, the question of whether it is driven by envy and hatred is far more relevant. The implications for our education policies are obvious, encouraging young Maori self-aggrandizement, and the hyped-up “warrior” practices involving traditional weaponry reinvented as self-esteem and mana.

For the agenda has always been quite clear, as in Dirty Silence, a 1990 publication subtitled Aspects of Language and Literature in New Zealand. Its aggressive title covers the usual education apparatchiks’ neoMarxist perspective of the English language not as a pre-eminent pathway to knowledge, but as a political tool of oppression.

While grudgingly acknowledging only about 10% genuine speakers of Maori, with English as the preferred language – even among fluent speakers at formal occasions – it revealed the activist push for more widely-spoken Maori and the resentment of its unequal status in relation to English – delusional though it is to think it could ever be otherwise.

Maori is now promoted to the point of absurdity and irrelevance, new bridges, roads, buildings having to be blessed in Maori – any new opening, occasion, dominated by Maori centre-staging. Places names of historical importance are tediously retitled in an over-wordy Maori tourists find

A reality check suggests the whole notion of Maori Language Immersion Schools is a radicalized imposition long overdue for review

bewildering and locals ignore; Maori pronunciation is reinvented by radio and television. These are all part of the politics of resentment, a war for power, part of the social engineering of the Left using language as propaganda, railing, as does one university English department writer against “the imposition of the English language”.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in our schools, where neo-Marxist obsession with racial issues has warred against the democratic concept of equal access for all to that intellectual treasure-house of knowledge promised Maori through the signing of the real Treaty of Waitangi.

The many thousands of contrived, arguably fake Maori words coined by academics cannot replace far more important gifts to young Maori of competence and fluency in the universal language of English. And more power to Sacred Heart Principal, Lisl Prendergast, sending back to the Ministry of Education infantile, demeaning badges promoting its new “Maori education strategy”, sporting inspirational slogans such as “ Wassup!”

Meantime, we can sympathise with the

unfortunate pupils at an Auckland Maori language immersion school duly reprimanded by Big Brother in the form of the Education Review Office for preferring to use English as their main language of communication. Naturally these educationists view the prevalence of English in classes as anathema.

A reality check suggests the whole notion of Maori Language Immersion Schools is a radicalized imposition long overdue for review. This, in spite of inevitable cries of outrage from the usual suspects. But then, their careers depend on making issues of race a tool to profit professionally, financially and politically, with little compunction about the real outcome for young Maori in the process.

Given the dismaying, widespread illiteracy in basic English usage, and the ministry’s long culpability in this respect, we’re more than overdue for education to be removed from political control. © Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds..co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 67

think life | SCIENCE

To infinity, and beyond… maybe not Buzz Aldrin calls for a reevaluation of NASA moon project, write Robert Block and Mark K. Matthews

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Just four years after President Bush announced his vision to send astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars, legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin is leading an effort to re-examine the whole idea – in particular, NASA’s choice of rockets for the mission.

It is the latest sign that NASA’s Constellation program – intended to replace the space shuttle after 2010 – is in trouble.

Concerned by reports that the Ares rockets and Orion crew capsule are beset by cost overruns, schedule delays and complex technical woes, Aldrin says he wants to create a panel of experts to make sure that Constellation is the right way to go.

68 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

“We need to stick with the mission but rethink some of the ways we implement it,” says Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. “It doesn’t pay to stick with a bad idea.”

Aldrin has won some backers, including a prominent Washington think tank and the backers of an alternate rocket design created by moonlighting NASA employees.

But the space agency – and its allies on Capitol Hill – insists there’s no need for more study.

“NASA has already completed a comprehensive look at possible systems,” says Stephanie Schierholz, a NASA spokeswoman. “NASA thinks it would be coun-

terproductive to do that all over again, as we are already under way developing a good system for the nation.”

President Bush unveiled his Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004, and NASA chose Ares and Orion a year later.

Since then, though, technical problems, redesigns and funding shortfalls have delayed Ares’ first launch to 2015, five years after the shuttle’s scheduled retirement.

“A whole number of things have gone wrong,” Aldrin says.

He compared the situation to the development of the shuttle after the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s.

“It was not wisely planned, it was under-

“Aldrin says an independent evaluation of NASA’s options is necessary to provide an overview of the best space policy choices for the new president who takes office in January

funded and we rushed into another decision that left us with a gap,” he says. “And the shuttle – as marvelous as it is – has not lived up to its expectations.”

Aldrin is a NASA icon; he and Neil Armstrong became the first astronauts to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. Since retiring from the space agency in 1971, he has fought alcoholism and depression but continued actively to promote space exploration.

Aldrin says an independent evaluation of NASA’s options is necessary to provide an overview of the best space policy choices for the new president who takes office in January.

He’s not alone. The National Academy

of Sciences is currently assembling a 14member panel for a $400,000 study of the goals and rationale of the U.S. space program. And The Planetary Society, one of the country’s largest organizations promoting space exploration, is preparing a position paper for the candidates that will encourage NASA to save money by, for example, exploring asteroids rather than the moon.

Some space advocates fear that both Barack Obama and John McCain might latch onto any study as a way to scrap Constellation entirely. Obama has said he would like to postpone Constellation for five years and use the money for the Department of Education. McCain has says that he favors increasing NASA’s budget – but also wants to freeze spending except for defense and homeland security.

Aldrin says he wants the panel to look at the Direct 2.0 rocket, a relatively simple design that would use the shuttle’s giant external fuel tank and rocket boosters to launch the Orion capsule into space.

Proponents of Direct, including freelancing NASA engineers, say it can be developed faster and cheaper than Ares. Last week, NASA released a study contesting their time frame and cost estimate, adding that Direct couldn’t generate enough thrust to get Orion to the moon. Direct has disputed that – and is also calling for an independent review.

Aldrin says he is not championing any one system but wants to make sure that all viable possibilities are studied.

“I think he has a very pragmatic approach,” says Vincent Sabathier of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank that will participate on Aldrin’s panel.

Jake Garn, a former Republican senator from Utah and the first member of

Congress to fly in space, agrees. “We are not far enough down the road that we shouldn’t consider other options while we’re working on the current path,” he says.

Aldrin’s push is a reflection of growing divisions inside the aerospace community over NASA’s next generation of rockets.

Originally presented as a relatively uncomplicated project that would reuse technology from the space shuttle, Ares is now an almost completely new design. “It went from shuttle derived to shuttle-flavored,” says CSIS’s Sabathier.

Ares is the first rocket to use a solid-fuel first stage – a five-segment engine derived from the four-segment solid rocket boosters used on the shuttle – rather than a liquid engine. Engineering studies have shown that harmonic vibrations triggered by the extra segment could cause “jack hammer” vibrations that could shake the crew to death.

NASA says that all new rocket projects encounter problems, and that this one will be fixed. But some engineers believe the flaw is fatal.

NASA documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel suggest that it will be years before the agency will know whether its proposed fixes will work. In the meantime, the documents say, new problems have arisen involving the design of Ares launch pad, the astronaut emergency escape system on Orion and the capsule’s heat protection system.

A NASA report made public last month says the agency will probably not meet its own internal goal of launching the rocket in 2013, and may even miss its publicly stated goal of a launch by 2015. However, NASA officials publicly insist the 2015 date is still on track.

Block reported from Cape Canaveral and Matthews reported from Washington.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 69

think life | TECHNOLOGY

Getting control Charlyne Schaub offers five real solutions to your kids’ technology clutter The trucks, teddy bears, dolls and Barbie Dream House may be history. But their fading from favour doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.

Next comes the hard-core electronics. desktop and laptop computers. video games. CDs. DVDs. Xbox. Nintendo’s Wii. Cables and more cables.

Your child’s room or playroom can be as much of a mess with electronic gear as it was with toys. So how do you set up a system to get things organized and have them stay that way?

We asked advice from a designer, organizational experts and Christopher Lowell, host of Work That Room With Christopher Lowell, which has just debuted on America’s Fine Living Network.

Interiors by Decorating Den, Myriam Payne: The challenge: A playroom created for two boys, ages 8 and 10.

Her mission: To organize their toys and electronic gear, which include an arcade machine, table soccer game, a Wii machine, Xbox and a large flat-screen TV. And to make sure it’s tidy enough for overnight guests.

Her plan: She hung the flat screen on the wall above a chest, where all the electronic gear was stored. To prevent glare on the 70 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

screen, she installed blackout shades.

Her advice: Look for cabinets with plugs inside and openings in the back. Install task lighting for the keyboard.

TV personality Christopher Lowell: The problem: He often finds children’s workstations are outdated or crammed into a corner. They don’t have the dominance they should in our tech-driven world.

The solution: If you get a flat-screen TV, mount it on the wall and build a great desk underneath. Take two or three plywood tops to expand the work space and store them in the garage when not in use.

Mydesignsecrets.com’s Lorrie Browne: The problem: Two boys share a bedroom and love to play video games.

The solution: She split the large closet into two smaller ones with a middle console that stores a TV and all the gaming gear. The cords can be pulled through the cabinet and grouped together with plastic ties.

Conquer Chaos, Noble Professional Organizers, Mindy Noble: The challenge: Set up an organizational system that works for the child so it’s easy for him or her to put electronic gear away. Determine if

the child is more tactile or more verbal.

The solution: Put electronic gear in plastic bins and label them so the child knows where each goes – DVDs, CDs, joysticks, wires. If you have a media center, the software and DVDs can go inside the slots provided. A verbal child can be told what to do. A tactile child has to be taken by the hand so he or she can touch the objects and learn where to place them.

The aftermath: Set up a reward system, such as stars or a treat, to encourage the child to keep the room organized.

From Chaos to Harmony, Kelly McDaniel The challenge: Establishing a system that will continue to work.

The solution: If the equipment is in a public room, small armoires are a good choice because the doors can be closed to hide the electronics.

Put DVDs and CDs in books to take up less space and so jewel cases won’t be tossed around the room. Use plastic ties or plastic tubes to wrap around the cords to keep children’s feet from getting tangled in the mess.

The aftermath: The key is to stick with the system and maintain it. Start a cleanupbefore-bed routine and stick with it. The key is to teach your kids organizing skills early so they can use them later in life.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 71

feel life | SPORT

Cirque de Sonny Bill He’s no longer a rugby league messiah. Sonny Bill Williams is now just a naughty boy, and rather rich with it. The gifted young man from Auckland has spurned a brilliant rugby league career, for a shot at rugby union fame and fortune in the south of France.And there are plenty of big game players behind this extreme case of sporting desertion, as columnist Chris Forster discovered

Money Bill’s circus is not so much a Whodunnit, more of a whydidyadoit.

Thousands of league fans on both sides of the Tasman, many of them heartbroken young women, are wondering what the hell possessed the gifted 23 year old, when he packed his bags for good on the 26th of July.

He boarded a plane to London on the same night the All Blacks stumbled to Robbie Deans and the Wallabies at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium.

72 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

His destination was the well-heeled Toulon Rugby club on the French Riviera, enticed by familiar faces, a handsome salary and maybe the chance of an All Blacks career.

Tana Umaga, the affable former New Zealand captain and now coaching Toulon, was the main man behind the ambush, along with the millions of Euros being brandished about by French comic book tycoon and club president Mourad Boudjellal.

