The Briefing Room

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March 31, 2006

Not guilty verdicts....right or wrong?

The jury has just delivered a not guilty verdict in the Louise Nicholas case...

This business of keeping juries in the dark about other things is a real dubious one...I reckon...

Posted by Ian Wishart at 03:19 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

March 27, 2006

Helen putting pressure on the Companies Office?

VV1 (Vestal Virgin 1) has told Newstalk ZB that disgraced MP David Parker will be back in Cabinet, possibly even as Attorney-General, if the Companies Office decides not to prosecute...

Staggering stuff...what signal does that send to the CO and to companies nationwide?

What does that also say about the hundreds of people prosecuted each year for breaches of the Companies Act?

In this case, David Parker admitted it...

Posted by Ian Wishart at 03:36 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Lesbian Seagulls, Part 2

One of our archived magazine stories from last year has set some in the blogging community into a minor frenzy as they attempt to label it another of Wishart's wacky "conspiracy theories".

The story basically looks at an estrogen hormone, Estradiol, which is being pumped into beef cattle and which some believe could harm human sexual orientation and reproduction...this stemming from research with animals, particularly seagulls but also others.

So it was with fascination that I just stumbled across this precis of a recent report in the journal Science:

NEW ORLEANS -- The combination of two environmental chemicals commonly found in insecticides and pesticides produces a response 1,000 times more powerful than each individual chemical, possibly causing harmful effects to the endocrine system, according to scientists at the Tulane-Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research (CBR) in New Orleans.

The resulting chemical mixture is estrogenic, meaning it acts like a female hormone in the body and can interfere with the body's endocrine system, which is responsible for normal development -- telling bones when and how to grow, and reproduction.

"I think it's clear now that at least at one level, we can no longer just assume that these are weak estrogens. We have to try and understand what happens when you mix them together," said University of Florida zoologist Louis Guillette, a collaborator with the New Orleans center. "The mixtures we're studying suggest that the potency of these compounds are now within the range of natural estrogens, and thus there is room for concern."

"One plus one doesn't necessarily make two, it can make 10" Guillette has been researching environmental estrogens for years, believing they could be responsible for dropping population levels and reproductive abnormalities in wildlife in some Florida waters, especially alligators in Lake Apopka, near Orlando.
Guillette found female and male alligators with abnormally high levels of estrogen and discovered the Lake Apopka male alligators had low levels of testosterone, poorly developed testes and significantly smaller penises.

"We knew these alligators had problems, we knew that there were chemicals in the eggs and we hypothesized that those chemicals were in fact causing the problems in the alligators," Guillette said. "But we did not have the underlying molecular basis to explain that."

The new research, published in the June 7 issue of the journal, Science, may provide an important piece of the puzzle.

"We have identified a molecular mechanism that explains how a mixture of chemicals synergistically activates the endocrine system, allowing low doses of weak environmental chemicals to combine and create a much higher response than each single chemical," says John McLachlan, director of the CBR and a member of the Tulane University research team. "In these cases, one plus one doesn't necessarily make two, it can make 10."

When combined, mixtures of two of these weak environmental estrogens were 1,000 times more potent In addition to the alligators in Florida, fish in England and seagulls in California exposed to high doses of estrogenic contaminants have shown adverse reproductive and developmental effects such as abnormal genitalia, lower fertility and bizarre mating behavior.

This would explain why LibertyScott's appeal to existing natural estrogens in the body being more harmful than estradiol additives may be wrong...because the additives may be 1000 times more potent than first thought.

Several recent studies have pointed in this direction. In 1993, McLachlan and researchers at the University of Texas reversed the sex of developing male turtles by painting eggs with natural estrogens, with PCBs and with a mixture of low concentrations of two kinds of PCBs. The sex of turtle eggs is determined by incubation temperatures, so even though the eggs were held at male-determining temperatures, the estrogen and the synthetic chemicals acted like the female hormone estrogen and influenced the embryos' development. The PCB mixture sex-reversed the turtles at much lower concentrations than the PCBs alone, proving the mixtures are more powerful than the individual PCBs.

Researchers conducted studies using a yeast estrogen system containing human estrogen receptors and the estrogenic compounds endosulfan, dieldrin and toxaphene. When alone, the chemicals only slightly inhibited natural binding of estradiol -- a natural estrogen hormone. When combined, however, mixtures of two of these weak environmental estrogens kept higher amounts of estradiol from binding and were 1,000 times more potent than any of the chemicals alone.

Food for thought, but not necessarily to eat.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 02:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Death threats force Investigate to pull story

Investigate has been forced to pull an archived magazine story from its website because of death threats towards the subject of the article.

The article was linked here.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Investigate Dec 05, All Those Burning Fridges

How good are NZ appliance safety standards?

A former appliance serviceman claims a bad fridge design could burn someone’s house down, another finds a string of safety faults in other brands of appliance. Is there a big problem or just a series of smaller ones? IAN WISHART investigates

John Rogers grimaces in the glow of a 60 watt tungsten bulb doing its best to illuminate a small suburban din-ing room, and failing miserably at the task. He pauses at the question, as if tumbling it over in his mind, glancing across at his wife Kerry. In their eyes you can see the thought writ large, as if in the neon light that decorates the home of this former appliance repairman turned neon artist: oh God, here we go again. Moments later, that unspoken thought takes wing.
“I must admit, when I got your call, Kerry and I thought, ‘do we really want to do this again?’ After all the publicity on TV four years ago when we blew the whistle on Fisher and Paykel’s dishdrawers…”
He stops for a moment, then lifts his gaze from a spot on the table to lock with mine.
“It wasn’t dealt with back then, maybe somebody will deal with it now. We don’t want to be responsible for someone losing a life because we kept quiet.”
It’s been four years this month since Rogers folded the tent on his long time company, JK Appliances, and walked away from a lucrative business as an authorized Fisher & Paykel service agent.
“I was an appliance serviceman for about 30 years, and we’ve been in business together for about 15 or 16 in West Auckland and we fixed roughly 42,000 appliances in that time. I put through seven apprentices and we did mainly F&P service work. So we did refrigeration and all types of domestic appliances.”
Rogers vividly remembers the day that changed it all, the one that tipped him off his perch.
“It was early in the morning, a job in Glen Eden. I walked into the kitchen, the family were all there in their pyjamas, the husband was there and there were two buckets of water beside the fridge. The front of the fridge was absolutely black from smoke and flame damage. They’d woken up in the middle of the night and smelt the smoke, turned it off and started throwing buckets of water in there to put the flames out.”
The immediate danger having passed, Rogers regrets not dialing the Fire Service. “I wish I had, now.” In hindsight, it would have been his smoking gun, in a manner of speaking. But instead, he rang F&P who promptly sent a truck with a brand new fridge, and took the near-new burnt one away.
Rogers was mystified, but thought little more about that incident until he was called to another fridge a week or so later, and again, some evidence of fire damage.
“I saw another one which wasn’t so bad, and again they changed it over. Then I saw three in one week and two at another service company, and I thought ‘this is getting out of hand’, because there’s no way of repairing them because the whole cabinet is burnt.”
Stripping the panels away, Rogers found the evaporator and defrost elements were set too close to the internal plastic casing of the freezers and, in the right conditions, they were overheating and melting the appliances. None of which was visible to the homeowner, who’d usually called him in for something else.
“It was usually another fault – cracking noises, or noises from the fan or something like that, but it wasn’t because of the burning. They hadn’t seen it, and not until I took the whole thing apart and they saw the big holes burnt in the base of the freezers. That’s when I explained to the customers very politely that it had a fault and we’d organize a new refrigerator for them.”
Rogers decided to make a habit of checking every freezer he was working on, and reckons 20% to 30% of them showed varying signs of meltdown. In all, some 15 to 20 units in his West Auckland patch alone, over the space of three months.
It wasn’t all fridge/freezers.
“Only the electronic ones. Anything with an electronic panel on the back wall. The majority of the problems come in the ones with a bottom freezer. I have seen one top freezer one with burning but it wasn’t as bad. It was just a one-off. Whether it was going to escalate I don’t know.”
Why was the problem not appearing in fridges over the previous 20 years?
“The freezers and fridges prior to that were made of steel. This model, the interior of the freezer is made of plastic, and they’ve still got an element in there that glows red hot when it goes into defrost and it’s so close to the plastic lining that the heat transfer causes the problem.”
Rogers felt he was on to a major public safety issue, but he also knew as an authorized Fisher & Paykel repair agent that his business depended on F&P’s continued goodwill. And if John Rogers had been a cat, he probably felt he’d already used his quota of lives after months earlier spilling the beans on a major fault with F&P’s flagship range of dishdrawers. The drawers were rusting out after only a few months use.
“They were offering customers who had rusty dishdrawers a normal dish drawer plus they had to pay an extra $500. So once we blew the whistle on it, things changed and they had to replace the dishdrawers.”
But ‘blowing the whistle’ involved calling in TVNZ’s top rating consumer programme Fair Go and bringing considerable public opprobrium to bear on the corporate that employed him. So to say that John Rogers was chuffed that he was the mug to find a problem with the new fridges would also be a serious overstatement of his mood.
He says he tried to deal with it internally, alerting F&P’s technical team about the growing number of burnt or partially burnt fridges he’d discovered.
F&P tried to brush him aside, he claims, telling him to “leave it alone”. But the company’s reaction got more strident when Rogers began contacting other F&P agents to inquire about their experiences with the problem.
“I talked to another service company over the North Shore about it. And he was concerned as well and he contacted F&P, and so at that stage F&P came storming in – there were about three of them – and they got really stuck into me.”
In Rogers’ mind, he was reporting a major safety hazard to one of New Zealand’s leading technology companies, and nothing was being done. Wondering whether he was overreacting, he sought a second opinion from registered electrical inspector Bruce Gosling, an independent analyst who’s main investigations are on behalf of large companies and the Electrical Workers Registration Board.
Gosling drafted a one page report to the Energy Safety Service (ESS) in Wellington, the Government agency tasked with regulating electrical appliance safety for the public. His report was headed, “Potential Fire Hazard issue” with the Fisher & Paykel E402B fridge/freezer.
“JK Appliance Services (John Rogers) have located this immediate fire damage in two of the above freezers and four others have had potential fire hazards existing,” he wrote on November 11, 2001. After personally inspecting one of the units, he told EnergySafe:
“This freezer unit has a potential fire hazard due to the incorrect fixing/installation of the evaporator/defrost heating assembly. This fire hazard, created by the manufacturer, breaches NZ Electricity Regulations 1997….the element touches and heats up the plastic lining until eventually catching fire.”
Under “Conclusion” he wrote: “This model of fridge/freezer needs to be modified.”
According to both Rogers and Gosling, EnergySafe never formally replied to their complaint, and no product recall of Fisher & Paykel fridges was ever made.
As part of their contract, authorized F&P agents were required to guarantee their work for 12 months, says Rogers.
“We had to guarantee these appliances once we’d repaired them and I couldn’t. I couldn’t guarantee that this wouldn’t happen two months down the road.”
“What was the newest fridge you found it on?”
“Three months old.”
After a long discussion with his business partner and wife, Kerry, Rogers decided to toss it in.
“It got pretty ugly from then on. They appointed another service company to take over from us, and we said we’d had enough and closed down. We didn’t want to work like that, we couldn’t work like that. It was at this time we got the phone call from Energy Safe in Wellington to say they couldn’t do anything. They needed proof from the Fire Service or the Insurance Council on loss of life or property before they could force F&P to make any modifications.”
As part of the process of investigating this issue, we approached EnergySafe’s senior technical advisor, operations: Bill Lowe.
Lowe admits that to some extent his hands are tied on the issue of public safety.
“We wouldn’t become involved unless there is injury or damage.”
“Isn’t that closing the door after the horse has bolted?”
“That’s the way our powers are, if they’re handling things internally.”
Fisher & Paykel, says Lowe, controls its own repair team and can control the information that gets released to government agencies like his. If the company chooses to keep a problem close to its chest, he says, it takes the commercial risk associated with that – the risk that one day a house might burn down and all hell will break loose.
But having said that, he adds, no house fire has ever been attributed to a Fisher & Paykel ActiveSmart fridge.
“Electrical fires, if they cause damage to the structure of a house, would be reported to this office. The few that we’ve had have been Westinghouse product, a bug problem literally. The defrost relay had some ventilation slots and a cockroach infestation, and the little beasties get up there and eventually get cooked. And in another one the guy poured brake fluid around to kill the roaches and it caught fire.”

Lowe concedes his agency did receive Gosling’s report on the fire hazards in November 2001, and felt it was seri-ous enough to raise with F&P. Unfortunately, however, because the person handling the investigation left ESS soon afterwards, there’s no evidence that Fisher & Paykel ever responded to EnergySafe’s request for more information, or that ESS chased it up.
“We’ve [now] asked F&P to check their records as to what changes if any were made at the time to the design to address that potential fire risk,” Lowe told Investigate.
“So you’ve got no record in your office of anything being advised to you by F&P?”
“Not that I’m aware of, a quick check hasn’t revealed that.”
For their part, Fisher & Paykel have been critical of John Rogers.
“Mate, we’re open to suggestions, but we want it supported with facts,” says general manager of Customer Services Brian Nowell down the phone. “We asked the guy for information and he just did not deliver it. It’s been high on rhetoric, short on fact, all the way through.”
And Fisher & Paykel global CEO John Bongard is equally skeptical:
“We have never had a fire with the model refrigerator that he has supposedly ‘tested’ so we are at a loss as to what we can say about his ‘issue’. Perhaps you can supply some factual information that we can refer to?
“Surely if these claims are true the ESS would have been able to confirm them. Have they done this? Could you tell me what the ‘specific’ problem is?”
Over at the ESS, we threw the curly questions back at Bill Lowe: is it true that there was no incident, no information supplied?
“Well we know of the two initial problems, so the allegation is a littler higher than that. Actually in the case of the F&P fridge we did consult with their engineers, possibly two of them. There will be a record somewhere but we’ve asked F&P for that information.”
Lowe believes his office may even have sent a formal notification to their counterparts in Australia via an electrical product safety incident report while they waited for F&P to report back, a report that apparently never came and which EnergySafe apparently failed to chase.
For their part, F&P insist that a fax from Investigate is the first time they’ve seen Gosling’s technical report to EnergySafe, despite requests in an exchange of lawyers letters in 2001 and 2002 asking Rogers for more data.
For his part, serviceman John Rogers accuses Fisher & Paykel of trying to avoid an embarrassing product recall on its ActiveSmart fridge line by “hushing up” the smouldering fridges and ensuring authorized repair agents towed the company line.
“I think the authorized service agents have been told to keep everything under wraps. I know they have.”
“Who’s told you?”
“Other service companies. They were told to keep quiet about it, and just put all the information back to F&P.”
Fisher & Paykel’s Brian Nowell says suggestions that New Zealand’s leading home appliance brand, with a strong presence in Australia, the US and UK, is anything less than responsible are ridiculous.
“We take a hell of a responsible attitude to these sorts of things. We view all of these sorts of things seriously, but people’s views on potential hazards vary from individual to individual, and we try and work through them as responsibly as we can given that we have authorities involved from time to time.
“And hell, we wouldn’t have been around for 70 years if we’d been as flippant as some people would have us believe.
“It doesn’t matter what the nature is of a problem that we come across, we sit down and we work through what we should be doing about it, whether it necessitates things like recalls, whether it needs modification and if we deem it needs modification how we confront that sort of thing. So if we deemed it to be of a high risk nature, we’ve done things like product recalls in the past.”
He also points out that no house fire has been attributed to this problem in a Fisher & Paykel fridge.
“Yeah, that’s a very valuable point. We from time to time come across appliances that cause smouldering, which might generate a bit of heat. If the Fire Service is called out to an incident of any nature where they think an appliance is involved, whether it’s ours or someone else’s, they get hold of us. We treat things like that pretty seriously. We’ve had clothes dryers for example, and people who use towels with hairspray all over them and they don’t clean lint filters and things like that.”
EnergySafe’s Bill Lowe nonetheless feels the fridge issue needs a closer look.
“I would say they’ve certainly got a design problem there because it’s not failsafe, however modern product is also manufactured to fire safety requirements in terms of materials and self quenching plastic and so forth. They will burn until such time as their source of energy is removed.”
And, says Lowe, the close working relationship between EnergySafe and F&P is a bonus, not a problem.
“I won’t say we treat them any better than other suppliers because we do work with Westinghouse and some of these other suppliers whose product is not made in NZ, but the fact that they’ve been quite open with us providing information – possibly selectively – but we work closely with F&P on the standards committee and we would expect them to be a responsible company.”
Meanwhile, the electrical inspector who kicked off the bunfight claims Fisher & Paykel can’t be left to take the rap for what is increasingly an industry-wide problem as regards appliance safety. Bruce Gosling says he’s made up to twenty reports to EnergySafe about unsafe appliances, and heard diddly-squat back about any of them.
“The Energy Safety Service, as far as I’m concerned, are a law unto themselves. Rarely can I get an answer from them, and one time I recall trying to get an answer, either yes/no or just a simple written reply from the ESS over a very serious safety issue – the only way I finally got an answer from them was threatening to go and see my local MP at the time, and my local MP is Helen Clark!”
An example of safety issues, he says, is an upmarket brand of rangehood.
“We still have an ongoing problem with Tuscany rangehoods that are brought into the country by Mitre 10, and again we could only go so far and we had to hand the complaint and the hazard over to the ESS. Again, we would have thought the ESS would have taken them off the market until they’ve been improved,” Gosling told Investigate.
“What’s the problem?”
“People getting electric shocks from these new rangehoods that have been installed, due to the design faults within them. They’re Italian manufactured, a very nice looking stainless steel rangehood, but the one we investigated, I was there on behalf of the Electrical Workers Registration Board as an investigating inspector. And we totally disconnected and removed that particular rangehood from service and we wrote a report, again, to Wellington to both the EWRB and we sent a copy to the ESS.
“That saga went on for well over a year for the customer, who was left without a working rangehood – he was contacting the ESS monthly because he wanted to get a new rangehood, obviously, and he was hoping Mitre 10 might supply him with one. I was totally blown away at the length of time they left that customer in limbo, but at the end of the whole thing we finally got – I’m pretty sure I’ve still got the written reply from the ESS – and they were saying again that there’s been 250,000 sold in Australia and they hadn’t had a problem over there, so why should they worry about one problem here in Ellerslie, Auckland.”
“How live were they when you measured the voltage and the current?”
“It was a hundred volts from the leakage current back to earth potential, because the stove was directly below and the person was touching it. These sort of things are a bit of a freak scenario, but in saying that it could well happen again in NZ.
“Anything above 50 volts AC becomes dangerous to humans. Yes, that was the measurement we took at the time, and the person getting the shocks had been doing cooking on the stove at the time and had wet hands, so it’s a very serious electric shock situation.
“But whether the ESS have contacted the Tuscany manufacturers back in Italy and told them to improve their design, I’ve got no way of knowing. But that’s what I stated in my report: the design needs to be improved, the electrical safety leaves room for improvement. But I bet nothing’s happened.”
According to EnergySafe there has been some movement, but not much. The Tuscany rangehoods were initially approved for sale in Australia and therefore became automatically approved for sale in New Zealand. Despite the 100 volt electric shocks, EnergySafe’s Bill Lowe says he hasn’t ordered the product to be withdrawn from sale here because Mitre 10 is refusing to agree to a recall.
“No, the product recall process is not simple, it’s a complex legal and technical process and we’re working through one at the moment with another product but we have to be very careful with regard to litigation, and that only becomes a problem if it’s not done voluntarily by the supplier. 99% of them are voluntary recalls.”
“Did Mitre 10 voluntarily take it off sale?”
“No.”
So in other words, this Investigate article is the first that most people will have heard about a possible safety fault with an Italian rangehood that’s now been on sale for more than a year in both New Zealand and Australia.
Ironically, the fact that a homeowner has been given 100 volt belts by the rangehood is not enough to force a compulsory product recall. That can’t happen in the main unless someone is first seriously injured or killed.
Bruce Gosling says he’s found serious safety faults in other appliances as well – portable residual current devices that are supposed to protect DIYers and workmen from being electrocuted while using tools outside.
“From memory, about 10 of these brand new devices failed out of 20 that were purchased.”
“How did this come to your attention?”
“From a company in Penrose, and Alstom out at the Otahuhu power station – they purchased 10 and they do ‘test and tag’, the same as this company in Penrose, a Fletcher Challenge company.
“What happens is that as soon as they buy an RCD personal protective portable device we test and tag them before they go into service, so as electrical people we take them out of their brand new packets and put them through the appropriate tests, and 10 of these devices out of 20 failed.
“And I can tell you for a fact that the guys out at Alstom were only buying one at a time, because they only wanted one, and it failed so they sent it back and swapped it with another one. Five times they did that before they got one that could be tagged as safe.
“It was just ironic that about two weeks prior to that we’d had a major problem at this factory in Penrose. They’d purchased at least 10, and five of them failed the performance test that we do. Some of them didn’t even trip at all, brand new out of the packet and wouldn’t even physically trip on the pushbutton – you know, they all have a little pushbutton that every user must test before they use them – and even that pushbutton didn’t work.
“So that was totally unsafe, and yet when we complained to HPM in Sydney they just said ‘nah, it must have happened in freight, in cargo, because we test every one before they leave the factory’. And we know for a fact that that’s B/S, absolute. But they still turn around and make those statements, and no one can prove them wrong, so in the end we dropped that issue. That’s the tactics these manufacturers are using,” says Gosling.
It is, to use a bad pun, absolutely shocking. And Investigate’s discovery of faulty RCD devices has made EnergySafe sit up and take notice.
“RCDS are on the declared article list and they require approval from this office before they go on sale in NZ,” says Bill Lowe of the ESS. “And why we get very nervous with RCDS is we specify them as a safety device and I look at them like a parachute when you jump out of a plane. Where you’ve got a device to protect a person and it doesn’t work because it’s defective we’ve really got some concerns, yeah.”
On the strength of Investigate’s information, he’s contacting HPM in Sydney to ask some hard questions. It’s not the first time the Australian company has supplied faulty RCDS. But the real question is why Australian and NZ authorities are not picking these things up before the products go on sale?
Fisher & Paykel’s Brian Nowell would like an answer to that one too. He says there’s a big problem with imported appliances where regulators make assumptions that the product complies with safety standards, rather than force suppliers to prove it before the product goes on sale.
“Rather than showing that you do comply, the system appears to be that if somebody comes across an incident you have to show that you are capable of complying. It’s more or less left to people to grizzle here. Let’s put the ambulance at the top of the fence, not the bottom.”
As to the safety or otherwise of Fisher & Paykel’s fridges, the arguing continues. Investigate spoke to another appliance serviceman about his experiences.
“I can mainly only comment on the earlier ones I saw, they would catch on fire, basically. The heating systems in the back of the defrost system would not cut out on the defrost timer and so then they’d just melt out the whole inside, they’d literally have a fire in the back of them.”
“How many of those did you see?”
“Mainly when I was with John, probably upwards of eight or ten I suppose. Then when I went back out on my own again I probably saw another three or four. The last one I saw was quite recently, no more than about 12 months ago. It was well melted out inside in the freezer compartment. Just an ActiveSmart, I can’t remember which model exactly.”
“I believe John perhaps ran foul of F&P for being someone who was prepared to stand up and say something, and I really honestly admire him for doing that because all these other guys just pushed it under the rug and didn’t want to jeopardize their authorizations etc. And he got bitten on the backside for that, big time.”
“So you were aware of other people who were aware of it?”
“Absolutely! No question, we all used to go to Service School for latest product ranges and that and we’d be talking about all kinds of stuff.”
“They talked about the fridges?”
“More the servicemen would be talking about while they’re all together at Service School. The F&P people would say ‘yeah, we’ve got a little issue and we’re sorting it out’, but in my opinion they never did.”
To which Brian Nowell’s response is, “rubbish”:
“We’re obligated to provide EnergySafe with information and we certainly do. We’re pretty self conscious about those sorts of things because we’ve got authority guys working in this country that influence the thinking and safety standards not only in NZ but also Australia and around the world. We’re actively involved with those guys all the time. We certainly wouldn’t send guys off to meetings with instructions to be ‘mum’ about an event that jeopardized our reputation. We work very openly with these people.”
Fisher & Paykel’s technical team were unavailable to Investigate, and the appliance company hasn’t got any data immediately to hand on whether it has swapped any burnt out fridges for customers under warranty.
We did approach one customer whose fridge was the subject of a report to EnergySafe, and she told Investigate that after John Rogers had highlighted the problem, F&P sent a new service team out to her who reassured her Rogers and Gosling were “panicking” unnecessarily and that her fridge would be alright. That was four years ago, she still has that fridge, but its freezer she says “doesn’t defrost properly” and is leaking water. “Do you think I got fobbed off?” she half mutters to herself.
Fisher & Paykel, meanwhile, are standing on their record. Yes, they say, there are occasionally defective units – which is why they have service agents. But the company rigorously denies that it would put public safety at risk.
In the meantime, EnergySafe and F&P are now liaising on the fridge issue again, and EnergySafe is preparing to further investigate the faulty RCD devices. And John Rogers? Well, he’s given up appliance repairs and now exhibits and sells neon art at home shows. “It’s much less stressful,” he says.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Dec 05, Having Affairs

Winston Peters unleashed

When NZ First leader WINSTON PETERS was named Foreign Affairs minister in the new government, editorial writers were quick to condemn. Now, in a wide-ranging interview with IAN WISHART, Peters talks about the election, the media, his desire to bring more Asian students here, and his plans to re-open dialogue with President Bush about an “enhanced” relationship amid new regional security threats