Back home in Sydney his club the

Canterbury Bulldogs and the National Rugby League were shellshocked. A lengthy and messy legal battle is their only option of dragging the reluctant Sonny Bill Williams back to honour the rest of his five year contract, worth a healthy $A450,000 a year.

He was also going to be an imposing figure in the Kiwis assault on the Rugby League World Cup, in Australia in November.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of the

the Olympic Games in Beijing.

But he marred his copybook straight away with one of his trademark shoulder charges. It not only left his amateur opponent sprawling on the ground in agony, but was also illegal in rugby and it meant ten minutes in the sin-bin and a red face to match his jersey. The irony of it all won’t escape league fans. Sonny Bill’s armless hits are legal in the code he’s shamelessly left behind.

Williams snuck into the Stade Du Pyanet under high security to avoid being handed the New South Wales Supreme Court injunction.

One of his mates, former league player turned boxer the motor mouth Anthony Mundine was in the 3-thousand strong capacity crowd at the small, sun-baked stadium.

A few days earlier Williams was tracked down by a Channel Nine league reporter in Toulon. He agreed to an interview to “set the record straight” which was aired on the Footie Show in both Australia and New Zealand.

His comments were straight out of the outlandish Mundine phrasebook, complete with an offbeat analogy.

“If you’re a bus driver, if they’re on 40 grand and they’re offered a lot more money to go somewhere else, what do you think they’re going to do? Change companies? Or are they going to say all these people want me to stay and I’m the best driver in this jurisdiction – blah, blah, blah. It’s just common sense mate”.

“I just want to see the game and the top players looked after the way they should”.

This time he was taking aim at the salary cap enforced by NRL boss David Gallop. “They (the crowds) NZPA / Wayne Drought don’t turn up to watch David Gallop play – do they?”

“Ten years ago the game was on top of the AFL (the rival Aussie Rules code).

Hopefully some good will come of what whole act of betrayal, is that SBW doesn’t seem to give a damn about what he’s left I’ve done. It works for everyone and something really needs to be done”. behind.

Mourad Boudjellal and Tana Umaga are Any chance of the Bulldogs and the NRL avoiding an almighty legal stoush, evapo- the movers and shakers behind the Sonny rated when Williams pulled on the red jer- Bill saga. The former is a bolshy, ultra-rich sey of Toulon and started his rugby career President who wants to turn his once small operation in the south of France, into the on the wing in a pre-season friendly.

His timing was eerie and also a little way- greatest club in the land.

The 48 year old made his fortune with a ward. This time it was a couple of hours after China’s spellbinding Opening Ceremony at Toulon-based venture Soleil Productions,

publishing extremely popular comic books which are something of a French obsession.

He clearly has no regard for Australian law let alone rugby league, and probably hadn’t heard of Sonny Bill Williams until Umaga came up with the idea.

Once he got his man to his city, and playing his first game, the new contract comes under the more liberal boundaries of the French Rugby Federation.

Australian law may not mean anything for this authority, presided over by all-time rugby great Serge Blanco.

Rugby Editor Laurent Dupre, with the Paris-based RNC radio network, has a keen understanding of the Sonny Bill saga, which is getting plenty of media attention in France.

“Boudjellal made his money selling comic books. He’s already working on the marketing, selling trousers whatever, with the Sonny Bill brand. He’s a commercial tycoon and a very successful one. He gets what he wants, and what he wants is Toulon to be French champions “It’s created a bit of excitement here, everyone is saying who is this kid Sonny Bill Williams?”

Dupre is sure Umaga has a free reign to attract whoever he wants to the club at any cost. The free publicity is a rather attractive bonus.

Tana Umaga carries enormous mana in Toulon. He’s being paid an enormous amount of money for that quality. His standing in the game and his persuasive abilities ended up swinging Sonny Bill over to the rugby side.

Boudjellal shrewdly worked this out when he first hired the New Zealand icon.

He launched into a confident tirade after Williams’ inauspicious debut. It bordered on the arrogant, and will leave rugby league bosses in Sydney shaking their fists in fury.

“The contract allows him to play in French territory, for Sonny Bill there is no release letter needed. He has signed a contract, he has played a game and he is with us.

The threat of an arrest warrant doesn’t faze him.

“France doesn’t have the same culture as Australia. There are worse things than that in the world.”

Rugby journalist Laurent Dupre believes a nice cash payment “maybe for 1-and-ahalf years of his remaining NRL contract” will end up settling the matter.

The 600,000 Euros will barely make a dent in the Toulon coffers.

Sonny Bill’s great escape is a fait accompli.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 73

feel life | HEALTH

Playing God Claire Morrow examines the tricky quagmire of “bioethics”

I’m sorry, but this is unusual. You’ll need to see a specialist for some further tests.

There’s a chance that this could be something serious. He’s a very good specialist, even if it is something nasty – and it might not be – you’ll be in good hands.

The specialist knows right away, but still orders more tests, tells you you have a good chance of survival and tells you you’ll be admitted to hospital for cancer treatment.

On Monday. The treatment starts Tuesday.

There are forms to fill out, people to talk to. You do as you are directed, in a blur of numbness with occasional breakthroughs of grief or panic or heroic optimism. You think about how scared you are and how you don’t want to die. You do not think much about bioethics.

If you are a 19 year old boy, you are thinking about how much you don’t like vomiting, how weak you feel, how your throat closes up and you find you have nothing 74 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

to say to the social worker, no questions, nothing. You care more about all those symptoms you might get and do not care at all that you may not ever have children.

You do not feel at all like giving a sperm sample to preserve your fertility. It is one more thing the hospital wants you to do, so you try. It’s about as easy as peeing in a jar with a nurse standing by. If you’re a young woman, you feel about the same. If you’re an older young woman, your feelings are more complex, perhaps, but they are lost in the same wave of numb panic.

Things to do, things to do, don’t let me die. Things to do.

The young man trying to provide a sperm sample is in the easier position. Should he find, down the track, that he wants to have children and is unable to conceive, he may be able to have children using his banked sperm. If he is lucky, he may be able to largely avoid a moral quandary. The young

woman is not so fortunate. Freezing eggs is not particularly successful. If she is able to delay her treatment for a few weeks, she will be offered the option of freezing her embryos, because this gives her a better chance of maintaining her fertility, or overriding it, anyway. If she does not have a partner, she will...need to use donor sperm if that is allowed, or find a partner and lie about their relationship. If you don’t approve (I myself do not), recall that she has just been told that this could be her one chance to have a baby, if she survives cancer treatment, and she is on a deadline to produce an embryo and start treatment. I suggest to you that no one is in any state to weigh it all up, under those conditions.

Human embryos are tricky enough in the circumstances in which they occur naturally. At conception a human baby is a zygote, rapidly becomes an embryo and at 11 weeks of pregnancy (nine weeks

into its development, since pregnancy is counted from two weeks before conceiving) it becomes a foetus. The older an embryo is, the more it does and the better its chance of survival is. Its legal status is confused, as is its moral status. But then, the legal and moral status of a 36 week old foetus is confused – it has different legal status dependent on whether it is inside or outside its mother’s tummy. If a woman driving to the hospital in labour is killed by a drunk driver, the death of the baby is not a crime. Driving home two days later with a newborn, it would be. Take the embryo out of the womb and it is more problematic again.

To whom does an embryo, created in a lab, belong? Since no child is property in the western world, if your embryo is stolen, you have fewer rights than if your car is. What if the power goes out and a frozen embryo defrosts prematurely? If the parents separate, but the mother still wants to use the embryo after they are divorced, can she do so? Is the daddy still the daddy? What happens to a frozen embryo if it is not used? Well, it can be donated to another couple, which kind of sidesteps one set of ethical issues by leaping into a new set, or destroyed (good-o), or donated to research.

We have trouble, as a society, agreeing on the legal and moral status of embryos. We can’t really answer these questions. I suggest that if the legal answer to a question is “depends what country or even what state you live in”, that’s a good sign the ethics of

it aren’t even close to sorted out.

Then there is an argument that says “we should perform research on these unused frozen embryos, which may garner some good, because they will otherwise be destroyed”. The implication is that they shouldn’t go to waste, which they should not, but that concedes that they have value in the first place, and we’ve not even agreed on what that value is. But what that argument doesn’t solve is the problem of what we are doing creating embryos and freezing them, and then not even using them to create happy families like we said we intended, but then wanting to not throw them away. Well? Do they have value or don’t they? Why not create embryos just for the sake of science? If you disagree with that, how can you disagree that they have inherent value?

You may be excused if you wish now to throw your hands up in the air and suggest we just stop. If we can’t agree on the status of embryos, ethical or legal, we maybe shouldn’t be creating them. Italy allows creation of embryos outside the womb for fertility treatment, but requires that they be transferred to the womb promptly, not allowing them to be frozen, and that seems wise, and perhaps a compromise we might be able to agree to. It doesn’t solve a lot of problems, but it does put some kind of halt on progress until the “-ethics” part has caught up with the “bio-” part.

The worrying part of this is the medical normalization of this. The cancer patient in

the beginning has not necessarily thought it through in much detail. Because it is just “what you do”. A procedure. It is, in fact, routine. And that is what worries me the most. Most people’s reasoning on tricky bioethical issues is confused. Which is understandable, because it tends to be confusing. If you try to reason it out, there is a good chance that – however you follow it through – you will find yourself having to reluctantly give up things that would be nice. It would be nice if ethics was easy, but it’s not. The mere fact that it would be sad for the young woman to lose her fertility simply does not make “preserving” it at all costs acceptable. Sorry, but it doesn’t.

It’s a good indication of the extent to which we are entrenched in playing God, I suspect, and also in the extent to which we are in the habit of making moral judgments on how we would like things to be, not on logic or morality. Is it fair that a young woman is rendered infertile by cancer treatment? No, it is not fair. It is horribly unfair and sad. It is not fair that she is sick in hospital, while all her friends are out enjoying themselves. It is horribly unfair and sad if she dies too, but it is possible. Life is not fair, and nature isn’t, and we do not always get what we want, but we should not allow ourselves to make decisions about bioethics based on what would be nice. Modern medicine does many good things, but it is not there to magic away every bad thing; that can’t and won’t be done. Instead: Primum Non Nocte: First Do No Harm.

HEALTHBRIEFS Texting hazardous while walking u Bill Haselow, an emergency physician at Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital, Ozaukee, described treating two teenagers who in recent months suffered serious texting-while-walking injuries at the Mequon hospital. Both patients received a broken nose after falling face first on a sidewalk. I think they just get so focused on (texting) they don’t see a little bump or a trip or a stumble, and down they go, Haselow said. And they’re not in a position to brace themselves.

Haselow, 51, said he tried to discourage the two from texting while walking. But he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

Brain uses fat for fuel u Antioxidants could play a role in weight control suggests new research at Yale School of Medicine. Researchers found that the brain’s appetite centre uses fat for fuel by involving oxygen free radicals - molecules associated with aging and neuro-degeneration. The findings were reported in the journal Nature. “Our study shows that the minute-by-minute control of appetite is regulated by free radicals, implying that if you interfere with free radicals, you may affect eating and satiety.”The results also imply that each

time a feeling of fullness or satiety is reached during a meal, you may be chipping away some time from your maximum lifespan as the most free radicals are produced when satiety-promoting brain cells are active.” Further studies are needed to determine whether any regiment of orally taken antioxidants could be used to control appetite in animals and humans.”

Schizophrenia is price of evolution u British, German and Chinese researchers say they’ve determined schizophrenia is an unfortunate consequence of the rapid evolution of the human brain. Philipp Khaitovich, who led the research said the scientists searched for differences in metabolite concentrations and the expression of genetic instructions in order to identify molecular mechanisms involved in the evolution of human cognitive abilities. He said they found the genes and metabolites altered in schizophrenia, especially those related to energy metabolism, are those that rapidly changed during evolution.Our new research suggests schizophrenia is a by-product of the increased metabolic demands brought about during human brain evolution.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 75

feel life | ALT.HEALTH

Lyprinol comes in from the cold Run out of town in a 1999 election year stoush with a Prime Minister and the media, Lyprinol is back with scientific proof that it can significantly help joint pain and asthma sufferers. Ian Wishart reports The health supplement derived from an extract of New Zealand’s green-lipped mussels is back on the market with a vengeance, and a sheaf of scientific studies behind it.

Lyprinol hit marketing hell back in the late 1990s after a TVNZ reporter and the Herald got over-excited about the fact it was undergoing testing as a treatment for cancer.

It was, but it was early days and the hopes weren’t met. In a media backlash, Lyprinol got hit with some of the worst press available and suddenly green-lipped mussels weren’t mentioned in polite society.

But just because the media are hot about a topic one day, and over it the next, doesn’t mean that life has suddenly ended.

In Lyprinol’s case, pharmacists and medical researchers continued testing the new dietary supplement against a whole range of medical conditions, fascinated at what they found in some cases.

In 2003 a Korean research team’s study in the journal European Annals of Allergology & Clinical Immunology, ��������������� and quoted on the international PubMed database, for example, recorded: “Lyprinol treatment led to significant improvement of the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis as determined by all efficacy measures. After a 4- and 8-week treatment period, 53% and 80% (respectively) of patients experienced significant pain relief, and improvement of joint function. There was no reported adverse effect during this 76 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

clinical trial. CONCLUSION: Lyprinol was very effective and is a promising antiinflammatory product that relieves the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis, without adverse effect.”

It was because of Lyprinol’s success as an anti-inflammatory that researchers wondered whether it might help prevent some cancers – tumours often appearing to develop from inflamed areas. The research on this question was not settled, but the scientific studies on Lyprinol’s anti-inflammatory benefits for health are now overwhelming.

Example: a 2007 study by Chinese scientists using rats suffering arthritis found “Rats treated with Lyprinol were apparently cured after 1 year. This study confirms the AI [anti-inflammatory] efficacy of this lipid extract of P. canaliculus, its initial analgesic effect, its perfect tolerance and its long-term healing properties.”

Great news if you’re a rodent with aching joints, but the point of the study is that there’s a human parallel.

A joint UK/Russian study, on humans again this time, and published in the European Respiratory Journal found Lyprinol had a “significant” impact in helping asthma sufferers: “There was a significant decrease in daytime wheeze, the concentration of exhaled H2O2 and an increase in morning PEF in the lipid extract group compared to the placebo group. There were no significant

side-effects.

“The authors conclude that lipid extract of New Zealand green-lipped mussel may have some beneficial effect in patients with atopic asthma.”

All of which goes to suggest that once the dust settled on Lyprinol’s previous bad rap in the NZ media, the scientific results were nonetheless nothing to sneeze at.

Australians, according to Blackmores, are snapping up Lyprinol supplements at the rate of 30,000 units a month. New Zealand, with only a fifth of Australia’s population, should be chewing through 6,000 units a month on those figures. Instead, we can barely manage 400 units.

The last time Lyprinol’s manufacturer Pharmalink went to the media the brand got seriously burned. You’d think Pharmalink’s Kennedy Garland would be twice shy, but not so.

“The ethics committee of the Royal Princess Hospital in Adelaide had approved a trial to test Lyprinol’s ability to inhibit the spread of both prostrate and breast cancer,” Garland says as he details the background to the controversy. “The NZ Herald ran a full page on the trial entitled The Cure For Cancer. It was the only news item covered on the front page of Saturday, July 31, 1999.” “[Prime Minister] Jenny Shipley demanded an investigation into the press releases and I was interviewed by Kim Hill along with Stewart Jessamine on national radio. The NZ media raged for a week or two about Lyprinol. Following the visit

by Medsafe detectives the [Royal Princess Hospital] ethics committee decided to drop the trial; they felt it had become too controversial.

“My company was taken to court and we were charged with selling a medicine without a licence. It was nothing to do with the cancer furore. We were charged because we had an international website on the packet. This featured some research showing Lyprinol was an effective anti-inflammatory and aided arthritis. Medsafe said the website link was an advertisement and so we were duly charged.”

This time around, Garland is careful to clutch a slew of completed scientific studies. Anyone armed with a keyboard and Google can access most of the research on Lyprinol’s benefits for themselves. For those who can’t, the 2005 book The Inflammation Revolution written by Professor Georges Halperns MD, PhD, contains virtually all the scientific references up to that point.

A natural marine oil that helps joint health, mobility, suppleness and healthy airways Unique extraction (a patented process) only from New Zealand’s very own green lipped mussel Grown, harvested, extracted and packed totally in New Zealand A highly concentrated, pure, lipid oil that is rich in omega-3 fatty acids Supports many natural processes essential for good health, including those for brain health Gram for gram Lyprinol provides significantly more health support Internationally published research and worldwide sales (23 countries) Monthly Australian sales exceed 30,000 packets

Three packets of Lyprinol® plus a free copy of Dr Georges Halpern’s (MD PhD) most informative book on the research and background of NZ’s green lipped mussel, for $90, delivered free anywhere in NZ. This special offer, valued at over $150, provides two to three months supply (depending on required dosage) of Lyprinol® plus a free book, essential reading for all those interested in good health. You may order as many sets (one book and three packets of Lyprinol®) as you wish.

Offer is available without using the coupon.

Just send address details with your cheque.

Please note free book only available as long as stocks last. Offer available until November 30, 2008. Offer not available through shops. Please post to

Pharma Health NZ Ltd, PO Box 15-185, New Lynn, Auckland 0640.

Name: ______________________________________________________ No of Sets: ___________ Cheque Amount: ____________________ Mailing Address: ____________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________

Contact Phone Number/s: ___________________________________ Email address: _____________________________________________

Email: info@phealth.co.nz Distributed by Pharma Health NZ Limited, PO Box 15-185, New Lynn, Auckland 0640. Ph: 09 827 4102. Fax: 09 827 4105.

SRP $44.50. Supplementary to and not a replacement for a balanced diet.

Always read the label and use as directed. If symptoms persist consult your doctor or healthcare professional.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 77

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taste life travel

The summerless North Longyearbyen, Norway, is the closest permanent settlement to the North Pole, and Tom Uhlenbrock has been there LONGYEARBYEN, Norway – The frozen Arctic tundra was smooth, so guide Ole Hoff set a fast pace as we roared like seven bikers in snowsuits across the treeless plain, flanked by gleaming white mountains.

The Panther Arctic Cat snowmobile, as its name implies, is a sleek, powerful machine, perfect for our 120 kilometre, round-trip ride across Spitsbergen to have a lunch of potato soup and broiled chicken at Barentsburg, a stuck-in-time Russian mining village that was as quiet as a ghost town. We pushed 80 km/h on the tundra, but it felt like twice that.

My vehicle of choice the previous evening had been dramatically different but equally exhilarating. As a sliver of moon arose over a silent valley, I stood on the back runners of a sledge and let eight exuberant dogs do the work. My only job was to hang on and use the foot brake to make sure we didn’t lose the sole sledge behind us, because we had the only bear rifle. I almost failed on both tasks as the dogs were eager to run.

“They had the day off yesterday, so they’re 78 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

anxious,” guide Linn Novis had says as she harnessed up the barking dogs.

Spitsbergen is the largest of the islands of Svalbard, an archipelago on the northwest coast of Norway. Longyearbyen is the largest city on Spitsbergen, with about 2,000 residents, compared with an estimated 3,000 polar bears on the islands. Longyearbyen has the distinction of being the permanent settlement closest to the North Pole. If you want to travel the last 830 miles and touch down on the pole, a Russian company offers plane rides from Spitsbergen.

“After landing, you can ride by helicopter to the pole point, although some go by cross-country skiing,” says Venke Ivarrud of Spitsbergen Travel, the area’s largest and oldest travel company. “You can only go in April, because of ice conditions.”

About 35,000 visitors arrive at this remote outpost each year, with even more stopping by on cruise ships. The numbers are growing among eco-tourists, explorers and adventurers in search of out-of-theway wilderness. Longyearbyen also was in

the news recently as the location for an international seed bank, a vault dug into a mountainside to safeguard the planet’s seeds in case of doomsday.

Most outsiders come from early June to late August, when the birds return and the sun melts the snow to expose the land between the glaciers, which cover 60 percent of the area. “It’s more green than you can imagine, with more than 170 species of flowers and plants,” Ivarrud says. “Then there are the people who fly up here, stay overnight, put their pin in the map, and say, ‘Been there, done that.’”

I scheduled my four-day visit for March, the coldest month of the year, when the average temperature is minus 14 degrees Celsius, which sounds a bit warmer when converted to 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind-chill factor brings the temperatures dangerously below that and makes it important to protect every inch of skin when heading outdoors. Outfitters of snowmobile and dog sled tours provide all the gear needed to prevent frostbite,

including wool balaclavas and goggles to cover the face.

March also marks the return of sunlight, which disappears from Oct. 26 to Feb. 16 each year. But while the sun shines again, the famous Northern Lights dim during the summer. Dancing across the sky like green spirits during winter months, both day and night, only a glimmer remained by my arrival. Evenings were marked by an eerie “blue light,” which was neither bright nor dark, but a glow in between.

Spitsbergen offers a range of “soft adventure” outings to experience the Arctic wonders. With the right equipment and guide, they require no special expertise or athleticism. My first guide arrived outside the Spitsbergen Hotel in a six-person Snowcat, which resembled a red Humvee on caterpillar tracks.

Margrete Keyser drove up a mountainside, rumbling in low gear through the snow.

Near the top, we reached the Longyearbyen Glacier and headed inside through a doorsize hole to follow a cave carved into the ice by meltwater. We were walking under the glacier, at times bending and squatting to make it through the narrow cavern, which glittered in our headlamps.

“You go further back, the roof is just a snow layer,” Keyser says. “If you were walking on top, you could fall through.”

Keyser noted that the cave is usually frozen at this time of year but that something, possibly global warming, had caused the ice to melt early. Often, we walked through ankle-deep ice water. I took off my gloves to change a camera setting, and got my glove liners wet, which could have been a critical mistake. Back outside, my fingers were aching and growing numb by the time I got back to the warmth of the Snowcat.

On the ride down the mountain, a fellow passenger told me an unsettling story.

“See that ridge?” says Beate Braaten, a young woman from Oslo. “In 1995, a girl from my school, a law student, was eaten by an ice bear on that ridge. She was crosscountry skiing.”