PETERS: It was a fascinating election, but a sad one in this sense – that the media decided they were going to turn this into a two horse race regardless, and it never was that. Not in July. But they got obsessed with the idea it would be a two horse race on one issue, and in the end it wasn’t.
INVESTIGATE: In terms of NZ First’s campaign team, did you see that coming?
PETERS: Well, we didn’t actually react with nearly enough speed to changing events. You might ask, ‘well, could one do that?’ and the answer is yes, you always can, but you’ve got to read the changing circumstances more quickly than we did. In 2002 we read it very well, we read it on a daily basis. In 2005 we couldn’t believe the media were going to pull that stunt, and we paid a price for it. And I take responsibility for that.
I thought, surely they’re not going to try and pull this off [a two party drag race to a majority win] which is never going to happen, and it didn’t happen. So we had two parties sitting on 39, 40%, yet the polls had a variability of 14% and they still won’t take responsibility for it. It’s a disgrace. I said so in a speech to the Commonwealth Press Association in Sydney and I’ve never changed my mind about the NZ media or the pollsters in this country. They’re anathema to any scientific analysis.
INVESTIGATE: What sort of internal polling was NZ First doing?
PETERS: We just did our material from April through to July so we’d have the basis for a good campaign. We were then rising on 12% and I was on 18%. Then the media took to us.
INVESTIGATE: It all turned to custard in the space of a week, after your speech about Islamic fundamentalism.
PETERS: I put it down to the belief, as I said in Sydney, that there were three major parties in the campaign: Labour, National, and the party with no candidates, no meetings, no halls and no advertising – the NZ media! They thought the campaign was about them, and hence their sense of chagrin and angst now that they’ve been proven wrong.
INVESTIGATE: The centre right came within a whisker of pulling it off, but that whisker wasn’t good enough.
PETERS: They lost the unloseable election with more money than you could throw a bank at. Some people who were doing the analysis should be coming forward and explaining to the country today why they’re still employed.
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, I want to expand on that. If you were in Brash’s shoes or Steven Joyce’s shoes in the National Party, what were their failures – what broke the camel’s back for National?
PETERS: Their Orewa speech was a straight steal, a purloining of another party’s policy without understanding. I’ve said it’s one thing to walk out of a saloon and steal someone’s horse, it’s quite something else to stay on its back trying to ride out of town!
INVESTIGATE: So in other words they got the rhetoric, but they didn’t understand what you were actually getting at?
PETERS: No, no. And my justification for saying that is that the election was hardly over and they were going back on it.
INVESTIGATE: National failed to hit some home runs and failed to react to media games like Brethrengate. What do you think their weak points were?
PETERS: Well, look, going into a campaign promising to borrow $3.6 billion to finance your tax cuts was the absolute antithesis of everything this country has argued it was doing since 1985. And here they were prepared to make these exorbitant promises without any regard to fiscal consequences, and proudly proclaiming that this was responsible policy. A lot of people have a disquiet about that.
INVESTIGATE: Interestingly enough, after the election the Reserve Bank has suddenly come out and warned the economy’s in trouble, and raised interest rates.
PETERS: Well post election, certain people decided to be responsible, such as those columns you’re reading in the NZ Herald today about the country’s liquidity, it’s level of borrowing, its current accounts deficit, the balance of payments crisis. This is all what they’re highlighting the day after the election, when really they’re a disgrace.
INVESTIGATE: Arguably everyone’s found their cojones and they’re now prepared to talk about it, and you’re saying they should have been talking about it before the election.
PETERS: Precisely. This was a unique campaign in a democracy.
INVESTIGATE: Is there anything you can see that’s changed in economic conditions from four weeks before the election to now –
PETERS: No –
INVESTIGATE: - that Alan Bollard can suddenly come out now and make the claims that he’s making?
PETERS: Well, it’s not my job to comment on Alan Bollard, and it could be said that his timing is based on set dates that don’t coincide with the election date, but I’m talking about the media commentators now, those who all of a sudden realize there’s certain things about the state of the economy post election which they weren’t prepared to talk about pre-election.
INVESTIGATE: Both of the main parties went into this election promising huge spending. In your opinion can any of those promises be delivered on now?
PETERS: Well, Labour can deliver on its promises with respect to students if their objective is to ensure that students stay in New Zealand, which it is. Now that has some logic to it. And right across the political spectrum a number of people realize that the student loans scheme has to be seriously looked at, in terms of retention of skills in this country. I think they’re possibly going to reshape their promises to fit that objective, and that does make economic sense.
But National’s promises? Borrowing for tax cuts is not a viable proposition. It was the height of irresponsibility.
INVESTIGATE: What about Labour’s Working for Families extensions – is the economy in too dire a condition for that?
PETERS: No, I believe that that, and the minimum wage package, alongside corporate tax cuts by 2008 is totally viable and must happen.
INVESTIGATE: What’s going to happen economically over the next 12 months?
PETERS: Internationally it doesn’t look great, and domestically it’s going to be a tough 12 months.
INVESTIGATE: Given that the NZ economy is hurting largely because of the high kiwi dollar, how does raising home mortgage interest rates tackle that problem?
PETERS: Well, it doesn’t! (chuckles). I’m just giving my personal view now, the dollar will fall away, it’s inevitable. The extraordinary feature of it is how long it’s stayed there.
INVESTIGATE: Well we’ve got some of the highest interest rates in the world now, surely that’s something we’ve got to address as a nation?
PETERS: Yeah, and I think to be fair to Cullen he is. Cullen’s statement about the level of the currency is a statement you would not really hear from a Treasurer or a Finance Minister before, but he’s right. I know it’s only a cliché but a benchmark is an export-sympathetic dollar!
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, very good…how “sympathetic” would you like it to be?
PETERS: [Laughs and brushes the specifics away] We’re an export dependent nation.
INVESTIGATE: Looking at the Tauranga campaign, that was unexpected, Bob Clarkson coming in. What went wrong?
PETERS: What went wrong, you’ll find out in court on the 28th of November.
INVESTIGATE: Replay of Wyatt Creech?
PETERS: Well, we’ve filed and we’re set to go.
INVESTIGATE: Even so, is it really as simple as overspending? Can a candidate overspending really buy that many votes or is there another aspect to this?
PETERS: There’s another aspect to it, but it’s sub judice so I can’t say too much.
INVESTIGATE: Did Tauranga suffer from the overall drop in third party support?
PETERS: Not really, no.
INVESTIGATE: Just colourful local versus colourful local?
PETERS: No, more than that, but I can’t say it. I will be saying it when the case is all over.
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, but steering clear of the sub judice bits, I guess what I’m asking is surely there must be more to it than an opponent’s alleged nefarious dealings. For it to become close enough to become an issue, what do you put that down to?
PETERS: Well there are aspects to it that I can’t really talk about yet because of the sub judice rule, seriously. All I can say on the record is that I’ve filed and I’m ready to go.
INVESTIGATE: What about the NZ First caucus, how are they feeling after the election?
PETERS: Well it was a bruising campaign for all of us and we didn’t appreciate after the election how well we’d actually survived, but on election night 58 was the magic number, not 57.
INVESTIGATE: It ended up 57/57. What made you look away from National, was it a political issue, was it simply that you couldn’t really see their coalition surviving long, what were the issues there?
PETERS: They had no intention of their “coalition” lasting more than six to eight months. It was clear that their objective was to cobble together some sort of numbers to go to the Governor-General, and get themselves set for a snap election.
INVESTIGATE: Wouldn’t that have backfired on them in the public eye?
PETERS: No.
INVESTIGATE: In the sense, cobbling together a coalition only to have it fail six months later –
PETERS: That’s what they did in their last outing of change in the National Party, they had a leader called Shipley who stabbed her leader in the back, with a cabal behind her, then stabbed the coalition in the back. The media don’t actually like to report the truth but it’s as plain as daylight, ask Bolger. I mean I’m not asking people to believe me, ask Bolger what happened there.
INVESTIGATE: How was that going to be good for them in the long run, did they think that if National put together a ridiculous coalition that the public would forgive them for that and re-elect them with a majority?
PETERS: Yeah, that’s what they thought. Isn’t the reaction since the government was formed so patently obvious? Here are people sitting – at their request – in my caucus room promising that they can deliver this, and they would have promised me and my party anything we wanted. And now they say we’re totally unfit for anything. Well I know who’s unfit, and who’s going to be there for nine years, less and less experienced as the years go by.
INVESTIGATE: In terms of compromise on National’s part, what were they prepared to compromise just to cobble this together?
PETERS: Anything. Don’t forget, they were talking to the Maori Party about reversing everything that they said at Orewa One and Two. Now, you can go from that ‘apex of deceit’ all the way down. But there’s nothing more significant than that preparedness to change their policy. Problem was we weren’t prepared to change ours. Our view of long term race relations has never changed, their view is a transient purloining of some other party’s policy.
INVESTIGATE: Could you have worked with the Maori Party in any way?
PETERS: No we couldn’t have, because we are too diametrically opposed on what, long term, is good for NZ.
INVESTIGATE: Could one have put those issues, on both sides, to the side to work on other core areas?
PETERS: No you couldn’t, because that party was formed specifically to do just that, which the Maori Party was. Privately, I spoke to the Maori Party about the impossibility of this, and they privately recognized it.
INVESTIGATE: So they came to the same conclusion you did?
PETERS: On the last day, they came to the same conclusion I did. It was a respectful conversation.
INVESTIGATE: I raise the question from the perspective of: knowing that the electorate has thrown up an inconclusive result no party can expect to get everything it wants, the Maori Party might just have to take it on the chin that they won’t get the concessions they were elected to, and say ‘put that to one side’, while at the same time NZ First puts some of its issues to one side and you work together on other issues like employment.
PETERS: I looked at the Maori Party and thought there’s no way they can be possibly contemplating going with National in any durable long term arrangement because their positions are so opposite. The fact that National is prepared to forgive and forget theirs didn’t mean that the Maori Party would, and I think in the end that’s the decision they came to. So without having that conversation with the Maori Party, me and my party tried to look at it as ‘what would we do if we were in their shoes?’.
INVESTIGATE: You’ve had Doug Woolerton resign, is the NZ First caucus back on track?
PETERS: Look, the moment it became 57/57, the position we’d taken at Rotorua became untenable. Neither side could command a majority, and neither side could guarantee that their social or economic policy initiatives could be passed through Parliament. We could not, in good conscience, continue with our policy of sitting on the crossbenches. My team understand that now.
INVESTIGATE: Here you are, part of the Government but not in Cabinet, ostensibly free to criticize. Really?
PETERS: I’m free to agree to disagree outside of my portfolio areas, and that’s a reality.
INVESTIGATE: How public can you be in your disagreement?
PETERS: Entirely public. What’s unprecedented, when you talk about the baubles of office, is a person who was in cabinet twice and never took a car or a house or anything. So when I say I’m not concerned about the baubles of office, I’ve got a record to back it up and a long career. And I’ve taken on big issues at enormous financial cost and time and effort, so when I look at the pygmies who criticize me and who’ve never invested five cents on anything in their whole lives, I just find it an issue of absolute mirth and comedy. When have they ever stood up for anything? These are the same people who for seven years berated me for going for the Winebox. Up hill and down dale, wrote 57 editorials in one case and 68 in another case, two major newspapers in this country and never said sorry when they were wrong. Or the Maori Loans affair or anything else for that matter. They’re just a bunch of cynics whose record in terms of being a public watchdog is a disgrace.
INVESTIGATE: Why don’t they like Winston Peters, the brand?
PETERS: Probably old fashioned jealousy. Nobody likes somebody doing the job that they should be doing. Right now you have a question about political interference with TVNZ. The last time there was political interference at TVNZ of great note was when the Board stepped in over the CEO and they both collectively colluded to shut down a major inquiry. That’s their record of June 2002.
The second highest rating in Australia that the programme Four Corners ever had, in its then 27 years, was in this country censored and Paul Norris – the man who’s commenting now – was head of TV news at the time and he told me “the issues have moved on”. Who was heading the board then? Political interference? It’s a disgrace.
Take the issue of the Holmes show and the so-called Scampi inquiry. A half hour attack on a guy to open the news programme for that year, where the National Party – one Mr Carter – is colluding with a guy brought up from Christchurch to do the investigation. How do I know? Because that night the guy doing the investigation for TVNZ called me by mistake thinking he was talking to Carter, and said “how do you think we’re going?”
Political interference? It stinks! That’s in the news. He made a phone call that night, straight after the programme, thinking he was talking to Carter. You know what I said to him? “Big mistake, sunshine, you got me.”
INVESTIGATE: You think TVNZ are paying the price for one too many scampi dinners themselves?
PETERS: Unlike them, I’m here to front up and have a go.
INVESTIGATE: Why Foreign Minister?
PETERS: I looked at examples abroad, and the Foreign Minister in NZ actually operates with the consent and support of parliament in the main. Hugely that’s the case. If you look at the issues of foreign policy, there’s significant unanimity in the house, with some exceptions – Act and National. But all the rest are pretty united on the issue. So I look at it the same way as the German Foreign Minister, he believed that he was representing the will of parliament as reflected by the Government.
Here’s a contrast – the National Party floated that idea in July without even talking to me, and then the media floated the idea of Attorney-General. I mean, how stupid is that when I’m involved in so many court cases. And they even said I should be heading the Serious Fraud Office. Well they’re right about that!
INVESTIGATE: What’s your vision for this portfolio?
PETERS: I’m a passionate New Zealander and I want to image this country in the best and most positive way I can when I’m in this job. I think it affords enormous opportunity, and I’ve got the time and freedom to do that, whereas if I was in Cabinet I would not.
INVESTIGATE: You do still have to attend Cabinet meetings don’t you?
PETERS: No. But if I’m requested to in key areas I’m happy to do it, but the reality is the key foreign minister in any country is the Prime Minister, so going to cabinet with proposals and the Prime Minister pushing for them is a very practical course of action.
INVESTIGATE: What are the areas within your department you’d like to tackle?
PETERS: Well it’s a very experienced department with very highly qualified people. But if you look at the speech made by the retiring US ambassador to NZ, there was a significant olive branch we should use to improve our relations with the United States.
INVESTIGATE: Can you pick up that olive branch?
PETERS: I believe I can, yes. I thought Charles Swindell’s speech was a benchmark of potential changed relations.
INVESTIGATE: The US fleet is no longer carrying tactical nuclear weapons, they’ve made that clear, and they can quite easily send a non nuclear powered ship here if it’s still an issue. So is there an ideological reason why this anti nuclear or anti American stand is still an issue?
PETERS: Well, I put it this way. If the US can contemplate a free trade agreement with Morocco, then there’s gotta be a chance for us.
INVESTIGATE: What do you see as the main areas we can work on there?
PETERS: Don’t forget there is a congressional senatorial licence out there with only a limited time to run and we’ve got to use every moment to ensure we advance things within that time frame, otherwise it has to be renewed with all the complications that represents.
INVESTIGATE: Helen Clark’s comments about George Bush a couple of years ago, is that still an issue do you think?
PETERS: I think they’ve moved on. Whatever Helen Clark may have said was, in the framework of the German or French comments, of no great moment. If they can move on why can’t we?
INVESTIGATE: In terms of our relationship with the US, Mark Steyn has written about the imminent collapse of Russia, you have China talking about war with the US being inevitable, so as Foreign Minister you are beginning your term in a less than benign strategic environment aren’t you?
PETERS: Two things, China’s historic experience is not one of hegemony at all, even to the Great Wall of China, so that sort of comment is at odds with that. But the second thing is that before Nixon died he made a very telling speech about the obligations of the West to Russia: now that communism has fallen the West should not stand back and cheer their triumph. They have a long term interest in ensuring Russia’s economic viability, and I still believe that. That’s our responsibility, all of us.
INVESTIGATE: But what happens if Russia does fall, what happens if the rest of the world doesn’t recognize this?
PETERS: I can’t answer that, but my personal view is that we have a collective responsibility. You cannot enjoy a changed time like the end of the Cold War and just take it for granted. There are huge ramifications domestically for Russia. It’s odd that a person like Nixon should acknowledge this when so few others do, but he did. I remember that speech and I thought ‘what an enlightening statement’. And my fear is that the West just hasn’t grasped how important his warning was.
INVESTIGATE: We have a world that is increasingly unstable, and in the Pacific rim you’ve got China, Russia, the US, Australia, all of us bordering this area which will become increasingly important to the world stage.
PETERS: I think so, and I said so the moment I got the job. I had certain media critics thinking I was misfocused on this issue, but it’s the size of the area of the world that we’re talking about, albeit that the populations are small, but it’s very significant and I think we’ve got to pick up our act in the Pacific significantly.
INVESTIGATE: What are the things happening in terms of superpower movement in the region that concern you?
PETERS: Well there’s a worrying contest going on in the Pacific at the moment. In nearly every part of it where you have governmental independence, you have a contest of influence between mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and France. I think we’ve got to be a bit more perceptive about what’s going on here.
INVESTIGATE: What’s the danger to NZ if we don’t?
PETERS: New Zealand will lose a significant strategic position of influence, and the danger for that internationally is that one of the great attributes of New Zealand will be lost on the world. We’re still well-regarded, but we’ve got to do more work to deserve it in the long term.
INVESTIGATE: What is strategic about the Pacific Island states that these superpowers are currying favour so much, why is this important?
PETERS: They’re staging posts. They’re island states which cover virtually a quarter of the world.
INVESTIGATE: So is it economic zone, military?
PETERS: In terms of the map, it’s huge.
INVESTIGATE: So why do you think mainland China or Taiwan are scrapping over this?
PETERS: Well I have my beliefs but I don’t want to put them on record! I’m the Foreign Minister now.
INVESTIGATE: But is it something that New Zealanders need to be concerned about?
PETERS: Most certainly we need to be concerned. We need to be concerned about the level of structural preparedness of these islands and what we can do. In terms of good governance, good management, responsible government, we’ve got to do much more. We’ve got to offer much more by way of training and assistance.
INVESTIGATE: But what’s in it for us?
PETERS: The advantage for us is that an area of peaceful tranquility is changing in front of our faces. There’s an arc of uncertainty stretching all the way from New Guinea across to Tonga, and you cannot stand by and do nothing. We were engaged in Fiji, we were engaged in the Solomon Islands, we were engaged in East Timor, this is not something contemplated 20 years ago.
INVESTIGATE: Militarily we no longer have some aspects of our armed forces that we used to have. Just how much is NZ capable of doing now in terms of projecting its influence?
PETERS: First of all, our overseas aid is now going to be, by agreement, much more focused on the Pacific. Secondly, there is significant institutional capacity that NZ can afford those countries at very low cost but enormous benefit to them. There are economies there that are not viable, they need assistance. And that should be our area of influence that we focus very strongly on, a neighbourhood where we can see the benefits of what we’re doing. I’m coming to the job having worked alongside the leader of French Polynesia in the freezing works, gone to law school with a number of people who are ministers of finance and prime ministerial advisers throughout the Pacific. I look 20 years down and say to myself: ‘is that combination going to emerge again unless we do something now?’ Unless we pick their best and brightest and train them, at our cost, in the long term interests of both themselves and NZ.
INVESTIGATE: You’ve got China threatening war with the West, you’ve got Russia going through what Steyn calls its death throes, you’ve got al Qa’ida training terrorists in the Philippines and Indonesia to create an Islamic superstate – does New Zealand need Australia and the US as defence partners?
PETERS: Let me put it this way: There is no doubt that we need an enhanced relationship.
INVESTIGATE: How enhanced? Realistically, what do we need, in your opinion?
PETERS: That’s what we need, an enhanced relationship with both countries. I’m not going to make foreign policy on the hoof here. My job is to represent the government’s position on foreign policy. I’m not going to put the cart before the horse here.
INVESTIGATE: But you’ve allegedly said to the Australian media that we need an enhanced relationship in slightly more specific terms –
PETERS: That report in the Australian media is not my quote, they’re not my sentiments, I did not say it and I demand the guy produce his tape. I know the media confronted him with the challenge to produce his tapes, but of course he hasn’t got any. And we’re not going to have that sort of abbreviated foreign policy statements. I’m denying it because I didn’t say it.
INVESTIGATE: What do we need? I’ll put it to you this way: do you disagree with the concept that I put to you that NZ’s interests in the medium term are going to require that we have some sort of official partnership with the US and Australia – if not fully what it was then at least a preparedness to go into bat together if necessary?
PETERS: Let me put it this way. Mike Moore wrote a very important article recently about the need for us to improve our relations with Australia, that the once great connection we had needs greater work and effort. I agree with him entirely.
INVESTIGATE: In what way are we drifting away from Australia that we can improve on?
PETERS: Well, whilst there’s significant alignment institutionally in nearly every area of governance, from the role of auditors in NZ to medicine, and you might say that’s an enhanced relationship, what Moore was talking about was a sentimental factor. And it might sound like it’s intangible but I think he’s right, that we need to improve our relations with Australia and be more focused on our joint needs, as difficult as things are in the last three years.
INVESTIGATE: Is the drifting away a cultural one or is it really a government one?
PETERS: Well whatever it is –
INVESTIGATE: Or what has it been?
PETERS: Whatever it is, I intend to improve upon it.
INVESTIGATE: Do you see discussions with Bush or Condoleeza Rice as being on the cards?
PETERS: On the cards – when are you publishing?
INVESTIGATE: November 14. Go on, tell me.
PETERS: But you’ll print it!
INVESTIGATE: Print what?
PETERS: What I’m about to tell you. Of course I see it on the cards. Preparations for talks are underway, yes.
INVESTIGATE: At what level?
PETERS: At that level. It’ll be my first foreign engagement. I’m going to APEC where they’ll all be present.
INVESTIGATE: So your office has been in contact with your American counterparts saying ‘we’re there, we’d like to talk’. What sort of response have you had?
PETERS: A very positive one. With Australia, with Asia – all the way to India, Japan and the United States. In other words, it’s all happening.
INVESTIGATE: In terms of the strategic environment we now face, how seriously concerned do New Zealanders need to be about our current preparedness for anything?
PETERS: Since September 11, I think it’s taken us a while to grasp the changing face of international travel. But we have a full comprehensive review going on right now to do with immigration, people who visit here and the kind of border security that we need. I think it’s a very positive step. The steps which you will see throughout the rest of the world, even Mexico, we need to take. They have eye scans in Mexico at their borders, and this is a third world country. I’ve seen them. We don’t.
INVESTIGATE: The US is imposing its new E-Passport regulations at the end of 2006 and by definition that must impact on New Zealand’s foreign policy and travel documentation. Britain is looking at ID cards, although critics have made the point that most of the terrorists in these countries are home grown, or at least bonafide people there –
PETERS: Yes.
INVESTIGATE: – which you’re never going to tackle with ID documents. What do we need to do here?
PETERS: Well we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, internationally enormous work is going on in that respect. But we need to look at what will work in NZ. We’re a lucky country, we’re surrounded by water. We’ve got an enormous advantage over other countries, most other countries have collective borders, we haven’t. How about starting by looking at our advantage for a kick off.
INVESTIGATE: So do we need ID cards?
PETERS: I can’t say that, but what we can do is know with absolute exhaustive precision who’s coming here. That’s the enormous benefit of an island country.
INVESTIGATE: We’re building on the worldwide database –
PETERS: Yes, because it’s there. I mean, you cannot have a guy that’s just about got through the police force and suddenly turns up on a security check. What was he doing here and how did he get into the police force? You’ve got to ask yourself what’s going on, and I have. The fact that I’ve got a lot of docile media commentators who don’t know anything about immigration or worldwide security, is neither here nor there. I’ve got a duty. I spent five days with the NYPD as their guest, looking at security measures since September 11, at my expense I might add. So I’ll certainly be making submissions to this review.
INVESTIGATE: In terms of reaction from the media commentators to your appointment as Foreign Minister, they’ve been quick to give you a kick over what they see as the contrast between NZ First and your position on immigration and other matters and how can you possibly represent NZ internationally. What’s your response to that?
PETERS: Well I’ve been here a thousand years. Maybe it’s the face of New Zealand we want to see abroad. The fact that their scope and vision is so miniscule doesn’t mean it should hinder me.
INVESTIGATE: What do you put that down to, do we have a faulty liberal worldview?
PETERS: It’s a terribly shallow view. Too many commentators have a terribly shallow view which is probably born of the fact that they’re paid $45,000, so what do you expect? Maybe the media should read some of my speeches about the fact that they’re denied room, space and money to do the job properly! I’m on their side actually. Investigative journalism in this country is almost dead. The media ownership are not prepared to finance decent quality work that takes time and research, and space and room and encouragement. I’m going to help these media people despite themselves!
INVESTIGATE: So what do you see as the short to medium term foreign policy issues that New Zealand must deal with?
PETERS: Number one, our image abroad, that’s the key. Number two, every country in Asia is different and we’ve got to see it that way. In terms of the collective institutions operating in Asia we’ve got to play a bigger role and be more present there. In the Pacific we start with an enormous advantage, but we’ve got to work at it much harder. Then you’ve got the European Union and the United States. And our engagement with South America – I think everyone would regard it as one of neglect these last 20 years. All of a sudden we’ve woken up to the fact that here is this huge grouping of population who all speak one language, apart from Brazil which is itself a unique country. So I don’t see it being any one focus, but doing the best you can with four million people in a country that’s had an unbroken line of democracy for more than 130 years – only nine countries in the world can make that claim now.
INVESTIGATE: Teaching Spanish in schools, we don’t do that...
PETERS: Yeah, but we should be. It’s the second most spoken language in the world.
INVESTIGATE: In terms of free trade agreements, again coming out of the speech by Chi Haotian, it admits it needs investment from the West to modernize its industrial military complex. There are those who say overseas there’s a danger that by embarking on a massive free trade and investment deal with China the West is simply writing the cheques for the bullets that’ll come back to them over the fence. Do you share that pessimism?
PETERS: No I don’t. I think that economic freedom breeds institutional freedom. Changes in China are dramatic. You might call it guided capitalism but it is still changing dramatically and in time that’ll bring fundamental change to the Chinese institutions.
INVESTIGATE: So does NZ benefit from a free trade agreement with China or do we end up with a lot of cheap frocks?
PETERS: I’m not going to comment on the role and responsibilities of the Minister of Trade.
INVESTIGATE: In terms of foreign policy then, what sort of relationship do you want to establish with China?
PETERS: I do start with an advantage. I was the guy who persuaded Cabinet to go to the China-Hong Kong handover before any other western nation, we put our hands up first. If you look at the new governorship of Hong Kong after the handover even the guestbook has New Zealand’s name in it first. I was the first foreigner to be invited. China remembers certain things. When the West wasn’t prepared to go, we said ‘yes’ first. Within 48 hours some other countries put their hands up and they all came in the end. But I’m proud of that, and the Chinese don’t forget things like that.
I just want to remind some of my critics that I was the guy that went there to negotiate student visas, to enable export education to happen in this country. The Chinese leadership did ask me though to promise on behalf of my Government that when they graduated I’d send them home. Well, I tried to keep my promise!
INVESTIGATE: There’s been a drop-off in student numbers from China. Is that because of the quality of the education we offer here, or is it as some suggest a result of NZ First speeches?
PETERS: That’s just humbug. We have been neglectful of our responsibilities to assure any Chinese mother and father that when students came here they’d be looked after. There’s been far too much naked, raw irresponsible capitalism associated with export education and we’re paying the price for it, in terms of quality and in terms of care. I remember them saying to me, “we entrust these children to you”. Now we can’t say that we’ve filled our obligations in that respect, and we’ve damaged our image. And I want to change that, beginning from when we did sign the visa programme.
INVESTIGATE: So in a strange sort of irony Winston Peters is going to be bringing more Chinese students in?
PETERS: Well I believe in export education, and that’s what the Chinese want. People might have laughed when I said Maori came from China, but the DNA’s irrefutable. We have some advantages.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Investigate Dec 05, Last Flight Of The Dragonfly

A mystery from inside NZ’s Bermuda Triangle

In February 1962, an ageing bi-plane on a scenic flight became the first victim of an area they’re calling New Zealand’s Bermuda Triangle. Six planes have vanished never to be seen again, taking with them 23 men, women and children. Now in this extract from aviation writer RICHARD WAUGH’s new book, Lost Without Trace?, comes the story of the missing Dragonfly, and details of a $4,000 reward for its discovery.

From a gentle idle Brian Chadwick closes down the Dragonfly engines. The ground running warms them up before the flight and is a last check for any obvious faults. Everything is fine and there is plenty of fuel aboard. Stepping away from the Dragonfly, Chadwick looks toward the distant Alps. It’s a habit. There is total cloud cover and he can feel the southerly wind.
With the Flight Plan filed he walks into the imposing terminal building and greets two men already waiting at the Inquiry Desk. “Hello, I’m Brian Chadwick, your pilot for today’s flight,” “Gidday mate, I’m Louis Rowan,” “And I’m Darrell Shiels.”
Elwyn Saville soon joins them and his new wife Valerie emerges from the powder room. ‘A happy young lot; they’ll love the flight,’ thinks Chadwick as they head off chatting, toward the parked Dragonfly. Louis quickly works out his older brother Bill had worked with Darrell at a Sydney brewery.
“Yes, she’s not the newest plane,” says Chadwick, “But you’ll have fantastic views and we’ll be slow enough for you to use all the film in your cameras – I guarantee it!” He soon finds out where they’re from, and puts Elwyn and Valerie together on the rear bench seat, Louis in the front seat next to him, and Darrell in the middle seat. They listen attentively as he gives the safety instructions and points out the First Aid box, barley sugars and four small blankets.
Chadwick eases into the pilot’s seat. He has just over 6,000 flying hours experience. There is friendly banter in the cabin and they all laugh when he says, “On board we have a Pom, three Aussies and a Kiwi – not a joke – but it’s going to be a memorable flight!”

***

The Dragonfly had been refuelled the evening before by Ken Froggatt who worked as an assistant to Chadwick. Following instructions Froggatt had filled the wing tanks to capacity (30 gallons each) and put 15 gallons in the rear fuselage tank, and the aircraft was all ready for the morning’s flight. After ground running the engines, Chadwick went to meet his passengers. The four tourists were all from New South Wales: Elwyn & Valerie Saville from Wahroonga, Louis Rowan from Granville and Darrell Shiels from Balmain. Valerie was a New Zealander who had married Elwyn in her home town of Gisborne just two months earlier.
THE SAVILLES came to the South Island as part of their extended honeymoon holiday in New Zealand, wanting to see some of the renowned scenery. They were intending to return to Australia in late February. Sidney Elwyn Saville, known as ‘Elwyn’, was born on 8 October 1941 at Casino on the north coast of New South Wales where his father Roy owned and ran a dairy farm. He was the third of five children. The family were Seventh Day Adventist and Elwyn attended Casino High School and then went to work at the Wahroonga Sanitarium and Hospital in Sydney. This is now the Sydney Adventist Hospital.
Valerie Gay Bignell was born on 27 June 1939, the second youngest of twelve children of Fred and Jessie Bignell at Tokomaru Bay, north of Gisborne. Fred was a foreman and slaughterman at the local Freezing Works. Valerie attended Tokomaru Bay School and from the age of 14, the New Zealand Missionary College (later Longburn College) near Palmerston North. She returned to Gisborne and worked in the office at Cook Hospital as a typist. Valerie’s family remember her as “a loving kind person, quiet, who loved children.”
She decided to go to Australia in 1959 as several relatives were there including a sister, Patricia. Valerie soon got a job as a secretary-clerk at the Adventist Sanatorium and this is where she met Elwyn. Engaged in the winter of 1961, they set a wedding date in New Zealand, took extended leave from their jobs and the couple left Sydney by air for New Zealand on 21 November, along with several other friends and were booked to return to Sydney by sea on the Canberra, leaving on 28 February 1962. It was a return trip they would never make.
Born at Junee in New South Wales in 1928, DARRELL STANLEY SHIELS was the youngest of Warrie and Doris Shiels’ three children. His father worked on the railway. He attended Drummoyne Boys High School. Darrell’s older brother, Allan Warren Shiels, aged 19, was killed in wartime England on 19 June 1944 in a plane crash whilst serving with the RAAF.
Darrell was 5’11” tall of medium build and played tennis, but his favourite occupation was playing the piano. He took after his grandmother who was a very good pianist. Darrell worked in a railways office and later as a clerk in the office of Tooth & Co Brewery in Sydney. Darrell was single but had been engaged for a short time a few years earlier. While at Tooths Brewery he lived at home with his mother at Balmain, Sydney.
LOUIS ROWAN had been working in New Guinea before returning home to Australia for Christmas 1961 and then took a trip to New Zealand with the prospect of working for a while.
“Louis was a very outgoing and popular man who had close mates and a wide circle of friends,” remembers his brother John. “He was generous by nature and a willing helper to anyone who needed it. He was popular with the girls and flirting was a trademark. He played tennis regularly and kept himself very fit. Louis was 6’1” tall, lean and about 170lb. He was a member of the Granville RSL and really enjoyed a beer and a smoke. He owned three cars, the first a Vanguard, the second an FJ Holden and the third, his pride and joy, a Dodge Kingsway. He was never short of family and friends to fill these cars for any occasion.”
Rowan’s date with destiny happened by chance: the possibility of a scenic flight to Milford Sound came up while he lingered in Christchurch awaiting a flight back to the North Island and thence home to Australia. When the opportunity came to board the Dragonfly, he seized it, leaving his luggage behind in a bed and breakfast establishment he never returned to.
As the group of five boarded the Dragonfly, Don Eadie, a 24-year-old licensed aircraft engineer with Airwork, was ready to help. In 2004 he remembered: “I was on tarmac duty when Brian Chadwick loaded up AFB with the tourists for the trip to Milford. At that time, the engineering staff at Airwork wore grey overalls, and I always kept a clean pair of white ones for ‘tarmac duty’. My job was to assist the pilot ‘load up’ and having shut the door, stand by with a fire extinguisher while the engines were started. I often wondered what I would do if one caught fire! However, I was never put to the test. The Dominie and Dragonfly engines always started and ran smoothly after a short warm up. A testimony to the care with which they were maintained.
“I seem to recall that it was a warm day at Harewood. I can still see the young couple in the Dragonfly, lightly dressed and quite excited at the prospect of flying to Milford. After a wave from Brian, I pulled away the wooden chocks and he then taxied out to the runway. That was the last I was to see of him.”
Dragonfly ZK-AFB was airborne just over 10 minutes late. George Blackett reported, “Upon Captain Chadwick’s departure from Christchurch the Control Tower sent the Flight Plan to Communications for onward transmission and sent the Control Centre a plaque to inform the Centre of the actual time of departure. The aircraft left at 9.52am and was to set down at Milford at 12.37pm.”
Christchurch Airport received no further radio reports from Chadwick as the Dragonfly began the long climb toward the Southern Alps.
As expected, many other pilots were flying in the lower South Island that day. From Hokitika, Brian Waugh took off mid-morning on the scheduled West Coast Airways service to Haast. He later wrote: “Dominie ZK-AKT lifted off into a light cloudy sky. It was early morning, and Hokitika looked quite sleepy beneath me. Another typical day I thought. Little did I realise that 12 February 1962 would be a day not easily forgotten. Just over an hour later I landed at Haast in sunshine, picked up six passengers and headed home on the return trip. Jim Harper was right: while the coast weather was good, it was pitch black in the ranges. I smiled smugly: ‘Chaddy will not be carrying any scenic passengers to Milford today,’ I thought.”
No radio reports were received from Chadwick after the Dragonfly took off but this was quite nor-mal as his next designated radio reporting point was the Mt. Elie- de Beaumont area, assuming his “Usual Route”. While there were no radio messages there were a number of reported hearings and sightings of the blue and white Dragonfly as it droned its way over the Canterbury Plains and headed south-west. In this sense the aircraft did not disappear ‘without trace’ as these observations were made by a range of people at many different places. These reports indicate that the progress of ZK-AFB for part of its intended journey can be confirmed with reasonable certainty.
In 1987 Eric Gillum contacted the author recording his memories of 12 February 1962: “I was digging a drain with a dragline working on Mr Walter Elliot’s Omahau sheep station that day, which is about 6 miles south from Lake Pukaki Village and about half a mile from where Twizel village was later established. I had just stopped work a few minutes before midday when I heard a plane going over, it was far too low and one engine was spluttering and blowing out smoke. I thought then that if it got as far as Lake Ohau it would be as far as it would get.
“Mr Elliot came out that afternoon about 3 o’clock and told me a plane had been reported missing. I asked him if he knew what sort of plane it was and when he said it was a Dragonfly I told him it had gone over with one engine spluttering. I had met Captain Chadwick and found him a very levelheaded person. If the plane had kept on course after it flew over where I was it would have had to gain a lot of height to get over the Ben Ohau Range, but I couldn’t see that being possible with one sick motor, he could have flown around the Ben Ohau Range at the bottom of Lake Ohau and got back on course from there.
“About 11 o’clock that same day my sister, Eileen Harrington, was at Jim O’Neil’s farm on Clayton Road, Fairlie, when that plane passed overhead, therefore he was right on course and the timing would be right too.”
One of the earliest reports received by Search and Rescue on the Monday night was relayed from deercullers at the head of Lake Ohau. This was further investigated on the Tuesday. Evan Blanch in 2004 wrote this detailed account:
As a 20-year-old, I was employed by the New Zealand Forest Service doing deerculling in the Hopkins River watershed. There were eight shooters covering the Hunter, Ahuriri, Hopkins and Dobson Valleys – two to each, plus a Field Officer and under the control of the Otago-Southland office in Queenstown. On the day Chadwick’s aircraft went missing we were all at the NZFS Waitaki Base Camp on Huxley Gorge Station. This camp is at the base of Ram Hill at the south end of the Hopkins Valley. We would meet up once a month to collect and send out mail, fill in our monthly report cards and have our tallies counted.
“The weather was, to say the least, terrible, with a very strong southerly coming up over Lake Ohau with low cloud and rain showers. I don’t remember now the exact time but it was in the middle of the day. I was at the time repairing the driveshaft on my Chevrolet pick-up truck and was surprised to suddenly hear an aircraft overhead in the cloud. It was clearly twin-engined and working very hard against the wind but at no time did it become visible. I stood and listened until it could no longer be heard. It flew directly up the Hopkins Valley and my impression was that some mountain tops must have been visible to make it possible to fly up the valley. The plane sounded as if it came out of the Dobson Valley and around Mt Glenmary, when the sound of the engines ceased – they stopped very abruptly.
“Everyone at the camp heard the plane but as they were indoors they did not take a lot of notice. It was not until the 6 o’clock news came over the radio saying that a plane was missing that we realised that what we heard was probably it.
“The Hopkins River is almost North to South and has a gentle curve over most of its length. The Huxley River is quite a large valley on the west of the Hopkins with the Elcho Valley a bit smaller. These would be an absolute trap in bad weather for any plane but they do give access to the Landsborough River, via the Brodrick Pass, which in turn gives a route to the West Coast and Haast. So we heard the plane going north away from its intended destination and into an area of high mountains and dense forest. In two years working in the area there was a lot of the area I never visited. A blue fabric covered aircraft could easily still be there!
“The Police were interested in what I heard but I didn’t see any – but officers in charge tend to take over in these situations. I have never been asked for my story and this is the first time I have put it to paper.”
A total of 17 civilian and 17 military aircraft – including both RNZAF and USAF aircraft from Operation Deep Freeze at Christchurch – combed Fiordland for any trace of the aircraft. All up, they logged more than 630 flying hours across more than 250 individual sorties. To this day, it remains the largest air search ever conducted in New Zealand history.
The whereabouts of Dragonfly ZK-AFB, its pilot and passengers, quickly became a persisting mystery spawning wide interest, and this has continued to the present day. Based on what many people reported seeing or hearing, the Dragonfly’s progress south west is reasonably certain but its final resting place is still elusive, despite a number of search initiatives over the years. Adding to this Dragonfly mystery is the subsequent disappearance in the same lower South Island region of five further aircraft which have never been found (see sidebar story).
With the official Dragonfly search being suspended, the families of those on board the missing aircraft were compelled to face the reality that their loved ones had died. It was a traumatic week.
Telegrams had been sent from the New Zealand Police in the late afternoon and early evening of 12 February notifying relatives in Australia that the aircraft was overdue and missing. Darrell Shiels’ mother told newspapers the following day that her husband had been put on sedatives to help cope with the shock.
For the Rowan family it was just as devastating with the family making desperate attempts to obtain more news. Every news bulletin on Sydney radio was listened to and reception of late evening radio broadcasts from New Zealand were sometimes successful. But the distance and lack of news was heartbreaking for all involved. Support for the families from relatives and friends was encouraging with care and prayers being offered all across Australia.
Elwyn Saville’s parents stayed with Valerie’s sister, Patricia King, at Cooranbong, and it was from there that Mrs Saville wrote a letter to the other bereaved families. Her heartfelt letter of 20 February to the Rowan family said:
“We are writing a short note to you in hope that by being parents of the young couple in the same plane as your boy has disappeared, we may be able to offer some comfort in knowing that the one sadness covers both our homes. We do not know each other but may God bless you with his love in our sad time, it is very hard for us to understand but I do feel that God must have a purpose for it all, may we put our trust in him.
“We contacted the New Zealand Commissioner of Police asking if they considered it would be of any gain for us to go over to New Zealand or if my husband and son could be of any assistance in the search, the reply wasn’t just what we’d have liked but they have really made a wonderful effort in the search for them.
“The reply stated that they have searched 17,000 square miles six or seven times. The search has been suspended in the meantime and will be taken up immediately if information comes to hand. No point in coming to New Zealand at present. We cannot expect more of them even though we’d like them to go on searching. We can only have faith in knowing that if we should not see them again in this world we will meet our loved ones when Jesus comes on the Great Resurrection Day. May your faith, courage and health, as well as our own be built so as to face the future whatever God has in store for us.”
In Christchurch the news had filtered out more quickly. The Isles family, where Valerie and Elwyn Saville had been staying, heard about the aircraft being overdue by late afternoon but Valerie’s parents, Mr and Mrs Fred Bignell and their family in Gisborne, weren’t contacted by police until later that evening.
Two weeks later Mrs Bignell and her daughter Joyce went to Christchurch, stayed with the Isles, and collected the luggage, including wedding presents, that the couple had left behind.
For Sylvia Chadwick and her two sons, the news was also unbelievable. At the naval training establishment in Auckland, Tony was convinced that his father would turn up unscathed after a couple of days, and had to be virtually ordered to go home on compassionate leave. Then there was a sense of helplessness, as there was nothing that could be done to assist the search.
Certainly the performance of the Dragonfly in alpine flying conditions, especially at the required altitudes in the lower Southern Alps, was very poor. Not only was there an appreciable difference in the actual single engine performance of ZK-AFB when compared to manufacturer’s claims, but by 1962, in comparison with other newer aircraft available, the veteran Dragonfly was clearly unsuitable for such trips. When the aircraft’s known poor single-engine performance and susceptibility to icing, is combined with the mountainous terrain and deteriorating weather, a whole new meaning is given to the term “margin of error”.
The reality was that the Dragonfly had little or no margin of error to cope with any major weather deterioration or mechanical failure en route to Milford Sound. Chadwick may not have originally envisaged using the Dragonfly for his Milford Sound flights, as his larger Dominie aircraft was more suitable, but in practice the aircraft regularly flew the Glacier and Milford Sound charters. With hindsight it can now be said that flying a Dragonfly aircraft on regular commercial charters over the rugged Southern Alps to Milford Sound, sometimes in deteriorating weather, was risky, if not a tragedy waiting to happen.
In spite of the passage of time, local pilots continued to keep watch for the Dragonfly, looking for anything unusual in the dense bush and trees, especially in more isolated areas. Brian Waugh was prominent, but there were many others.
Nancy Stokes, widow of Mt Cook skiplane pilot John Stokes, who was based at Fox Glacier 1961-1964, recently commented: “John always kept an eye out for Chadwick”. Ray Sweney from Hokitika also deliberately flew over many likely areas. The same was true for Canterbury-based pilot Jim Pavitt, who continued to fly Milford Sound charters, “After Brian Chadwick went missing, every time I flew to Milford I scrutinised the terrain for any signs. I even varied the route to cover as much as possible, but there is such an extensive wilderness it was fruitless. One day I hope a tramper or someone finds something; then we might learn what happened.”
In January 1975 a deerstalker, N.L. Duncan reported seeing what looked like aircraft debris in the headwaters of the Rangitata River. A fully equipped six-man team, led by two police constables, completed a search accompanied by Mr Duncan but nothing was found.
On 8 August 1980 Paul Beauchamp Legg and his wife Frances were flying with Dr Paul and Jean Monro in the Middle District’s Aero Club’s Piper Cherokee 180 ZK-ECR. Paul Monro recounts: “We were on a flight from Franz Josef to Milford Sound with Paul Legg flying. I remember us flying well round Mt. Aspiring to the south of the West Branch of the Matukituki River. We then headed for a point a few miles out to sea from the entrance to Milford Sound and flew over tall bush-covered undulating country which I assume may have been the Dart River. As we descended towards Lake Alabaster, before crossing its southern end, Jean, who was sitting in the left rear seat, saw what looked like the white tail plane of an aircraft semi-hidden in the bush.” Beauchamp Legg was quickly alerted and he recalls: “We were in a severe down-draught at the time and I was more interested in staying with the living than joining the dead and was working hard to get into an updraught. I only had time to make a quick glance in the direction Mrs Monro indicated. I marked it on the map and passed the information to Air Department but as far as I know nothing was done about it. I was told much later, at Queenstown, that one of the helicopters had dropped a fridge in the bush somewhere about there but Mrs Monro was still adamant that it was an aeroplane she saw.”
A further on-going search initiative has been quietly undertaken by Lex Perriam, a ranger with the New Zealand Forest Service based at Omarama since 1975. Perriam remembers the Dragonfly going missing while attending high school at Mosgiel. In 1977 he discussed the mystery with Stafford Weatherall, owner of the Lake Ohau Station. Weatherall told him that on the day the Dragonfly went missing he had been mustering east of Lake Ohau on Ben Rose Station and heard, above the fog, an aircraft to the west with engines revving loudly. This account, together with a dream Perriam had of the Dragonfly being in the South Huxley area, and Richard Waugh’s article for the 25th anniversary of the disappearance in 1987, renewed his interest and prompted him to be deliberate about ongoing searching for wreckage in the areas for which he has Forest Service responsibility. In 2005 he reported: “I was encouraged to continue looking for the location of the plane by foot and by air.”
Mason Whaitiri of Bluff reported to the author recently: “In early 1962 I was the Skipper of the Miss Geraldine fishing boat and was working directly off the entrance to Milford Sound at the time the aircraft went missing. It was a bright sunny day and the boat was straight out from St Anne Point about a mile from the Sound mouth. The time was about midday or 1pm and the boat was picking up pots.
“I was in the wheelhouse and two crew members were at the winch – Russell Trow, my brother-in-law, and Allan Strange. In spite of the noise from the freezer and engine in the wheelhouse I heard a very loud aircraft noise which all of a sudden cut out.
“I went out on deck and asked the others who were using the winch whether they had heard the close-by aircraft but they hadn’t heard a thing over the noise of the winch and didn’t see anything. While the weather was sunny and clear it was blowing a 25-30 knot wind from south west coming up the coast. A hard wind!
“Later that day we heard that an aircraft was missing. We also saw smoke in the bush behind Big Bay and steamed for about three hours to get closer but we determined it was Davy Gunn mustering cattle. Some weeks later it dawned on me the possible explanation for the very loud aircraft noise and its sudden end.
“I felt the aircraft would have been very near for the noise to have penetrated the wheelhouse so clearly – maybe within 200 yards. I think the missing aircraft may have been running out of fuel and the pilot had nowhere else to land and so decided to get close to the only human civilisation – the Miss Geraldine – and to ditch in the sea alongside. This was the loud noise I heard as the aircraft came up very close. But unfortunately the pilot ditched on the wrong side and was not noticed. The crew and I were not looking that way as we were concentrating on collecting the pots and were watching certain land features to help determine where the pots were. I am a friend of veteran helicopter pilot Bill Black. On occasions Bill came up close to my boat but if I was in the wheelhouse I only heard his helicopter when he was directly overhead. This whole incident has haunted me for all these years.”
Although many years have passed it is quite likely there will be still more reports made about the Dragonfly. All deserve to be considered carefully. The reality is that the Dragonfly did not just vanish without trace. This book documents many key and credible reports, many dating back to 12 February 1962, which provide strong evidence that the Dragonfly was flying on a southwest route down the eastern side of the Main Divide. The sighting/hearing reports of an aircraft in the Lake Ohau/Hopkins area and the Mt. Aspiring area provide important clues as to its possible final resting place.