Keyser added: “There were two women.

The other one jumped off the mountain to get away from the bear.”

Polar bears are the Kings of the Arctic.

With curving claws and teeth, they are equipped to snag their favorite meal, the seals that look like fat sausages on the drifting ice. A human bundled up in a snowsuit resembles a tasty meal to a bear. For that reason, anyone who ventures outside of Longyearbyen is advised to carry a large-bore rifle. Ski rental outlets also rent rifles.

During my stay on Spitsbergen, the only bear I saw was stuffed in the Svalbard Museum. I asked Novis, the dog-sled guide, the all-important question: Can the dogs

outrun a bear? Not over a short distance, she says, but quickly added that she has never had to fire the rifle she carried at an advancing bear.

“The only bear I’ve shot was on a target poster,” she says.

Back in the warmth of the Spitsbergen Hotel, I noticed that the drink of the day at the bar was a Bahama Mama. Chilled Stoli, up, seemed more apropos.

Dutchman Willem Barentz discovered the Svalbard islands in 1596. The islands are in the Barents Sea, one of the most productive seas in the world thanks to the warm ocean currents. The whaling ships that followed reported that the whales were so thick, they had to plow through them.

By the end of the 18th century, the slaughter was over, the whales all but gone.

In 1906, an American named John Munro Longyear started the first mining company to tap into the vein of coal that runs below Spitsbergen. The town that grew up around his mine was called Longyearbyen or City of Longyear.

Under the Treaty of 1920, Svalbard became part of the Kingdom of Norway, while other nations retained mineral rights to the land. Military activity was deemed “undesirable.” Other provisions maintained the islands as a protected habitat for wildlife. Commercial fishing was prohibited; the whale, seal and reindeer on the menu

“Longyearbyen also was in the news recently as the location for an international seed bank, a vault dug into a mountainside to safeguard the planet’s seeds in case of doomsday

Photo: Mari Tefre

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 79

at the Spitsbergen Hotel comes from other Nordic countries. (I couldn’t bring myself to order whale. I passed on the seal after it was described as strong and oily. The reindeer steaks were tender and moist but came topped with a single cherry tomato that looked – gulp – like a big red nose.)

Polar bears are among the protected animals. While rifles and signal pistols are necessary when venturing from town, shooting a bear is a last resort that triggers an investigation like a murder.

The Germans burned Longyearbyen in World War II, so the only historical buildings are the remnants of the mining industry. The newer homes are simple, two-story structures, built in rows and painted in rich earth tones of gold, russet, olive green and deep blue.

With the wind-swept snow creating sculptures on every surface, the whole scene would look at home on a Christmas mantel.

Spitsbergen has two major hotels – the Radisson Polar Hotel Spitsbergen and the Spitsbergen Hotel. Both are comfortable with dining rooms that offer views of the mountains situated across the fjord from the town.

“The light off the mountains is changing all the time,” says Ivarrud, the travel agent. “If you took one photo every day for a year, you wouldn’t have two that looked the same.”

Mining, tourism and research are the major activities on Spitsbergen. The University Centre in Svalbard has about 250 students, adding a college atmosphere.

The university offers courses in Arctic biology, geology and geophysics. Global warming, of course, is a hot topic that draws researchers from around the world.

“We can see that the glaciers in Longyearbyen are getting smaller,” Ivarrud says. “There is less ice, year by year.”

Because nearly everything is imported to the islands, at great distances, life is 80 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

expensive, made worse by the decline of the dollar. Entrees on the menu at the hotels were around $50. A bottle of California sauvignon blanc was priced at $100, but imagine the human hands involved in taking that grape from a vine in Napa Valley to a glass near the North Pole.

The town has a modest commercial strip, where you can buy a gorgeous sealskin parka for $2,800 or a full polar bear skin, mounted with the head, for $13,000. (The bear skins come from Canada.) The Karls-Bergen Pub in town had about 200 brands of whisky and a barmaid from Thailand. About 80 Thai live in Longyearbyen, where they make enough working in the service industry over a year or two to return home rich.

As befitting its reputation as the last frontier, the 1920 treaty had another provision that says people of all nationalities have the same rights as Norwegians when they live in Svalbard. But the region has no government agency or funding for the old and infirm. If you can’t hold your own, you must return to your home country.

From an all-white landscape, we descended deep into the earth, where everything was black as coal.

Steve Torgersen is a former miner who now takes visitors into Mine No. 7 on what he says is the world’s only tour of a working underground mine. The Norwegianowned mine is the last active mine in Longyearbyen.

Six of us donned overalls and hardhats with lamps and rode a Ford van through tunnels shored up by wood beams, then transferred to an open flat car where we sat low as the clearance dropped to about 4 feet, the height of the coal vein. By the time we reached the end of the line, where the coal was being dug, we were duck-walking.

As we crouched on the coal debris, Torgersen took over a machine that drilled holes into the ceiling and put a bolt in place. The 2-foot-long bolts “secured” the layers of sandstone and clay above to make sure they do not come tumbling down on the miners. Torgersen says the last two fatalities in the mine were in the 1970s, although another catastrophe occurred on Aug. 29, 1996. A plane carrying Russian miners and their families plowed into Opera Mountain, which stands across from

Longyearbyen, killing all 141 aboard.

“It was the first time in the world that they took DNA samples to identify bodies and send the remains back,” Torgersen says.

Torgersen told another fascinating story: A miner was working in Mine No. 7 in December 2006, when he noticed something strange – footprints of a five-toed creature on the ceiling. Scientists were called and determined the prints were made 55 million years ago when a hippopotamus-like animal called a pantodont walked through the mud of a riverbed, which was covered by 600 feet of sediment over eons. The discovery showed that this spot close to the North Pole once had the climate of a Florida swamp.

We followed Torgersen to a side shaft and his headlamp beamed upward. The footprints strolled above us.

Back on top, as we washed coal dust from our faces, Graham Sagar, a Brit on the mine tour, gave a terse summary that could have covered the whole Arctic trip: “Not quite like Disney, was it?”

IF YOU GO GETTING THERE u I flew to Copenhagen in Denmark, then on to Oslo, Norway, where I spent the night.

A flight the next morning took me to Longyearbyen, with a stop in Tromso.

LODGING u Rooms at the two major hotels, Spitsbergen Hotel and the Radisson, cost about US$360 a night.

Guesthouses and bed and breakfasts have rooms starting at $100 a night.

Winter season rates are lower. Visit svalbard.net and click the British flag.

SEASONS u From April 19 till Aug. 23, Longyearbyen has midnight sun. From Oct. 26 through Feb. 16, it is dark. The return of the sun is celebrated each March 8. The average summer temperature is 6 degrees Celsius or about 43 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest winter month is March, with an average temperature of minus-14 degrees Celsius or 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind chills makes it feel much colder.

ACTIVITIES u Winter activities include snowmobiling, dog sledding, ice caving, cross-country skiing, coal mine tours and visits to the Svalbard Museum. Longyearbyen has a small ski lift, although many resident skiers get lifts on snowmobiles. In summer, kayaking, hiking, boat tours and glacier treks are popular.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 81

taste life FOOD

On a Bali high James Morrow enjoys a week of eating luxuriously – and picks up a trick or two along the way For the first couple of decades of life, each new year brings new privileges and opportunities: dating, drinking, driving (though hopefully not all at the same time).

But once your feet are firmly planted on the far side of thirty, it is sometimes hard not to think that it’s all been something of a downhill coast since that day long ago when a mischievous uncle on his fifth beer clapped his hand on your shoulder and congratulated you for becoming, as he so genteely put it, “free, white and 21”. Which is why, when your kids tell you it is really exciting that you have a birthday coming up, it is hard not to wrinkle your nose and say simply, “not so much”.

Thus determined to shake off the annual – and have no doubt, it gets worse by the year – birthday torpor, a few weeks ago 82 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

on the eve of turning not quite 35, I found myself sitting over the wing of a Jetstar A330 bound for Bali, home of sun, sand, and Schapelle Corby. I knew a few things going into this holiday: For example, that with the weak US dollar I could have my own villa, with maid, for a song. And that very little would be required of me except possibly make it through a large stack of books. And that I should stay out of the Kuta end of town, which every person I spoke to before my trip nominated as “mate, an absolute hole, mate”.

But what I was not prepared for was the fact that Bali has become an absolute food Mecca where for what one would spend for a feed at a slightly up-itself Sydney gastropub one can have three or more courses worth of the sort of food that back in the

real world would be sent out from the kitchen at least once a week with a diamond solitaire in it.

Take lunch at Cafe Warisan in Kerobakan.

What from the road looks like a high-end antiques shop in one of the more fashionable parts of town gives way to a terrace, covered on three sides, which on its fourth side comes to an end at rice paddies which stretch on to the mountains beyond, and decorated in tropical-colonial chic. (Later research would uncover the fact that chef Nicholas Tourneville was once the personal chef to Paris’s ambassador to Algeria, explaining somewhat why the whole place had a bit of the feel of the French Plantation sequence in Apocalypse Now Redux about it. Indeed French, not English, was the language we heard most from other tables, which at lunchtime were populated largely with leggy, glamourous Francophones of European, Asian and African descent, the descendants of a disgraced empire’s post-colonial elite.)

But this is no musty ex-pat club; Warisan is not the sort of place where colonels come to berate the staff for putting ice in their gin-and-tonics: we were a million miles from that sort of Year of Living Dangerously Indonesia. This is a serious restaurant, and my only regret is that we came for lunch not dinner (next time). My travelling companion had a plate of pasta, a fresh ravioli of artichokes with a lemon-basil sauce, and having tried hers I can honestly say that I have not seen a more deft touch with a pasta machine this side of Italy. For myself, I enjoyed a starter of pan-seared foie gras – the real stuff, not the overpriced, overheated tinned stuff Australians and Kiwis normally have to make do with. And although they poured a white that was far too sharp to complement it properly, it was perfection on a plate: two luxurious slabs of fatty goose liver fried to perfection and interleaved with apples and a tart reduction of raspberry vinegar.

Indeed, foie gras would be something of a leitmotif of the trip, and would be my starter of choice at almost every restaurant (unless, of course, it was integrated into a main course, as it was at one otherwise unremarkable Italian joint where it was laid over a veal chop), and typing this I hope my GP is not an Investigate reader lest he call me up and demand I come in for cholesterol bloodwork and a cardiac workup, stat. On our last night it opened the batting at a gorgeous meal at Breeze Restaurant at the Samaya Seminyak resort (whose beach-

side tables are perhaps the most romantic affairs one will find this side of New York City’s One if by Land, Two if by Sea) and gave way to plates of duck (done two ways) and pork (done three). The pork, truth be told, was something of a disappointment: the square of pressed belly was notable for its crispy skin, but the rest was a bit too dry and stringy and left us picking bits of flesh from our teeth over a nightcap at next door’s oh-so-trendy Ku Da Te. The duck, however, was transcendent, even if its inspiration has become so classic as to verge on the twee. Rich, heady, unctuously ducky, it was everything such a plate should be.