REWARD
Investigate magazine is supporting Richard Waugh’s quest to solve New Zealand’s most perplexing aviation mystery by offering a $4,000 cash reward to anyone who discovers the wreckage and reports it exclusively to Investigate in the first instance. No reward will be payable if news of any discovery is first publicized intentionally or unintentionally in any other media than Investigate. For full details of the likely route of the Dragonfly, purchase a copy of Waugh’s new book, Lost Without Trace? Available at all good booksellers.

NEW ZEALAND’S ‘BERMUDA TRIANGLE’?
Since the disappearance of Dragonfly ZK-AFB on 12 February 1962, there have been five other aircraft lost without trace in the same southern region of the South Island; four fixed wing aircraft and one helicopter. In total, including those aboard ZK-AFB, 23 persons – 6 pilots and 17 passengers – have vanished!
The large area in which these aircraft and people have been lost is among the most rugged in New Zealand, with much of it having World Heritage status. Since the Dragonfly, other aircraft to disappear have been:
• 16 AUGUST 1978: Cessna 180 ZK-BMP owned by Central Western Air. The pilot was Rev Cyril Francis Crosbie (aged 37) of Riversdale and the passengers were: Trevor George Collins (aged 50) of Waimea, Gordon Grant (aged 28) of Waipounamu and Peter Alexander Robertson (aged about 40) of Wendonside. The aircraft was on a flight from Big Bay, South Westland, to Riversdale, Southland. It was probably last heard at Jamestown at the northern end of Lake McKerrow and appeared to be heading towards the Jamestown Saddle.
• 29 DECEMBER 1978: Piper Cherokee Six ZK-EBU owned by the Otago Aero Club. The pilot was Edward James Sinclair Morrison (aged 28) and the passengers were: Earl Blomfield Stewart (aged 40), his wife Elizabeth McGregor Stewart (aged 37), their son David John Stewart (aged 18), Alec Davidson Stewart (aged 38), his wife Rosie Stewart (aged 37) and David Hogg (aged 20). The elder Stewart men were brothers and all the Stewarts were from Dunedin. The aircraft was on a scenic flight from Taieri, Dunedin, to Queenstown, Milford Sound, Preservation Inlet and then back to Dunedin. It was last seen flying down Milford Sound toward the coast.
• 30 JULY 1983: Cessna 172K ZK-CSS owned by Arthur Roy Turner. The pilot was Arthur Roy Turner (aged 55) of Mt Ruapehu, National Park, and the passengers were: his wife Anne Zelda (aged 33) and children Kim Dorothy (aged 6) and Guy (aged 4). Anne was also a pilot. The aircraft was on a flight from Tekapo to Fox Glacier.
• 8 NOVEMBER 1997: Cessna 180 ZK-FMQ owned by Cascade Whitebait Ltd. The pilot was Ryan Michael Moynihan (aged 23) and he was the sole occupant. The aircraft was on a flight from West Melton Aerodrome, Canterbury to Waiatoto, South Westland.
• 3 JANUARY 2004: Hughes 369HS ZK-HNW owned by Featherstone Contracting Ltd, Hamilton. The pilot was Campbell Montgomerie (aged 27) from Hamilton and his passenger, girlfriend Hannah Rose Timings (aged 28) from Cheltenham, England. The helicopter was on a flight from the Howden Hut, on the Routeburn Track, to Milford Sound. A total of 204 flying hours and 2300 man hours were reported as being spent searching the mountainous area for the missing helicopter, without success.
Following the Dragonfly’s disappearance, Civil Aviation officials investigated some overseas developments regarding aircraft radio beacons. A 1962 memo entitled ‘Recommendations Arising from the Dragonfly Accident’ says in part: “Radio in the past has been out of the question, but recently appears to be becoming a distinct possibility. We are currently obtaining data on several emergency transmitters which
have recently become available.”
In New Zealand, the Emergency Locator Transmitter device (ELT), to assist in locating missing aircraft, was not finally made mandatory for the general aviation fleet until 1986. The beacon commences transmitting if a certain ‘G’ threshold is exceeded, as in a crash. It radiates on 121.5 MHz for civil or 243 MHz for military, but in the near future the standard will be 406.5 MHz. The signal can be detected aurally if a receiver is set to the appropriate frequency, so overflying aircraft are often the first to report a beacon.
Orbiting SARSAT/COSPAS satellites operated by the United States and Russia are designed to receive the signals and within 90 minutes they can typically determine the location with amazing accuracy and so greatly assist Search and Rescue personnel.
In the case of Hughes helicopter ZK-HNW, the ELT did not function correctly with no signal being transmitted; a rare failure. Phil Timings, father of Hannah Timings, was reported in the New Zealand media in March 2004 calling on the British Government to pay for high tech “Synthetic Aperture Radar” (SAR) equipment that could possibly locate the missing helicopter. He said: “It is like a giant metal detector and the Americans use them for search and rescue. If they can find downed pilots, they can find Hannah.”
Over coming years it will be interesting to see whether the six missing aircraft, Dragonfly ZK-AFB included, can be located by advancing technology.
NOTE: The author acknowledges published information regarding four of these missing aircraft from the book ‘Missing! Aircraft Missing in New Zealand 1928-2000’ by Chris Rudge (Christchurch, Adventure Air, 2001)

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Dec 05, Red Dragon Rising

“War is not far away”
World War Three within five years? That’s the spectre allegedly raised by a confidential briefing given by China’s former Defence Minister CHI HAOTIAN to his military leadership, a transcript of which has now been leaked to Western intelligence agencies. Haotian says his country needs living space, and will take it by force from the US, Australia and Canada as part of China’s vision for a new global empire.

COMRADES,
I’m very excited today, because the large-scale online survey sina.com that was done for us showed that our next generation is quite promising and our Party’s cause will be carried on. In answering the question, “Will you shoot at women, children and prisoners of war,” more than 80 percent of the respondents answered in the affirmative, exceeding by far our expectations [1].
Today I’d like to focus on why we asked sina.com to conduct this online survey among our people. My speech today is a sequel to my speech last time [2], during which I started with a discussion of the issue of the three islands [3], mentioned that 20 years of the idyllic theme of “peace and development” had come to an end, and concluded that modernization under the sabre is the only option for China’s next phase. I also mentioned we have a vital stake overseas. Today, I’ll speak more specifically on these two issues.
The central issue of this survey appears to be whether one should shoot at women, children and prisoners of war, but its real significance goes far beyond that. Ostensibly, our intention is mainly to figure out what the Chinese people’s attitude towards war is: If these future soldiers do not hesitate to kill even non-combatants, they’ll naturally be doubly ready and ruthless in killing combatants. Therefore, the responses to the survey questions may reflect the general attitude people have towards war.
Actually, however, this is not our genuine intention. The purpose of the CCP Central Committee in conducting this survey is to probe people’s minds. We wanted to know: If China’s global development will necessitate massive deaths in enemy countries, will our people endorse that scenario? Will they be for or against it?
As everybody knows, the essence of Comrade Xiaoping’s [4] thinking is “development is the hard truth.” And Comrade Jintao [5] has also pointed out repeatedly and empathetically that “development is our top priority,” which should not be neglected for even a moment. But many comrades tend to understand “development” in its narrow sense, assuming it to be limited to domestic development. The fact is, our “development” refers to the great revitalization of the Chinese nation, which, of course, is not limited to the land we have now but also includes the whole world.
Why do we put it this way?
Both Comrade Liu Huaqing [6], one of the leaders of the old generation in our Party, and Comrade He Xin [7], a young strategist for our Party, have repeatedly stressed the theory regarding the shift of the center of world civilization. Our slogan of “revitalizing China” has this way of thinking as its basis. You may look into the newspapers and magazines published in recent years or go online to do some research to find out who raised the slogan of national revitalization first. It was Comrade He Xin. Do you know who He Xin is? He may look aggressive and despicable when he speaks in public, with his sleeves and pants all rolled up, but his historical vision is a treasure our Party should cherish.
In discussing this issue, let us start from the beginning.
As everybody knows, according to the views propagated by the Western scholars, humanity as a whole originated from one single mother in Africa. Therefore, no race can claim racial superiority. However, according to the research conducted by most Chinese scholars, the Chinese are different from other races on earth. We did not originate in Africa. Instead, we originated independently in the land of China. The Peking Man at Zhoukoudian that we are all familiar with represents a phase of our ancestors’ evolution. “The Project of Searching for the Origins of the Chinese Civilization” currently undertaken in our country is aimed at a more comprehensive and systematic research on the origin, process and development of the ancient Chinese civilization. We used to say, “Chinese civilization has had a history of five thousand years.” But now, many experts engaged in research in varied fields including archeology, ethnic cultures, and regional cultures have reached consensus that the new discoveries such as the Hongshan Culture in the Northeast, the Liangzhu Culture in Zhejiang province, the Jinsha Ruins in Sichuan province, and the Yongzhou Shun Emperor Cultural Site in Human province are all compelling evidence of the existence of China’s early civilizations, and they prove that China’s rice-growing agricultural history alone can be traced back as far as 8,000 to 10,000 years. This refutes the concept of “five thousand years of Chinese civilization.” Therefore, we can assert that we are the product of cultural roots of more than a million years, civilization and progress of more than ten thousand years, an ancient nation of five thousand years, and a single Chinese entity of two thousand years. This is the Chinese nation that calls itself, “descendents of Yan and Huang,” the Chinese nation that we are so proud of. Hitler’s Germany had once bragged that the German race was the most superior race on Earth, but the fact is, our nation is far superior to the Germans.
During our long history, our people have disseminated throughout the Americas and the regions along the Pacific Rim, and they became Indians in the Americas and the East Asian ethnic groups in the South Pacific.
We all know that on account of our national superi-ority, during the thriving and prosperous Tang Dynasty our civilization was at the peak of the world. We were the center of the world civilization, and no other civilization in the world was comparable to ours. Later on, because of our complacency, narrow-mindedness, and the self-enclosure of our own country, we were surpassed by Western civilization, and the center of the world shifted to the West.
In reviewing history, one may ask: Will the center of the world civilization shift back to China?
If we refer to the 19th Century as the British Century, and the 20th century as the American Century, then the 21st Century will be the Chinese Century.
To understand conscientiously this historical law and to be prepared to greet the advent of the Chinese Century is the historical mission of our Party. As we all know, at the end of the last century, we built the Altar to the Chinese Century in Beijing. At the very moment of the arrival of the new millennium, the collective leadership of the Party Central Committee gathered there for a rally, upholding the torches of Zhoukoudian, to pledge themselves to get ready to greet the arrival of the Chinese Century. We were doing this to follow the historical law and setting the realization of the Chinese Century as the goal of our Party’s endeavors.
Later, in the political report of our Party’s Sixteenth National Congress, we established that the national revitalization be our great objective and explicitly specified in our new Party Constitution that our Party is the pioneer of the Chinese people. All these steps marked a major development in Marxism, reflecting our Party’s courage and wisdom. We must greet the arrival of the Chinese Century by raising high the banner of national revitalization. How should we fight for the realization of the Chinese Century? We must borrow the precious experiences in human history by taking advantage of the outstanding fruition of human civilization and drawing lessons from what happened to other ethnic groups.
The lessons include the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the defeats of Germany and Japan in the past. Recently there has been much discussion on the lessons of the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, so I will not dwell on them here. Today I’d like to talk about the lessons of Germany and Japan.
As we all know, Nazi Germany also placed much emphasis on the education of the people, especially the younger generation. The Nazi party and government organized and established various propaganda and educational institutions such as the “Guiding Bureau of National Propaganda,” “Department of National Education and Propaganda,” “Supervising Bureau of Worldview Study and Education,” and “Information Office,” all aimed at instilling into the people’s minds, from elementary schools to colleges, the idea that German people are superior, and convincing people that the historical mission of the Arian people is to become the “lords of earth” that “rule over the world.” Back then the German people were much more united than we are today.
Nonetheless, Germany was defeated in utter shame, along with its ally, Japan. Why? We reached some conclusions at the study meetings of the Politburo, in which we were searching for the laws that governed the vicissitudes of the big powers, and trying to analyze Germany and Japan’s rapid growth. When we decide to revitalize China based on the German model, we must not repeat the mistakes they made.
Specifically, the following are the fundamental causes for the defeat of Germany and Japan: First, they had too many enemies all at once, as they did not adhere to the principle of eliminating enemies one at a time; second, they were too impetuous, lacking the patience and perseverance required for great accomplishments; third, when the time came for them to be ruthless, they turned out to be too soft, therefore leaving troubles that resurfaced later on.
Our Chinese people are wiser than the Germans because, fundamentally, our race is superior to theirs. As a result, we have a longer history, more people, and larger land area. On this basis, our ancestors left us with the two most essential heritages, which are atheism and great unity. It was Confucius, the founder of our Chinese culture, who gave us these heritages.
These two heritages determined that we have a stronger ability to survive than the West. That is why the Chinese race has been able to prosper for so long. We are destined “not to be buried by either heaven or earth” no matter how severe the natural, man-made, and national disasters. This is our advantage.
Take response to war as an example. The reason that the United States remains today is that it has never seen war on its mainland. Once its enemies aim at the mainland, the enemies would have already reached Washington before its congress finishes debating and authorizes the president to declare war. But for us, we don’t waste time on these trivial things. Comrade Deng Xiaoping once said, “The Party’s leadership is prompt in making decisions. Once a decision is made, it is immediately implemented. There’s no wasting time on trivial things like in capitalist countries. This is our advantage.” Our Party’s democratic centralism is built on the tradition of great unity. Although fascist Germany also stressed high-level centralism, they only focused on the power of the country’s executive, but ignored the collective leadership of the central group. That’s why Hitler was betrayed by many later in his life, which fundamentally depleted the Nazis of their war capacity.
What makes us different from Germany is that we are complete atheists, while Germany was primarily a Catholic and Protestant country. Hitler was only half atheist. Although Hitler also believed that ordinary citizens had low intelligence, and that leaders should therefore make decisions, and although German people worshipped Hitler back then, Germany did not have the tradition of worshipping sages on a broad basis. Our Chinese society has always worshipped sages, and that is because we don’t worship any god. Once you worship a god, you can’t worship a person at the same time, unless you recognize the person as the god’s representative like they do in Middle Eastern countries. On the other hand, once you recognize a person as a sage, of course you will want him to be your leader, instead of monitoring and choosing him. This is the foundation of our democratic centralism.
The bottom line is, only China, not Germany, is a reliable force in resisting the Western parliament-based democratic system. Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany was perhaps but a momentary mistake in history.
Maybe you have now come to understand why we recently decided to further promulgate atheism. If we let theology from the West into China and empty us from the inside, if we let all Chinese people listen to God and follow God, who will obediently listen to us and follow us? If the common people don’t believe Comrade Hu Jintao is a qualified leader, question his authority, and want to monitor him, if the religious followers in our society question why we are leading God in churches, can our Party continue to rule China?
Germany’s dream to be the “lord of the earth” failed, because ultimately, history did not bestow this great mission upon them. But the three lessons Germany learned from experience are what we ought to remember as we complete our historic mission and revitalize our race. The three lessons are: Firmly grasp the country’s living space, firmly grasp the Party’s control over the nation, and firmly grasp the general direction toward becoming the “lord of the earth.”
Next, I’d like to address these three issues.
The first issue is living space. This is the biggest focus of the revitalization of the Chinese race. In my last speech, I said that the fight over basic living resources (including land and ocean) is the source of the vast majority of wars in history. This may change in the information age, but not fundamentally. Our per capita resources are much less than those of Germany’s back then. In addition, economic development in the last twenty-plus years had a negative impact, and climates are rapidly changing for the worse. Our resources are in very short supply. The environment is severely polluted, especially that of soil, water, and air. Not only our ability to sustain and develop our race, but even its survival is gravely threatened, to a degree much greater than faced Germany back then.
Anybody who has been to Western countries knows that their living space is much better than ours. They have forests alongside the highways, while we hardly have any trees by our streets. Their sky is often blue with white clouds, while our sky is covered with a layer of dark haze. Their tap water is clean enough for drinking, while even our ground water is so polluted that it can’t be drunk without filtering. They have few people in the streets, and two or three people can occupy a small residential building; in contrast, our streets are always crawling with people, and several people have to share one room.
Many years ago, there was a book titled Yellow Catastrophes. It said that, due to our following the American style of consumption, our limited resources would no longer support the population and society would collapse, once our population reaches 1.3 billion. Now our population has already exceeded this limit, and we are now relying on imports to sustain our nation. It’s not that we haven’t paid attention to this issue. The Ministry of Land Resources is specialized in this issue.
But the term “living space” (lebensraum) is too closely related to Nazi Germany. The reason we don’t want to discuss this too openly is to avoid the West’s association of us with Nazi Germany, which could in turn reinforce the view that China is a threat. Therefore, in our emphasis on He Xin’s new theory, “Human rights are just living rights,” we only talk about “living,” but not “space,” so as to avoid using the term “living space.” From the perspective of history, the reason that China is faced with the issue of living space is because Western countries have developed ahead of Eastern countries. Western countries established colonies all around the world, therefore giving themselves an advantage on the issue of living space. To solve this problem, we must lead the Chinese people outside of China, so that they could develop outside of China.
The second issue is our focus on the leadership capacity of the ruling party. We’ve done better on this than their party. Although the Nazis spread their power to every aspect of the German national government, they did not stress their absolute leadership position like we have. They did not take the issue of managing the power of the party as first priority, which we have. When Comrade Mao Zedong summarized the “three treasures” of our party’s victory in conquering the country, he considered the most important “treasure” to be developing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and strengthening its leadership position.
We have to focus on two points to fortify our leadership position and improve our leadership capacity.
The first is to promote the “Three Represents” theory [8], stressing that our Party is the pioneer of the Chinese race, in addition to being the pioneer of the proletariat. Many citizens say in private, “We never voted for you, the Communist Party, to represent us. How can you claim to be our representatives?”
There’s no need to worry about this issue. Comrade Mao Zedong said that if we could lead our allies to victory and make them benefit, they would support us. Therefore, as long as we can lead the Chinese people outside of China, resolving the lack of living space in China, the Chinese people will support us. At that time, we don’t have to worry about the labels of “totalitarianism” or “dictatorship.” Whether we can forever represent the Chinese people depends on whether we can succeed in leading the Chinese people out of China.
The second point, whether we can lead the Chinese people out of China, is the most important determinant of the CCP’s leadership position.
Why do I say this?
Everyone knows that without the leadership of our Party, China would not exist today. Therefore, our highest principle is to forever protect our Party’s leadership posi-tion. Before June 4 [Tianenmen Square], we realized vaguely that as long as China’s economy is developed, people would support and love the Communist Party. Therefore we had to use several decades of peacetime to develop China’s economy. No matter what -isms, whether it is a white cat or a black cat, it is a good cat if it can develop China’s economy. But at that time, we did not have mature ideas about how China would deal with international disputes after its economy is developed.
Comrade Xiaoping said then that the main themes in the world were peace and development. But the June 4 riot gave our Party a warning and gave us a lesson that is still fresh. The pressure of China’s peaceful evolution makes us reconsider the main themes of our time. We see that neither of these two issues, peace and development, have been resolved. The western oppositional forces always change the world according to their own visions; they want to change China and use peaceful evolution to overturn the leadership of our Communist Party. Therefore, if we only develop the economy, we still face the possibility of losing control.
That June 4 riot almost succeeded in bringing a peaceful transition; if it were not for the fact that a large number of veteran comrades were still alive and at a crucial moment they removed Zhao Ziyang and his followers, then we all would have been put in prison. After death we would have been too ashamed to report to Marx. Although we have passed the test of June 4, after our group of senior comrades pass away, without our control, peaceful evolution may still come to China like it did to the former Soviet Union. In 1956, they suppressed the Hungarian Incident and defeated the attacks by Tito’s revisionists of Yugoslavia, but they could not withstand Gorbachev thirty some years later. Once those pioneering senior comrades died, the power of the Communist Party was taken away by peaceful evolution.
After the June 4 riot was suppressed, we have been thinking about how to prevent China from peaceful evolution and how to maintain the Communist Party’s leadership. We thought it over and over but did not come up with any good ideas. If we do not have good ideas, China will inevitably change peacefully, and we will all become criminals in history. After some deep pondering, we finally come to this conclusion: Only by turning our developed national strength into the force of a fist striking outward – only by leading people to go out – can we win forever the Chinese people’s support and love for the Communist Party. Our Party will then stand on invincible ground, and the Chinese people will have to depend on the Communist Party. They will forever follow the Communist Party with their hearts and minds, as was written in a couplet frequently seen in the countryside some years ago: “Listen to Chairman Mao, Follow the Communist Party!” Therefore, the June 4 riot made us realize that we must combine economic development with preparation for war and leading the people to go out! Therefore, since then, our national defense policy has taken a 180 degree turn and we have since emphasized more and more “combining peace and war.” Our economic development is all about preparing for the need of war! Publicly we still emphasize economic development as our center, but in reality, economic development has war as its center! We have made a tremendous effort to construct “The Great Wall Project” to build up, along our coastal and land frontiers as well as around large and medium-sized cities, a solid underground “Great Wall” that can withstand a nuclear war. We are also storing all necessary war materials. Therefore, we will not hesitate to fight a Third World War, so as to lead the people to go out and to ensure the Party’s leadership position. In any event, we, the CCP, will never step down from the stage of history! We’d rather have the whole world, or even the entire globe, share life and death with us than step down from the stage of history!!! Isn’t there a ‘nuclear bondage’ theory? It means that since nuclear weapons have bound the security of the entire world, all will die together if death is inevitable. In my view, there is another kind of bondage, and that is, the fate our Party is tied up with that of the whole world. If we, the CCP, are finished, China will be finished, and the world will be finished.
Our Party’s historical mission is to lead the Chinese people to go out. If we take the long view, we will see that history led us on this path. First, China’s long history has resulted in the world’s largest population, including Chinese in China as well as overseas. Second, once we open our doors, the profit-seeking western capitalists will invest capital and technology in China to assist our development, so that they can occupy the biggest market in the world. Third, our numerous overseas Chinese help us create the most favorable environment for the introduction of foreign capital, foreign technology and advanced experience into China. Thus, it is guaranteed that our reform and open-door policy will achieve tremendous success. Fourth, China’s great economic expansion will inevitably lead to the shrinkage of per-capita living space for the Chinese people, and this will encourage China to turn outward in search for new living space. Fifth, China’s great economic expansion will inevitably come with a significant development in our military forces, creating conditions for our expansion overseas. Even since Napoleon’s time, the West has been has been alert for the possible awakening of the sleeping lion that is China. Now, the sleeping lion is standing up and advancing into the world, and has become unstoppable!
What is the third issue we should clinch firmly in order to accomplish our historical mission of national renaissance? It is to hold firmly onto the big “issue of America.”
Comrade Mao Zedong taught us that we must have a resolute and correct political orientation. What is our key, correct orientation? It is to solve the issue of America.
This appears to be shocking, but the logic is actually very simple.
Comrade He Xin put forward a very fundamental judgment that is very reasonable. He asserted in his report to the Party Central Committee: The renaissance of China is in fundamental conflict with the western strategic interest, and therefore will inevitably be obstructed by the western countries doing everything they can. So, only by breaking the blockade formed by the western countries headed by the United States can China grow and move towards the world!
Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan and some other countries! Second, even if we could snatch some land from Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.
Therefore, solving the “issue of America” is the key to solving all other issues. First, this makes it possible for us to have many people migrate there and even establish another China under the same leadership of the CCP. America was originally discovered by the ancestors of the yellow race, but Columbus gave credit to the white race. We the descendents of the Chinese nation are entitled to the possession of the land! It is said that the residents of the yellow race have a very low social status in United States. We need to liberate them. Second, after solving the “issue of America,” the western countries in Europe would bow to us, not to mention to Taiwan, Japan and other small countries. Therefore, solving the “issue of America” is the mission assigned to CCP members by history.
I sometimes think how cruel it is for China and the United States to be enemies that are bound to meet on a narrow road! Do you remember a movie about Liberation Army troops led by Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping? The title is something like “Decisive Battle on the Central Plains.” There is a famous remark in the movie that is full of power and grandeur: “The enemies are bound to meet on a narrow road, only the brave will win!” It is this kind of fighting to win or die spirit that enabled us to seize power in Mainland China. It is historical destiny that China and United States will come into unavoidable confrontation on a narrow path and fight each other! The United States, unlike Russia and Japan, has never occupied and hurt China, and also assisted China in its battle against the Japanese. But, it will certainly be an obstruction, and the biggest obstruction! In the long run, the relationship of China and the United States is one of a life-and-death struggle.
One time, some Americans came to visit and tried to convince us that the relationship between China and United States is one of interdependence. Comrade Xiaoping replied in a polite manner: “Go tell your government, China and the United States do not have such a relationship that is interdependent and mutually reliant.” Actually, Comrade Xiaoping was being too polite, he could have been more frank, “The relationship between China and United States is one of a life-and-death struggle.” Of course, right now it is not the time to openly break up with them yet. Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology, we still need America. Therefore, we must do everything we can to promote our relationship with America, learn from America in all aspects and use America as an example to reconstruct our country.
How have we managed our foreign affairs in these years? Even if we had to put on a smiling face in order to please them, even if we had to give them the right cheek after they had hit our left cheek, we still must endure in order to further our relationship with the United States. Do you remember the character of Wuxun in the movie the “Story of Wuxun”? In order to accomplish his mission, he endured so much pain and suffered so much beating and kicking! The United States is the most successful country in the world today. Only after we have learned all of its useful experiences can we replace it in the future. Even though we are presently imitating the American tone “China and United States rely on each other and share honor and disgrace,” we must not forget that the history of our civilization repeatedly has taught us that one mountain does not allow two tigers to live together.
We also must never forget what Comrade Xiaoping emphasized “refrain from revealing the ambitions and put others off the track.” The hidden message is: we must put up with America; we must conceal our ultimate goals, hide our capabilities and await the opportunity. In this way, our mind is clear. Why have we not updated our national anthem with something peaceful? Why did we not change the anthem’s theme of war? Instead, when revising the Constitution this time, for the first time we clearly specified “March of the Volunteers” is our national anthem. Thus we will understand why we constantly talk loudly about the “Taiwan issue” but not the “American issue.” We all know the principle of “doing one thing under the cover of another.” If ordinary people can only see the small island of Taiwan in their eyes, then you as the elite of our country should be able to see the whole picture of our cause. Over these years, according to Comrade Xiaoping’s arrangement, a large piece of our territory in the North has been given up to Russia; do you really think our Party Central Committee is a fool?
To resolve the issue of America we must be able to tran-scend conventions and restrictions. In history, when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land, because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabres or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns. Therefore, it was impossible to gain a stretch of land without keeping the people on that land. However, if we conquered America in this fashion, we would not be able to make many people migrate there.
Only by using special means to “clean up” America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us. This is not a matter of whether we are willing to do it or not. What kind of special means is there available for us to “clean up” America? Conventional weapons such as fighters, canons, missiles and battleships won’t do; neither will highly destructive weapons such as nuclear weapons. We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons, despite the fact that we have been exclaiming that we will have the Taiwan issue resolved at whatever cost. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves. There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio weapons have been invented one after another. Of course we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country.
From a humanitarian perspective, we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America and leave the land they have lived in to the Chinese people. Or at least they should leave half of the United States to be China’s colony, because America was first discovered by the Chinese. But would this work? If this strategy does not work, then there is only one choice left to us. That is, use decisive means to “clean up” America, and reserve America for our use in a moment. Our historical experience has proven that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as the leader is gone, then other enemies have to surrender to us.
Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people are strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. According to the computation of the author of Yellow Peril, more than half of the Chinese will die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people! Just after the liberation, our yellow land supported nearly 500 million people, while today the official figure of the population is more than 1.3 billion. This yellow land has reached the limit of its capacity. One day, who knows how soon it will come, the great collapse will occur any time and more than half of the population will have to go.
We must prepare ourselves for two scenarios. If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack [on the United States, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States. If, however, the attack fails and triggers a nuclear retaliation from the United States, China would perhaps suffer a catastrophe in which more than half of its population would perish. That is why we need to be ready with air defense systems for our big and medium-sized cities. Whatever the case may be, we can only move forward fearlessly for the sake of our Party and state and our nation’s future, regardless of the hardships we have to face and the sacrifices we have to make. The population, even if more than half dies, can be reproduced. But if the Party falls, everything is gone, and forever gone!
In Chinese history, in the replacement of dynasties, the ruthless have always won and the benevolent have always failed. The most typical example involved Xiang Yu the King of Chu, who, after defeating Liu Bang, failed to continue to chase after him and eliminate his forces, and this leniency resulted in Xiang Yu’s death and Liu’s victory (during the war between Chu and Han, just after the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC) was overthrown). Therefore, we must emphasize the importance of adopting resolute measures. In the future, the two rivals, China and the United States, will eventually meet each other in a narrow road, and our leniency to the Americans will mean cruelty toward the Chinese people.
Old comrades like us cannot afford to wait that long, for we don’t have that much time to live. Old soldiers of my age may be able to wait for five or ten more years, but those from the period of the Anti-Japanese War or the few old Red Army soldiers cannot wait any longer. History has proved that any social turmoil is likely to involve many deaths. Maybe we can put it this way: death is the engine that moves history forward. During the period of Three Kingdoms [9], how many people died? When Genghis Khan conquered Eurasia, how many people died? When Manchu invaded the interior of China, how many people died? Not many people died during the 1911 Revolution, but when we overthrew the Three Great Mountains [10], and during the political campaigns such as “Suppression of reactionaries,” “Three-Anti Campaign,” and “Five-Anti Campaign” at least 20 million people died. We were apprehensive that some young people today would be trembling with fear when they hear about wars or people dying. During wartime, we were used to seeing dead people. Blood and flesh were flying everywhere, corpses were lying in heaps on the fields, and blood ran like rivers. We saw it all. On the battlefields, everybody’s eyes turned red with killing because it was a life-and-death struggle and only the brave would survive.
It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the CCP leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths. But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we’d have to pick the latter, as, for us, it is more important to safeguard the lives of the Chinese people and the life of our Party. That is because, after all, we are Chinese and members of the CCP. Since the day we joined the CCP, the Party’s life has always been above all else! History will prove that we made the right choice.
Now, when I am about to finish my speech, you prob-ably understand why we conducted this online sur-vey. Simply put, through conducting this online sur-vey we wanted to know whether the people would rise against us if one day we secretly adopt resolute means to “clean up” America. Would more people support us or oppose us? This is our basic judgment: if our people approve of shooting at prisoners of war, women and children, then they would approve our “cleaning up” America. For over twenty years, China has been enjoying peace, and a whole generation has not been tested by war. In particular, since the end of World War II, there have been many changes in the formats of war, the concept of war and the ethics of war. Especially since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European Communist states, the ideology of the West has come to dominate the world as a whole, and the Western theory of human nature and Western view of human rights have increasingly disseminated among the young people in China. Therefore, we were not very sure about the people’s attitude. If our people are fundamentally opposed to “cleaning up” America, we will, of course, have to adopt corresponding measures.
Why didn’t we conduct the survey through administrative means instead of through the web? We did what we did for a good reason.
First of all, we did it to reduce artificial inference and to make sure that we got the true thoughts of the people. In addition, it is more confidential and won’t reveal the true purpose of our survey. But what is most important is the fact that most of the people who are able to respond to the questions online are from social groups that are relatively well-educated and intelligent. They are the hard-core and leading groups that play a decisive role among our people. If they support us, then the people as a whole will follow us; if they oppose us, they will play the dangerous role of inciting people and creating social disturbance.
What turned out to be very comforting is they did not turn in a blank test paper. In fact, they turned in a test paper with a score of over 80%. This is the excellent fruition of our Party’s work in propaganda and education over the past few decades.
Of course, a few people under the Western influence have objected to shooting at prisoners of war and women and children. Some of them said, “It is shocking and scary to witness so many people approving of shooting at women and children. Is everybody crazy?” Some others said, “The Chinese love to label themselves as a peace-loving people, but actually they are the most ruthless people. The comments are resonant of killing and murdering, sending chills to my heart.”
Although there are not too many people holding this kind of viewpoint and they will not affect the overall situation in any significant way, but we still need to strengthen the propaganda to respond to this kind of argument.
That is to vigorously propagate Comrade He Xin’s latest article, which has already been reported to the central government. You may look it up on the website.
If you get on the website using key words to search, you will find out that a while ago, comrade He Xin pointed out to the Hong Kong Business News during an interview that: “The US has a shocking conspiracy.” According to what he had in hand, from September 27 to October 1, 1995, the Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachëv Foundation, funded by the United States, gathered 500 of the world’s most important statesmen, economic leaders and scientists, including George W. Bush (he was not the US president at the time), the Baroness Thatcher, Tony Blair, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as George Soros, Bill Gates, futurist John Naisbitt, etc., all of the world’s most popular characters, in the San Francisco Fairmont hotel for a high-level round table conference, discussing problems about globalization and how to guide humanity to move forward into the 21st century. According to what He Xin had in hand, the outstanding people of the world in attendance thought that in the 21st century a mere 20% of the world’s population will be sufficient to maintain the world’s economy and prosperity, the other 80% or 4/5 of the world’s population will be human garbage unable to produce new values. The people in attendance thought that this excess 80% population would be a trash population and “high-tech” means should be used to eliminate them gradually.
Since the enemies are secretly planning to eliminate our population, we certainly cannot be infinitely merciful and compassionate to them. Comrade He Xin’s article came out at the right time, it has proven the correctness of our tit for tat battle approach, has proven Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s great foresight to deploy against the United States military strategy.
Certainly, in spreading Comrade He Xin’s views, we cannot publish the article in the party newspapers, in order to avoid raising the enemy’s vigilance. He Xin’s conversation may remind the enemy that we have grasped the modern science and technology, including “clean” nuclear technology, gene weapons technology as well as biological weapons technology, and we can use powerful measures to eliminate their population on a large-scale.
The central committee believes, as long as we resolve the United States problem at one blow, our domestic problems will all be readily solved. Therefore, our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan, but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites.
Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife for the birth of the new society. Therefore war is the midwife for the birth of China’s century. As war approaches, I am full of hope for our next generation.

SIDEBAR:
New Chinese Missile Could Hit NZ and Australia
By Martin Sieff

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (UPI) — The Pentagon’s latest assessment of China’s military power said Beijing would deploy a new mobile nuclear missile, the DF-31, in 2005-2006 and the new missile was capable of hitting Australia in an arc from Brisbane to Perth, the Herald Sun newspaper reported Sunday.
In 2007-2009, China is planning to deploy a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-31A, which has a far greater range and would be able to strike any Australian city, New Zealand and most of the United States with a one megaton warhead, the report said.
At present, China’s strategic nuclear weapons have been based in silos. They are liquid-fueled, making them easier targets for satellites to pick up and to strike. But the new and mobile DF-31s are solid-fueled, have a longer range and are much harder to detect…

FROM THE EDITOR
The preceding speech was supposed to be part of a secure briefing to Chinese military leaders, but it is understood a faction disagreeing with Haotian’s “Fourth Reich” plans were behind the leaking of the transcript to the West. Although it has only recently hit the public domain, the speech appears to suffer from assumptions made about it, such as the suggestion in internet versions that he was making the speech as Defence Minister and a vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. Haotian vacated that role in 2002, and retired as Defence Minister in 2003. He remains to this day however a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, which appears to be the context he is speaking from when he says: “The purpose of the CCP Central Committee in conducting this survey is to probe people’s minds. We wanted to know…”
Some critics have questioned the authenticity of the document because its first public appearance was on a Falun Gong website, but this ignores the reality that the Falun Gong movement is well-entrenched in Chinese society with its own highly-placed sources.
More important, in determining authenticity, is whether the speech can be corroborated by other comments or actions of Chi Haotian or the Chinese authorities which would show the latest speech is not a radical departure but in fact a further step on a pathway China is heading down.
To that end, Chi Haotian has issued similar statements publicly in the recent past, notably in 1999: “Seen from the changes in the world situation and the United States’ hegemonic strategy for creating monopolarity, war is inevitable. We cannot avoid it. The issue is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative in this war. We must make sure that we win.”
In a top-level analysis of China’s military ambitions published last year (before the appearance of the Haotian speech), intelligence analysts at the Strategic Studies Institute in the US talk of new concepts emerging inside the People’s Liberation Army:
“An example of this is the concept of obtaining a ‘silver bullet’ technology to make the PLA more powerful. The term shashoujian (assassin’s mace) now has currency. In classical Chinese military thought, ‘assassin’s mace’ is used to indicate a secret weapon or method used by a person or group to triumph over a stronger adversary…Whether this concept is PLA’s way of defeating a superior military force or a reference to a specific weapon or program within the Chinese military is not clear. In tactical and operational-level PLA literature, ‘assassin’s mace’ seems to refer to unconventional tactics, asymmetrical warfare and even ‘miracle weapons’ that could be used to negate the combat and technological advantages of a stronger adversary.”
The commentary goes on to note that one of the China specialists consulted for the study, Jason Bruzdzinski, “is troubled by the possibility that Chinese leaders would be more willing to risk military action due to their belief that specific advanced weapons would give them a sudden victory.
“What worries Bruzdzinski is the notion that China’s leadership could decide to order a PLA equipped with a few such advanced weapons into what would almost certainly be a disastrous conflict with the United States.
“He argues that not enough is known about the concept and possible weapons being developed to support it. Bruzdzinski says questions regarding the PLA’s approach to such ‘silver bullet’ weapons…need serious attention and further study by academic and governmental PLA watchers.”
The analysis, and remember it pre-dates the publication of Chi Haotian’s speech, also corroborates the point about China’s need for Western investment to build the military industrial complex it seeks.
“The money for PLA modernization requires continued economic growth. Were this growth to drop from its current pace, so too would the money available to the PLA.”
The concept of China having to fight a major, possibly nuclear, war with the United States is known in Chinese literature as the “People’s War” doctrine. Chi Haotian, again, has been on the record on the likelihood of this in the Liberation Army Daily newspaper in 1998, where he stated “Under high tech conditions, we still need to insist on People’s War…[which] is the product of historical and dialectical materialism.”
The view that communist control of the Chinese Army should form part of national religious significance is reinforced by comments in 1996 from President Jiang Zemin, who called on the PLA to be in the vanguard of creating a “spiritual civilization” – said by the Hoover Institute to be standard code for the imposition of socialist ethics.
In July this year, PLA Major General Zhu Chenghu threatened nuclear first strikes against the United States, a comment that captured worldwide attention but which was dismissed as mere saber-rattling. Seen in the context of the Haotian speech however, the question for New Zealand, Australia and the West is: what if it isn’t? Ian Wishart

FOOTNOTES
[1] Sina.com is one of the largest on-line media corporations in China. The on-line survey was launched by sina.com’s branch Sina Military (jczs.sina.com.cn). It started on February 2 and ended on March 1, 2004 and there were 31,872 persons who filled out the survey. The web page for this on-line survey is at “http://jczs.sina.com.cn/2004-02-02/1644180066.html” but this page has been removed and cannot be viewed.
The question was “If you are a soldier, and if are under the orders of your commanding officers, will you shoot at women, children and prisoners of war?” 34% of the visitors answered they would shoot under any circumstances even without permission from their commanding officer. 48.6% of the visitors replied that they would shoot when the lives of themselves or their companies are threatened. Only 3.8% of the participants held they would not shoot under any circumstances. Those who agreed to shoot were mostly under the age of 25.
[2] “War Is Approaching Us”, January 2003
[3] “Three islands” refer to Taiwan, Diaoyu Islands, and Spratly Islands.
[4] Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997). Officially, Deng was the leader of the CCP and China from 1978-89. Actually, after Mao’s death in 1976 Deng became the de facto leader of China until Deng finally died
in 1997.
[5] Hu Jintao (1942-). Leader of the “fourth generation” of CCP officials. In 2003, Hu became President of the People’s Republic
of China.
[6] Liu Huaqing (1916-). Commander of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy from 1982 through 1988, vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission (until 1997). Liu is considered to be responsible for the PLA’s modernization efforts.
[7] He Xin (1949-). Senior Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
[8] “Three Represents” states that the CCP represents the requirement to develop advanced productive forces, an orientation towards advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people in China. It was put forward by Jiang Zemin, former Chinese president.
[9] Three Kingdoms refer to Wei, Shu, and Wu, three countries that overlapped the land of China during the period A.D. 220-80.
[10] “Three great mountains” were said according to the CCP to have weighed on the backs of the Chinese people – imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic-capitalism.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Investigate Dec 05, Strip Mining the Sea

SO LONG & THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

It’s happening off the New Zealand coast and, as PAUL SALOPEK discovers, it’s happening around the world: massive over-fishing by major companies strip-mining the sea of fish, and raising questions of sustainability

Sunset, five kms off the coast of Angola – Strange blue stars are appear-ing in the west. False stars. They rise unnaturally, against the usual migration of the constellations, from the smooth dark skull of the Atlantic. These are the deck lights of the foreign poachers. They are Chinese boats, mostly: big diesel-powered trawlers slipping inshore to plunder Angola’s rich waters. The fish they come to steal – teeming shoals of hake, sole and grouper – are frozen and shipped to warehouses in Asia, the Pacific, Europe and the United States. If you eat packaged seafood, some will end up on your plate.
By contrast, the open boat Daniana fades into the dusk. It is an Angolan catronga, a frail, eight metre-long craft that rides the waves like a lurching coffin, and it leaks. A waterlogged Portuguese Bible is its only emergency gear. Rusty wires angle up from the rails to a tubular steel mast. Draping them, the skins of flayed moray eels flap in the salty breeze like macabre scalps.
“Whore pirates,” mutters Antonio Rodriguez, the skipper, peering through the gathering darkness at his enemy. “Taking the food right out of our mouths.”
A skinny 27-year-old Angolan fisherman, Rodriguez orders his five gristly crewmen to battle stations. He places baseball-size rocks around the greasy deck – crude artillery should the marauders draw close.
This is an act of desperation. Because in the increasingly violent struggle over the planet’s last wild fish stocks – a sprawling, global food war replete with rammed boats, frenzied nighttime chases and nameless bodies washing up on desolate beaches – the outcome is all but settled.
For more than 50 years, the motorized fishing fleets of the industrial world have scoured the wide seas, hauling up a seemingly endless bounty of seafood.
But as global fish populations shrivel – and especially since the richest nations have sealed off their coastlines inside 200-mile “exclusive economic zones” – the crews of thousands of steel-hulled trawlers from the developed world have taken to raiding or buying their way into the waters of the poor.
The result: a showdown over scarce protein in which some 20 million ragged traditional fishermen such as Rodriguez are the inevitable losers.
“We are witnessing the last buffalo hunt at sea,” says Reg Watson, a researcher at the University of British Columbia who has helped document steep declines in the world’s key seafood stocks since the 1960s. “Our southern oceans are becoming the new Wild West.”
And so it goes tonight on the remote frontier shores of Angola. As the waves darken to matte black, an armada of international trawlers sneaks inside a four-mile coastal zone reserved exclusively for local fishermen.
Aboard the Daniana, one of Rodriguez’s crewmen staggers to the rolling bow. His job: to frantically hand-haul the anchor – a stone tied to a rope – in case a foreign ship bears down on the Angolans.
Rodriguez tosses a baited hook over the side. He wheezes a Portuguese love ballad. The others, too, begin to sing, though none sings the same song.
This is the Angolans’ secret weapon: They claim to “sing up” the fish. But as the fishless hours drag on through the night, it’s clear the old juju isn’t working. The fish are deaf. Or, more likely, the heavy nets towed by the outsiders have dragged away the submerged rocks that have sheltered schools of fish for centuries. Rocks the Angolans locate as if by feel, using mental maps passed down from father to son. Maps now being wiped clean by the pirates.
Dawn finds the fishermen of the Daniana sprawled in their squalid boat. They are exhausted. Bitter. Confused by the lack of fish. They bicker. One crewman hooks a razor-toothed eel. Pounding it angrily with a shark club made from a length of old water pipe, he chants, “Piratas! Piratas! Piratas!”
Rodriguez pretends not to hear. He stares numbly out to open sea, slapping the back of his head with a callused palm. As if somehow the pirates were trawling in there also, wreaking havoc on the remembered ocean.
When does a frontier vanish?
The most fabled one of all, the American West, expired in a spasm of violence known as the Range Wars more than a century ago – a vicious fight among settlers over control of the last of the unfenced prairie.
This is precisely what is happening today as the seas’ once-vast shoals of fish fade into memory.
Nobody can accurately count ocean fish, but a growing body of research indicates that the world’s seafood supply peaked sometime in the late 1980s. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the agency responsible for tracking the health of the oceans, now estimates that three-quarters of the world’s fish stocks are either depleted or hunted to the brink of collapse.
This global food crisis hasn’t yet hit the display cases of First World supermarkets, U.N. analysts say, partly because fishermen are “fishing down the food chain” for smaller, less appetizing species – and because they have been dipping their nets into the marine larders of the developing world.
Roughly half of the seafood eaten in the United States today, for example, is pulled from distant oceans. Import figures show that much of this catch comes from southern waters via China, Mexico and Peru.
Fleets of modern trawlers – efficient fish-killing machines equipped with huge nets, onboard freezers and satellite guidance systems – have been stampeding across the equator for decades, of course, and even more so in recent years as northern fishing grounds have played out. Most fish legally, paying cash-starved governments for the right to harvest their coasts. But lately, as even these end-of-the-world pockets of fish start to vanish, impoverished nations are scrambling to guard their fading riches with air patrols. And before that door closes, desperate crews are turning to what marine scientists call “illicit biomass extraction.”
In a word, piracy.
“If you buy fish in a store, do you know where it comes from?” asks a recent U.N. report on the alarming 100 percent rise in fishing piracy over the past decade. “It might be stolen from the poor. It could even have cost lives.”
Pirate fishing has many guises: outright poaching in another nation’s territorial waters; buying local fishing rights but then flouting established catch quotas; and using prohibited gear, such as small-mesh nets, to indiscriminately vacuum the host nation’s resource.
The result is the same. The fish disappear. And the world’s remaining seafood is tainted with violence as impoverished local fishermen fight for their survival.
In Senegal, fishers in hand-dug canoes have been plowed under by European trawlers. Indonesian gunboats now protect domestic fishermen by blasting foreign poachers out of the water. And bizarre cops-and-robbers chases have begun roiling even Antarctica’s remote seas: Last year, an Australian patrol boat pursued a sea bass pirate more than 4,000 miles across the bottom of the world.
But the ultimate redoubt of the fishing wars — conflicts that northern consumers benefit from but hardly know exist — is the immensely long, untamed and vulnerable shoreline of sub-Saharan Africa.
For decades, European, Russian, Japanese and Korean boats — both legal and piratical — have raked Africa’s rich continental shelves. Now China, a powerful new player in the world’s fish race, has steamed into the African battlefield.
“It’s like the end of the world,” says Antonio Rodriguez, the bewildered Angolan skipper of the Daniana. “We don’t stand a chance.”
Angola’s wild, beautiful, 1,600-km seashore is typical of most in Africa. Three government patrol boats, often docked for lack of fuel, theoretically guard territorial waters as long as the U.S. Western Seaboard. Foreign trawlers have hammered patches of coastline so hard that fish have become locally scarce — a blow to a nation where a million people rely on U.N. food aid.
“It’s not worth going to sea,” says Jose Texeira da Cunha, an unemployed fisherman in Tombua, a forgotten port of crumbling stone houses and old fish meal factories corroding to rust. “You have to stay out for three days to get the same catches you once got in eight hours.”
A dollar a day is the best living most fishermen can hope to wring out of the ocean, da Cunha says. Now some refugees from Angola’s fishing wars are even pushing into deserted coastline, seeking more fish.
On virgin beaches, they clap together raw outposts of corrugated zinc and flotsam washed up by the Atlantic. Skinny-legged, bull-chested, shouting gruffly, the men heave their plank boats through the breakers at dawn. And their wives and rag-clad children ululate and dance on the sand, wishing them luck. The seamen wave goodbye in silence. They hold up both arms in an attitude of surrender.
To understand why Angola has emerged as a hotbed of the oceanic food wars, you must rent a Jeep, load it with fuel and water, and drive south from the nation’s monumentally dilapidated capital of Luanda.
You will traverse a country almost twice the size of Texas, utterly wrecked by civil war. Though Angola’s 27-year-long fratricide finally ended in 2002, its people remain dazed and exhausted. Bullet-pocked towns still lack basic amenities such as power and water. Roads are mere smears of dirt. Indeed, past Tombua, on the remote southern coast, they disappear altogether.
This is the edge of the Namib Desert. And here the route hugs the coast. If you pass a driftwood cairn topped by a human skull, you are on the right track.
Park at roughly 17 degrees south latitude. Camp in a bay where hyenas nose the surf, digging up the eggs of sea turtles. Then climb a sand dune at first light.
There, facing the sea, you will witness one of the great natural wonders of the world: bronze sunlight glinting off countless millions of mullets, kob, sardines, garrick and elf that swim in the rollers like specimens trapped inside immense, translucent aquariums. Behind these glittering clouds of fish loom the silhouettes of monstrous sharks. It is a mesmerizing scene. A glimpse of the primordial majesty of the sea. In terms of sheer fish abundance and biodiversity, no other marine ecosystem in the world – excepting Chile’s Humboldt Current – can match it.
This dazzling display of aquatic life is a rarity, one of the last unfished corners of Africa. It owes its existence to the storminess of the local seas, and to a strange dance of waters called the Angola-Benguela Frontal Zone.
Cold currents from the South Pole and warm currents from the equator collide along the lonesome beaches of Namibia and southern Angola. A comparable boundary on land would thrust together the frosty tundra of the Yukon and the sweltering grasslands of the Serengeti – a bizarre overlap of moose and zebra.
Yet this is exactly what happens in the ocean off southern Af-rica. Scientists have compared the swarms of intermixing warm-and cool-water fishes on Angola’s seaboard to a “ma-rine Amazon.” Meanwhile, only last year, European biolo-gists stumbled across an even more species-rich habitat farther offshore, on the 5,000 metre deep seabed: 80 percent of the hundreds of organisms dredged up by a German-led expedition were new to science.
“Whole sections of this coast belong in marine reserves,” says Tamar Ron, an Israeli ecologist and the only environmental adviser on the staff of the U.N. Development Program in Angola. “But there is no political will to protect anything here. No baseline data exists. Nobody funds studies. So we will never know what’s being lost through overfishing.”
But noble causes such as marine sanctuaries or “no take” zones – a concept that is rapidly gaining momentum in conservation circles as global fish populations stagnate or collapse – can seem faintly absurd to the beleaguered fishermen of Africa.
Some policemen stationed, for example, on the remote island of Ilha dos Tigres, Angola’s only official marine environmental preserve, don’t protect wildlife; they terrorize bird, seal and turtle nesting grounds with their drunken target practice, local villagers say. Angolan seamen also tell stories of having their shoes and meager catches stolen by officers.
On the feral shores of Angola, even the good guys are flint-hearted.
“This is one of the last good places left on Earth,” insists Bruce Bennett, the closest thing to a conservationist on Angola’s outlaw coast. “But they’re destroying it real fast. It won’t last 10 years.”
Once an up-and-coming biologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Bennett pioneered research on the ecological benefits of marine reserves. But he turned his back on academia a decade ago to become a fishing guide in Angola.
Sandpapery, broiled red by the tropical sun, he sports a threadbare pair of shorts and hasn’t worn shoes for years. Local Angolans have dubbed him Tarzan. He presides over a tin-roofed fishing camp where he rails against international fishing poachers and the garbage they toss into the sea, polluting Angola’s pristine beaches.
Then, poker-faced, he tells this story:
Out casting on the beach one day, he spotted four men rolling in the waves. Two were dead already – drowned – and the others were alive but ranting. They were Congolese stowaways pitched overboard by the crew of a passing cargo ship, standard practice in Angola’s cutthroat waters. Bennett dutifully covered the corpses’ gull-pecked faces and offered water to the survivors. Then he kept on angling up the shore. Only when he had bagged his self-imposed limit of lira, a spirited surf predator, did he load the Congolese, alive and dead, into his truck and cart them off to the police.
“Fish learn,” Antonio Rodriguez is insisting.
It is the second day at sea aboard the hard-luck Daniana.
The boat creaks as if under the iron weight of the African sunlight. The Punta Grossa lighthouse, gutted by war, stares blindly down from faraway desert cliffs. Gray and empty, the Atlantic stretches away like a fogged mirror.
Rodriguez sits on the rocking bow, his legs dangling over the side, tensing a fishing line across the pad of his left ring finger – the finger most attuned, Angolan fishermen believe, to the tremblings of the sea. He smiles dreamily into the water. He is warming to his favorite subject: his prey.
“If a hooked fish escapes, you might as well move to another bay,” Rodriguez says. “He will alert every friend within a kilometer.”
This fact applies, however, only to “heroic” fish, because fish – much like humans, Rodriguez points out – possess distinct personalities.
Hence shad: a “supremely courageous” fish because it fearlessly attacks lures nearly as big as itself.
And pungu: “lazy” because it slumbers by river deltas, waiting for its dinner, in the form of catfish, to swim past its mouth.
And peixe-voador, or four-winged flying fish, the most “confident” fish of all: It holds dead still in the water, invisible to its predators, until – pok! – it explodes into the air like a bullet.
“Don’t be fooled by fishes’ eyes,” Rodriguez says, holding up a bait sardine, its dead, lidless pupils flat as polished stones. “They can think. They even have learned to recognize this boat. I must paint it a different color every year!”
Such folk wisdom – the vivid, personalized worldview of the true hunter-gatherer – is what irrevocably divides the lives of the antagonists in the oceans’ fishing wars.
Afloat day after day, surrounded by elemental beauty, Rodriguez and his crew know how the skin of the sea is made of light, and how you can peer into its middle depths through the mossy green shadows of every ripple. They can read the tiny bubbles of bream feeding 100 feet below. They know the fickle moods of sharks. The ocean of the industrial trawler deckhand, by contrast, is a backdrop, a dull abstraction: inert, blurred by walls of sound, steel and diesel smoke.
Surprisingly, some of the native lore of traditional fishermen is being confirmed today by science.
Gone is the conceit that fish are pin-brained drones governed by instinct – a view that has made it easier to slaughter them in untold billions.
“Now fish are regarded as steeped in social intelligence, pursuing Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment and reconciliation,” say the editors of “Learning in Fishes: From Three-second Memory to Culture,” a survey of 500 scientific papers on fish behavior that was recently. “They also use tools ... build complex nests and bowers ... and can even exhibit impressive long-term memories.”
Groundbreaking studies by British biologist Dan Hoare and his German colleague Jens Krause reveal that huge fish shoals such as those depicted in countless television documentaries are anything but random masses of identical, robotic organisms. Instead they are complex, hierarchical communities on the move – fish cities where individuals sort themselves into subgroups defined by size, sex, kinship, age and experience.
The most recent and startling discovery of all, however, involves fish memory.
Kevin Warburton, an Australian scientist, has revealed that fish not only possess long-term recollections (and some fish live nearly a century) but are capable of lengthening or shortening their “memory windows” depending on environmental change. This is a skill most humans would envy; fish have learned when it is adaptive to forget.
“Ay!” Rodriguez cries, yanking back on his line as if it were a lawn mower cord.
Hand over hand he pulls up a slapping 20-pound grouper, or garoupa vermilion, a fish of such hallucinogenic beauty – fiery orange flecked with spots of cobalt blue – that it seems like some exotic sky beast dropped from the heavens, not something hauled from the murky Benguela Current.
It is the first sizable fish landed on the Daniana in hours.
The crew is grumbling. Cramped onto 8 pitching metres of deck, and irritable after two days of working, sleeping and defecating within elbow range of each other, they talk of returning home. The food is scarce and bad: oily moray eels. The fishing is miserable. Lino, the crew’s strongman, blames global warming – a punishment from God he overheard on Angolan national radio. But most of the older men curse the foreign trawlers that have licked the seabed clean.
Rodriguez, more guileless and cheerful, tries to raise their spirits.
Whistling, he butchers the grouper on the spot. The valuable carcass goes into the fish hold. And the guts go into a sooty pot. Boiled in seawater, they are dinner for the hungry crew.
One billion people worldwide, most of them poor, rely on fish as their main source of protein.
A disturbing study published last year by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington and the WorldFish Center in Penang, Malaysia, lays bare the sobering consequences of this massive hunger pang.
Driven by exploding population growth in developing countries, nearly 80 percent of the world’s seafood soon will be extracted from tropical waters – the same embattled seas that today also help sate the rich world’s craving for fish.
These two competing appetites are colliding brutally in Angola.
“People talk about blood diamonds!” hollers fisheries inspector Jorge Martins, referring to the shadowy trade in gemstones that has fanned Africa’s endless civil wars. “Well, here we have blood fish!”
Shaved-headed, clad in baggy hip-hop shorts and sneakers, Martins is the unlikely defender of 500 kilometres of anarchic Angolan coastline. He steers a roaring Ministry of Fisheries and Environment patrol boat toward a nighttime ambush against fishing pirates. Eight Chinese trawlers have been spied poaching in sensitive fish nurseries near the port of Tombua. And Martins and his ragtag band of fisheries police, armed with two AK-47 assault rifles and a medium machine gun, are pounding across the Atlantic waves to confiscate the vessels.
Three hours out of port, the aging patrol boat’s steering fails. Apparently, this isn’t a surprise. Martins uses an old coffeepot to refill the boat’s leaking hydraulic fluid system. But by the time the lawmen finally reach position, dawn singes the horizon glowing orange. And the Chinese, who possess radar, are long gone.
“To do it right, you need something bigger than an AK-47,” Martins says of his underdog job as marine avenger. “The surest bet is a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.”
He isn’t joking. The fishing violence churning Angolan waters – like that in other pirate-infested fishing grounds in Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania – is nothing short of an undeclared guerrilla war. Occasionally the nautical skirmishes resemble B-grade Hollywood action flicks. Police hurl grappling hooks onto poaching vessels. Fistfights erupt on decks. And captured skippers hide their passports down their underwear.
Last year, one of Martins’ ill-equipped fish posses angrily fired some 300 rounds of ammunition at a pirate trawler that wouldn’t obey orders to stop. The barrage shattered the steel boat’s windows and running lights, and snapped off the radar and radio antennas, Martins recalls. Still, the sortie failed: The poacher escaped to the open sea. Other missions have ended worse.
Illegal trawlers – lately Chinese, but also Koreans, Spaniards, Namibians, Russians and others – have rammed and sunk attacking Angolan inflatable boats, Ministry of Fisheries and Environment officials say. Other pirates have hurled buckets of boiling water on Angolan boarding parties. In one case, a foreign ship ran down and killed an irate Angolan fisherman who was trying to block its way with his rickety skiff. And at least two Angolan inspectors have vanished mysteriously while on observer duty aboard large industrial trawlers – suicides, assert the foreign skippers; pushed overboard, the fisheries police insist.
“It’s no fish ye’re buying,” Sir Walter Scott wrote of the hazards of the trade nearly two centuries ago, “it’s men’s lives.”
Clearly, little has changed. But it will. As with any frontier, the days of the world’s fishing wars are numbered.
One reason is technology.
Aquaculture is fast replacing the relentless global hunt for wild fish. A quarter of all fish eaten today is farmed. And now even poor countries are using the same high-tech means of fencing off their seas that industrial nations pioneered a generation ago. Such tactics, called “Monitoring, Control and Surveillance,” employ aircraft and cheap satellite tracking technology to safeguard dwindling fish populations.
“It’s the beginning of the end of the cowboys,” asserts Paulo Jose Cusso, a young fisheries officer who flew with Angola’s first air patrols earlier this year. “We’re putting these guys out of business.”
And at first glance such optimism appears justified. Cusso’s shiny plane soared over Angola’s wild shoreline like the first sheriff to swagger into Dodge City. Sweaty pirate crews gaped up in amazement. In the program’s first month alone, almost 20 Chinese boats were nabbed red-handed inside protected zones closed to allow fish stocks to rebuild. Others were caught pillaging fish inside the four-mile coastal limit reserved for traditional fishermen.
But Angola’s new surveillance program completely ignores the opportunists from within.
As in other poor countries, many of Angola’s worst poachers are what one fisheries official calls “legal pirates” – that is, outsiders licensed to sift territorial waters for a fee, or in exchange for setting up a joint venture with local fishing companies. Ministry of Fisheries and Environment records show that many of the Angolan associates in these dubious operations are political elites – ministers, generals or the family of President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. (One business partner of Chinese pirates sighted by recent air patrols was the president’s sister Marta.) Thus, the foreigners who are carting away Angola’s marine treasures are shielded from prosecution, helpless fisheries police complain.
“Politicians are using the oceans as a bank account,” Jose Goldschmidt da Silva, the commodore of Angola’s minuscule patrol boat fleet, snorts with an angry shrug. “If they keep it up, there will be nothing left worth fighting over. Nothing.”
Twelve degrees south latitude. The Atlantic is the color of wet concrete. A warm offshore breeze carries the faint tang of overripe fruit, smoke and dust – the scent of tropical Africa.
The Xangongo, a massive trawler manned by 30 Chinese and two Angolan deckhands, is busy. It drags a net half the size of a football field through Angola’s waters, snaring every fish in its wake bigger than a child’s hand.
This morning it happens to be 2,000-pound hauls of wriggling, silvery grunts – a bony reef fish of little commercial value. The helmeted crew wades knee-deep into the shuddering mass of life, picking out barely two basketfuls of prized sole, bream and skates. The rest of the dead and dying catch is scraped over the side with square-nosed shovels.
Such grotesque waste is termed “bycatch”: the modern fishing equivalent of mowing down buffalo herds for their hides and leaving the flayed carcasses on the prairie to rot. Anywhere in the maritime world, killing so many untargeted species to harvest a handful of valuable fish could be subject to prosecution. Yet so toothless are the laws of the sea in the far, tattered shores of the Earth – whether they be Angolan environmental regulations or the U.N. Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries – that captain Kim Kuang Ho’s main worry is that the “wrong fish” are clogging up his nets.
“This slows us down,” says Kim, 33, overseeing his noisy deck operation from an air-conditioned wheelhouse decorated with vases of plastic tulips. “It’s bad, bad, bad. Want a Coke?”
Kim is an affable swashbuckler in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt.
In the typically murky and unaccountable fashion of the international fishing industry, he and his crew are overwhelmingly Chinese, his boat’s owner is listed as Angola’s own Ministry of Fisheries and Environment, and its operator is an Angolan-South Korean conglomerate appropriately named Worldwide. Such muddled lines of responsibility, U.N. fisheries experts say, only complicate law enforcement at sea.
Kim hasn’t seen home for years. A latter-day nomad, he moves from fishery to fishery, having lately chased tuna in the Indian Ocean until those stocks plummeted by more than 90 percent. He embodies the twilight of an era: perhaps the last generation of global fishermen, and part of a far-flung tide of Chinese crews and boats that is tirelessly strip-mining the oceans.
China’s fishing fleet has mushroomed sevenfold since the early 1980s, according to the U.N. Today, it is by far the largest in the world. And though European fishermen still dominate the waters of Africa, China’s eventual supremacy is a foregone conclusion: The nation’s exploding appetite for fish, like its burgeoning demand for oil, iron and other natural resources, ensures it will elbow aside all competition. The U.N. Environmental Program calculates that, at its current rate of consumption, China theoretically could swallow the world’s entire seafood catch by 2023.
Moreover, China is becoming fishmonger to the developed world; today, it is the United States’ third-largest supplier of seafood.
“They take whatever they can get, wherever they can get it,” says Jackie Alder, a researcher at the Fisheries Center at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “The Europeans and Russians can be good pirates too. But the Chinese are absolutely single-minded.”
In hapless Angola, that means the superpower is leveraging its control of fishing rights with $2 billion in development aid to the Angolan government – unprecedented largesse that Angolan bureaucrats say will guarantee China’s primacy at sea over European competitors.
“We have been accused of breaking fishing laws, but our captains are simply inexperienced in these waters,” declares Antonio Bernardo, the Angolan spokesman for Dalian Yanming Enterprises, a Chinese company that has racked up $1.3 million worth of fishing fines in Angola. “We are not pirates.”
Translating for a grim-faced company executive who would identify himself only as “Mr. Guan,” Bernardo called Angola’s fishing police “gun-happy.” Both men sat in a high-walled compound in Luanda where scores of Chinese seafarers peered warily from stark barracks. They were fishing crews waiting to rotate to sea.
Back aboard the 140-foot Xangongo, the trawler men’s work ethic is on noisy display.
Steel cables snap taut under tons of fish, instantly vaporizing the seawater that wets them. Hydraulics whine. Captain Kim thunders orders on a public-address system. And northern Chinese seamen with weather-beaten faces sift through the mountainous bycatches day after day, night after night, sweating around the clock on backbreaking six-hour shifts.
At the end of a 60-day trip, the Xangongo’s flash freezers are expected to brim with 80 tons of seafood, the precious residue of a slaughter. On this occasion, Angola’s fish are bound for European markets. The crew of the leaky Daniana would toil more than four years to amass such a bonanza.
“Some days fishing is good, other days not,” Kim says, brushing aside any suggestion that Africa is a final enclave of plenty.
In a gesture of rebuttal, he opens his map cabinet with a flourish. Arranged neatly inside are marine charts of his fishing grounds – the entire world.
The night sea is on fire.
A southerly breeze has stacked up waves like the wales in corduroy, and with them comes plankton, microscopic organisms that float freely in the ocean current, sparking with bioluminescence.
Pale green light smears the surface of the sea. Rodriguez recalls seeing migrating schools of sardines that thrashed the nighttime Atlantic into a weird brightness that seemed to shine from the core of the Earth. Such sights are rare these days.
It is the third day of toil for the Angolans, and finally their luck has turned. Rodriguez has maneuvered his ratty boat close under some crumbling shoreline cliffs, a treacherous place where foreign poachers will not go. The jackpot: a net bulging with 250 gasping pounds of grouper, bream, guitarfish, sharks and skates.
For a few hours it seems like old times. The boat’s rock projectiles, instruments of war, lie forgotten under masses of dying fish.
The six Angolans horse the net onboard, grunting snatches of song, clubbing netted sharks, joking about debts to be paid, or about new dresses to buy wives. All the while the shuddering fish make themselves heard as they die – a soft but unsettling medley of sighs, chirrups, clicks and grunts, one of the oldest sounds of human labor in the world, a noise that foreign trawler crews rarely hear over the thrum of their engines.
The electric sea drips from the wet net like fireflies. Drips from the men’s busy hands. Their singing dips and rises across the waves. The fish rise. And as a few squiggle away, they leave faint afterimages in the sea, like ghosts.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE/KRT

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March 26, 2006

Sunday Star Times tries to get it right

The SST has published a piece this morning on a business I ran that collapsed in 1998. The liquidation was covered at the time by NBR, the Herald and other media...but has re-emerged because of this week's article on Parker.