None of this is to say that the only thing worth eating is high-end European with ingredients that flew further than you did to get to Bali – though in our eco-puritanical age there is something profoundly satisfying about enjoying a meal with a carbon footprint as big as the Ritz. In Jimbaran Bay, where one goes to watch the sunset with a cast of thousands we enjoyed some great, if overpriced, local seafood. And in Ubud, a 45 minute drive up into the hill country, just off the brilliant markets, we enjoyed a plate of babi guleng, the local delicacy of suckling pig – and walked away with change for a tenner.

It was also in Ubud that we enjoyed the highlight of the trip: an afternoon’s cooking course at Mosaic Restaurant, the only restaurant in all of Indonesia to make it into the exclusive Les Grandes Tables du Monde, an annual review of the 100 best restaurants in the world. (Michelin does not give stars out in this part of the world, apparently). Led by chef James Efraim in the restaurant’s private kitchen/dining room off the back garden – from whence many of the restaurant’s local herbs are sourced – this was no typical tourist-trap Balinese cooking class. Instead, we were told that we would be making Western cuisine complemented by Asian ingredients, with an eye towards creating high-end dinner party food. Mission accomplished: over the course of four very hands-on hours, we made tuna, duck, and a trio of deserts that had even die-hard pastry-phobes such as myself putting a KitchenAid for making short-crust pastry on his Christmas list (I’ll have to be very, very good this year I reckon), and walked out stuffed from eating our creations. And if what a bunch of talented amateurs with a bit of direction made tasted so good, next time I’ll have to eat in the restaurant and see what the professionals can accomplish.

Sesame Crusted Tuna, Cherry Tomato and “Bangkuang” Salad, Ginger Flower Relish Adapted from Mosaic Restaurant’s Kitchen Workshop You’ll need: 1 320g filet of tuna, trimmed and wrapped with cellophane to form a cylinder, and refrigerated 160g cherry tomato 30g carambola 60g rosewater apple 50ml olive oil 20 ml red wine vinegar 5 ml ginger juice (obtained by crushing fresh ginger) 50g shallot, sliced chopped fresh herbs (small handful) chives spring onions ¼ tsp shrimp paste 1 red chilli, sliced 15g sliced tomato sliced lemon 1 tsp salad oil crème fraiche dill

Method 1. Slice the cherry tomatoes in half. Slice the carambola into thin slices and the rosewater apple into segments. Place all of these into a bowl and season with the olive oil, ginger juice, 25g of the shallots, the herbs and the chives.

2. Toast the shrimp paste until it is dry and crumble it with some sea salt. Add the chilli, remaining shallot, sliced tomato, ginger flower, lemon, salad oil and salt.

3. Mix the crème fraiche and dill with a squeeze of lemon juice and salt and pepper.

4. When ready to serve, slice serving-size rounds of your tuna and season with salt and pepper. Heat a little salad oil in a pan until lightly smoking and place the fish into the oil. Cook until ¾ cooked and add some room temperature butter, lemon juice and thyme. Turn your fish to finish cooking, to just medium rare.

5. Using the back of a spoon, spread the dill crème fraiche into circles in the centres of four room temperature plates, and arrange a spoonful of the salad in the middle. Place the fish on top, and top with sea salt. Add some ginger flower relish, and, if desired, garnish the plate with basil oil.

Serve immediately.

Serves four.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 83

touch life > drive

Forester hitches its wagon to crossover craze Jim Mateja tests the latest Subaru The Subaru Forester isn’t the most fuel-efficient machine out there. Not the fastest, either. Nor the roomiest, quietest or most stylish. But it is a user-friendly compact workhorse for young couples or small families.

In profile, Forester looks like a station wagon with large side windows. But to avoid the wagon stigma, Subaru wisely calls Forester a crossover, the hottest thing on wheels at the moment.

Can’t blame Subaru for that.

Subaru, we should note, helped create the crossover market with full-time all-wheel-drive available in all cars in 1987. By 1997, it became the first automaker to make it standard across the board.

Add to the security of AWD, a car smaller, lighter, better riding, easier handling than an SUV and Subaru’s found its niche.

The 2009 Forester in showrooms now sports a major makeover.

In addition to fresher styling – it still looks like a wagon – dimensions increased. Wheelbase grew by 4 inches to improve road stance; length by 3 inches for more leg and cargo room; width by 2 inches in recognition that many buyers have buns of butter, not steel; and height by 3 inches to keep melons a safe distance from roof tops.

Forester is available in 2.5X, 2.5XT or 2.5 XT Limited versions. The 2.5 refers to the 2.5-litre, 170-horsepower, normally aspirated 4-cylinder engine. The T is for turbo and the 224 horses it employs to gallop from the stoplight.

We tested the 2.5XT Limited.

The horsepower rating on the 2.5-litre 4 is down slightly from 173 for 2008, but the engine was tweaked for more low-end torque and a quicker shot of energy when stepping on the pedal.

Didn’t feel that early burst of adrenalin in the Forester we tested, rather a heavy dose of 4-cylinder growl and some hesitation between kicking the pedal and engine response. The delayed reaction is similar to the lag waiting for the turbo boost to kick in. Maybe that’s the price for gaining length, width and height-and more than 90kgs.

The downside to offering only a turbo for a more energetic launch is that it needs premium 84 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

lead-free, without which it tends to run too hot – but with which your wallet tends to run too empty.

Fuel economy is rated at 10.5 litres per 100 km, while the nonturbo version uses a litre less over the distance.

Despite the weight, ride was smooth without jostling and handling good without excessive lean. Good road manners. The fulltime AWD is complemented by stability control for grab and grip in all weather. It measures acceleration, deceleration and traction to transfer power to the wheels that are slipping.

The dimension changes are best appreciated in the cabin with its added front and rear seat leg and head room. Perforated leather seat backs and bottoms help hold you comfortably in place. In back, dual cupholders with a sandwich tray fold out from the middle seat cushion.

The three granddaughters sat in back without tangling arms and legs, but if your kids are still little enough to mandate safety or booster seats, three would be a squeeze.

The cargo hold is roomy and the flat floor lifts to expose sev-

eral cubby holes. There also are a variety of clips to secure groceries or gear as well as a power plug in the wall. The seat backs fold to expand space, and the tailgate opens wide for easy loading, unloading.

Upfront, there’s another power plug in the instrument stack below the dash; a couple of square cupholders in the center console; and a power plug and auxiliary outlet under the center armrest. The test car also had a couple plastic pouches in the center armrest to hold cell phones or tissue. When pouches are removed, there’s room for a purse or laptop.

The 2.5X Limited includes automatic climate control, AM/FM stereo with six-disc CD changer, 10-way power driver’s seat, fog lights, heat front seats/outside mirrors and 4-speed automatic transmission.

It would be nice if the next upgrade had a little less growl and a little more power without need for a turbo that has a thirst for the high-priced stuff. Shedding a few kg would help, too.

“Didn’t feel that early burst of adrenalin in the Forester we tested, rather a heavy dose of 4-cylinder growl and some hesitation between kicking the pedal and engine response. The delayed reaction is similar to the lag waiting for the turbo boost to kick in

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 85

touch life > toybox

E2200HDA: First of a Series, First in the World As BenQ and the world’s first 21.5” 1080p Full HD LCD display sporting a 1920x1080 native resolution, the E2200HDA delivers uncompromised visual enjoyment of high definition content. The 10,000:1 DCR and 300nit brightness render dark details in razor-sharp clarity along with a rich, vibrant display of 16.7M colors.

Senseye+photo technology instantly optimizes viewing for all home and office applications, while gaming and video are enhanced by integrated speakers, headphone jack, and a fast 5ms response time.

Two additional E Series 1080p models will be introduced later and will feature HDMI and DVI-D (both with HDCP), 2ms GTG response time, , and Windows Vista Premium Certification. 21.5” and 24” sizes offer widescreen viewing that is perfect for enhanced office productivity and small TV replacement. BenQ 16:9 1080p Full HD LCD displays will be available in China and select countries in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America in Q3. www.benq.com

dinovo edge keyboard Laser cut from a single, semi-translucent piece of black Plexiglas and set into a brushed-aluminum frame, the diNovo Edge keyboard makes a bold statement in the office or the living room.

• TouchDisc navigation: Move a finger up and down or across the disc to move the cursor. Move a finger in a circular motion around the perimeter of the TouchDisc to scroll horizontally and vertically through documents.

• Premium typing experience: Logitech’s PerfectStroke key system makes each keystroke fluid and natural.

• Media controls: A touch-sensitive volume slider makes it easy to quickly adjust the computer’s volume.

• Rechargeable: No need to replace batteries. Simply place the keyboard in the charging base – a two-hour charge yields up to two months of battery life.

• Bluetooth wireless Technology: Bluetooth wireless technology ensures seamless, secure operation from up to 30 feet.

• Windows Vista Ready: You’re ready to work with Windows XP or Windows Vista with extras like hotkeys. www.logitech.com

86 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

Epson GT-1500 business scanner Epson New Zealand has released its first A4 scanner for business users, the Epson GT-1500. With an array of productivity enhancing features the GT1500 is great value for money and an ideal partner for small to medium businesses. With its large 40 page ADF input the GT-1500 can scan up to 18 pages per minute for an efficient and productive workflow.

In addition, the GT-1500 supports a variety of paper sizes including A6, A5, B5, Letter, A4 and Legal size. Featuring Epson’s ReadyScan LED Technology business users get the benefits of instant scanning with virtually no warm up time and increased energy efficiency with less heat dissipation and lower power consumption. The GT-1500 also has mercury free LED lamps, reducing its environmental impact. With its fast scanning speed the GT1500 does not sacrifice quality. The built in 3 line optical CCD sensor means the GT-1500 is capable of scanning at up to 1200dpi optical resolution at 48 bit colour depth, which allows the scanner to quickly complete high quality scans of documents and images. The RRP for the Epson GT-1500 is $749 including GST. www.epson.co.nz

Toshiba’s USB 2.0 hard drives Toshiba has made external storage and data back-up that much easier with the launch of the Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drives – 160GB / 250GB / 320GB. Hassle free and simple to use, they are tiny at only 2.5inch long – but while small size, they are hefty in power!

These portable external hard drives store huge amounts of data while taking the mystery out of the back up process through combining with easy to use automated backup software – NTI Shadow. The software enables even digital novices to easily conduct computer backup and enjoy peace of mind knowing critical data and cherished digital files are protected. They make a great mobile computing accessory, and provide click-free, switch-free and button-free backup for easy operation. Better yet, they are fully mobile – powered through the USB port rather than a power cable. www.toshiba.com

nikon d700 The D700 offers pro-level performance and an extensive array of features and innovations in a comfortably nimble platform. In addition to the Nikon-original FX-format CMOS sensor, the D700 incorporates Nikon’s EXPEED Image Processing System, Nikon’s renowned 51-point auto focus system with 3D Focus Tracking and two Live View shooting modes that allow photographers to frame a shot using the camera’s three-inch high-resolution LCD monitor. The D700 also features Nikon’s sophisticated Scene Recognition System and a new active dust reduction system.