No problem with that, I expected it, although if the SST devoted its energies to probing the backgrounds of public officials it might actually be more relevant.

But the point of this is that the SST article errs by ommission because it didn't ask enough questions of me or allow me to elaborate.

The company went into liquidation because of a $45,000 bill that we were late paying. The creditor refused to accept a repayment schedule and instead pushed for liquidation regardless. The company at the time had contracts for work in progress that later generated more than $150,000 of revenue, but the standard contracts we used at that time included a clause that they were annulled if the publishing company was placed in receivership or liquidated.

After discussions with lawyers and liquidators and the contractees we set up a sister publishing company, which continues successfully to this day, which would continue to work on the projects in the hope of generating enough revenue after staff wages and publishing costs to repay creditors of the first company.

The liquidators approved of this, and also recommended changing the name of the liquidated company so as not to interfere with Howling At The Moon's continuing brand and the attempt to generate sales to repay creditors.

Had the $45,000 creditor not forced liquidation, the company would have traded its way out of the temporary difficulty.

However, at the time of this happening we had a six month old lawsuit in train against another major supplier who had failed to deliver our entire Christmas book releases until Christmas eve...overshooting the deadline by four weeks.

We sued them for $90,000, they counterclaimed for $100,000 which was their print bill - even though they admitted to our lawyers they had failed to meet the contract delivery terms the factory did not feel it was responsible for "consequential losses".

The liquidator decided not to pursue the claim further because of the dollar cost involved in corporate litigation...so what was a $45,000 loss turned into - when liquidators fees were added - a $180,000 loss.

The liquidators with my assistance realised $65,000 of assets, but the two major creditors - the bolshie one and the print factory that had missed the delivery deadline, got nothing. The secured creditors, which didn't include me or any investors, shared the proceeds with the liquidator.

While regrettable, the big two were authors of their own misfortune. A lot of small creditors were repaid by our new company because we continued to trade with them, and we paid them off over time. I still owe $20,000 to a personal friend and will meet that debt.

Sadly, although the new projects were successful, they didn't meet provide sufficient income to repay the big two...

This wasn't through lack of trying. One of our books, an NZ bestseller, was picked up by HarperCollins international but they messed up the marketing of it and the book flopped in the UK and US..had it performed comparitively as well as it did in NZ it would have generated up to half a million dollars in revenue for the liquidators.

Hope this clarifies it...

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March 25, 2006

I Don't Like Mondays - the Helen Clark version

Helen's greatest hits, hear it here

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March 24, 2006

Russell, Russell, Russell

Russell Brown rants about our previous coverage of Helen Clark..his problem is that our sources were (and still are) close to Clark. Of course I'm not going to name them because that would breach the assurance I gave them. However, I know who they are and their relationship to the Prime Minister.

Secondly, how is it inappropriate to investigate the PM's worldview and how it impacts on her job, when the Brown's of this world constantly hold George W's worldview against him and have done so even before he was elected? If it is relevant for one, it is equally so for the other. Get over it.

Thirdly, Russ got on breakfast TV the other day and got his facts wrong, while accusing me of getting my facts wrong. He talked about Investigate promoting the Moon Landing Conspiracy...in fact, Investigate published a story shooting the Conspiracy theory down.

Brown's other bleats about stories will be dealt with in my response to Cresswell, coming soon.

But Brown promotes atheist fundamentalist conspiracy theories of his own.

In today's Hard News, he writes:

I don't happen to believe in the founding myths of the major religions (and there's a decent case for saying Jesus never existed as a single individual), but at least they have some stature and grace.

I'm sorry Russell, the only certified New Testament scholar (out of about 13,000 worldwide) that I'm aware of who subscribes to the idea that Jesus didn't exist is Michael Martin...and few of his colleagues take his conclusions seriously. The only other people pushing that barrow are secular humanism's tin-foil hat wearers who publish their own conspiracy books that people like Russell Brown appear to subscribe to.

There may be scholarly disagreement about how much of the real Christ can be distilled from history, but only fringe-dwellers try and argue he didn't exist.

There is more evidence for the existence of Christ and a contemporaneous belief of his deity than there is for virtually any other historical figure of his time.

Get your facts right Russell, then maybe people will take you more seriously.

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Why Peter Cresswell is, in fact, PC

Cresswell has been on a downer on Investigate for a long time, motivated largely I suspect by his own atheistic worldview.

That's fine...Pete's entitled to his opinion, but he's so biased he can't see his own inadequacies.

Take his latest post, endorsing Helen Clark's "creep" epithet...

Helen Clark has called Ian Wishart a "scandal monger" and a "creep." She once called John Campbell, deservedly in my view, a "little creep," so presumably Wishart is less vertically challenged. "Miss Clark went on to say that if you want to meet the Wishart test of public life you had better be one of the vestal virgins."

Is Wishart a scandal monger? No doubt of that. A fundamentalist nutbar? For sure. Conspiracy peddler. Big tick. Creationist and anti-evolutionist? Sure is. Intellectual dwarf? Clearly. A creep? Well, I wouldn't drink with him.

For the record, I've never met Cresswell nor do I recall ever writing about him, but boy does he spew vitriol...you'd think I'd insulted his mother somewhere along the line.

"Conspiracy peddler". Which "conspiracy"? The conspiracy to cover up dioxin poisoning in New Plymouth? Yeah, that turned out to be accurate. The conspiracy to purchase a billion dollars worth of dodgy LAV 3 armoured vehicles? That was accurate too. The conspiracy to cover-up the shonky state of NZ's 111 system when we warned it was only a matter of time before someone got killed? We were lauded in Parliament for getting that right. The conspiracy that Travis Burns was the real killer of Howick mother Tania Furlan, rather than Chris Lewis? Got that one right too.

Hard working and energetic for sure, and in New Zealand's lack-lustre (read near non-existent) world of investigative journalism he stands out for both investigating evidence and manufacturing it -- his brain and his magazine remain the toxic dumping ground for everything dreamed up by anyone who ever wore a layer of tin-foil inside their hats. He is Winston Peters with a magazine; Nicky Hager with subscriptions; Dan Brown without the sales; John Grisham with cliches. (This last is irony by the way.) Of Wishart, NBR's Nevil Gibson once said, ""Not one to use a telling phrase where a cliche will do; Mr Wishart's purple prose detracts from an otherwise fascinating account ... a conspiratorial tale of greed and excess ... created in the milieu of the X Files ... "

Talk about "manufacturing" evidence. At this stage I'll withhold slapping Cresswell with a defamation suit, but I'm reserving my position on that. I have NEVER manufactured evidence, and every major story we do is prepared to a legal standard capable of withstanding a defamation challenge. The only person wearing a tin-foil hat is the architect trying to be taken seriously despite his rabid post.

To call his work yellow journalism would be too kind. The overwhelming majority of his stories take a breathless join-the-dots approach to a story, but with too few dots to make a picture -- inventing what isn't known, and taking denials by protagonists as evidence that they're hiding something. The sad thing is that this muck sells. You lot buy it.

Again, Cresswell, if anyone is suffering intellectual dwarfism around here it is you, and obviously I don't have to merely "join the dots" for you, I have to do it in 48pt type. According to you the "overwhelming majority" of my stories "invent" what isn't known. That writ is getting dangerously close to you. If my stories were so easily attackable by the people we name in them, don't you think we would have been tackled by now?

A few stories (although none spring to mind) "might" not have hit the target. Again, I can't think of any, I'm merely conceding the point for argument's sake. But to leap from that to an "overwhelming majority" is an example of the worst kind of journalism that you accuse me of.

Among some of his gems, if you remember, were the claims that George W Bush was secretly planning to abolish income tax (I wish!);

I'd hardly call front page of the New York Times a "secret", but then, you are the one wearing the tin foil hat. Try looking at the website http://www.fairtax.org for details of the proposal to scrap income tax and replace it with a national sales tax. This, by the way, is why I'm the journalist and you are an architect.

...that soy milk causes homosexuality;

Phytoestrogens, oh Politically-Correct one, are estrogen compounds produced in nature by plants and are also the by-product of certain industrial processes. Scientific studies of environmental pollution have found areas with high phyto-estrogen or other estrogen pollutants produce fish and animal life exhibiting gay behaviour and androgynous sexuality.

Barbara Sumner-Burstyn covered the fact that estradiol compounds are being injected into NZ and Australian beef. Your frothing-at-the-mouth sneering betrays an attempt to downplay stories by appeal to ridicule without tackling the substance of them. You should get a job in Helen Clark's office.

that condoms don't work and the 'safe-sex' campaign promoting their use is intended only to spread AIDS and increase the power of the "gay lobby"

Sigh...read this. And then read this.

...that Bill Clinton was a cocaine smuggler "in an operation that was turning over billions of dollars a year";

Here's a link from Scoop to assist...there have also been books written by former Arkansas state police testifying to Clinton's involvement in helping drug smuggling...Get over yourself.

that "ruins" have been found on the moon, "artifacts" on Mars and "lost cities" in Antarctic lakes (and the US Government has presumably been covering up ever since);

Stories done at the height of the "Face" on Mars speculation...entertainment value that readers enjoyed...we only did them for a few months however.

that the Kyoto Treaty was all the work of "the boys from Enron";

An essay by Ken Ring...are people not entitled to write anything you disagree with PC? You sound more authoritarian than Libertarian.

that abortion causes breast cancer;

PC...a simple google on abortion "breast cancer" and brind and you'll get a series of links to stories and studies. Or read this WND summary of why a 2004 rejection of the link was bad science.

that NZ defence researchers are "helping perfect" US missile systems, nuclear submarines "and even space warfare craft";

Again...read the story, halfwit. AUSCANZUKUS agreement remains in force to this day, as I understand it. We stumbled across reports on US military websites referring to it and tracked it from there. It names the Kiwis involved. What I can tell you is that after our story was published a lot of the documents were moved onto secure servers.

I'm getting bored...Cresswell's rant continues to list stories, but I could be here all night responding to the ravings of a man who turns out to be living proof of Darwin's theory.

Don't give up your day job PC, if the above post is a good example of your intellect.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 01:18 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

March 23, 2006

PM blasts Investigate, yet again

This from Newstalk ZB this afternoon:

PM calls Investigate editor "a creep" 23/03/2006 15:44:02

The Prime Minister has hit out at the editor of Investigate magazine.

Ian Wishart's magazine broke the story that led to the down fall of Labour high-flier David Parker.

Last year an interview in the magazine led to the downfall of John Tamihere, and earlier this year the magazine targeted a Labour campaign donor whom it alleged to be a freight handler for a major tobacco company.

Helen Clark is not impressed by Mr Wishart whom she calls a scandal-monger. She described him as the "sort of creep who really delights in picking out any little thing that people might have in their background.

Miss Clark went on to say that if you want to meet the Wishart test of public life you had better be one of the vestal virgins.

Nassssty badsss journalissssts, attacksings her Preciousssss

Posted by Ian Wishart at 02:42 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

"Extraordinary force" behind Big Bang

Scientists have found more evidence of what some are calling the 'fingerprints of God' in the creation of the Universe:

The leading theory describing the moments that followed the big bang just got another boost

DURING the first split second of existence, an extraordinary force stretched the universe from a cramped sub-microscopic speck into the forerunner of the spacious cosmos we now inhabit. Or at least that's what cosmologists would have us believe. This theory, known as inflation, can explain a number of puzzling features about the cosmos, such as the fact that one side of the universe looks much the same as the other. Yet despite the enthusiasm, experimental backing for the idea has been thin on the ground.

Last week, however, cosmologists unveiled powerful new support for the theory from observations made by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. "We have evidence that the universe suddenly grew from sub-microscopic to astronomical size in the blink of an eye," says WMAP team leader Charles Bennett of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Given that no quantum event has ever achieved similar in 13.7 billion years (otherwise we wouldn't be here to know about it), this "extraordinary force" must be some unique one-off, caused by...what?

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March 21, 2006

Newsflash - David Parker quits all portfolios

Embattled cabinet minister David Parker has quit all his portfolios

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:33 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Newsflash - David Parker quits all portfolios

Embattled cabinet minister David Parker has quit all his portfolios

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 20, 2006

Investigate inspires Clark to make policy change

This morning, the Prime Minister said this:

"I'm not going to start a public inquiry every time Investigate magazine decides to smear somebody, which is every month on average".

Investigate has now discovered the missing end of that above quote, which reads:

"...Instead, I've decided to sack my Ministers as soon as I hear Investigate are on to them."

If only...

Posted by Ian Wishart at 06:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Attorney-General resigns

Newsflash...David Parker has resigned, admitting Investigate's allegations are true, or in political speak "i made mistakes" in filing documents with the Companies Office.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 04:23 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 19, 2006

Attorney-General caught filing false declarations

NEWS RELEASE FROM INVESTIGATE

Attorney-General David Parker could face up to $1.8 million in fines or a five year jail term after filing false statements with the Companies Office during his time as a Labour MP, according to a story in the latest Investigate magazine.

The magazine says it has six documents bearing David Parker’s name, that make a false declaration to the New Zealand Companies Office about the Labour MP’s business affairs. Four of the documents have been submitted since Parker became a Labour MP, the most recent document is dated 2005.

The documents relate to a company, Queens Park Mews Ltd, of which Parker was an equal one-third shareholder along with his father and a Dunedin businessman, Russell Hyslop.

Under section 196(2) of the Companies Act directors are required to file an annual return to the Companies Office each year, and appoint an auditor to the company’s affairs, unless the shareholders have passed a unanimous resolution not to seek an audit.

Such a resolution is required under section 122 to be in writing, signed by all shareholders and held in the company's minutes book.

The director is required to declare to the Companies Office whether a unanimous shareholders’ resolution has been passed, and if so on what date.

Russell Hyslop has told Investigate he and Parker had a falling out over what he alleges was the Labour MP’s refusal to pay him up to half a million dollars he was owed, back in early 1997.

Hyslop alleges Parker’s refusal to pay up pushed Hyslop into personal bankruptcy, and he has told Investigate that he has had no business dealings with Parker since July 1997 and has never been asked to vote on a unanimous resolution waiving his right to audit the company’s affairs.

But Investigate’s search of the company records has found a series of documents signed by David Parker stating that each year the shareholders have passed such a resolution.

Under section 377 of the Companies Act 1993 it is an offence to file false statements to the Companies Office, punishable under section 373(4) by up to five years jail or a $200,000 fine per offence.

Investigate magazine alleges between five and nine false statements were filed.

The full story, including further irregularities involving David Parker's business dealings, is contained exclusively in the print edition of Investigate, out today.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:44 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

March 18, 2006

UPDATED Major announcement imminent...breaking story

The latest Investigate magazine is about to break a major story.

Details will be released here within 24 hours...

UPDATE: News release will be posted here at 10pm tonight

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 16, 2006

Investigate Nov 05, Return to Erebus

EREBUS: What really happened?

Twenty six years ago, New Zealanders were shocked as their mid evening TV programmes broke format for a newsflash. A somber Dougal Stevenson advised an Air New Zealand DC10 with 257 people on board was overdue from a sightseeing flight to the Antarctic. The airline was advising waiting friends and relatives at Auckland airport not to panic. STUART MACFARLANE argues misinformed commentators are now trying to rewrite the history of New Zealand’s worst aviation disaster:

The cockpit transcript of the last few minutes of the flight indi-cates these guys had no idea where they were as they flew straight into the foothills of Mt Erebus. Everyone in the cockpit seemed to be throwing in their penny’s worth. It was like the country cousins up from Ekatahuna, mum with map book on her knee, lost on Spaghetti Junction,” wrote Brian Rudman in the New Zealand Herald.
“It has been instructive to reflect on the loss of TE901 on Mt Erebus … It is clear from the cockpit transcripts that at least some on the flight deck knew that they did not know where they were. It was therefore a substantial error of judgement that the pilot did not immediately climb his aircraft to a safe altitude at the moment in which the doubt was first raised,” said Keith Rankin on Scoop.
“There was probably more than one cause involved, as I’ve read the Erebus situation, but it is certainly clear I think in retrospect that the pilots could not bear the full blame for what happened,” said Michael Cullen on Newstalk ZB reported in the New Zealand Herald.

CHIPPINDALE REPORT
On 28 November 1979, Air New Zealand’s DC10 flight TE901, on a sightseeing mission to Antarctica, crashed into the slopes of Ross Island. It was at 1,500 ft (457 m) and heading towards the 12,450 ft (3,795 m) Mt Erebus. Its number 1 engine, and most probably all three engines, were in climb settings of 94% of maximum power just below a level which might damage the engines. The ground speed was 257 knots or 476 kph. On impact the shock waves passed through the victims’ bodies at about 960 kph killing all 257 before nerve impulses at about 140 kph could transmit any pain, so the victims felt nothing.
New Zealand’s Chief Inspector of Air Accidents of the Ministry of Transport, Ron Chippindale, investigated the cause of the crash. Ian Gemmell, a member of the airline’s management team, and its principal witness who argued the airline’s case that pilot error caused the crash was said to be Chippindale’s principal adviser and perhaps only adviser regarding the technicalities of jet flight and DC10 navigation. He accompanied Chippindale to the DC10’s manufacturer and was among those who went with Chippindale to the crash site. He was present when Chippindale interviewed pilots. Reports from Chippindale’s office were leaked to the media who reported the aircraft had been flying in cloud.
When the Chippindale Report was published it said the crash was caused by pilot error. The pilots didn’t know where they were, “the crew was not certain of their position”. “The crew were not monitoring their actual position in relation to the topography adequately”. “The crew descended beneath the minimum altitude permitted by the airline.” The co-pilot “should not have overcome his natural caution in relation to cloud covered high ground.” The captain decided “to continue the flight at low level toward an area of poor surface and horizon definition.” The report’s findings coincided with the arguments Gemmell subsequently put forward on behalf of Air New Zealand in claiming the crash was caused by pilot error and the airline’s management was blameless.

MAHON REPORT
Justice Peter Mahon was appointed on 11 June 1980 as a Royal Commission of Inquiry to inquire into the crash. The inquiry was in public, the evidence extended over 75 days and filled 3,083 pages, while submissions of counsel took 368 pages. The total of exhibits produced was 284. In contrast the Chippindale Report’s inquiry was held in private and, with few exceptions, statements of evidence were not taken. Finally Chippindale made no evidence public. The Mahon Report overturned Chippindale’s findings of pilot error and instead decided that “the single dominant and effective cause of the disaster was the mistake made by those airline officials who programmed the aircraft to fly directly at Mt. Erebus and omitted to tell the aircrew.” “… neither Captain Collins [the pilot] nor First Officer Cassin [the co-pilot] nor [Brooks and Moloney] the flight engineers made any error which contributed to the disaster, and were not responsible for its occurrence.”
He went on to say in respect of Air New Zealand’s case which had asserted that the pilots were to blame for the crash “… the palpably false sections of evidence which I heard could not have been the result of mistake, or faulty recollection. They originate, I am compelled to say, in a pre-determined plan of deception. They were very clearly part of an attempt to conceal a series of disastrous administrative blunders and so, in regard to the particular items of evidence to which I have referred, I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.”
Air New Zealand applied for judicial review to the Court of Appeal against the “orchestrated litany of lies”. The Court held Mahon had no jurisdiction to make such a finding and he could not say that unless he had first warned the witnesses that he did not believe their evidence. Mahon appealed to the Privy Council but it upheld the Court of Appeal, saying there was no evidence of a pre-determined plan of deception, he didn’t warn the witnesses, and his reasoning was illogical. Much publicity followed. What is now forgotten by many is that the Privy Council did not accept the Chippindale Report as being correct and indeed went out of its way to uphold the Mahon Report in exonerating the pilots from blame for the crash.

THE COCKPIT VOICE RECORDER
The Chippindale Report printed a transcript of the tape from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) which recorded the last 30 minutes of the flight and which has been repeatedly quoted by the media in subsequent years. The cockpit area microphone (CAM) recorded voices from the cockpit area including those of passengers on the flight deck and, when the door was open, those behind the flight deck including persons in the galley. It was discovered that the transcript printed in the Chippindale Report was not the original transcript which had been transcribed by a team working in Washington at the Audio Laboratory of the National Transportation Safety Board in accordance with accepted procedure (Washington transcript). This procedure required the transcribers to be familiar with the persons whose voices were recorded, familiarity with the aircraft type, and familiarity with flight deck procedure and terminology.
The Washington transcription team under the direction of an air accident inspector consisted of Captain Barney Wyatt, Don Oliff, the chief flight engineer, and Captain Arthur Cooper who had over 13,000 hours flying time including over 2,000 as pilot in command of DC10s and was an experienced navigator. All knew the deceased flight crew members well, having crewed and socialised with them on many occasions. Cooper knew the engineer Moloney even better than the others. They had a long time friendship dating back before Cooper joined Air New Zealand in 1965 and continuing until Moloney’s death. Chippindale did not possess any of the requirements. Cooper was the only one of the Washington team to give evidence. He was appointed on behalf of the Airline Pilots Association. Air New Zealand appointed the other two members of the transcription team but did not call them to give evidence.
The Chippindale transcript was instead one rewritten by Chippindale himself and contained not less than 55 departures from the Washington transcript. Each departure varied from one word to several lines. For instance one question he added to the Washington transcript seemed to imply one engineer was saying to the other called Bert that the weather was a bit thick here, even though neither engineer was called Bert. Other changes he made removed from the record evidence of the crew’s competence during the flight. Air New Zealand’s principal witness, Gemmell, listened to the tape with Chippindale.
The most lasting damage done by the Chippindale Report was its accusations that the transcript showed the engineers were trying to convince the pilots who were lost not to fly into cloud thereby risking destruction. This folklore is illustrated by the articles Rudman and Rankin have written.
That Chippindale’s allegations are fiction not fact is proved first by the fact that they are contrary to the “crew-loop” discipline, secondly by the record of the very words spoken by the two engineers Brooks and Moloney and the two pilots Collins and Cassin, and thirdly by overwhelming evidence also disproving his 1987 claims based on tone of voice.
First, the crew-loop or fail-safe system to ensure the safe flying of DC10s did not rely on the skill of the captain but relied instead, in the usual case, on the triangular link of three people on the flight deck, being the two pilots in front and the flight engineer seated between the two pilots but slightly to the rear of them. In this instance, on flight 901 it was more than just a triangular link as there were two engineers on the flight deck. In the case of flight 901 it can be virtually taken for granted Brooks would be facing forwards from the time he took over from Moloney and the critical period starts from then. In all probability Moloney would have been standing slightly to the rear of Brooks’s left shoulder. The CAM would have been positioned directly above or slightly to the rear of Brooks’s head so it would pick up the voices of Collins, Cassin, and Brooks clearly.
Airlines run with fail-safe systems. If a main system fails then a backup system will take over and carry the load. The same fail-safe system is applied to the flight crew and was called the crew-loop or simply the loop. Flight deck communication involves a continual flow of comments, questions, observations, and confirmations being circulated between the three members of the flight crew. So that if one member should fail to respond in an appropriate manner, then the other two must take the necessary action, which is to remove the unresponsive member from the loop, that is to remove him from flying the aircraft. A vital part of the crew loop is detecting and interpreting body language.
Gordon Vette, author of Impact Erebus, discoverer of sector whiteout, and a witness before the Royal Commission gave a dramatic example of the loop as practised in the DC10 simulator. A note is secretly passed to one of the pilots saying “You’ve had a heart attack”. Without showing many overt signs the pilot ceases to take part in flying. If the loop works well the two other crew will notice this within seconds. The engineer will pull the seat withdrawal lever to pull the “dead” pilot clear of the controls and check the flight position and instruments with the other pilot before attempting first aid.
One of the engineers, Brooks, was an instructor in fail-safe training. He was a firm disciplinarian on the flight deck and came down hard on anyone who seemed not to be concentrating.
Cooper told the Royal Commission:
“It is also important to understand the three crew ‘fail-safe’ concept utilised in flying an Air New Zealand DC10. One of the basic fundamentals of this philosophy is that it is the inherent responsibility of every crew member, if he be unsure, unhappy or whatever, to question the pilot in command as to the nature of his concern … if a pilot in command were to create an atmosphere whereby one of his crew members would be hesitant to comment on any action, then he would be failing in his duty as pilot in command. I have no doubt that if any crew member on Captain Collins’ flight had any concern about the progress they would have not hesitated to advise Captain Collins of that concern. Some remarks in the tape transcript are suggested [by the Chippindale Report] as having been directed to the Captain and to have indicated concern on the part of the person who made the remark [an engineer].
“Any such remark would be in the nature of a challenge in the ‘fail-safe’ concept and would be responded to. When the transcript shows that there has been no response to a remark, the remark must be regarded as conversational and not a challenge nor critical or important as to the operation of the aircraft and indeed it must be a matter of doubt as to whether Captain Collins was aware of the remark having been made at all.”
Secondly, the record of all that was said by Collins and Cassin during the critical final period of the flight demonstrates that there was no acknowledgment by them of the remarks which Chippindale attributed to the flight engineers and which he claimed showed increasing concern on their part.
If the remarks had indeed been made as a challenge in the crew loop and Collins or Cassin heard them, the pilots would have responded to them. If the pilots had not responded, the engineers would have repeated them. This disproves Chippindale’s allegations. Furthermore, the actual words spoken by the engineers show no sign of so-called mounting alarm.
The following records all that was said by pilots Collins and Cassin from 46:14. It proves from that time at least they did not acknowledge the remarks which Chippindale attributed to the flight engineers and which he claimed showed increasing concern on their part. If the remarks had indeed been made as a challenge in the crew loop and Collins or Cassin heard them, then the pilots would have responded to them. If the pilots had not responded, then the engineers would have repeated them.
This is because of strict fail-safe or “crew-loop” discipline imposed on flight crews under which they must respond to comments made by others in the flight crew to prove they heard and understood the comment and where appropriate are reacting to it. Furthermore Brooks was himself a fail-safe instructor. The extract printed below demonstrates the crew-loop in operation. Note especially from 48:55. Times GMT, 46:14 being 0046:14 GMT.

THE FINAL 3 MINUTES: WHAT THE PILOTS SAID
46:14 Collins: Two nine three oh ... right
Cassin: Yes
46:21 Cassin: A thousand to go.
Collins: O.K.
46:24 Cassin: Alt, Nav track, vert speed.
Collins: Speed.
46:28 Cassin: Speed I see.
46:43 Cassin: Yep Yep.
47:06 Unidentified voice: Down to two thousand feet. [Comment from source other than pilots on the aircraft arriving at 2,999 ft. The acceptance of this altitude is not queried.]
Collins: Yes
Cassin: Yes
47:20 Collins: You’ve got speed set up there anyway, haven’t you?
47:23 Cassin: Yes alt cap (nav) track
47:28 Collins: Speed nav track alt ...
47:43 Collins: We might have to (drop) down to fifteen hundred here I think. [Washington transcript. Chippindale rewrote “drop” as “pop”. Both Collins and Cassin with the best forward vision concur in the decision to descend to 1,500 feet.]
Cassin: Yes O.K.
47:47 Cassin: Probably see further anyway.
47:49 Cassin: It’s not too bad. [This is before the commencement of descent from 2,000 feet to 1,500 feet.]
47:55 Cassin: I see vert speed for fifteen hundred feet
48:10 Collins: Right [Chippindale transcript. Not recorded on Washington transcript]
48:12 Cassin: (Terrain) fifteen hundred
48:22 Cassin: Alt hold
48:30 Collins: We didn’t get that TACAN frequency did we?
Cassin: No
48:38 Unidentified voice: What’s the frequency one oh nine two? [Comment from source other than pilots]
48:40 Cassin: Well we think that’s what it is, but it’s channel twenty nine.
48:46 Collins: Actually those conditions don’t look very good at all, do they? [Note he says “those” not “these”.]
Mulgrew: No they don’t. [Comment from source other than pilots]
48:50 Mulgrew: You’re down at one one four now are you? [Comment from source other than pilots]
48:51 Collins: Fifteen hundred.
48:55 Collins: Have we got them on the tower? [Cooper believed from his personal knowledge of the parties and his involvement in the transcription that this is Collins’s first positive indication of concern. But his tone of voice showed he was puzzled not worried. It was asked as a question. Although Collins is not concerned about terrain obstruction, he is saying that something is not jelling here, we are not getting some sighting of these buildings, or any of the things which I would have expected would be coming into view.”]
48:59 Cassin: No ... I’ll try again. [Cooper explains that Cassin also sounded puzzled not anxious. His confirmatory demur put into the loop.]
49:04 Collins: Try them again
Cassin: O.K.
49:24 Brooks: I don’t like this. [Brooks’s first positive indication of anxiety or concern. It’s the first verbal as opposed to tonal demur. [Sitting between pilots but about 400mm behind them almost certainly facing forward. His view to the right is blocked by the engineer’s panel, so he has lost sight of Cape Bird (which he believes is Cape Bernacchi) on the right. Mulgrew seated and Moloney standing on his left have probably blocked his view of Cape Tennyson (which he believes is Cape Royds). He has gone into full whiteout, so he expresses concern. The pilots are still only in sector whiteout.]
49:50 Impact