Nikon’s flagship FX and DX-format cameras, the D3 and D300 respectively, established new benchmarks for digital image quality, speed, and unmatched ISO performance. The D700 maintains this new measure with exceptional overall image quality, broad tonal range and depth, and extremely low noise throughout its native ISO range of 200 to 6400. ww.nikon.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 87

see life / pages

Taking breath Michael Morrissey gets caught in the surf, and distracted by Perkins BREATH

By Tim Winton Hamish Hamilton, $50 This is the first Tim Winton novel I have read but if his other novels are as skillfully written as this one it won’t be my last. If you’re a surfer this book is for you – one you will read with recognition and even delight, satisfied that the dare devil white water activity has found, so to speak, its poet laureate. And if you’re not a surfer (like me) you can still thrill to the graceful, descriptive power of Winton’s prose.

The story is straightforward – Loonie ( the bolder of the two) and Pikelet (the less bold) are two adolescent boys who love surfing. Being drawn to danger they pal up with Sando, a man in his 30s who is the surfer supreme. He casts a strange spell over the boys – they are magnetically attracted by his enormous though almost casually rendered skill on a surfboard but also by his philosophy of risk-taking. Sando rates the inner experience and confidence gained by successful surfing in the water far above any public recognition or photographs in surfing magazines. Both boys are hooked by Sando’s life style and his daring draws them ever onward into deeper waters and more terrifying waves. One of his carefully chosen spots even has a resident great white shark for additional thrills beyond dangerous waves.

Pikelet, the novel’s narrator, is the more sensitive of the two, and therefore the one who eventually knows the sea is too strong and the risks too great to be engaged. This novel caused me to reflect how often when there is a story of two boys, one bold and one not so bold, it’s the more timid and reflective one who tells the story. Apart from the attractions of a compelling narrative strategy, it suggests that the writer-narrator may be more bookish, and less intrepid than the more reckless anti-hero. That is, of course, if the narrator is psychologically closer to the writer than his counterpart. I could well be wrong about this – Winton looked a bit 88 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

like the confident surfer type when I saw him on stage at a recent literary festival in Auckland.

When Sando is up in Indonesia with Loonie – and the narrative should have made more of Pikelet’s exclusion – a bond forms between Eva, Sando’s partner and the fifteen year-old Pikelet.

Like Sando, Eva is someone who lives for sports adrenalin – in her case, freestyle skiing. However, she has came to grief and can no longer ski. She now gets her thrills by allowing herself to be asphyxiated and half strangled during sex and draws in a reluctant Pikelet into her deviation. Eventually, if not predictably, she pays the supreme price.

My only criticism of the novel might be that the up to date family portal of Pikelet with a new partner and children is perhaps a mite hurried but overall this novel satisfies as an insightful analysis of why people take risks with nature. At the book’s conclusion Pikelet, a mellow fifty year-old, is still riding the waves.

STREET WITHOUT A NAME

By Kapka Kassabova Penguin, $28 Kapka Kassabova, a Bulgarian emigre to New Zealand in her mid teens, increasingly looks like a youthful prodigy, full of burgeoning and ongoing promise (and accomplishment), that we will continue to claim as one of our own. She is and she isn’t. Her writing career began in New Zealand as a poet and novelist but she now lives in Scotland. My guess is she is unlikely to resume living in New Zealand – though she does return for visits.

For many of us the word and country “Bulgaria” doesn’t instantly evoke much data. My own scatter of impressions includes steroid-swollen weightlifters, fought on the “wrong” side during both wars, one more of those little known East European countries once under Communism’s post-war yoke. Let it be noted, that one matter in which modern Bulgaria can definitely uplift

Among many striking images one moved me more than most – when her mother saw the size, splendour and luxury of a Dutch university toilet she burst into tears. Shopping in stores plushly laden with western goods had a similar lachrymose effect. In other words, the world of communist-ruled Bulgaria was quite comparable to 1984 – a book naturally they were forbidden to read at the time.

Kassabova has the natural writer’s gift for the witty, captivating phrase. One of her Auntie’s gardens produces, “watermelons the size of small planets, peaches as big as heads, lettuces like forests”; a hill should have imploded from “the sheer pressure of eras bubbling inside like elemental gases”. This book is a wonderful and poignant tour through the geography of memory that is full of wit and pathos. I feel as though I’ve been to Bulgaria.

Last thought – Kassabova is exactly the age when Katherine Mansfield left the world. The Bulgarian author, however, looks in good health. Undoubtedly, we’ll be getting more books from her any time soon.

TALL TALES (SOME TRUE): Memoirs of an Unlikely Writer

By Greg McGee Penguin, $37

its head with pride, was King Boris III’s refusal to deport its Jews as instructed by Hitler. To put things in a New Zealand perspective, Bulgaria is about the size of the North Island but with over twice New Zealand’s population.

Kassabova revisited Bulgaria, I would surmise, for the same reason we all return to our origins – to hold up a mirror to memory and to re-evaluate the present. The book begins with her arriving in a down-at-heels Bulgaria then a long flash back to her childhood and adolescence then a leap forward – alas, more or less bypassing her life in New Zealand – thence to a tour of contemporary Bulgaria. For the non-Bulgarian, Kassabova’s account gives a thorough history and geography of her home country as well as the moving history of her own family.

As I read about her miserable gray life in Y3 minus trees, minus even a street name (hence the title of the book), I realised it more or less fitted the cliched view I had of life under a communist system. While not as grimly lethal as the Ukraine in the 30s or as terror-ridden as I might have expected, the dour grayness, shopping by coupon, sparse goods, inadequate food, and sterile Socialist propaganda, all fell into place.

Here is her precise description of Y3 – “an eight-floor concrete building surrounded by thousands of identical concrete buildings, purposeful and sturdy like nuclear plants in freshly bulldozed fields of mud.” Her address was Sofia, Mlast 3, block 328, entrance E, floor 4, apt. 79. One could say – irony of ironies – that there was something democratic about such an address for it strips its inhabitants of any royalist, elitist or aristocratic ambiance. In this regard, the democratic urge to bestow equality of street names (observable in New York) and Socialism’s gray face were the same. But of course we westerners had capitalism and the chance to move out of our concrete buildings. When Kassabova revisited in 2007, the nameless street had become Transfiguration Street and had indeed been transfigured by trees, green fields, pizzerias, shopping malls and children’s playing grounds.

In 1980, a bomb went off in New Zealand theatre. I use the word bomb to mean lively explosion rather than as in the phrase it bombed (i.e. fell heavily to earth). That positive explosion was Foreskin’s Lament and the author was a tall, well-built ex-football player called Greg McGee. In the play, bad guy ex-cop Clean decides to kill good guy Ken by kicking him in the head in a scrum. The play was notable for two things – some of the scenes were in a man’s changing shed so the players (male) were naked; second, the long rave at the play which ends in the now immortal phrase, “What are yah?” meaning who or what are New Zealanders – what is their identity?

McGee wrote several more stage plays but bombed out commercially with Whitemen. Thereafter, he switched to writing for television and then to producer. In general, he has had a successful life in that he has been able to make a living at what he wanted to do – writing. But there have been dry patches, even desperate times and McGee unflinchingly and with good humour tells of these times in his highly readable memoir which for a writer has a minimum amount of navel gazing.

Before the writer McGee came to prominence, there was McGee, the footballer. His prowess and rising promise as a player is described in detail. Though no footballer myself, I found it gripping. As a literary lounge lizard, I tended to register his clashes on muddy fields as a form of combat rather than a sport. And like everything else in life, you perform best if you love the game.

Half-heartedness in rugby will result in poor playing. In the final analysis, McGee is brutally honest with himself – he just didn’t quite make the final cut because he wasn’t good enough to be an All Black, though he was a triallist.

Later, McGee coaches, at first unsuccessfully, a team in Italy. The cultural and linguistic difficulties are well explored. And McGee discovers, due to faulty Italian, he had been shouting to his team members, “Get out there, flowers, and get into them!” No matter, after a long unsuccessful season, they begin to triumph.

It is clear McGee was not your typical rugby player – he had long hair and took part in protests against the Springbok tour in 1981. And when did you last hear a rugby player on or off the field say he was discombobulated?

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 89

In the later part of the book, he offers working and personal cameos of such notable stage and media persons as Raymond Hawthorne, Mervyn “Proc” Thompson, Tony Isaacs, Chris Hampson, Roy Billing and fellow writer Dean Parker. Compared to my own relatively simple writer’s life – essentially me and the word processor in my study – McGee’s TV production world is a complex and fascinating one which in an odd way reminded me of football. It’s full of rucks, and scrums and mauls and it’s necessary to keep your eye on the ball – i.e. the finished production.

There’s no doubt McGee has been a strong player in this world, a battler even, who has scored more than a few tries and successfully converted most of them. Good on ya, mate!

NOVEL ABOUT MY WIFE

By Emily Perkins Bloomsbury, $35 Emily Perkins made a stunning debut at age 26 with her first collection of short stories Not Her Real Name. She has since published two other novels which some critics consider to be inferior to the short stories. Novel About My Wife, her third novel, concerns itself with a marriage under stress. Tom Stone is a Londonbased TV horror writer having difficulties with his career. We see him reach financial straits so dire that he will crawl to people he doesn’t like to get work he doesn’t want to do – in short, the real life struggle that many writers go through just to keep money rolling in. Ann, his wife, who sculpts body moulds for cancer patients, is pregnant. She also persistently sees or thinks she sees, a derelict man loitering with presumed ill intent. London itself is a bit derelict in this grim novel with subway crashes, dingy poky terraced houses with weedy backyards, street fights and muggings.

Meanwhile, the beleagured couple meet and socialise with Simon, a much more successful writer who regularly jets to America, and his wife Kate, a home-schooling New Age type.

There was some intrigue and cross tension between the couple but disappointingly it doesn’t materialise into full blown drama and is allowed to fizzle.

Thus the pregnancy and the glimpsed man assume a keener focus in the unfolding narrative. I tried hard but couldn’t work up a lot of interest in the pregnancy per se which is probably a lack of gender empathy. The elusive man is a bit like the sightings in the classic horror film Repulsion – fear, rather than fact. This means an eventual drop in dramatic tension for a skein of interest threaded throughout most of the story. However, the glimpsed possible assailant, her notion the house is haunted, over-run with ants and bad smells, is all part of an accurate portrayal of the stresses that pregnancy can bring.

What saves this novel from threatened anti-climax is Perkins’ extraordinarily felicitous style and her acute psychological observation. When Tom’s “male gaze” is directed towards his wife, he sees a beautiful and striking woman but one who becomes increasingly hard to deal with as her pregnancy progresses. We feel his shame and his desperation as a struggling writer compared to the much more successful Simon. The book is a moving elegy of retrieved memories for his departed wife and while he partly earns sympathy, Tom is full of acidic observations that make him a vehicle for social satire but less than attractive as a person. Despite the deft cutting dialogue, lush well-wrought style, the plot wasn’t sharp enough for this reader and I suspect women will enjoy this book more than men.

90 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

THE BLACK SWAN

By Nassim Nicholas Taleb Penguin, $30.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an angry man. He is angry at the academics, particularly economic theorists (many of whom he tell us – frothing with righteous outrage – have won Nobel prizes!), who claim ways of predicting the economic future that are inaccurate and philosophically and methodologically ill-founded. Taleb argues that the average Casino-style way of looking at predictability and chance fails to take into account the major unpredictable events which are a good deal more common that is generally recognised. The title of his book comes from the surprising discovery that black swans existed, whereas prior to arrival in Australia, Europeans thought all swans were white. In other words, exceptions are to be expected.