THE FINAL 3 MINUTES: WHAT THE ENGINEERS SAID
46:39 Brooks: Where’s Erebus in relation to us at the moment? [Question is directed to either Moloney or Mulgrew]
Mulgrew/Moloney : Left (about four or five miles) about 11 o’clock. ((Sound of paper rustling))
46:43 Mulgrew/Moloney: Left do you reckon?
Mulgrew/Moloney: Well no [pause] I think.
Mulgrew/Moloney: I’ve been looking for it.
46:46 Mulgrew/Moloney: I think it’ll be erh
46:48 Brooks: I’m just thinking of any high ground in the area that’s all.
Mulgrew: I think it’ll be left yeah.
Moloney: Yeah I reckon about here.
Mulgrew: Yes [pause] no no I don’t really know.
47:02 Mulgrew: That’s the edge. [Mistakenly identifies Cape Royds on edge of Ross Island when in fact looking at cliffs on left of Lewis Bay.]
47:06 Unidentified: [unintelligible word] Two thousand feet.
Collins: Yep.
Cassin: Yep.
47:16 Brooks: Yeah I just
[47:18] Brooks didn’t want to block the window too completely with it.
47:20 Collins: You’ve got speed set up there anyway, haven’t you?
47:23 Moloney: Alt cap. [Moloney has announced he has seen the enunciator light displaying “alt cap”, showing the aircraft is initiating a capture of the selected altitude.]
47:43 Collins: We might have to (drop) down to fifteen hundred here I think.
Cassin: Yeah OK.
47:55 Cassin: I see vert speed for fifteen hundred feet [vert speed in flight guidance system used to initiate descent.]
[47:57] Moloney: [unintelligible words] it’s not right
Unidentified: [unintelligible words]
47:59 Moloney: Yeah bloody oath.
48:05 [The word “instruments” was spoken by someone but after Mahon, Baragwanath, Turner , Tench, and Shaddick had listened to the passage, they agreed it was unintelligible or not sufficiently intelligible to be given any reliable meaning. What was shown as one sentence in the transcript was probably two sentences relating to different subjects and possibly by different speakers.]
[48:08] Brooks: Alt cap.
Mulgrew: Ross Island there [Sentence interrupted] Erebus should be here.
Unidentified: Alt hold. [Someone has announced he has seen the enunciator light displaying “alt hold” showing the aircraft has completed the capture of the selected altitude.]
[48:10] Moloney: Yeh yeh. [Moloney appears to concur with Mulgrew, albeit mistakenly, on location of Erebus.]
48:23 Brooks: Hold on both nav track. [Navigation track followed by auto pilot]
48:30 Collins: Ah we didn’t ah get that ah TACAN frequency did we?
Cassin: No.
48:36 Brooks:(Have) we got the (AIRAD) [British equivalent of the Jeppeson navigation manuals] [unintelligible word] on the aircraft? [Suggesting Cassin looks up TACAN frequency in the AIRAD.]
49:00 Moloney: (Only got them on HF that’s all.) [Refers to radio comms with Control Tower.]
49:04 Collins: Try em again.
Cassin: OK.
49:08 Mulgrew: Looks like the edge of Ross Island there. [Still believes he’s looking at Cape Royds while in fact he’s looking at Cape Tennyson.]
49:24 Brooks: I don’t like this. [Sitting between pilots but about 400mm behind them and is almost certainly facing forward. His view to the right is blocked by the engineer’s panel, so he has lost sight of Cape Bird (which he believes is Cape Bernacchi) on the right. Mulgrew seated and Moloney standing on his left have probably blocked his view of Cape Tennyson (which he believes is Cape Royds) . Has gone into full whiteout, so he expresses concern. The pilots are still only in sector whiteout.]
49:25 Collins: Have you got anything from him? [Anything on radio from Control Tower?]
Cassin: No.
49:30 Collins: We’re twenty six miles north we’ll have to climb out of this. [Sounds puzzled not worried.]
Unidentified : OK
49:33 Cassin: It’s clear on on the right. [In right hand seat, he can still see terrain on right, so he is not yet in full whiteout.]
Collins: Is it?
Cassin: Yep.
49:35 Mulgrew/Moloney: You can see (Ross Island). [Probably Mulgrew. Could not be positively distinguished.]
49:38 Cassin: You’re clear to turn right there’s
Collins: No negative [Sitting on left, Collins has lost sight of terrain on right, so is unwilling to fly to the right. He is in full whiteout to the right]
Cassin: No high ground if you do a one eighty. [Cassin on the right can still see terrain to the right, so he repeats his suggestion.]
49:44 ((Ground proximity warning tone – warning continues until impact))
[49:46] Brooks: Five hundred feet. [Calls decreasing ground clearances.]
[49:48] Brooks: Four hundred feet.
49:50 Impact [Aircraft impacts on 13-14 degree slope at about 1,500 ft above sea level.]
In 1987 during a claim for compensation by the dependents of the deceased Chippindale asserted that the engineers displayed their mounting alarm by the tone of their voices. Here again the evi-dence disproves his claim. He also claimed by implication that the voices marked by the Washington team as unidentified were in fact the voices of the engineers. He claimed this despite previously saying “At no time did I attribute any comment to any person. I relied totally upon the recognition of the voices made by the team in Washington.” One needs to examine his 1987 claim in greater detail.
When asked whether he was able to discern any indication of concern or anxiety in the voices of any of the crew members on the flight deck, Chippindale replied that from the time of 0041:45 GMT when a voice said “my God”, “there was a mounting atmosphere of concern among those that were speaking.” He pointed out that the expression immediately followed Collins’s words “Tell him [the control tower] we can make a visual [pause] descent.” Chippindale is by implication attributing the phrase “my God” to one of the engineers, horrified at the prospect of a visual descent, and denying it was some extraneous comment by some passenger or cabin crew member perhaps referring in awe to the scenery. He said the time the engineers’ sounds of concern become continuous commenced when somebody asked where Erebus was [at 43:27]. He said “… there was no reassuring event after that.” However the record of everything the pilots said starting from three minutes later at 46:14 shows they made no acknowledgment to what Chippindale claims were continuous sounds of concern.
The further evidence against Chippindale being correct is:
• Of the three-man Washington team Cooper detected no sound of mounting alarm and believes that neither Wyatt nor Oliff did either.
• Mahon and David Baragwanath (who was counsel assisting the Commission, later to become Justice Baragwanath) listened to the tapes many times in Auckland, in Farnborough, and Washington. Mahon concluded Chippindale was wrong while Baragwanath in his submissions made no reference to hearing mounting concern, which he certainly would have done if he had heard it.
• Three overseas specialists in CVR transcription, Shaddick, Tench, and Turner, also listened to the tape together with Mahon and Baragwanath. Had any of them heard mounting concern they would have discussed it with the New Zealanders.
• One Farnborough CVR transcription specialist, Davis, listened to the tape first with Chippindale and later with Mahon and Baragwanath. He agreed with Chippindale contrary to the Washington team that certain words were spoken but later when given more facts he offered no opinion. He is not reported as hearing concern by tone of voice, so on this point he can be added to the other eight who heard no concern.
• So a total of at least seven and probably nine persons listened to the tape without hearing sounds of mounting concern as opposed to Chippindale alone who claimed to hear them. Or rather we must assume that Air New Zealand’s representative Gemmell also heard them since he listened with Chippindale, but Gemmell gave no evidence on the point.
• Chippindale chose not to reveal that his theory depended on tone of voice in his evidence before the Royal Commission so he could not be asked to point to the passages when the tape was played in public. He had legal representation.
• Air New Zealand who were zealous in pointing at every possible avenue of pilot error never adopted Chippindale’s argument.
• The voice saying “my God”, which Chippindale claimed first showed concern by the engineers was marked as unidentified by the Washington team.
• The alleged dereliction of duty would have persisted from 41:45 (the time of the “my God” remark) until 49:24 when Brooks said “I don’t like this” which Cooper says was a genuine expression of concern. Six seconds later Collins said “… we’ll have to climb out of this”.
• It is not credible to assert the engineers would have continued in dereliction of their fail-safe drill procedure by not protesting in the strongest possible terms if they believed the DC10 faced impending danger.
• Chippindale in his transcript did not purport to identify the voice which said “my God”.
• Chippindale admitted in evidence he could not identify the voice.
• Brooks expressed no concern when at 45:18 he said the DC10 was about to make a further descent to 2,000 feet.
• The actual words used by the engineers reflect a normal flight deck conversation and are at variance with a theory of mounting alarm.
• The engineers had no reason to express mounting concern at Collins’s decision to make a visual descent. The pilots believed they knew exactly where the DC10 was located because of the DC10’s navigation computer, namely at the entrance to McMurdo Sound. They could see the black rock cliffs of the Capes on each side of what they had every reason to believe was the Sound. Cloud cover was not continuous. There were large breaks between the clouds. Collins said he proposed to descend visually. There was no suggestion he proposed to make a cloud penetration. Low level flying in the area by the airline was standard practice and known by the whole New Zealand community which was why passengers booked flights.
• Chippindale admitted he did not know the crew.
• Chippindale admitted he had no experience as a crew member on a DC10.
• He had no experience of the DC10’s computer navigation system.
• He wasn’t familiar with Air New Zealand’s procedures.
• He wasn’t familiar with DC10 aircraft.
• The cockpit area microphone, as previously noted, picked up voices from not just the flight crew but also from persons in the cockpit area, including those in the galley and passengers on the flight deck wanting a view. For example one passenger was found strapped into a seat used only on the flight deck.
• Chippindale’s theory requires all four flight crew on the flight deck to have breached their duty, the engineers by failing to get the pilots to pay attention to their fears and the pilots for failing to heed them.
• A third pilot, Lucas, although not on duty, would clearly be monitoring this part of the flight carefully from the passenger cabin and he would have forcibly made his concerns felt, had he believed the DC10 was in any danger.
• Mulgrew, although he was a commentator and not a member of the flight crew, would have expressed his feelings had he believed the DC10 was in danger.
• Had the engineers in truth “expressed their dissatisfaction with the descent toward a cloud covered area”, then they must have known of the perils of whiteout under those conditions. Because it is the presence of clouds overhead when there are white surfaces below which causes whiteout. The airline, the management of which did know of whiteout, had never revealed its existence to the line pilots who actually had to fly the sightseeing flights. It is not credible that the engineers should have somehow discovered for themselves the phenomenon of whiteout and then permitted the pilots to descend without making the most vociferous protests and without explaining the deadly nature of whiteout to the pilots.
• Chippindale claimed the engineers “expressed their mounting alarm as the approach continued on at low level toward the area of low cloud.” Readers would infer the crew is about to fly into cloud which was visible as cloud. This is not correct. In actual fact the pilots were flying into sector whiteout not into cloud. Passenger photographs, taken shortly before impact, show sun streaming in through cabin windows, while other photographs looking out through the windows show clear views unobstructed by cloud. The pilots made 13 or more comments on the transcript that they were in visual meteorological conditions.
When did the pilots first sound even puzzled? Cooper said:
• The pilots’ voices did not sound puzzled until 48:55 when Collins asked “Have we got them on the tower?” which was only 35 seconds before Collins decided to climb out.
• Cassin first sounded puzzled when he replied at 48:59 “No [pause] I’ll try him again.”
• Brooks sounded really concerned at 49:24 when said “I don’t like this.”
• At 49:25 Collins confirms that concern is mounting when he says “Have you got anything from him?”
• An uneasy reply of “No” follows from Cassin.
• Collins’s last comment at 49:49 “Go round power please” sounded professional but with a degree of anxiety in his voice.
Collins is following standard go around drill to pull up even though he can see, so he believes, the clear space of McMurdo Sound 40 miles ahead. Had he believed the DC10 was in real danger because they were flying in cloud, then his voice would have carried great anxiety and he would have “firewalled” the engines in a genuine emergency climb.
So what did Chippindale actually do in order to create his theory of mounting concern? He took overlapping snatches of dif-ferent conversations of passengers and cabin crew speaking in the galley area and flight deck and attributed them to the engi-neers when the Washington team agreed the voices were unidentifiable. He added words to the transcript which the Washington team agreed were unintelligible and suggested they suited his theory that the engineers were expressing their concern about flying conditions to the pilots. He latched onto a few remarks passing between Mulgrew and Moloney. After his theory was disproved by evidence given to the Royal Commission in 1980, he claimed seven years later, contrary to the opinions of seven to nine others, and supported only by Gemmell, that the engineers expressed mounting alarm by their tone of voice.
The conclusion must be that Chippindale’s claims are untrue. The engineers voiced no queries about the proposed descent, expressed no mounting alarm as the flight continued, and expressed no dissatisfaction. Those claims ought not to have been made by an inspector of air accidents. They brought no credit to the Office of Air Accidents Investigation. They were approved for release to the public by the Minister of Transport on 12 June 1980 and are still at the time of writing on the website of that Office’s successor. They have done lasting damage. They must have caused grief over the years to the flight crew’s families. They have created a fantasy scenario of events which supposedly led to the disaster that endures in the public mind to this day as media comments such as Cullen’s, Rudman’s, and Rankin’s bear witness and perpetuates this untrue scenario into history.
Chippindale’s evidence in the court case brought for compensation by the dependents of those killed by the crash against the US Government no doubt contributed to their case failing. He attended in person to give evidence “at the direction of the New Zealand Government”. The US Government paid for his transportation to and from the US.
He has said: “One thing I will state solemnly is that no attempt was made by me to tailor the CVR readout or insert comments which were not clear to me”.

PRIVY COUNCIL UPHOLDS MAHON ON CVR
The Privy Council agreed that Mahon was correct in rejecting Chippindale’s interpretation of the CVR, saying:
“The other principal reason why the Judge felt able to displace Mr Chippindale’s ascription of the cause of the accident to pilot error was that certain remarks forming part of the conversations recorded in the CVR of the crashed aircraft and attributed by Mr Chippindale to the flight engineers had suggested to him that shortly before the crash they were expressing to the pilot and navigator uncertainty about the aircraft’s position. The tape from the CVR which had been recovered from the site of the crash proved difficult to interpret. The Judge, with the thoroughness that characterised him throughout his investigations, went to great pains to obtain the best possible expert assistance in the interpretation of the tape. The result was that he was able to conclude that the remarks attributed by Mr Chippindale to the flight engineers could not have been made by them, and that there was nothing recorded in the CVR that was capable of throwing any doubt upon the confident belief of all members of the crew that the NAV track was taking the aircraft on the flight path as it had been plotted by Captain Collins on his atlas and chart, and thus down the middle of McMurdo Sound well to the west of Mt Erebus.”

PRIVY COUNCIL UPHOLDS MAHON ON WHITEOUT
John Roughan New Zealand Herald:
“Mahon’s true insight in retrospect was not the cover-up or even the aircraft’s computer co-ordinates, it was the polar atmospheric phenomenon he described. A ‘whiteout’ was not, as most people assumed, a blizzard. It was a trick of the polar light that could obliterate the horizon on a cloudy day and cause low-flying pilots to hit a mountain they could not distinguish from a flat landscape.”
The Privy Council agreed with Mahon’s finding that whiteout was an essential ingredient of the disaster saying:
“Its effect, in meteorological conditions such as prevailed at the time of the crash in the area where it happened, would be to induce in a pilot, unaware that any such phenomenon could exist, the belief that he had unlimited visibility ahead and that he was flying over a flat terrain, since ‘whiteout’ prevents changes in levels of the terrain over and towards which the aircraft is flying from being perceived by the pilot even though the change in level is as great as that of a precipitous mountainside such as that of Mt Erebus. The Judge makes out an overwhelming case in his Report that the aircraft was in a ‘whiteout’ when it crashed into that volcano.”
The form of whiteout (“white surface whiteout”) referred to by the Privy Council and which contributed to the crash is the insidious optical illusion present in polar conditions where white surfaces exist. It leads pilots to believe they are flying in clear air and so can see any obstructions ahead; when in fact, although they are in clear air, any obstructions have been rendered invisible. This phenomenon would make an obstacle a few feet ahead invisible if the obstacle were white, even in reported visibilities of 40 miles. The contribution of this form of whiteout to the crash, in particular “sector whiteout” in which only one sector within the pilots’ vision is in whiteout, was discovered by Gordon Vette who subsequently received an honorary D.Eng. from the University of Glasgow for his research on visual perception.
The other form widely known by New Zealand pilots without polar training before Erebus involves broadly speaking (there are sub-groups) blown snow or snow showers in which pilots are conscious of being in whiteout.
When preparing for the McMurdo Sound flights to commence in 1977 Air New Zealand management knew of white surface whiteout and had attended the RNZAF briefing for air force flights to McMurdo Sound. Gemmell made a deliberate decision to conceal the existence of whiteout from the crews who flew to the Antarctic. He explained he did this because if pilots had been told, they would have believed they were permitted to descend beneath 16,000 feet which he claimed they were prohibited from doing. His reasoning was that 16,000 ft was above the level of Mt Erebus, so at that altitude whiteout was irrelevant.
However the following evidence given to the Royal Commission disproves Gemmell’s claim a prohibition existed:
• The briefing officer admitted he never imposed such a prohibition;
• flights to the McMurdo area commencing on 18 October 1977 were without exception flown at low levels;
• Air New Zealand publicised low level flying in Antarctica so widely (including distribution to every household in New Zealand) that management’s denial of knowledge did not carry credibility;
The possible existence of white surface whiteout renders low level flying in Antarctica without special precautions perilous, so polar trained pilots regarded the pilots of flight 901 as foolhardy in flying at low level in white surface whiteout conditions. This explains why such pilots have subsequently criticised the 901 flight crew.
Chippindale claimed that when the crew made their descent orbit they would have noticed broken sea ice but when they approached Lewis Bay they would have seen no such breaks and he implied that from that fact they should have deduced the existence of the phenomenon of whiteout and so realised they were not approaching McMurdo Sound but must be approaching Lewis Bay made by sector whiteout to look the same as McMurdo Sound and realised that Mt Erebus must lie ahead concealed in whiteout. His reasoning is invalid. The crew would have expected McMurdo Sound to present a flat, featureless, unbroken expanse as contrasted with the broken sea ice of the Ross Sea. Nowhere else but in McMurdo Sound would they expect to see such a clear expanse.

AIR NEW ZEALAND CHANGES CO-ORDINATES
Though the global positioning system (GPS) with its pinpoint accuracy did not exist in 1979, the DC10’s navigation system, the AINS, was state of the art for its time, being highly accurate and reliable. After flying from Auckland to McMurdo, a distance of 3,000 miles, the cross-track error was only 1.2 miles and distance error 3.1 miles. It was not uncommon on the Auckland-Honolulu route for the northbound aircraft at 35,000 feet to have its radio altimeter triggered by the southbound aircraft on a reciprocal track passing directly underneath in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
On dispatch the crew were given a printout from Air New Zealand’s navigation computer being a flight plan having the latitude and longitude of each of the waypoints. One of the crew, probably Cassin, typed these co-ordinates into the DC10’s onboard computer.
While Flight 901 flew south from New Zealand to Antarctica on the track loaded into its navigation computer the auto pilot took it over the same route which Collins had plotted onto his maps from the flight plan the airline had previously given him on briefing on 9 November. The crew would have checked the DC10 was still on this track as it approached Buckle Island, and again as it approached Cape Hallett, its second to last waypoint.
What the pilots did not know, as the airline never told them, was that at 2.10 am that very morning the airline had shifted the final waypoint from the safe location of West Dailey Island in the middle of McMurdo Sound by 26-28 nautical miles east so that it ran to a waypoint lying behind the 12,450 ft Mt Erebus situated behind Lewis Bay on Ross Island.
The DC10 was flying above cloud but passenger photos produced to the Royal Commission proved that there were large breaks between the clouds. Collins decided to descend through one of these breaks so that he could fly visually up the safety of McMurdo Sound. He’d been told visibility was 40 miles. Being a cautious pilot he decided that not only would he descend visually but he would also keep to the navigation track he had plotted on his maps.
He descended through one of the breaks between the clouds in a conventional figure of eight descent orbit. Unknown to him, as the airline had never revealed its existence to him, he placed himself in peril, because below cloud in Antarctic conditions he became subject to the optical illusions created by whiteout.
He locked the DC10 onto nav track and flew south at 2,000 ft descending to 1,500 ft. Before them the crew saw what they confidently believed to be the entrance to McMurdo Sound exactly where it ought to be located in relation to the nav track plotted from the briefing onto their maps. The geographic features matched what all of them, including the experienced Antarctic observer Peter Mulgrew, were expecting and furthermore those features lay on the expected points of the compass (“azimuth bearings”).
However what they were observing was not the flat expanse of McMurdo Sound as they believed. Instead they were looking at Lewis Bay and Mt Erebus concealed in sector whiteout. The effect of whiteout made the entrance to Lewis Bay appear to the pilots to be the entrance to McMurdo Sound.

NON NOTIFICATION
For an ordinary flight, say Auckland to Honolulu, the airline’s flight plan was contained on a cassette which the pilots fed into their on board navigation computer. The tapes were updated every 28 days. Whenever a change to a route was made between the issue of cassettes the consortium of airlines which produced the cassettes issued a notice to airmen (NOTAM) giving details. The Antarctic flights, not being a standard route, did not have cassettes, instead their flight plans were keyboarded into the DC10’s computer. The airline changed the co-ordinates without issuing its own NOTAM and without telling the dispatch officer.
The chief navigator said he asked the flight services controller (flight dispatch) to amend the flight plan on 20 November 1979, the day before Captain White’s flight was due to depart. At first the controller said he didn’t know why he didn’t make the change that day as asked but he later said the navigator hadn’t told him until the next day after White’s flight had departed. Neither the navigator nor the controller radioed White to tell him of the “error” which his flight plan supposedly contained and which the change was to supposedly “correct”. Air New Zealand flights had already flown on that allegedly erroneous flight plan for 14 months. As already noted the airline did nothing for a week until it finally shifted the co-ordinates only five hours 50 minutes before flight 901 was due to depart.
Flight plans had an “ops flash” line at the top for important information for pilots. The airline ought to have entered up the change to the co-ordinates here, but didn’t.
Had the pilots been NOTAMed, the dispatch officer been told, or the ops flash entered up, then the disaster would never have happened.
The airline said it didn’t do any of those things because it thought the change it was making was not 26-28 nautical miles but only 2.1 nautical miles and hence not worth mentioning. In effect it said it would continue not to notify pilots of such changes.

PRIVY COUNCIL CONCURS WITH MAHON ON CO-ORDINATES
The Privy Council agreed with Mahon’s finding that since the airline briefed the pilots on a McMurdo Sound flight plan, but on dispatch gave them an Erebus flight plan, there was no pilot error, saying:
“The Judge was able to displace Mr Chippindale’s attribution of the accident to pilot error, for two main reasons. The most important was that at the inquiry there was evidence from Captain Collins’ widow and daughters, which had not been available to Mr Chippindale at the time of his investigation and was previously unknown to the management of Air New Zealand, that after the briefing of 9 November 1979 Captain Collins, who had made a note of the co ordinates of the Western Waypoint [the Dailey Islands waypoint in McMurdo Sound] that were on the flight plan used at that briefing, had, at his own home, plotted on an atlas and upon a larger topographical chart the track from the Cape Hallett waypoint to the Western Waypoint.
“There was evidence that he had taken this atlas and chart with him on the fatal flight and the inference was plain that in the course of piloting the aircraft he and First Officer Cassin had used the lines that he had plotted to show him where the aircraft was when he switched from NAV track to heading select in order to make a descent to 2,000 feet while still to the north of Ross Island which he reported to ATC [the Control Tower] at McMurdo and to which he received ATC’s consent.
“That on completing this descent he switched back to NAV track is incapable of being reconciled with any other explanation than that he was relying upon the line he had himself plotted of the flight track on which he had been briefed. It was a combination of his own meticulous conscientiousness in taking the trouble to plot for himself on a topographical chart the flight track that had been referred to at his briefing, and the fact that he had no previous experience of “whiteout” and had been given no warning at any time that such a deceptive phenomenon even existed, that caused the disaster.”

PRIVY COUNCIL UPHOLDS MAHON ON CAUSATION
The Privy Council said of The Chippindale Report: “In effect, although there are criticisms elsewhere in his report of management practices of Air New Zealand in relation to Antarctic flights, Mr Chippindale ascribed the principal blame for the tragedy to pilot error.”
The Privy Council then summarised The Mahon Report’s findings by quoting these extracts from it:
“ ... The dominant cause of the disaster was the act of the airline in changing the computer track of the aircraft without telling the aircrew.
“In my opinion therefore, the single dominant and effective cause of the disaster was the mistake made by those airline officials who programmed the aircraft to fly directly at Mt Erebus and omitted to tell the aircrew. That mistake is directly attributable, not so much to the persons who made it, but to the incompetent administrative airline procedures which made the mistake possible.
“In my opinion, neither Captain Collins nor First Officer Cassin nor the flight engineers made any error which contributed to the disaster, and were not responsible for its occurrence.”
The Privy Council said there was ample supportive evidence for these findings. The Privy Council placed on record their tribute to the brilliant and painstaking investigative work undertaken by the Judge with the support of counsel appointed to assist him, Baragwanath. The Privy Council said: “The Royal Commission Report [the Mahon Report] convincingly clears Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin of any suggestion that negligence on their part had in any way contributed to the disaster.”

ACCEPTED BY AVIATION COMMUNITY
The Mahon Report transformed the investigation of accidents and was finally recognised as valid by the aviation community in 1994. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in its Safety Digest on Human Factors No. 10 used the flight 901 disaster to demonstrate how latent and active failures combine to cause an organisational accident. The disasters ICAO refers to are: Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear power accident 1986; Bhopal, the world’s worst industrial accident 1984 (6,500 killed, 20,000-50,000 seriously injured); Clapham Junction railway collision 1989; Kings Cross underground fire 1989; Dryden, a fatal aircraft accident in Dryden, Ontario 1989. ICAO concludes:
“The [Mahon] Report and most of its associated literature were produced ten years before Dryden; they generated violent controversy and remained inconspicuously shelved until recently. The [Mahon] Report was, probably, ten years ahead of its time. After all, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Clapham Junction, Kings Cross and other major high technology systems catastrophes had yet to happen. They need not have happened. In retrospect, if the aviation community – and the safety community at large – had grasped the message from Antarctica and applied its lessons, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Clapham Junction, Kings Cross and certainly the Dryden report would not have existed.”

CASUALTY LIST

ADDIS Peter James 29 Te Atatu * ALLAN Alan Lawrence Malyon 59 Clive * ALLAN Jane Phillipa 17 Clive * ALLAN Marjorie Townsley 66 Clive * ANDERSON Margaret Isobel Epsom * ANGLESEY Grant William 19 Waitara * ARMITAGE Ethel Mary 73 Milford * ARNOLD Melinda Maria Manurewa * ARNOLD Valerie Ellen Papatoetoe * ASHTON Grahame 63 Orakei * BAINBRIDGE Thomas Eric 40 Meadowbank * BALDWIN L Peter 50 Birkenhead * BEAUMONT Earl * BECKETT Desmond 62 Te Puke * BOND Marilyn Edna 48 Blockhouse Bay * BOND Rolain Melville 54 Blockhouse Bay * BREHAUT Ronald Thomas 39 Timaru * BROAD John Phillip (Dr) 51 Hamilton * BROOKS Geraldine Timaru * BROUGH Aubrey Conroy 68 Thames * BUCHANAN Geoffrey 68 Orewa * BUERGI Heinz Avonalde * BURGESS Lindsay Robert 60 Whangarei * BURGESS Rose Eileen 58 Whangarei * BURTON Lorraine 42 Wellington * BUTLER Rae Jeanne 43 Waihi Beach * CAMERON Tangiaho 57 Mt Wellington * CAMPBELL Stuart Donald 22 Whakatane * CARLTON John Barry 46 Otautau * CARLTON Marion Rennie 40 Otautau * CARR Margaret Bell 64 Whangarei * CHADDERTON Bryan Harry Papatoetoe * CHADDERTON Valerie Enid Papatoetoe * CHRISTIANSON Alla Remuera * CHRISTMAS Hugh Francis 58 New Plymouth * CLARK David 60 Mt Wellington * CLARK Irene 75 Belmont * CLARK Iris 65 Takanini * CLARK William Henry 67 Takanini * COCKRILL Joan * COLBRAN Yvonne Louise 45 Invercargill * COLBRAN Cyril Bernhard 49 Invercargill * COLE John Wright 124 Westmere * COPAS Jean Ann 46 Hawkes Bay * COPSEY Audrey Joy 55 Pukekohe * COREY Constance (Dr) 46 Epsom * CRABTREE Mary Alison Takapuna * CRABTREE Norman David 72 Takapuna * DAHL Marie Patricia 57 Wellington * DAWSON Peter Maissie 50 Piopio * DEAN Kay 22 Reporoa * DEBBAGE Florence Daisy Rotorua * DELMAGE N.V * DUKE Athol David 18 Epsom * DYKZEUL Herman Maria Douglas Wiri * DYKZEUL Johannes Jacobs 30 Morrinsville * EAGLES G * EDWARDS Elizabeth Jane 30 Naenae * EDWARDS Miriam Ponsonby * EMMETT Cecilia Campbell 62 Te Awamutu * EMMETT John Barnham Te Awamutu * FROST Barle Sandringham * GALLAGHER Alfred James Remuera * GALLAGHER Elsie Thelma Remuera * GIBBS Bryn 78 Wellington * GOLLAND Pamela Margaret Bucklands Beach * GOSLING Violet 60 Opotiki * GULLEVER Richard Kawerau * HANSEN Marlene Anne Picton * HARRIS Hazel Phoebe 60 Hamilton * HARRISON Annie 50 Takapuna * HARRISON Muriel Florence 78 Campbells Bay * HARTLEY James Follett 36 Otorohanga * HARTY Myra Pearl 82 Devonport * HILL Eileen 73 Lower Hutt * HILL Gordon Alexander Mission Bay * HOLLOWAY Jean Marie 63 Glenfield * HOLTHAM Bryan Ernest 35 Invercargill * HOTSON Roy Henry 58 Tuakau * HOUGHTON John 39 Dunedin * HOWARTH Bart Ralph 31 Tauranga * HOWARTH Kathleen Maureen 47 Forest Hill * HOWARTH Peter 52 Forest Hill * HUGHES Stephen 32 Bucklands Beach * HUMPHREY Mildred 69 Orewa * HYNDMAN Thomas William 60 Blockhouse Bay * JARVIS Nicholas Dunstan 43 Glenfield * JENKINS Evelyn Lois Birkenhead * JENNINGS Charles Ivory 44 Taradale * KARL Kathline 61 Ellerslie * KEARNEY Denis 40 Hillsborough * KEITH John Edgar 39 Whangarei * KENDON Nancy Phyllis 67 Howick * KERR Betty New Lynn * KERR Francis Ronald New Lynn * KERR Geoffrey Ian Hamilton 21 Wanganui * KILSBY Anthony John 44 Levin * KILSBY Geoffrey Michael 35 Levin * KING Nancy 62 Russell * KIRK Donald Clive Te Kuiti * LANVIN James Francis 58 Howick * LARSEN Olaf William Raetihi * LING Alison Louise 60 Titirangi * LOCHER Urs 29 Kelston * LOMAX B Kawerau * LOUGHNAN Charles Henry 66 Tauranga * LOUGHNAN Patrick Louis 61 Tauranga * MacDONALD Shirley Jane 35 Palmerston North * MacKENZIE John 62 Manurewa * MADGEWICK Eudora Emily Whangaparoa * MANLEY David Victor 37 Cambridge * MANN Dorothy Maude 49 Te Atatu * MARSDEN Dorothy Tokoroa * MARSDEN Joseph Alan 45 Tokoroa * MARTIN Sally 65 Blockhouse Bay * MASKELYNE Trevor John 26 New Plymouth * MASON R * MATHEWS Aoxautere 60 Palmerston * MAYNARD Olive Mytle 54 Thames * MAYNARD William John Thames * McKENDRY Richard John 33 Wellington * McKENZIE Margaret Joyce 62 Napier * McMILLAN John Bruce 64 Gisborne * McMILLAN Melba Pearl 63 Gisborne * McNAMARA Bernard Joseph Pauanui * McNEIL Eric Onehunga * MITCHELL Mark Geoffrey 17 Lower Hutt * MULGREW Peter David 52 Parnell * MUNRO Ross 34 Otorohanga * MURRAY Murray 33 Mataura * NICHOLSON Christine Margaret 26 Christchurch * O’CONNOR Ian John 41 Timaru * OLIVER Mervyn John 65 Palmerston North * PALMER David Lloyd 31 Stanmore Bay * PALMER Edward James 63 Tauranga * PALMER Gary Kent 29 Tauranga * PATERSON Ethel Mary 54 Onehunga * PATERSON Linda Jan 22 Onehunga * PAYKELL Nola Minchin Devonport * PAYNE Alfred Murray 34 Remuera * PEACOCKE Marjorie Ethol Glenfield * PETHERS Carla 49 Takapuna * PLUMMER Alexander Francis 85 Pakuranga * PLUMMER Hilda Francis 52 Hamilton * POTTER Michael Arthur 53 Whangaparoa * PRICE Irene 86 Sandringham * PRICE Beverley (Daughter) Sandringham * PRIDMORE Joy Agnes 40 Levin * RAWLINS Valgria 76 Mt Eden * REVELL Basil Halvor 52 Waiwera * REVELL Geraldine 60 Waiwera * RICHMOND Pamela Gaye 24 Mt Eden * ROBB Helen (Lady) Remuera * ROBERTS Allison Meryle 46 Wellington * ROBERTS Michael Seaver 47 Wellington * ROBINSON Betty Estell 36 Pariate * RUDEN Karl 79 Mission Bay * SCOTT Mary Theresa 40 Dunedin * SMITH Betty Louise 46 Whangarei * SMYTHE Henry Howard 55 Thames * STEVENSON Anthony James Picton * STEWART Donald Mathew 35 Birkenhead * STOKES Alan Maxwell 51 Pakuranga * STOREY Phyllis May 58 Mt Wellington * TANTON Peter Alec 60 Whangaparoa * TAYLOR Douglas Clement Frank 56 Whangarei * THOMAS Roy Pearce Tauranga * THOMAS Walter Daniel 69 Whangaparoa * TREMAIN Floss Taupo * TREMAIN Robert David 60 Taupo * TRINDER Elaine 26 Epsom * WARD Henry 58 Henderson * WARD Valerie 57 Henderson * WATSON Isobel 65 Mt Albert * WATSON Kathleen 64 Wellington * WEBB Alfred William Waitoa * WILLIAMS Jan 60 Havelock North * WILLIAMS Janet Challis 70 Hastings * WILLIAMS Leonard Heathcote 60 Havelock North * WOOD Barbara Annie 66 Kiwitea * WOOD Irvine Kirkham 72 Kiritea * WORTH Linda 74 Epsom * ZOLL Otto 46 New Lynn * FLIGHT CREW: ALL FROM AUCKLAND * BENNETT David John Senior Flight Steward * BROOKS Gordon Barrett Flight Engineer * CARR-SMITH Elizabeth Mary Stewardess * CASSIN Gregory Mark First Officer * CATER Martin John Flight Steward * COLLINS Martin John Purser * COLLINS Thomas James Captain * FINLAY Michael James Senior Flight Steward * KEENAN Dianne Stewardess * LEWIS James Charles Fight Steward * LUCAS Graham Neville First Officer * MARINOVIC Suzanne Margaret Stewardess * MAXWELL Bruce Rhodes Flight Steward * MOLONEY Nicholas John Flight Engineer * MORRISON Katrina Mary Stewardess * McPHERSON Roy William Chief Purser * SCOTT Russell Morrison Purser * SICKLEMORE David Brian Flight Steward * SIMMONS Stephen George Flight Steward * WOLFERT Marie-Therese Stewardess

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Investigate Nov 05, Edge of Darkness

Because of threats to kill the subject of the story that we posted here, we have been asked to urgently remove the article.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Nov 05, Doonegate

Have NZ internet bloggers caught the mainstream media in a cover-up?
On the night, New Zealand’s election result hung on a thread. Is this the story that could have swung it for National? A story the mainstream media refused to cover? IAN WISHART profiles the rise of a blogsite and its power to embarrass big media

In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream, which is probably just as well for 20 or so of New Zealand’s top political journalists after an internet blog site stumbled across what appears to be a major cover-up for Labour by members of the mainstream media. Overseas, it was bloggers – amateur newsgatherers and commentators posting articles to their own websites – who took the scalps of major media entities like the New York Times over the Jayson Blair fake reporting case, or CBS News supremo Dan Rather over his organisation’s dodgy investigation of George Bush’s military service.
In the latter case, Rather’s team based a story around what turned out to be forged National Guard documents, and got fatally burned.
“The yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took [CBS’s 60 Minutes II] down,” wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. “It was, to me, a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt.”
Or, as US conservative blogger “Rrrod” put it so succinctly on FreeRepublic.com, the site that led the attack, “NOTE to old media scum…We are just getting warmed up!”
In New Zealand, there’s a similar mood afoot. With Labour re-elected against a sizeable swing to the right on election day, public suspicion that socially-liberal journalists in the mainstream media have been overly kind to Labour is only set to grow. So imagine the controversy if Investigate could show that the mainstream media had a chance to broadcast a story of Brethrengate proportions about Labour, before the election, and chose not to run it?
Well, that’s exactly what we appear to have found. What follows is an Investigate story based on documents originally published on September 8, 2005 on the NZ blogsite Sir Humphrey’s (http://sirhumphreys.blogspot.com), a week and a half before the election. Ironically, through one of the Universe’s quirky little twists of fate, it was also a year to the day since Dan Rather published his own-goal on George Bush.
Under the heading, “Proof Clark knew the contents of the PCA [Police Complaints Authority] report before she talked off the record to the SST [Sunday Star Times]”, Sir Humphrey’s began to dump dozens of pages of documents released under the Official Information Act on the Doonegate affair: Labour’s railroading of former Police Commissioner Peter Doone.
Although the documentation was available to those in the know, no one in the media had joined all the dots. So the blog site decided to take it directly to the great unwashed themselves, uploading the documents, and summaries of the main points.
Sir Humphrey’s explained that it was releasing the two official police reports carried out on whether Doone had tried to prevent a constable from breath-testing his partner Robyn during a traffic stop on election night, 1999, in Wellington.
The first report, written by Doone’s subordinate Rob Robinson – the man who subsequently took over Doone’s job – was highly critical of the police boss. It was details in the Robinson report that Helen Clark allegedly relied on when she mislead the Sunday Star Times into publishing a career-destroying story on the police commissioner.
However, what Sir Humphrey’s found was that not only did the second report, the PCA investigation, contradict the Robinson report, but Helen Clark knew that when she tipped off the SST.
In brief, before we begin our own investigation, here’s what the Sir Humphrey’s blog said on September 8, under the heading “Summary Points”:
1. PCA report found neither Doone nor his partner (the driver of the car) were intoxicated.
2. Helen Clark had the PCA report before the 11th January 2000.
3. Clark leaked selected parts of the superceded Robinson report to the Sunday Star Times between the 10th and 16th of January 2000. See the Brief of Evidence of SST reporter Oskar Alley [released on the site]. On the basis of Clark’s leaks, the SST ran a front-page story claiming Peter Doone had used his position as Police Commissioner to intimidate a rookie cop and avoid a breath test.”
You should now be getting a feel for just how serious Sir Humphrey’s pre-election document drop was politically. Should the mainstream media have been interrogating Helen Clark with the same intensity they had been interrogating Don Brash that week over the Brethren pamphlets? You be the judge as you read what follows.
Although the story of Doonegate broke earlier this year, the release of the documents on Sir Humphrey’s was the first time all the documents relating to the case had been placed in the public domain. It should have resulted in a media feeding frenzy, but there was none.
So how had Doonegate arisen? The first media mention of it was Friday December 3, 1999, on the Holmes show on TV1, almost a week after the incident had taken place. Somehow, TVNZ had been tipped off that the Police Commissioner had “exchanged pleasantries” with a police patrol during a traffic stop on election night the previous Saturday – the election that brought Labour to power.
Oskar Alley’s brief of evidence discloses that the SST picked up on the story for its December 5 edition on the front page, “basically repeating the fact that the Holmes show had reported this matter”.
“By that stage,” says Alley, “it had also become apparent, from a statement released by Police Headquarters dated 3 December 1999, that Deputy Commissioner Rob Robinson was investigating the incident as a result of inquiries made by TVNZ’s Holmes show.”
Alley says his own involvement escalated in mid December that year, when he spoke to “a senior Wellington lawyer who had some direct involvement in the matter [who] spoke to me ‘strictly off the record’ saying that ‘Doone should be facing charges over this’, urging me to keep investigating because there was a very good story in this, saying that in the sources’ [note the plural] view Peter Doone had acted highly inappropriately”.
Alley does not disclose the identity of the “senior Wellington lawyer” or who, exactly, the lawyer was acting for in order to have some “direct involvement”.
However, Investigate has discovered from a Cabinet briefing paper released on the blog site that Labour’s incoming Prime Minister had been briefed on 3 December 1999, the same day the Holmes programme later went to air with the first media report of the incident. Additionally, the new Police Minister received a full briefing from Deputy Commissioner Rob Robinson on December 10. In other words, Labour was well across Doonegate long before a “senior” lawyer came forward to urge the SST to dig deeper.
On 14 December, Alley attended a police Christmas Party where he spoke to several people “employed at Police Headquarters” who disclosed fresh details to him about the case, such as the fact that the car had been stopped because its headlights were not turned on, and that both the Commissioner and his partner had been at a corporate function that evening and stopped off at a restaurant on the way home. Alley says the police sources he spoke to were adamant that the driver of the car should have been breath-tested as standard procedure.
On the same day, December 14, Rob Robinson’s preliminary report had been completed and delivered, and the more in-depth Police Complaints Authority investigation was well underway.
Among those interviewed by the PCA was another police officer who’d seen Doone and Robyn Johnstone at the corporate function:
“It was my impression the last time that I saw them that neither of them were intoxicated or unfit to drive. I do not think that Robyn Johnson had in fact had much to drink and I also gained the impression that she was the designated driver.”
The PCA also heard analysis from doctor about the likely levels of alcohol in Robyn Johnstone’s blood (two to three small glasses of wine, with food, over several hours), and found they were likely to be “well below the legal driving limit, at levels unlikely to be associated with any significant intoxication or impairment of judgement or behaviour”.
The PCA head, Judge Neville Jaine, concluded, “The only evidence available to the Authority leads to a conclusion that at the time of driving the blood alcohol level of Ms Johnstone did not exceed the legal driving limit.”
This information was in the Government’s hands by December 29. Regardless, the heat really started to go on in the New Year, with an SST lead story on January 9 2000 headlined “Labour considers sacking Doone”. According to Alley, much of the information for this story was actually provided by the paper’s political editor at the time, Ruth Laugeson, who’d interviewed key but unnamed members of Helen Clark’s staff.
The following week, Alley published a front page lead of his own, the first story to allege that Doone told the young constable “That won’t be necessary” in reference to breath-testing. For Labour, this was the silver bullet with which they hoped to dispatch the Police Commissioner.
“The first information I received about Peter Doone allegedly using the words ‘that won’t be necessary’ came from an anonymous phone call to me,” says Alley, “on about Tuesday 10 or Wednesday 11 January 2000..[the caller] said something along the following lines: … ‘I know the constable involved. Are you aware that Peter Doone said to that constable ‘That won’t be necessary’ on the night in question?’
“Of course, an anonymous phone call on its own is not a reliable enough source, so that week I contacted a Senior Government Advisor in the Police Sector [who] confirmed that he was told that our information and the words ‘that won’t be necessary’ were correct…[and] he also told me, which was something I did not know at the time, that the constable who spoke to Peter Doone on the night in question was holding a sniffer device, which I understood was [for breath testing].”
Adopting the Woodward & Bernstein three source rule, Alley decided to approach Prime Minister Helen Clark.
“By the time I approached the Prime Minister, both the Robinson and PCA reports into the matter would have been completed, signed off and handed to appropriate government members,” says Alley in his brief.
“The Prime Minister made it clear that she had seen both reports.”
Alley says he specifically rang Clark – as the person with both reports in front of her – to check whether the claims about the sniffer being visible and Doone’s alleged response – “that won’t be necessary” – were included in the report Clark was holding.
“The Prime Minister confirmed that I was correct that the Constable had a sniffer device in his hand to test for alcohol; and included in the comments Peter Doone made to the Constable, with regards to the breath test, Peter Doone said ‘that won’t be necessary’.
“The Prime Minister specifically said ‘…you’re not wrong’.”
In her own brief of evidence, published on the blog site, Helen Clark admits confirming the detail, although she suggests she drew attention to the fact that Peter Doone was “disputing” some of those details.
But even if Clark is telling the truth about alluding to the dispute, in actual fact nowhere in the two reports on her desk when she spoke to the SST is there any suggestion that the constable had intended to breath test the driver. Nor does the phrase “that won’t be necessary” appear in either the Robinson report or the Police Complaints Authority report. That allegation was never “in dispute” because it had not been made by any named source except Helen Clark herself.
The documents released by Sir Humphrey’s before the election included statements from a police officer waiting back in the police car, and two other police witnesses, none of whom mentioned seeing a sniffer device in the young constable’s hand as he approached Doone.
Even Brett Main, the constable concerned, says in his brief of evidence for the Doone’s defamation case against the SST earlier this year that there’s no guarantee his sniffer was visible to anyone:
“I have read the article from the Sunday Star Times dated 16 January 2000. The headline for this article is ‘Doone case cop was ready to breath test’. This article reported that I had said to the Commissioner that I wanted to breath test the driver of the car. I did not say that to the Commissioner. I know I had the sniffer with me but I can’t remember whether it was in my hand or my pocket. When I got out of my car, I had no intention of breath testing anyone at that stage. I only grabbed the sniffer from the car in case I needed it. I recall that I did not even mention EBA (excess blood alcohol) procedures or breath testing to the Commissioner.
“The article also said that the Commissioner said in response ‘That won’t be necessary’. At no stage did the Commissioner say that to me.
“There is no truth to either of those statements reported in the Sunday Star Times.”
The Prime Minister, then, told a national newspaper that the reports in front of her contained a phrase that was absolutely damning in its implication that the Commissioner of Police had improperly intervened to prevent a breath test. Yet the phrase does not appear in those reports, and is denied by the police officer it was allegedly said to.
Not only did the Prime Minister say it once. She was contacted again by Alley on the 15th of January, and also by the paper’s editor Sue Chetwin, and repeated her assertions that Doone used those words.
Naturally, when the Sunday Star Times published this hitherto unreleased information on January 16, all hell broke loose in the media and Peter Doone’s position as Commissioner became untenable.
It was behind the scenes, however, that the newly released documents disclose how events were falling nicely into place for Labour’s plans to oust Doone from his job. For a start, there had been bad blood between Labour and the Police Commissioner for months leading up to the election because of the INCIS computer debacle. Doone and National’s police minister Clem Simich had taken the brunt of Labour’s INCIS attacks in parliament. Politically, Doone was already seen in Labour circles as a lame duck, long before the alleged drink driving incident happened.
Sir Humphrey’s published a cabinet briefing paper dated 21 January – five days after the bombshell Sunday Star Times article now known to have been caused by the Prime Minister’s leak of false information to two journalists.
In the cabinet paper, Attorney-General Margaret Wilson tells her colleagues that “Serious issues of confidence were raised by…the perceptions created by the incident in terms of the wider public perception of the integrity of the law enforcement system.”
In other words, crucial to the issue of whether Doone should keep his job was the amount of media opprobrium bouncing around the case. And that’s why the Prime Minister’s decision to up the ante by leaking false incriminating information is directly relevant to the events that followed.
That Labour was making the issue a top priority is confirmed in the briefing paper, with Margaret Wilson acknowledging that she’d been asked by Helen Clark to take over the Government’s handling of the matter as early as January 5, instead of leaving it to Police Minister George Hawkins.
Wilson admits that Labour had known as early as December 17 that there were no grounds for criminal prosecution of the Commissioner or his partner, and she admits the Government had also been told at the same time by Deputy Commissioner Rob Robinson that “it was the PCA’s report, and not his, which would be authoritative in terms of any adverse findings.”
In other words, Labour was clearly on notice that it should not rely on the Robinson report if it wanted to criticize Doone.
The cabinet paper reveals just how much knowledge Helen Clark had of this. It says the Prime Minister, Deputy PM Michael Cullen and Attorney General Margaret Wilson met on January 11 with the Solicitor General, the head of the Prime Minister’s Department Mark Prebble and the head of State Services, Michael Wintringham.
At that meeting, full copies of the authoritative Police Com-plaints Authority report, the Robinson report, and submis-sions made on behalf of Peter Doone, were tabled and dis-cussed, along with their legal implications. The document reveals that public perception of the Doone affair was identified at that meeting as a critical factor in whether the government would be within its rights to dismiss Doone.
This meeting took place three days before Helen Clark leaked false and damaging information about Doone to the Sunday Star Times. In other words, knowing the adverse media coverage was likely to be a determining factor, the Prime Minister turned up the heat.
In her briefing paper, Margaret Wilson also acknowledges that the issue was not serious enough, but for the publicity, to warrant sacking:
“A decision to advise the Governor-General to remove the Commissioner is one with considerable personal and financial impact for the Commissioner. His reputation would inevitably suffer. He would also suffer significant adverse financial effects.
“Given the mitigating factors found by the PCA, a decision to recommend the Commissioner’s removal would be a severe sanction.”
The briefing paper released by Sir Humphrey’s also shows Margaret Wilson gave specific advice to her cabinet colleagues, including Prime Minister Clark, on the basis of the findings of the Police Complaints Authority:
“On account of the findings in the PCA’s report, my advice is that Ministers should proceed on the basis that the Commissioner is being truthful, in particular as to the amount of alcohol consumed [very little] and in stating that it was his belief at the time the car was stopped that no road safety issue was involved.”
The cabinet briefing paper was dated Friday, January 21, in preparation for the following week’s cabinet meeting where Doone’s position would be discussed. Before that, the Sunday Star Times had another go at the Commissioner on January 23:
“Last chance to resign, Cabinet ready to ask Doone to fall on his sword,” screamed the headline.
“The Government is set to ask beleaguered Police Commissioner Peter Doone to quit this week,” it began, quoting unnamed government ‘sources’ as saying Doone would be asked to fall on his sword.
In the released document, Oskar Alley reveals that his ‘source’ was none other than Prime Minister Helen Clark. Again. He believes he spoke to her on Friday January 21, the same day Margaret Wilson’s memo had gone to all cabinet ministers.
Alley says Clark told him that Constable Main definitely had the sniffer device – “she quoted a passage from the Robinson report on that subject” – and she said she “would hang tough on this one if she were the Sunday Star Times.”
“I took comfort from the Prime Minister’s comments,” says Alley. “She had the relevant documents and reports, parts of which she read to me over the telephone…she confirmed that there was nothing to worry about in the story the previous week. In effect, she confirmed that, despite Peter Doone’s statement, the 16 January 2000 article had been accurate.
“She also read to me parts of the Robinson Police Inquiry, which were quoted in the story.”
One of the pieces of information in the Prime Minister’s possession, however, was advice originating from the January 12 legal briefing that she should not be relying on the Robinson report. In fact, the cabinet briefing paper from Margaret Wilson specifically says, “I do not propose to refer further to the Robinson report. I suggest Ministers likewise focus on the PCA report.”
So what game, exactly, was the Prime Minister playing, by continuing to feed the media titbits from a report her own Attorney-General was backpeddling from?
“I specifically put it to the Prime Minister that they would ask Peter Doone to fall on his sword. It was confirmed to me he might, that that ‘was in the plan’, and that that was what the Government were going to ask him to do,” recalls Alley.
Not content, SST editor Sue Chetwin was back on the phone to Helen Clark as well, and came away reassured.
“She encouraged the newspaper to continue its investigation as the matter was reaching its critical stages.”
It is now a matter of record that Helen Clark was the Sunday Star Times secret source on Doonegate. But what hadn’t emerged, prior to the election, was a complete set of documents revealing for the first time exactly what the Prime Minister knew and when she knew it. It is this paper trail that the Sir Humphrey’s blog published on September 8, and which almost the entire parliamentary press gallery were then tipped off about via email.
So why wasn’t the story covered during the election campaign? In the midst of a media scrum over whether National leader Don Brash knew the specifics of the Brethren pamphlet campaign, and Labour calling that an “issue of integrity”, why did the media fail to cover the release of the Doonegate documents?
When Investigate approached One News executive producer John Gillespie, his first words on the document release were, “That’s news to me. First I’ve heard of them. I’ll get back to you.” Investigate is still waiting to hear, although that may have more to do with the Grim Reaper of the Stars currently stalking TVNZ’s news corridors than any attempt to obfuscate. However, we can confirm that three of TVNZ’s senior parliamentary bureau reporters were emailed in the early afternoon of Thursday 15 September by a journalist from a business publication, mystified as to why there’d been no coverage of the matter.
Investigate has emailed all the press gallery journalists concerned directly, only one, from a major newspaper, has replied:
“I don’t seem to remember this email. Probably because on the dates you mention, I wasn’t in the office - like most down here, I was on the road six days a week, at least 12 hours a day, and this mail probably got deleted en masse among the hundreds from Nigerian scamsters, Dutch lottery win, penis enlargement pills and offers of free viagra on the very odd late night I came back into the office.”
TV3’s news director Mark Jennings says his team never brought it to his attention.
“I was never aware of it, which is surprising.”
At the stage we approached the New Zealand Herald’s editor Tim Murphy in early October, we were more guarded in revealing exactly what we were investigating, so we simply asked the question whether he was aware of any significant stories that went unreported by the Herald during the election campaign?
“Hell No!!! We didn’t run some comments from the Tauranga woman against Clarkson because they were arguably defamatory. And we took a day or so to get to the bottom of the first wave of Taito Philip Field allegations before publishing throughout that final few days. And Owen McShane has told anyone who will listen that he had some tip about Christian churches and the Green pamphlet but I’ve not been able to run that down, and not at all sure that it was of tremendous moment in the great scheme of things anyway. “But I’m certainly not aware of — and am pretty sure there aren’t — any stories that could have in any way been thought ‘significant’ that we didn’t run. Quite the opposite. We ran far more ‘significant’ stories than anyone, anywhere.”
TV3’s Jennings, likewise, says he also played it cautious during the election campaign when choosing whether or not to run stories like the alleged “leaked National Party emails”.
“We had some knowledge of that prior to the Sunday Star Times, but I decided not to go with it because what we had was these emails going to Brash, and we did not have any emails going from Brash back the other way. So it was just people giving Brash advice, seemingly unsolicited advice, and I wasn’t comfortable running with it unless I had an email from Brash going back saying ‘Yeah, I really want to take that on board’, or ‘Yeah, if we get in power I really want to follow that agenda’. So I just didn’t have a high enough comfort level.
“To me, people like the Business Roundtable sending advice to a prospective National Party prime minister did not seem that odd, if you know what I mean. But there has been discussion within our own ranks as to whether we made the right decision on that.”
The leaked emails story, like the Doonegate one, raises fascinating issues about how far the media should go to expose the people deliberately leaking politically-damaging material at strategic moments.
“Yeah, that’s a tricky one,” concedes Jennings, “because on that email thing it was a confidential source issue. There were also thoughts going through our minds about the reasons for this going out and where it was coming from, but it came to us through quite a trusted confidential source so we weren’t going to investigate further on that. We accepted that the source was going to be confidential before we knew what the story was going to be about or presented to us. A Catch 22.
“I take your point, that at some stage it wouldn’t be bad to actually blow one of these people wide open, but it’s always the case – are you biting that hand that feeds you!”
“So the Doone story was one that you personally were never told of?”
“No, no. I’m actually fascinated by it right now. It’s still a good story, I would suggest!” says Jennings.
Radio New Zealand’s director of news, Don Rood, is another who wasn’t told.
“Not that I know of, no. It would depend on what else was happening on the day. When dumps like that happen, select your time very carefully. If it’s a dull day you’ll get a lot of attention, but if it’s really busy or someone is crook in the office it’ll be passed over. It’s all about timing, timing is everything!”
To her credit, Nine to Noon’s Linda Clark gave the Prime Minister a serve over the documents on September 9, to which the bloggers responded with glee.
“Yes folks, this is the interview to listen to. Helen gets asked the tough questions. There is a priceless moment where there is a frosty three second silence where I’m sure Helen is imagining flaying Linda alive for the audacity…I hope Linda still has a job after this,” posted one.
“Ouch, has RLWN [Radio Left Wing News] suddenly developed a spine?” queried another.
“If you listen to the beginning of the next hour, a number of emailers were horrified at Linda’s move to the right.”
But there is one other unresolved mystery – the role of the National and Act parties. Both organizations had the Doonegate documents, but apart from Act leader Rodney Hide trumping National by releasing the Prime Minister’s brief of evidence and those of the two SST staff back in May, neither party released the January 21 cabinet briefing paper, or Constable Brett Main’s statement themselves. Instead, the task was left to an internet blogsite.
The man behind the Sir Humphrey’s blog is another mystery, an internet secret squirrel who, aptly, plies his information trade under the pseudonym “Antarctic Lemur”, or AL for short.
“I’m the one who followed the Doonegate story and published the papers online. I’m not keen on revealing myself, as I work in an area not known for its sympathies towards people of my political leanings. In fact not a single one of the Sir Humphrey’s co-authors is aware of my identity.”
So what does he make of National and Act’s failure to move in for the kill, especially when the documents had been released with still-sensitive portions blanked out. Surely it had all the makings of a Brethrengate scandal for the centre right to enjoy 10 days out from a general election?
“This is all conjecture really. What’s most odd is how neither party released the documents through their websites earlier.”
AL sees three possible explanations:
“1. Hide jumped the gun when he released the Briefs of Evidence a day early. Perhaps he was trying to avoid irritating National even more.
“2) National was trying to avoid an overtly negative campaign. Bringing Doone back into it might have taken the campaign down a path of negativity they didn’t want to tread.
“3) Understanding the reports requires a deep understanding of the new facts and contradictions revealed by comparing the Briefs of Evidence to the news reports of the day to the official Police reports. Perhaps neither party had researchers capable or willing to do that.”
On the media’s failure to fire, he remains bemused.
“I’m surprised other print media competing with Fairfax didn’t cover the story, i.e. the Herald. And it’s obviously not ‘oversight’ given quite a few journos were emailed about it by our readers and the documents were available online. I went back through [one journalist’s] previous commentary on the matter and discovered she was more interested in analysing supposed little political games being played by Fairfax etc – who cares? The world doesn’t revolve around the media involved, far from it. I’m not surprised TVNZ and TV3 weren’t interested as it was a complex story damaging to the Left’s election hopes, and I regard most TV reporters as either centre-left or very left.”
Was it conspiracy theory, laziness, or just that the emails to the news media too closely resembled one of those Nigerian penis-enlarging Viagra pill spams?
Given the deafening silence from a large number of press gallery journalists to questions from Investigate, it may be that with the election running so close they simply couldn’t bring themselves to stick the knife into Labour.
The Monday morning that Investigate released its September cover story on John Tamihere and the pokie machine trusts, Prime Minister Helen Clark cancelled her scheduled media appearances on National Radio and Newstalk ZB, and her handlers told the press gallery she had come down with food poisoning.
“It’s the first time she’s ever done this,” a top National party aide told Investigate. “We think she’s pulled a sickie in case she gets questioned about your article.”
Clark needn’t have worried. It was another story the news media failed to cover, and once that fact became apparent by early afternoon, it coincided with a miraculously healed Prime Minister who was able to attend a photo opportunity at the Beehive after all.
With the election hanging on a 40,000 vote margin, we may never know whether the media’s failure to cover the last chapter in Doonegate effectively threw the election. But the question of socio-political bias in the mainstream media is one that isn’t going to disappear any time soon. What we do know is that the documents released on the internet 10 days before the election proved that Helen Clark had not just been mistaken in what she had told the Sunday Star Times – the Prime Minister of New Zealand appears to have knowingly lied, with the sole purpose of creating so much bad publicity that she could remove Doone from his job on the grounds of “public perception”.
Should the voting public have been told? You be the judge.
To see what others think on this, visit Investigate’s new weblog, thebriefingroom.com

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Investigate Nov 05, Fetal Distress

Is it ethical to experiment on aborted humans?

It’s the hidden side of medical research. A massive industry harvesting pieces of dead children for experiments, or transplanting into animals. IAN WISHART discovers the University of Auckland has imported body parts from American babies for a research project, and asks some hard questions:

There are puddles of water in the gloomy corridors of Auck-land University’s School of Medicine, leftovers from a spring rainstorm and some bad building maintenance on this grey September afternoon. This nondescript urban edifice, now in the shadow of the new Auckland Hospital extensions, houses dark secrets. Or so Investigate has been told.
“They’re doing an undergraduate presentation next week in the Department of Optometry and Vision Science,” a source in Auckland’s optometry community confides in a cryptic email. “Thought you might be interested to investigate a research project involving tissue from aborted fetuses.”
Optometry. Eye doctors. Hardly the first branch of medicine that springs to mind as the cutting edge of macabre experimentation. But inside the Cole Lecture Theatre, safely sheltered from the weather and the waterlogged corridor, fifty or so medical students have filled the room almost to capacity as teams of fourth-year undergrads present the results of this year’s main research projects.
An American woman holds court, a scientific Mistress of Ceremonies taking clear pleasure in parading her protégés to their medical colleagues as they make audio-visual presentation after presentation. She is Dr Keely Bumsted O’Brien, and this is her baby, so to speak.
Across the road, in the big hospital’s emergency rooms and oncology units, specialists, intensivists, nurses and registrars are working frantically to save the living. Here, in the School of Medicine, it turns out O’Brien’s team has been dissecting the dead. And not just any dead.
“The title of the project,” tipped our source, “is ‘Photoreceptor-associated gene expression in human fetal and embryonic chicken retina’. As far as I am aware this project is unlikely to have received regional ethics approval from the Ministry of Health. The tissue has been obtained from elective abortions in the United States and was transported here for the experiments. This may be the first research of its kind in New Zealand and I am sure the public are quite unaware of it.”
Just how did body parts from a group of aborted American infants end up in New Zealand for students to conduct experiments on? To find the answers, we began investigations in the United States, and a controversy that blew up there six years ago.

***

It was an interview that shocked America. An Insider, spilling the beans on massive malpractice to a reporter on ABC’s 20/20. Only this time, it wasn’t Big Tobacco in the gunsights, it was the US abortion industry, exposed as harvesting the organs from aborted babies. According to former abortion clinic technician Dean Alberty, clinics were harvesting eyes, brains, hearts, limbs, torsos and other body parts for sale to the scientific market: laboratories wanting to test new drugs or procedures, or researchers trying to find the causes of genetic disorders or discover new ways of treating disorders like Parkinsons.
To make matters doubly embarrassing for authorities, the trafficking was taking place inside abortion clinics run by Planned Parenthood, the US affiliate of New Zealand’s Family Planning organization.
Alberty worked for a Maryland agency called the Anatomic Gift Foundation, which essentially acted as a brokerage between universities and researchers seeking body parts, and the abortion clinics providing the raw material. Alerted by the clinics about the races and gestations of babies due to be aborted each day, AGF technicians would match the offerings with parts orders on their client lists. Alberty and his colleagues would turn up at the abortions that offered the best donor prospects to begin dissecting and extracting what they needed before decay set in.
“We would have a contract with an abortion clinic that would allow us to go in...[to] procure fetal tissue for research. We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue researchers, pharmaceuticals and universities were looking for. Then we would go and look at the particular patient charts—we had to screen out anyone who had STDs or fetal anomalies. These had to be the most perfect specimens we could give these researchers for the best value that we could sell for.
“We were taking eyes, livers, brains, thymuses, and especially cardiac blood…even blood from the limbs that we would get from the veins” he said.
Alberty told of seeing babies wounded but alive after abortion procedures, and in one case a set of twins “still moving on the table” when clinicians from AGF began dissecting the children to harvest their organs. The children, he said, were “cuddling each other” and “gasping for breath” when medics moved in for the kill.
Alberty had been asked by a pro-life group, Life Dynamics, to provide information about activities in the clinics, and the issue caused enough national scandal to see an episode of ABC’s 20/20 devoted to it in March 2000.
On that programme, as in this magazine, the imagery was highly sanitized so as not to upset sensitive viewers. The closest 20/20 got to screening images of trafficked human fetal tissue was a pea-sized fragment of unidentifiable tissue in a glass Petri dish.
Life Dynamics founder Mark Crutcher later told media:
“We are sympathetic to the explanation offered by the ABC producer who told us after the show that the network could not broadcast footage of dismembered babies, baggies full of tiny human eyes or any other accurate footage of the ‘commodity’ being sold by the baby parts merchants. But this should have been stated in the programme. Showing scientists poking at slivers of flesh in a Petri dish through a microscope was deceptive and it dehumanizes this debate.”
In America, late-term abortions are permitted, even up to 30 weeks gestation. It’s a three day procedure and involves forcing the mother to go into labour but killing the baby with a spike to the base of the skull before it leaves the birth canal. Even so, according to Alberty, it wasn’t unusual out of the 30 or 40 late-term abortions each week to see several babies born alive on the operating table before clinicians could perform the procedure.
“They were coming out alive. The doctor would either break the neck or take a pair of tongs and basically beat the foetus until it was dead.”
Alberty’s testimony was verbal, and in many cases it was challenged by abortion providers who questioned his motives and accused him of “embellishing” the sordid details of the abortion industry. But Alberty the whistleblower wasn’t alone. Another former clinic manager, Eric Harrah, gave a video interview disclosing live births as the abortion industry’s “dirty secret”:
“It was always very disturbing, so the doctor would try to conceal it from the rest of the staff.”
One incident in particular haunts him. The clinic had begun inducing a woman 26 weeks pregnant, but sent her overnight to a nearby motel to await the full procedure in the morning. Instead, in the middle of the night she gave birth to a child and was brought back to the abortion clinic with the baby wrapped in a towel.
“I was in the scrub room when I saw the towel move,” says Harrah. “A nurse said, ‘Eric, you’re just tired. It’s three in the morning.’ Then we both looked and a little baby’s arm raised up out of the towel and was moving like a newborn baby. I screamed and ran out. The doctor came in and closed the door and when we went back in to process the baby out of the clinic into the lab, [the baby] had a puncture wound in his chest.”
In the United States, trafficking in baby parts for profit is a criminal offence. But to get around the problem, universities and researchers pay a fee – not for the parts themselves but for the “cost of extraction”. Thus, there are different fees depending on the amount of work involved. And shipping and handling is extra.
Harvesting fetal tissue is not yet illegal in the US. In fact, the programme at five major universities including the University of Washington is part funded by the US National Institutes of Health. It is the University of Washington that has been supplying Keely Bumsted O’Brien at the University of Auckland, with some of her eyeball retinas of aborted children.
The reality of the ethical boundaries wasn’t lost on the stu-dents gathered in the Auckland School of Medicine lecture theatre when fourth year undergrads Tim Eagle and Kimberly Taylor wrapped up their presentation on genetic testing the eyeballs of chicken embryos and human fetuses. They told the audience they’d used tissue from a 10 week human embryo, a 12 week and a 16 week foetus. When Keely Bumsted O’Brien called for questions from the audience, the first was an ethical one, from a female student somewhere up the front of the crowded auditorium. Had Eagle and Taylor, she wondered, run their project past the Auckland University Ethics Committee?
“We have ethical approval under Keely as referee, which is obvious by itself. Her current ethical approval worked for what we were doing so we basically used hers, which was obtained as far as we’re aware from America,” Taylor responded.
When Investigate rang O’Brien to clarify, she confirmed her teams were working on something big.
“There’s a large ongoing project, and I don’t think I need to tell you when and where I actually do specific things. Are you aware that importation of human tissue into New Zealand does not require any sort of permit?,” she countered.
Apparently, she’s right. Under current New Zealand law, you can import body parts to your heart’s content as long as you do it in a biosafe manner. But what about seeking approval from the Ministry of Health’s Northern Region Ethics Committee? Surely there must be laws governing the carrying out of experiments on aborted human infants in the name of science?
“No,” says O’Brien emphatically, “because you’re not required to, because it’s tissue, not alive.”
In other words, thanks to a loophole in New Zealand law, it is perfectly legal to conduct experiments on aborted human embryos. For all we know, there may be dozens of experiments being carried out on aborted children in research labs throughout New Zealand. The fetal eyes, O’Brien says, arrive in the country having been “snap frozen cryogenically” just minutes after death, then placed in formaldehyde.
So who supplies Auckland University with infant eyeball retinas? O’Brien repeatedly talks of the “organizations” that supply her, but names only one, the University of Washington.
“These organizations, like for example the University of Washington has a tissue programme. The UOW oversees the collection of tissue, they have their own ethics committee. So they have to be overseen by another committee. So to use fetal human tissue in NZ I have to go through the local ethics committee, and in addition the tissue that I’m gathering has to be gathered under a separate ethics protocol. That ethics protocol is overseen by the ethics committee that’s on site.”
When Investigate suggests that the body parts could be coming in without mothers even realizing their aborted baby had been harvested moments after death, O’Brien is outraged.
“Working with human fetal tissue is not taken lightly. You have to have respect for the donation of the tissue. Now the child obviously cannot give consent, it’s the mother that’s giving consent.”
“Do you think they’re asking these women, ‘do you mind if we keep the baby for medical research?’,” we ask.
“You absolutely have to! You absolutely positively have to! Do your homework man! You simply cannot take fetal tissue from an aborted foetus without informed consent from the mother. Oh my goodness, I’m shocked to hear you suggest that. I’m upset and shocked that you suggest that. Totally off base.”
But is it really off base? O’Brien insists that women seeking abortions are asked to sign consent forms authorizing the use of their dead babies for medical research. It leads to a terse exchange with Investigate.
“There is an informed consent form that the mother signs. She is not coerced, she is not paid any money. She is informed of all of her options. That informed consent was part of my approval that was produced and shown to the ethics committee here [in Auckland].”
Great, we thought. So O’Brien actually knew the names of the mothers involved and had presented copies of their consent to her peers?
“Absolutely not! That is so unethical! All I know is that the tissue was donated by the mother, and the mother has signed an informed consent form.”
But hang on, we asked, how do you know, if you don’t have a signed form with a name on it?
“I don’t keep those records on site.”
No, but somebody must.
“Yes, they are kept by the organization that coordinates the donation.”
So what, physically, does O’Brien have that proves there’s been informed consent from the mother?
“You cannot collect the tissue without informed consent from the mother. It is unethical for the organization that coordinates the collection of the tissue to provide me with any sort of information that might link it back to the mother.”
In other words, there’s no signed paperwork for O’Brien or the ethics committee to see. It’s done on trust. To Investigate’s knowledge, O’Brien has never seen a signed informed consent form.
So for all you know, we pushed her, it could be somebody in an office somewhere chucking out these forms on a word processor saying ‘yeah, we do all this’ and of course they don’t. “If you’ve never seen a signed copy, how do you know?”
And when Investigate went searching, those are exactly the kind of discrepancies we began to find. Like this extract from the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper in the wake of a congressional visit to the University of Washington lab:
“Women who agree to the use of their aborted babies for research sign a simple “informed consent” document at the abortion clinic, which includes no information on where the particular “donation” will be sent or how it will be used. This oversight is inconsistent with the regulation requiring “informed” consent, according to a physician familiar with research protocols, and could be problematic for the University of Washington laboratory.”
The newspaper also discovered other discrepancies in the University of Washington paperwork, such as the University letting outside labs fill in forms instead of doing the paperwork themselves. Nor was the University of Washington doing the actual organ harvesting at the abortion clinics, so the University itself was one step removed from the informed consent process in terms of verifying whether the consent was genuine. In other words, the University of Washington’s ethical oversight could not have included whether the tissue was harvested ‘ethically’, because the University has never been in a position to know.
The congressmen went away sufficiently concerned that six separate pieces of legislation were drafted to combat the harvesting of tissues. But with a change in administration, those bills went onto the backburner.
Then there’s the issue of the other ‘organisation’ O’Brien refers to but doesn’t name. Investigate traced two scientific papers published by O’Brien in the past 24 months. One, “Expression of photoreceptor-associated molecules during human fetal eye development”, was published in the journal Molecular Vision in 2003 and can be found on the internet through a Google search. In the paper, O’Brien discloses she used body parts supplied by the University of Washington, but also by a private broking firm like the controversial Anatomic Gift Foundation referred to earlier; this one is named Advanced Bioscience Resources, or ABR, and is based in California. After Anatomic Gift Foundation was sprung thanks to the testimony of insider Dean Alberty, Advanced Bioscience Resources moved to fill the fetal tissue power vacuum. In an industry now estimated to be worth around $2 billion globally, ABR is believed to be a major player, particularly as it’s prepared to supply organs harvested from second trimester late-term abortions, which the University of Washington refuses to do.
Investigate has confirmed that an early second trimester baby was dissected for the Auckland University study, making ABR the likely supplier to O’Brien. And O’Brien has used babies up to the fetal age of 22 weeks, according to her published studies.
Her Molecular Vision paper describes how experiments were “prepared from snap frozen intact human fetal eyes ranging from fetal week 9 to fetal week 19…labeling was performed in a large number of eyes within an age group.”
There is no disclosure in the internet version of the paper how many eyes were harvested for the experiments. At least ten babies from fetal weeks 9 to 22 are known to have been harvested for O’Brien’s second scientific paper we found, published in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science in August 2004. Again, suppliers were both ABR and the University of Washington. One paper on eyes supplied by ABR
describes how the baby’s eyes are “enucleated” from the skull – medical talk for being scooped out with a knife.
Although she was working at the University of Auckland at the time, O’Brien has told Investigate the experiments detailed in her published papers were carried out “elsewhere”.
And what do we know of Advanced Bioscience Resources? According to O’Brien, her suppliers operate with transparent ethical rules and committees. But Advanced Bioscience Resources appears far from transparent. At least one American news report says the company has refused to comment on its body parts trade, making it impossible to ask whether ABR’s practices comply with federal US law.
“We’re a biotechnology firm, we don’t talk to the press,” a company spokeswoman is quoted as saying on another occasion.
Investigate has confirmed that ABR supplied aborted baby brains to be injected into mice, as part of experiments creating a part human/part mouse chimera. The genetically-engineered mice have been given – all courtesy of aborted fetuses from ABR – a human immune system, a human fetal thymus, liver and lymph node. The mice are then infected with HIV as part of AIDS research.
The US National Institutes of Health, which funded the grisly harvesting and experiment, has refused to provide any written proof that ABR holds informed consent forms, nor has the NIH confirmed that mothers were told by ABR that organs from their dead babies would be transplanted into genetically-engineered mice.
ABR has also supplied baby hearts for transplantation into pigs, and fetal stem cells.
We asked O’Brien whether she felt modern scientists were stepping into a dark pedigree.
“Do you see a correlation between the boundaries of science and experimentation on humans in this area, and the dreams of Nazi Josef Mengele and others back in World War 2 and the kind of experiments they were conducting?”
“No.”
Mengele had taken particular interest in dissecting live infants for medical experiments.
“You see no correlation?”
There was a pause as O’Brien drew in her breath. “What you’re trying to get me to say is that research on human fetal tissue is morally and ethically wrong, and I’m not going to say that. Because obviously I’m working on the tissue. I think the information to be gained is extremely valuable and it’s not something taken in lightly. I don’t think the information I use can be interpreted and used for eugenics. The reason that we have ethics committees is so we don’t have a scientific free for all.”
Other ethicists, like Paul Ramsey in the US, disagree however.
“Far from abortion settling the question of fetal research, it could be that sober reflection on the use of the human foetus in research could unsettle the abortion issue.”
Are human children, ask ethicists, any less-deserving of protection from medical experiments and execution than animals?
Pittsburgh-based researcher Suzanne Rini, who interviewed Ramsey and whose 1995 book Beyond Abortion: A Chronicle of Fetal Experimentation brought to light a body parts trade that’s existed since the 1950s, believes the very fact that scientists need the elixir of youth from fetuses may be the ethical catch-22 that kills the abortion industry. On the one hand, she says, medical researchers try to argue the foetus is not a live person. On the other, whether it’s a cure for Parkinson’s, diabetes, Huntington’s, MS or a range of other disorders, medical researchers claim the life in fetuses is the only thing that can save adults. But only if you kill the foetus first.
University of Auckland’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research – Tom Barnes – says it is ethical under current NZ law to harvest organs from fetuses for the sake of improving the lives of adults.
“As you know [Keely’s] research is looking at eyes. She’s trying to solve the problem of macular degeneration which is a disease that affects 60% of more of people who are 70 years old or over. She’s also trying to solve some problems to do with eye disease in younger people as well.”
It is a modern, relativistic idea that you can sacrifice the few for the good of the many. Indeed, this was one of the justifications Hitler used in whipping up hatred against Jewish, Gypsy and gay minorities. In 21st century form, the argument is more subtle: that if a cure for crippling diseases can be found by harvesting fetal organs from abortions, or growing human embryos in the laboratory for stem cell harvesting, then the deaths of those infants are justifiable because of the perceived greater good to the community at large.
Indeed, O’Brien makes a similar appeal when we ask what the ultimate benefit of dissecting children’s eyeballs is:
“You achieve knowledge, so that you can start to try and find therapies to help people regain their vision, or intervention so that you can help people who have congenital abnormalities that we might be able to fix them.
“Obviously I don’t think there should be a blanket ban on the use human fetal tissue because I think the information that you get out of the use of human tissue is very valuable in trying to help people.”
But is that a valid line of reasoning that justifies made-to-order abortions?