Taleb’s central thesis is well summed up by his double entry-style list of characteristics on page 36. The average mediocre way of looking at events he calls Mediocristan and its opposite Extremistan.

In his view, large unpredictable events make mince meat of the Mediocristan method of prediction. The main villain among the condemned items of Mediocristan is the Bell Curve which Taleb gleefully informs was not invented by Bell but issues from the mind of Carl Gauss.

Some of the large scale events not predicted include the duration and intensity of World War One (predicted to take only a few months), the 1929 Stock Exchange crash, the sudden demise of communism, the 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist disaster. In Caleb’s view, history is shaped by large quantum-like leaps like these, not slow accumulation. This view is contrary to the dominant view of our era which views history as a gradual evolution of events. It is ultimately a romantic view because it means that Michelangelo, say, is restored to full scale status as an innovator rather than viewing him as someone just adding on to what went before.

In the main, I found Taleb’s arguments persuasive though his voice is shrill. And, at times, very un-academic. Taleb is no mildmannered voice-of-soft-reason sounding intellectual but a cryer from the rooftops outraged by the sea of falsehood he sees engulfing contemporary thought. In his view, when it comes to the future, we are all in the dark.

Taleb has his villains and his heroes. Most of his villains – the advocates of Mediocristan are economic theorists of whom I (not being an economist) have not heard – like Paul Samuelson, Robert Merton the minor, Gerard Debreu. On the other hand, his heroes are also numerous – Poincare, Karl Popper, Montaigne, John Maynard Keynes, Mandelbrot plus some more obscure scholars like Pierre Daniel-Huet and Frederic Hayek. By his own account, whenever Taleb turns up at university conferences (especially ones to do with economics) and opens his mouth – to attack naturally – the mediocre Mediocristans start spluttering and turning red with rage. Taleb, the anti-Bell Curve heretic is here! In our midst!

If Taleb is the Galileo of our time – if he is telling stubborn professors to look into his telescope and see what is there – then we ignore him at own peril. In the glossary, he has a set of challenging terms like Beldungphilster (a philistine with cosmetic culture) and epistemic opacity. The bibliography and chapter notes are detailed and impressive. At the book’s conclusion, he tells us we are all black swans – that is, we are all exceptions – and thanks us for reading his book. And, I also, want to thank Taleb for writing what is probably the most provocative book I’ve read this year.

Reviewed by Ian Wishart

JONES ON MANAGEMENT

By Bob Jones Poseidon Publishing, $24.99 The old master is back in print, with a book that’s a laugh a minute whilst offering key insights into what’s wrong with ‘management’ culture. Jones, in the spirit of David Attenborough, goes searching for the various species of ‘manager’ inhabiting the wilds and shrubbery of corporate New Zealand. Among the first he stumbles across are ‘box tickers’ – the kind of manager who’s absolutely tremendous provided they have a script to work from. Step outside the script, however, and the box-ticker is lost at sea. Case studies include the box-ticker who demanded a strip-club install wheelchair ramps onto the pole dancing stage for staff, prompting Jones to query whether a market existed for naked wheelchair-bound poledancers. Then there are what Jones describes as ‘head-nodders’ – the next rung of management above box ticking. At the top of the tree are MBA graduates or, as Jones prefers to call them, “Masters of Bogus Academia” “For all practical purposes MBA courses should be reduced to a two week programme confined to training solely in head-nodding, periodic frowning, lip-pursing, head cocking, the occasional shuffling of papers and other associated gestures, because that is the only role these graduates will fulfill once ensconced into humdrum box-ticking, middle level management positions, particularly when faced with judgement issues.” No review can truly do Jones on Management justice. Most of us, even the guilty, will recognize the captured specimens, blinking in the headlights.

DEEP DOWN THINGS – COLLECTED POEMS

By Amy Brooke The Medlar Press, $24.99 Brooke, Investigate’s education columnist and sometime organizer of The Summer Sounds Symposium, is an author with fifteen books to her name. This, however, is her first excursion into published poetry.

I don’t claim to be a poetry critic, so have been guided by others: “...the product of a passionate intelligence and a deeply effective, though unobtrusive mastery of technique. Its tone is tender, yet tough-minded, intelligent, perceptive...We have here a book whose words, often deeply moving, speak of things obviously worthwhile... It is a breath of fresh air, and highly recommended.” – Hal G.P. Colebatch, Australian author, poet, lecturer, journalist, editor, and lawyer.

SILENT LEGACY

By Paul Henderson and John Fox Maxim Institute, $30 If you’re looking for an engagement with some of the West’s best thinkers over the past few millennia, Silent Legacy may well be it. Henderson and Fox reach back as far as ancient Greece to explore the ideas that made the West the planet’s leading civilization.

Ready When You Are! IN THE TABLOID WORLD It seems enough just to go into rehab.

Spend a little time and a lot of money and presto!

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IN THE REAL WORLD It’s quite different It needs a special ingredient, YOU. We need your personal commitment and motivation to make it all work.

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The Ashburn Clinic, Private Bag 1916, Dunedin, NZ. Tel 03 476 2092 Fax 03 476 4255 Email ashburn@ashburn.co.nz www.ashburn.co.nz

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 91

Cre8ive 4220D

Short Takes

see life / music

At Beck’s call Chris Philpott is very impressed with the Rolling Stones, less so with Beck BECK Modern Guilt I need to be completely honest upfront and tell you that I simply don’t get Beck at all.

I’ll admit, the singer formerly known as Bek David Campbell does have a knack for creating unique soundscapes that move seamlessly from genre to genre, seemingly without limit, and as a music fan I can appreciate his influence on the current indie and experimental trends.

The trouble is, Beck is just plain weird.

Even with uber-producer Danger Mouse, of Gnarls Barkley fame, at the helm, Modern Guilt just seems like a string of randomly selected songs put together for the sake of being put together, and comes well short of the quality of previous work like 2002’s Sea Change or 2005’s Guero.

Despite the fact that it is an eclectic selection of tracks, there are highlights; the brilliant ambience of “Chemtrails” wows the listener with a minimal, almost pulsing piano sequence giving way to a rolling drum beat dripping with Beck’s recognizable falsetto, and ranks among his best work.

But for all the peaks and drops on Modern Guilt, it all feels a little disjointed and contrived, jumping eagerly from track to track while the overall effect of the album suffers as a result.

ROLLING STONES Shine a Light It seems like a minor miracle that the Rolling Stones have lasted as long as they have, releasing over 60 albums in a career spanning over 45 years, and staying near the top of the highest grossing tours list time and again.

Heck, that’s without even considering that it’s a minor miracle Keith Richards is still able to function properly!

The Stones are one of those acts that transcend culture itself, remaining relevant and popular throughout the latter part of the 92 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

last century. The problem then is how to capture that properly in one album.

Shine a Light, this latest live album that forms the soundtrack of a concert movie directed by screen legend Martin Scorsese, certainly does a decent job, incorporating tracks from throughout the group’s career and featuring guest performances from current stars Jack White, Christina Aguilera and blues legend Buddy Guy. Despite lacking a little in sound quality, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Paint It Black”, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “Brown Sugar”, “Start Me Up” and many more Stones favourites feature prominently, making Shine a Light both a great album that does well to sum up such an illustrious career, and a must-have even for casual fans.

GAVIN DEGRAW Gavin DeGraw Seemingly coming from nowhere, New York singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw emerged in 2003 with a string of hits from his great pop-rock crossover debut Chariot, including the worldwide smash hit single “I Don’t Wanna Be”.

DeGraw’s eponymous follow-up seems to pick up where that debut left off, his rock leanings distracting from the more orthodox pop arrangements that form the core of most of the tracks here.

First single “I’m in Love With A Girl” demonstrates this quality perfectly, with DeGraw’s silky vocal crawling over a relentlessly crunching rock riff that gives way occasionally to smatterings of piano, bringing to mind contemporaries like Maroon 5 and Matchbox Twenty.

Whether it’s the slow drawl of “Young Love”, the enthusiastic crescendos of “Relative” or the more melancholic “Let It Go”, one can’t help but feel DeGraw isn’t really stretching himself at all, sticking close to the formula that made Chariot such a success without really grabbing a firm hold of the listener.

The album is not a complete loss – tracks like “She Holds a Key” and album closer “We Belong Together” providing glimmers of what DeGraw is really capable of – but ultimately falters beneath the singers’ quest to repeat the success of his debut.

Gabriella Cilmi Lessons To Be Learned

TURN PAPER & PHOTOS INTO ORGANISED DIGITAL DOCUMENTS

Let me start by saying this: the first thing I heard about 16 year old Aussie prodigy Gabriella Cilmi was that she was “the new Amy Winehouse”, and ordinarily I would have been calling a bomb disposal unit for any album which drew that comparison.

Listening through Lessons to be Learned for the first time, its fair that the comparisons to Winehouse are notto completely Millionstoofsaypeople use ScanSoft PaperPort turn piles of paper into organised digital documents. At work unfounded – first single “Sweet About Me” is oozing with– the and at home we are inundated with paperwork receipts, bills, letters, tax information, memos, investment Brit’s trademark jazz-pop style but listening a little deeper andkeeps piling up. statements, contracts…

You– name it, the paperwork the differences become clearer.

PaperPort things.than It’sthird the track best“Sanctuary” tool available to make your all-in-one device or scanner easier and more efficient to One simplifi need goes no further or highlight ® Now” to see that Cilmi sings with a Want ToMicrosoft Go To Bed use. “Don’t It enhances Windows with large clear thumbnails of over 150 document and photo formats you can print, rangeand and share. variety that stretches far beyond her years. organise That said, Lessons comes across as really no more than a pop End the frustration for paper digital documents by searching for words inside your files with the exclusive All-in-One record designed of to looking fit the current trend,or and therein lies the prob™ Search timeacoustic and have the security of knowing that lem,. asSave track after soul-infused track inexplicably starts to important documents and photos will never be lost. PaperPort is perfect for your homebecoming or smallinane office. youbystart using PaperPort you’ll wonder how you ever did without it. melt into each other, and Once repetitive the time it reaches its conclusion.

I wasn’t exactly calling a bomb disposal unit by the time I was done, but after starting out with a hiss and a roar, Lessons ultimately disappointed this reviewer.

Flight of the Conchords Flight Of The Conchords Billing yourself as New Zealand’s “fourth most popular comedy-folk duo” might seem like a strange way to introduce yourself to a picky American market, but for Flight of the Conchords – the infamous Kiwi combo featuring comedian Jermaine Clement and former Black Seeds singer Bret McKenzie – it has proven a surprising path to success – and after winning a comedy Grammy award for their debut EP The Distant Future, the stage was set for the Conchords to release their debut full length album.

It would 11 be fair to say it was one of the most anticipated Kiwi PaperPort releases of the year, both here and internationally.

Your scanner companion Yet, despite my initial concerns, the Conchords have managed PaperPort® 11 is the easiest way to turn piles of paper and photos to add an element of catchiness to their catalogue of humourous into organised PDF and JPEG files that you can quickly find, use and tracks, and this album features both live performance staples like share.

“Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros”, the groups’ riotous rap PaperPort produces perfectAbout scansIt”, every time with the pushofoftracks a button. parody, and “Think alongside a number that Your documents displayed as small on a unique visual featured onare their well-received TVthumbnails series, including my personal desktop for fast browsing. favourites “Bowie” and “Business Time”.

Flight of theofConchords hilarious fromdocuments start to finish, but is also End the frustration looking forispaper or digital by searching legitimately enjoyable on a musical level, making it one of finfor words inside your files, with the exclusive All-in-One Search™.theSave est Kiwi albums of 2008.

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Neil Diamond

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With over 25 studio albums to his credit, it seems like Neil

The Nuance Communications product range is available through your usual computer software reseller. Nuance also makes Diamond has been around literally forever. But surprisingly enough, it easy and affordable for you to equip every member of your team with PaperPort Professional 11: special pricing applies it more seems like The Basher is producing some of his finest work. for 10 or licences.

Withsales@mistralsoftware.co.nz a back catalogue that or includes classics likereseller “Cherry Please contact your usual computer for further information.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008 93

see life / movies

The ultimate war spoof Roger Moore enjoys Ben Stiller’s latest, tremendously Tropic Thunder Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. Jack Black, Nick Nolte Directed by: Ben Stiller Rated: R16 (for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material) 105 minutes This is the one they put on Ben Stiller’s tombstone.

This is the spectacular spectacle that he will be known for, the movie that all those years spoofing Hollywood, the industry he grew up in and the people who run it, were leading up to.

Tropic Thunder is Ben Stiller’s Apocalypse Now. After this, nobody will dare make another Vietnam War epic. After this, the sound of choppers, the slang and the POW camps will just be punch lines. After this, nobody will ever say “Tom Cruise has no sense of humor.”

Stiller rounded up a cast of A-listers, took them to Hawaii and blew up $90 million worth of stuff. He made a movie about making a movie that no movie-maker should ever have made. And it’s a riot.

There’s the dim-witted action star (Stiller) who still smarts that he’s never been good enough to win an Oscar. “Load and Lock!”

There’s a Beyond Method Aussie actor, a five-time Oscar winner (Robert Downey Jr.) who has undergone “pigment augmentation” (blackface) in order to play, essentially, Ving Rhames.

There’s a drug-addicted tubby funny man (Jack Black) who hates himself and a world that won’t take him seriously.

There’s a kid (Jay Baruchel) just starting out, and a rapper-entrepreneur dabbling in acting (Brandon T. Jackson).

And their in-over-his-head director (Nick Nolte), egged on by a 94 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM September 2008

deranged ‘Nam vet (Nick Nolte), dumps these Blackberry babies in the jungles of Vietnam to get Blair Witch-style realism, real suffering, “the real deep (bleep)” of the Vietnam War, growls the vet.

This part of Southeast Asia still has armed men fighting wars over opium. Real guerrillas, armed to the teeth, face real Hollywood phonies, armed with blanks, not realizing that they’re not in a movie. A Platoon of funny people left Mission in Action, “Tropic Thunder” is lowdown high camp, a movie lover’s comedy.

Downey goes deep, deep, to play this pretentious thespian acting out an African-American cliche. Stiller, Nolte, Black, Coogan and Danny McBride, as a gonzo movie pyrotechnics guy, all score.

Tom Cruise, in fat suit, bald cap and fake furry arms, sends up foul-mouthed Hollywood power players as a studio chief trying to cuss his way out of a jam.

There’s so much exposition to get through – guys whose “mission” turns real – that the movie can drag at times.

But this is Stiller’s magnum opus, a brilliantly broad character farce that should do what Stallone and all his steroids never could – end the Vietnam War, the Hollywood version anyway.

By Roger Moore Then She Found Me Starring: Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick Directed by: Helen Hunt Rated: M (for offensive language & sexual references) 100 minutes Then She Found Me, the directing debut of Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt, is less noteworthy for its erratic parts than for its atmospheric whole.

SNAPSHOTS THE DARK KNIGHT M (violence) 152 minutes This sequel to Batman Begins has the caped crusader (Christian Bale) teaming up with police Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) and a new D.A. (Aaron Eckhart) to take on the Joker (Heath Ledger in his final film) – Carrie Rickey

HANCOCK M (violence and offensive language ) 93 minutes

Here’s a film that whips loss, romantic yearning and the accelerating ticking of a woman’s biological clock into a moody dramady that is by turns touching and exasperating.

Hunt portrays April Epner, a 39-year-old primary school teacher, and almost from the film’s first frame it’s clear that whatever her motives in making the film, Hunt wasn’t trying to make herself look good.

April is wan and drawn and looks beaten down by life. Early on her boy-man husband Ben (Matthew Broderick) declares that after only a year of marriage this isn’t the life he wants. The nowsolitary April sinks into a whiny funk.

Two things occur to change her outlook. The first is a relationship with Frank (Colin Firth), the single father of one of April’s young students.

And then there’s Bernice (Bette Midler), hostess of a popular daytime TV talk show who, just days after April has buried her adoptive mother, declares herself April’s biological mama. April at first suspects this is some sort of perverse scam – Bernice is loose with the truth, at one point claiming that April is the result of a one-night stand with Steve McQueen on the Fourth of July.

Moreover, Bernice’s big brash personality is diametrically opposed to April’s constricted tightness.

All this should make April happy. Within weeks of her marriage collapsing and her mother dying, she finds herself with a new man and a new mother.

But no. She wants a baby, too. And she gets one, though not by her new beau Frank. Instead the dad is her feckless ex. This complicates things.

Hunt, who also co-wrote the screenplay from Elinor Lipman’s novel, scrupulously avoids anything that smacks of TV sitcom humor. This is admirable, but the result is one of the glummest romantic comedies in recent memory.

Part of the problem lies with Firth’s Frank, a guy who can veer so unexpectedly from doting lover to apoplectic antagonist that you wonder if he has an undiagnosed brain tumor. Firth is one of the movies’ most reliable heartthrobs (just ask any woman), but here he injects so much tension into his scenes that it’s hard to get into a romantic mood.

By Robert W. Butler

Will Smith stars as a problem-plagued, screw-up superhero in this dark, funny, rollicking tale of rehabilitation, redemption and really cool special effects. With Jason Bateman and an awesome Charlize Theron.

– Steven Rea

MAMMA MIA! PG (low level offensive language ) 108 minutes You’ll smile! You’ll wince! (Sometimes both at the same time.) Meryl Streep’s debut as a knockabout physical comedian, Amanda Seyfried’s breakout role as her daughter, who doesn`t know which of Mom’s three exes is Dad, and wall-to-wall ABBA songs.

With Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skargsard, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski and Julie Walters.

– Carrie Rickey

THEX-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE M (violence) 104 minutes A convoluted, unconvincing mishmash of hot-button social issues thrown into a murky stew by X-Files creator Chris Carter.

Agents Mulder and Scully – David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson – tag along with a psychic ex-priest, looking for missing women.

Dogs bark, crows squawk, the plot sickens.

– Steven Rea

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see life / dvds One of the charms of writer-director Adam Brooks’ flashback romance is the way it plays out against the backdrop of Clintonera politics, with its idealism battered by “bimbo eruptions.” That stuff is downplayed, though, because a child who has just learned the rudiments of sex education and is eager to blurt out what she knows (tacky and trite) wouldn’t be interested in that pre-cell phone/pre-Internet age.

Brooks’ movie has romantic ambition, something lacking in Hollywood romantic comedies of late. But he has made a slowfooted, long-winded comedy with more grins than laughs, an arm’s-length romance with a real eye-roller of an ending. He wrote the scripts to Practical Magic, Wimbledon and the Bridget Jones sequel, and this is only marginally better than those.

Definitely, maybe, perhaps Roger Moore checks out romantic comedy and Rambo Definitely, Maybe Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Abigail Breslin, Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz, Kevin Kline.

Directed by: Adam Brooks Rated: M (for low-level offensive language) 105 minutes Is Definitely, Maybe a make-or-break movie for Ryan Reynolds, as he evolves from frat boy funny-man to leading man?

Definitely. Well, maybe.

Reynolds, who buffed up and tried his hand at action (in one of the lesser Blade movies) and horror (that awful Amityville remake) is the surprisingly bland center in the surprisingly sweet Definitely, Maybe, a romantic comedy about a soon-to-be-single dad who breaks down and tells his precocious daughter (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine herself ) the tale of how he and her mom met and fell in love.

But Will, the New York ad man, decides to be tricky about it.

He tells of all the women in his life at the time he got married, and the years leading up to it. He changes their names. Let little Maya guess who her mom was. Let Will see what made him want to marry the missus in the first place, maybe reconsider their divorce.

There was “Emily,” the University of Wisconsin college flame (Elizabeth Banks, given little to play) who knew they would “grow apart” when Will headed off to New York to work on Bill Clinton’s first campaign for the White House. There was Emily’s old roommate (Oscar winner Rachel Weisz), the sophisticated city-girl writer and journalist living with a legendary and much older writer (Oscar winner Kevin Kline, a stitch in a bit part).

And lastly, there was the adorable April (Isla Fisher), the Clinton campaign’s “copy machine girl,” all into Kurt Cobain and cynical about politicians.

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Rambo Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Gavin McTavish, Ken Howard Directed by: Sylvester Stallone Rated: R (for strong graphic bloody violence, sexual assaults, grisly images and language) 84 minutes This Rambo is more profane than we remember and more violent than ever, as Stallone morphs the aged, steroid-bulked action figure into someone who knows how to roll with today’s young filmgoer. The sensitive, confused ‘Nam vet of First Blood has curdled into a world-hating loner, a man beyond politics, beyond religion, beyond salvation.

“When you’re pushed, killin’s as easy as breathin’,” he growls.

Thus, Rambo becomes a splatter film.

He’s living on a river in Thailand, catching and selling snakes, running his boat deep into the Heart of Darkness. That’s where a group of idealistic, naive missionaries want him to take them.

They’re trying to help a tribe threatened with extinction by the genocidal military regime in Burma. Rambo isn’t having it.

“Go home,” he says. “Live your life, because you’ve got a good one.”

A woman (Julie Benz) talks him into transporting them. He delivers them, not without a little killing. And then they go missing. A rampaging, mass-murdering unit of the Burmese Army led by a pedophile commanding officer has grabbed the missionaries. Their Colorado church hires mercenaries (Graham McTavish, Reynaldo Gallegos, and others) to save them. The mysterious Rambo is the only man who can get them upriver for their mission.

Plot doesn’t count for much in this Rambo, which is all about heinous atrocities, righteous payback and not enough one-liners.

The man knows how to stage and film a movie gun battle, but the faint tint of racism returns – slaughtering faceless, craven, subhuman brown people with impunity. This is a Chuck Norris version of Apocalypse Now. And Stallone? The early trailers suggested that he was looking like a comically aged muscle man with a misshapen head (he was caught transporting steroids into Australia last year). He doesn’t look that bad in the finished film, doesn’t appear to have needed stunt doubles to do his running and killing, though mercifully, he doesn’t tear off his shirt. The unintentional laughs about his physique aren’t so prevalent as to take us out of the movie.

By Roger Moore