At the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, evidence was presented of horrific scientific experiments being performed on cap-tives in the concentration camps. The Nazi medics on trial attempted to justify it by saying the test subjects were due to die anyway and the knowledge gained would benefit the rest of humanity.
Needless to say, the Nazis were shot down in the courtroom (and later simply shot outside it) and Nuremberg issued a declaration condemning the role of the medical profession in experimentation and slaughter of innocents.
University of Auckland’s Keely Bumsted O’Brien resents modern scientists being likened to Hitler’s gruesome genetic engineers, and points out that when Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Brain
Research recently discovered it possessed the brains of many Down’s Syndrome people slaughtered by the Nazis, the Institute did the decent thing.
“Rather than use [the brains for research], it was the decision of the Director to give those brains a decent burial. Which one could argue might be the ethical way to do it, if they were gathered by the Nazis in an unethical way dealing with eugenics. Now I don’t compare what I do to eugenics.”
But Investigate challenged O’Brien on her example.
“There is an arguable case that in 50 or a hundred years time society will look back and say the current Western practice of mass abortion was a similar sort of thing to what the Nazis did and they’ll look at it the same way, what’s your response to that?”
“I don’t think they will,” exclaims O’Brien. “And I think we take much more care in how we carry out the research than the Nazis did.”
It is clear to Investigate after an hour long interview with O’Brien that she is sincere in her beliefs, and she makes special mention of the fact that she respects the humanity of the tissue. She also attends an annual memorial service, she says, that the medical school has for the cadavers and tissue used during the year. Nonetheless, our inquiries into the baby parts business give no reason to think that the harvesting of organs in America from dead or dying infants is done more humanely than the Nazis did.
For a start, the death toll alone from abortion far eclipses anything Hitler was able to achieve. In fact, one estimate of the abortion tally in the West in the past 30 years is that more than 58 million lives have been lost. Once you kick in the figures for the rest of the world including China, more people have been killed by abortion in the past 30 years than in all wars in recorded history. For the record, international studies like a 1999 paper from International Family Planning perspectives suggest 46 million lives a year are taken throughout the world.
At the Mayfair Women’s Clinic in Aurora, Colorado, staff admitted under cross examination in court that they had so many aborted babies to get rid of that clinician Dr James Parks used to put the bodies of larger babies (up to week 22) into meatgrinders so the remains could be reduced to the consistency of toothpaste and flushed down sinks.
Leaked documents from inside abortion clinics have hit the headlines across the US, and they make dark reading. They’re order forms from scientists to agencies like Advanced Bioscience Resources, instructing what parts they need and how to get them.
“Dissect fetal liver and thymus and occasional lymph node from fetal cadaver within 10 (minutes of death).” “Arms and legs need not be intact.” “Intact brains preferred, but large pieces of brain may be usable.”
Or this, from a scientist studying the “Biochemical Characterization of human type X Collagen,” who requests “Whole intact leg, include entire hip joint, 22-24 weeks gest.”
The harvesting technician is asked to “dissect by cutting through symphasis pubis and include whole Illium [hip joint]. To be removed from fetal cadaver within 10 minutes.”
Another, from University of Colorado’s Gary J. Miller, a professor of pathology, seeks the prostate glands of 24 fetuses from the first and second trimesters. The glands, he says in his request to Anatomic Gift Foundation on November 10, 1998, are “To be removed and prepared within 5 minutes ... after circulation has stopped.”
According to World magazine in the US, which broke the story, other specifications state that they are to be “preserved on wet ice,” “picked up immediately by applicant,” have “low risk no IV drug abuse or known sexually transmitted diseases,” and no prescription medications used by “donor” mother. The contract is signed both by Dr. Miller and, for the Regents of the University of Colorado, by “Sharon Frazier, Director of Purchasing.”
O’Brien refuses to believe there is anything dodgy about the fetal tissue harvesting operations in the US.
“I have to put my faith in the fact that the organizations that I’m obtaining tissue from are obtaining it in an ethical manner.”
But let’s look at that more closely. The American Society For Cell Biology, an association of cell biologists, lobbied hard against regulating the fetal tissue harvesting industry, including a suggestion that researchers should have to “verify that the tissue was obtained properly”. This condition, and others, were regarded as too onerous for the scientists to accept.
None of the many articles and papers Investigate has read on the issue suggest that the abortion clinics or tissue har-vesting organizations are subject to ethical oversight com-mittees. In fact, the Anatomic Gift Foundation, which is similar to ABR, openly puts the onus on its clients – the researchers – to get ethical approval before they make an organ purchase application. Investigate has found no evidence that AGF or ABR are themselves audited by anyone.
And how ethical is the behaviour of another big fetal tissue provider (until it was sprung in the ABC 20/20 programme), Opening Lines?
A division of Missouri and Illinois-based Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology Inc, Opening Lines made no bones about the fact it was in business to make money. A 20/20 producer, posing as a potential investor in the 11 year old company, visited its founder, pathologist Dr Miles Jones.
Jones, unaware he was being recorded on a hidden video camera, explained how his company obtained fetal parts from clinics across America for shipment to research labs. “It’s market force,” Dr. Jones told the producer about how he sets his prices. “It’s what you can sell it for.” He said he was looking to set up an abortion clinic in Mexico in order to get more fetal tissue by luring women in with cut-price abortions.
“If you control the flow — it’s probably the equivalent of the invention of the assembly line.”
As to the financial benefits of his business, Jones was brutal about the demand from researchers: “If you have a guy that’s desperate for, let’s say, a heart, then he’ll pay you whatever you ask,” he said.
“That’s trading in body parts. There’s no doubt about it,” Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics, told the Alberta Report newspaper after reviewing Jones’ statements.
The Opening Lines corporate brochure reads more like a supermarket advertisement than an ethical, dignified approach to the death of a baby.
“The freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need it.”
Despite compiling a baby parts price list and charging fees, an FBI investigation concluded that Opening Lines had broken no laws in what it had done and how it had done it. So if the American ethical rules are tough, there’s been no evidence of it to date.
Then there’s the question of whether the University of Auckland Human Ethics Committee is tough enough in demanding proof of informed consent in cases like O’Brien’s. You’ll remember O’Brien is insistent that she could not provide the University of Auckland with copies of the informed consent because it would be unethical for her to know the identities of the mothers who’d signed them.
“It is unethical for the organization that coordinates the collection of the tissue to provide me with any sort of information that might link it back to the mother.”
Contrast O’Brien’s statement with this extract from the ethical guidelines imposed on fetal tissue research by the University of Texas at Houston:
“An investigator proposing to use fetal tissue must complete an application form for full [Ethics Committee] review and approval. The application must include a copy of the consent form used to obtain consent for donating the tissue. [Ethics Committee] must be assured that the woman donating tissue has been given an opportunity to understand the procedures, any possible risks to her privacy and well-being, and to assure that she has an opportunity to give free and informed consent to the donation.” [emphasis added]
Additionally, the University of Texas requires that the consent form cannot be generic, and must relate to the actual research project that is planned, with “a short description of the reasons for the research.”
While O’Brien claims it would be unethical for her to know the donor or talk to them, the University of Texas requires its researchers to include on the woman’s copy of the consent form “the name and telephone number” of the researcher, so that the donor can make contact, ask further questions, and even withdraw their consent.
Implicit in this is that the researcher must take ethical responsibility for the collection of the tissue, and should know who the donor is. Both of these aspects corroborate the comments made about the flawed informed consent procedures of the University of Washington earlier in this report.
It is clear from O’Brien’s interview with Investigate that none of the women donating their dead babies’ eyeballs would have been able to reach her to withdraw their consent or ask questions.
But Investigate didn’t leave the issue there. Despite the fact that Advanced Bioscience Resources refuses to give media interviews, we obtained the cellphone number of its President, Linda Tracy, and we rang it. What we obtained is a world exclusive:
“We’re just doing a story on fetal tissue use over here in NZ, and one of the suppliers is ABR, and people tell us you guys are subject to ethical committee oversight, would that be right?”
“Who are you with again?”
“Investigate magazine.”
“OK, I don’t give any information to magazines or interviews to anyone.”
But just as Tracy was about to do what she’d done so many times before to American journalists – hang up – we reminded her that negative publicity could affect her business, and she had a responsibility to put her side of the story.
“In this particular case, the researcher says that the suppliers such as yourself are subject to ethical committee oversight. I’m trying to find out who is responsible for ethical oversight in terms of ABR, would it be you or is it the researcher who must seek approval?”
“Both.”
“What committee do you people report to, how does it work?”
“Well, we are overseen by the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. As a non-profit organization we have guidelines to abide by, but that’s about the only regulatory committee that we are subject to.”
So much for ethical oversight. Is there, we asked, an external ethical committee that Advanced Bioscience Resources reports to or which oversees its baby harvesting operation?
“No.”
What about the actual extraction of eyeballs and other fetal tissue, who carries that out?
“It is our responsibility to collect the tissue,” confirms Linda Tracy.
“So you’re in control of the process all the way through?”
“No.”
This ‘ethical oversight’ is getting more fascinating by the minute. Which part of the process, we asked, was outside ABR’s control?
“The [abortion] clinic consents the patient.”
“And then the clinic provides you with the consent?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any possibility that the clinic may not properly consent the patient, the clinic may take the view ‘we’re never going to see the patient back through here, they’re never going to know’, and they’ll just write out the forms. How do you know the clinic is doing the informed consent properly?”
“We just have to trust them,” says ABR’s Linda Tracy.
Don’t forget, the abortion clinic gets paid money for providing ‘office space’ to the harvesters, and has a financial interest in the success of harvesting as an industry.
Keely Bumsted O’Brien may have expressed “shock” and outrage when Investigate suggested the harvesting programmes could be ethically shonky, but the evidence now appears pretty damning.
Not only is there no ethical oversight of the abortion clinics, there is none on the companies doing the fetal tissue harvesting either. All the way through, the process appears to be done purely on “trust”.
And just how good is the actual informed consent process that the ethics committees rely on? According to the University of Texas, informed consent forms had to spell out what kind of research was specifically planned.
We asked ABR whether, for example, donating ‘mothers’ would be told their child’s organs would be used for eye studies, or for transplantation into animals for experiments?
“The law requires that we always state that it is possible that it may be used for important stem cell research, and if the patient asks specifically what it might be used for then that is explained to her verbally. The consent itself is somewhat generic except for the pluripotent stem cell use.” [our emphasis]
Based on Linda Tracy’s interview with Investigate, it now appears certain that no donating mother gave informed consent for her baby’s body parts to be transplanted into human/mouse hybrids, or injected into the veins of rats. Little wonder the US Government National Institutes of Health refused to release informed consent forms from ABR regarding those projects.
There was another aspect we wanted to clarify: O’Brien’s insistence that it would be unethical for her to see a donating mother’s consent form.
“Are those forms available to researchers if they need them for ethical approval?”, we asked Tracy.
“Yes.”
Naturally, all these discoveries raised more questions than answers. We went back to the University of Auckland’s Tom Barnes, the man the university’s ethics committee reports to.
“Keely does have ethical approval from the University of Washington to do this and that ethical approval is current and has gone through their prescribed procedures.”
Barnes explained that the project is a collaboration with the University of Washington’s Anita Hendrickson, who was apparently the principal point of contact with tissue harvesters.
But Barnes was not aware that University of Washington’s ethical procedures were found wanting, as referred to earlier in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer report.
“I’m sorry, I can’t comment on that,” reflected Barnes. “I’d have to know exactly what the situation is before I comment.
“In terms of what this university knows, we have the ethical approval from Washington, and also the proposal has been examined by our ethics committee de novo [as if for the first time] as well.”
When we pointed out that neither University of Washington nor ABR had directly sought informed consent from women and instead relied on abortion clinics to get it, Barnes said the University of Auckland had to trust the paperwork in front of it.
“As I say, I understand the ethical approvals were granted over there and we have paperwork that backs that up. Whatever happened over there I can’t comment on.”
We explained to Barnes the stringent ethical conditions imposed on informed consent forms by the University of Texas, and asked whether he was satisfied that the University of Auckland’s ethical rigours were tough enough.
“Let me say that our ethics committee operates under guidelines that are set nationally, and those guidelines are approved by the HRC. I believe we have an ethics committee that is absolutely committed to research being done in the correct way and I believe they do an excellent job of that.”
Having said that, says Barnes, the University of Auckland will ponder Investigate’s allegations that the US ethical process is flawed.
And what about the overall ethical issue of whether human infants should be experimented on at all? Barnes says it is legal under current New Zealand law, and proposed new rules to control it have not yet come into effect. When we again raise the comparison with Auschwitz, Barnes rejects the analogy.
“I think that’s entirely inappropriate.”
“How?”
“Well it’s a totally different situation.”
“How?”
“If you accuse, by default, Keely of behaving like somebody in a Nazi death camp, I do think that’s unfair. If the issues you’ve raised about ethical approval in America are resolved satisfactorily, if the mothers are in fact giving informed consent for the use of their tissue, that’s really quite different to somebody who’s in a Nazi death camp being experimented on,” says Barnes.
But doesn’t the answer, we pointed out, really turn on whether the fetus is the ‘mother’s tissue’ to dispose of in the first place?”
“We make sure we fall within the ethical guidelines as they are laid down,” says Barnes. “Whether those guidelines are flawed or not or whether they’ll change or not is a matter for the future, and in the meantime we have to operate within those constraints.
“To be honest with you, I think that that [whether a foetus is an individual human life or just part of the mother] is a broader debate which would have to take place in the country at large.”
It’s a good point. Researchers talk of the baby simply being “the mother’s tissue”, but advances in DNA mean we now know the foetus has its own unique DNA and tissue, and is not merely an extra piece of maternal flesh. The mother, in real scientific terms, can no more “own” the foetus on such grounds than she can “own” her older children and consent to their execution and vivisection. Is it time for renewed public debate?
It’s an argument that the University of Auckland is sympathetic to.
“You have to sort of balance the tremendous potential of this research to solve some absolutely debilitating problems – people being blind for years and so on. So we do the best we can at balancing all these factors within the guidelines and the law as it stands, and we contribute to and take part in that ethical debate and we will abide by what comes out of that ethical debate. We’re not trying to cover anything up.
“If the result of that debate that you’re referring to is that it’s unethical to work with this kind of tissue, then we wouldn’t do. No question.”
Another who shares that view is Steven Bamforth, a Canadian geneticist harvesting fetal tissue at the University of Alberta for his research colleagues. Every day, his job entails sifting through aborted remains, searching for recognizable eyes, hearts, livers and other organs sought after by universities.
“The humanity is always before us,” Dr. Bamforth told Alberta Report magazine recently. “If society said this research is not acceptable, of course, we would immediately desist. It’s not something that I
do happily.”
Nor does the “helping older people with their health” excuse carry water with Christopher Hook, of Illinois’ Centre for Bioethics and Human Dignity.
He told World magazine the exploitation of pre-born children was “too high a price regardless of the supposed benefit. We can never feel comfortable with identifying a group of our brothers and sisters who can be exploited for the good of the whole. Once we have crossed that line, we have betrayed our covenant with one another as a society, and certainly the covenant of medicine.”
In New Zealand, the issue of conducting medical experiments on dead bodies – both adult and fetal – is currently the subject of an ethics committee review by the Ministry of Health. Keely Bumsted O’Brien was one of those who made submissions to hearings prior to the issue of a draft report last year, Review of the Regulation of Human Tissue and Tissue-based Therapies, available on the web.
The 131 page document records a majority of submissions believe research should be prohibited on bodies where the wishes of the deceased were not known prior to death, even if the family give their consent post-mortem. As a foetus cannot express its wishes, such a restriction could impact on the use of fetal tissue, especially if society eventually reaches a decision that a foetus is a human life.
Even so, the document also notes growing unease at the use of fetal tissue for experiments, and the fact that it currently falls outside of the regulations, and the Ministry is now considering giving fetal tissue fresh ethical protection. How far it goes will depend, ultimately, on public debate.

PRICE LIST FOR BODY PARTS (US$)

Opening Lines Fee for Services Schedule
> age greater than
< age same or less than

Unprocessed Specimen (> 8 weeks) $ 70
Unprocessed Specimen (< 8 weeks) $ 50
Livers (< 8 weeks) 30% discount if significantly fragmented $150
Livers (> 8 weeks) 30% discount if significantly fragmented $125
Spleens (< 8 weeks) $ 75
Spleens (> 8 weeks) $ 50
Pancreas (< 8 weeks) $100
Pancreas (> 8 weeks) $ 75
Thymus (< 8 weeks) $100
Thymus (> 8 weeks) $ 75
Intestines & Mesentery $ 50
Mesentery (< 8 weeks) $125
Mesentery (> 8 weeks) $100
Kidney-with/without adrenal (< 8 weeks) $125
Kidney-with/without adrenal (> 8 weeks) $100
Limbs (at least 2) $150
Brain (< 8 weeks) 30% discount if significantly fragmented $999
Brain (> 8 weeks) 30% discount if significantly fragmented $150
Pituitary Gland (> 8 weeks) $300
Bone Marrow (< 8 weeks) $350
Bone Marrow (> 8 weeks) $250
Ears (< 8 weeks) $ 75
Ears (> 8 weeks) $ 50
Eyes (< 8 weeks) 40% discount for single eye $ 75
Eyes (> 8 weeks) 40% discount for single eye $ 50
Skin (> 12 weeks) $100
Lungs & Heart Block $150
Intact Embryonic Cadaver (< 8 weeks) $400
Intact Embryonic Cadaver (> 8 weeks) $600
Intact Calvarium $125
Intact Trunk (with/without limbs) $500
Gonads $550
Cord Blood (Snap Frozen LN2) $125
Spinal Column $150
Spinal Cord $325

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Nov 05, Islam's Message To The West:

ISLAM’S MESSAGE TO THE WEST
We’re coming to get you
Earlier this month the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah hit Bali again. Now, in this exclusive interview for Investigate magazine in New Zealand and Australia, given shortly before the latest bombings, alleged terror leader Abu Bakar Ba’asyir tells TAUFIQ ANDRIE and SCOTT ATRAN there’s no place to hide from militant Islam in the Pacific, and no hope of peace. Ever.

This interview was conducted on August 13 and 15, 2005 from Cipinang Prison in Jakarta. Questions were for-mulated by Dr. Scott Atran and posed for him in Behasa Indonesian by Taufiq Andrie. The interview took place in a special visitor’s room, where Ba’asyir had seven acolytes acting as his bodyguards, including Taufiq Halim, the perpetrator of the Atrium mall bombing in Jakarta, and Abdul Jabbar, who blew up the Philippines ambassador’s house. The transcript follows the short introduction below.
In this interview, the alleged terrorist leader Abu Bakar Ba’asyir provides his justification for waging jihad against the West. He also explains the calculus of suicide bombers and discusses his interpretation of Islam concerning war and infidels. Despite accusations that he is head of the al-Qa’ida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist organization and has planned the most lethal terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia, Ba’asyir has only been convicted on conspiracy charges in the 2002 attack on a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people. His 30-month sentence for his role in that bombing, which included scores of Australian tourists among the casualties, was recently reduced by four months and 15 days.
Just outside the visitor’s cell is Hasyim, who runs Ba’asyir’s daily errands. Hasyim is a member of Majlis Mujahidin Indonesian (MMI), the country’s umbrella organization for militant Islamist groups headed by Ba’asyir. Like many Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) members, including Ba’asyir and JI founder Abdullah Sungkar, Hasyim originally came from Darul Islam, a post-independence group banned by the Suharto regime that has operated semi-clandestinely in Indonesian society much as the Muslim Brotherhood has in the Middle East.
In 1993, Sungkar split from DI, bringing with him most of the Indonesian Afghan Alumni that he and Ba’asyir had sent to fight the Soviets. Until Suharto’s downfall in 1998, Sungkar and Ba’asyir
expanded their network of Islamist schools from exile in Malaysia, funnelling students to training camps in Afghanistan and the Philippines, and expanding JI’s influence across Southeast Asia. After Sungkar’s death in 1999, Ba’asyir became “Emir” of JI – a position and organization whose existence he publicly denies but for which there is overwhelming evidence, including from current and former JI members Dr. Atran has interviewed. Although Sungkar himself established direct ties with bin Laden, it is under Ba’asyir’s stewardship that JI has adopted key aspects of al-Qa’ida ideology and methods, targeting the interests of the ‘far enemy’ (the U.S. and its allies) with suicide bombings (Bali, Marriot Jakarta, Australian Embassy, Bali again) in support of global jihad.
Referred to as Ustadz (“teacher”), Ba’asyir is surrounded by visiting family and students who offer him a daily assortment of news magazines and foods, especially dates, his favorites. His disciples tend to be well-educated, often university graduates, and they wash his clothes. Ba’asyir’s wife visits him once a month, and Ustadz offers to share the food she prepared with his prison mates, including Christians. He is a lanky, bespectacled Hadrami (a descendent from the Hadramawt region of Yemen, like bin Laden and Sungkar) who fasts twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. He is 66 and seemingly in good health. Dressed in a white robe, red sarong and white cap, he is sitting on a wooden chair, one foot up perched on the edge. He exudes politeness and is all smiles, with a strong voice and easy laugh he answers questions as if teaching.
Q: You say that it is fardh ‘ain [an individual obligation] for Muslims to wage jihad against Infidels.
A: There are two types of infidels. The infidel who is against Islam and declares war on Islam is called kafir harbi [enemy infidel]. The second type is kafir dhimmi [protected infidel]. These are people who don’t fight against Islam, but don’t embrace it either and basically remain neutral.
Q: When in Cipinang, did Ustadz meet Father Damanik? [1] Is he kafir dhimmi?
A: Yes, I was visited and was respected by him. I have a plan, if Allah allows me, to pay a visit to his house. That’s what I call “muamalah dunia,” daily relations in the secular life. Because al-Qur’an sura 60 verse 8 says that “Allah encourages us to be kind and just to the people who don’t fight us in religion and don’t help people who fight us” so we are encouraged by Allah to be good and just to them. It means that we can help those who aren’t against us. On these matters we can cooperate, but we also have to follow the norms of Shari’ah. If Shari’ah says not to doing something, then we shouldn’t do it. Shari’ah never prohibited business in the secular world except in very minor things. So it is generally allowed to have business with non-Muslims. We can help each other. For example, if we are sick and they help us, then if they become sick, we should help them. When they die we should accompany their dead bodies to the grave though we can’t pray for them.
Q: What is the principle of Hudaybiyah [the covenant between prophet Muhammad and the People of the Book]?
A: Hudaybiyah means different things according to the legal situation. When Islam is strong, we come to the infidel’s country, not to colonize but to watch over it so that the infidel cannot plan to ruin Islam. Everywhere, infidels conspire to ruin Islam. There is no infidel who wouldn’t destroy Islam if they were given even a small chance.
Therefore, we have to be vigilant.
Q: What are the conditions for Islam to be strong?
A. If there is a state, the infidel country must be visited and spied upon. My argument is that if we don’t come to them, they will persecute Islam. They will prevent non-Muslims converting to Islam.
Q: Does being a martyr mean being a suicide bomber?
A: As I explained [the day before] yesterday, there are two types of infidel terms for suicide: first, those who commit suicide out of hopelessness, second, those who commit suicide in order to be remembered as a hero. Both are types of suicide and there is no value in it.
In Islam there are also people who commit suicide out of hopelessness and we call this killing oneself. But if a person defends Islam, and according to his calculations must die in doing so, although he works hard in life, he will still go and die for Islam.
The consideration is: “if I do this, will Islam benefit or lose? If I must die and without my dying Islam will not win, then my dying is allowed.” Because to die in jihad is noble. According to Islam, to die is a necessity because everyone dies. But to seek the best death is what we call “Husn ul-Khatimah,” and the best way to die is to die as a shaheed [martyr].
Q: Is it acceptable to postpone a martyrdom action in order to make the hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca]?
A: A martyrdom action cannot be postponed in this case because jihad is more important than making the hajj. For example one of most revered ulema, Ibn Taymiyya, was asked by a rich person:
“O Sheikh, I have so much money but I’m confused about donating my money because there are two needy causes. There are poor people who, if I don’t help, will die of starvation. But if I use the money for this purpose, then the Jihad will lack funding. Therefore, I need your fatwah [religious decision] O Sheikh”
Ibn Taymiyya replied: “Give all your money for jihad. If the poor people die, it is because Allah fated it, because if we lose the Jihad, many more people will die.”
There is no better deed than jihad. None. The highest deed in Islam is jihad. If we commit to jihad, we can neglect other deeds. America wants to wipe out the teaching of jihad through Ahmadiyah [an Islamic school of thought that believes that Pakistan’s Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the Prophet Muhammad’s successor]. Through this organization, America works. Why? Because Ahmadiyah prohibits its followers to undertake jihad because [they argue] jihad is the teaching of Christians. This organization originates from India. Its headquarters are in London, funded by America. Ahmadiyah is America’s tool to destroy Islam, including JIL [Jaringan Islam Liberal, Islamic Liberal Network], an NGO in Jakarta that advocates a liberal form of Islam. It is funded by USAID.
Q: So is the idea to postpone is not allowed in any circumstances, even in order to visit sick parents?
A: No, no. If we are in jihad, the jihad must come first. Unless jihad is in [the state of] fardh kifayah [a collective duty, for the nation]. If jihad is in [the state of] fardh ’ain [an individual duty], jihad must be number one. There is no obligation to ask permission from one’s parents. But even if jihad is still in the fardh kifayah state, such as jihad to spy on infidel countries, Muslims don’t require their parent’s permission.
Q: Can a martyrdom action be permanently abandoned if there is a good chance that the martyr’s family would be killed in a retaliation action? similarly if the community where the martyr is from will also experience retaliation and casualties?
A: That is the risk and the consequence of jihad. If the martyr’s family understands Islam deeply, they will obtain many rewards. Their reward will come, if they understand. A martyr must have ikhlas [sincerity]. The parent who understands this concept must be thankful to Allah. This is the spirit of jihad that most scares the infidels. This is a moral force. According to General De Gaulle, moral force is 80% and actual action only 20% [of successful combat]. For infidels the motivation is to be a hero or [to die for] the nation. Some are even encouraged to drink [alcohol] so that they can become brave. Russia was badly defeated in Afghanistan. [Afghanistan] is different than Eastern Europe which could be conquered in only a month or two. Russians thought [that they could conquer] Afghanistan in two weeks maximum because its people were backward, isn’t that right? That was Russia’s calculation based on their experience in Eastern Europe. But Afghanistan fought Russia back with their aqidah [by following Islamic doctrine] in the way of jihad. I’ll tell you a story so that you’ll understand. There was an Afghan mother who made cakes. She asked her children to distribute the cakes to the mujahideen. One by one her children were hit by shells on their way to deliver the cakes. When the mujahideen informed her they said : “Dear mother, please be strong because your children are martyred.” [The mother replied]: “I’m not crying for my children but I’m crying because I don’t know who’ll bring my cakes to the mujahideen.” Then one of the mujahideen agreed to replace her children. So, this is the spirit of jihad. You find ikhlas and willingness. Prophet Muhammad said: “I want to make jihad then die, then live again, then do jihad again, then live again, then jihad – for ten times.” This is because of the noble status for Muslims who became shaheed.
Q: Do you think the community which believes in martyrdom actions cares if the martyr only manages to blow up himself/herself and fails to kill any of the enemy?
A: No, [provided that] the ni’at [intention] to be a shaheed must be for Allah. During battle it is different. Istimata is also different. Still, the whole notion revolves around martyrdom. But in places like London and in America there must be other calculations. In battle it is best to cause as many casualties as possible.
Q: Do you think God favors or cares more for the martyr who manages to kill 100 enemies or one enemy?
A: The value [nilai] and reward [pahala] is the same.
Q: In regard to the global condition, what kind of things can the West, especially America, do to make this world more peaceful. What kind of attitudes must be changed?
A: They have to stop fighting Islam, but that’s impossible because it is “sunnatullah” [destiny, a law of nature], as Allah has said in the Qur’an. They will constantly be enemies. But they’ll lose. I say this not because I am able to predict the future but they will lose and Islam will win. That was what the Prophet Muhammad has said. Islam must win and Westerners will be destroyed. But we don’t have to make them enemies if they allow Islam to continue to grow so that in the end they will probably agree to be under Islam. If they refuse to be under Islam, it will be chaos. Full stop. If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam.
Q: What if they persist?
A: We’ll keep fighting them and they’ll lose. The batil [falsehood] will lose sooner or later. I sent a letter to Bush. I said that you’ll lose and there is no point for you [to fight us]. This [concept] is found in the Qur’an. The other day, I asked my lawyer to send that letter to the [U.S.] embassy. I don’t know whether the embassy passed on my letter to Bush [telling him], “You are useless, you’ll lose.” There are verses in the Qur’an that say, “You spend so much money yet you’ll be disappointed.” The verse is clear so I’m not some one who can predict the future but I get the information from Allah, so I’ll never be sad because I believe the time will come. Still, I feel that the Ummah [Muslim community] has a problem now. If the Ummah loses the [current] battle it isn’t because of Islam. A Muslim, as long as he is not “broken” [and remains committed to Allah’s rule] will get help from Allah.
Q: How about using nuclear weapons by Muslims, is it justified?
A: Yes, if necessary. But the Islamic Ummah should seek to minimalize [the intensity of the fighting]. Allah has said in verse 8 chapter 60 that we should equip ourself with weapon power – that is an order—but preferably to scare and not to kill our enemy. The main goal is to scare them. If they are scared they won’t bother us, and then we won’t bother them as well. But if they persist, we have to kill them. In this way, Prophet Muhammad sought to minimalize the fighting.
Q: In your personal view, what do you think of bombings in our homeland, namely the Bali, Marriott and Kuningan bombings?
A: I call those who carried out these actions all mujahid. They all had a good intention, that is, Jihad in Allah’s way, the aim of the jihad is to look for blessing from Allah. They are right that America is the proper target because America fights Islam. So in terms of their objectives, they are right, and the target of their attacks was right also. But their calculations are debatable. My view is that we should do bombings in conflict areas not in peaceful areas. We have to target the place of the enemy, not countries where many Muslims live.
Q: What do you mean by “wrong calculation,” that the victims included Muslims?
A: That was one them. In my calculation, if there are bombings in peaceful areas, this will cause fitnah [discord] and other parties will be involved. This is my opinion and I could be wrong. Yet I still consider them mujahid. If they made mistakes, they are only human beings who can be wrong. Moreover, their attacks could be considered as self-defense.
Q: Does that mean you think they didn’t attack?
A: No, they didn’t attack because they defended themselves. They shouldn’t be punished. In Bali where 200 people died, it was America’s bomb. That was a major attack and Amrozi [the Bali plotter who bought the explosives] doesn’t have the capability to do that. [2]
Q: Did Amrozi tell you this himself?
A: He himself was surprised to see the explosion. When he said that it was Allah’s help he was right but he didn’t make that bomb. America did. There is much evidence to this effect and so the police dare not continue their investigations. According to England’s expert, that bomb was not Amrozi’s bomb. You should ask Fauzan. He knows this subject. That bomb was a CIA Jewish bomb. The Mossad cooperates with the CIA. [3] I had an exchange of views with the police and they didn’t say anything. I said to them, “You are stupid to punish Amrozi if he really knows how to make such a bomb. You should hire him to be a military consultant, because there is no military or police person [in Indonesia] who can make such a bomb.” However, when I asked Ali Imron [4] in the court he said: “Yes, I did it” I believe him [that he made one of the smaller bombs that went off]. A bomb expert from Australia said that anyone who believes that Amrozi and friends made that [bigger] bomb is an idiot; [this is also the opinion of] a bomb expert from England whose comments I read in a magazine. If Amrozi really did make that bomb, he deserves the Nobel Prize. So, the death penalty is not fair.
Q: I want to ask your opinion of Nasir Abas’s book where he said that you are the Emir of JI? [5]
A: This is a traitor, a betrayer. I was in Malaysia and I had a jama’ah [congregation] the name of which was Jama’ah Sunnah. We just studied Islam.
Q: Were you aware that Nasir Abas was your student?
A: Yes, I was. But he was not the only one there; he also studied with Ustadz Hasyim Gani. I joined his group. He died. I think Nassir Abas’s book is [written] on orders from the police and for money.
Q: According to you, the book is incorrect, especially on Jemaah Islamiyah and you being its Emir?
A: This is not a court and the real court has failed to prove it. [6]
Q: What was Nasir Abas’s motivation in writing that book?
A: I don’t know. But basically he got orders from the police and received some money. I think that was his motivation. He doesn’t have the courage to meet me. If I meet him, I’ll send him to do jihad in Chechnya or to the Southern Philippines so that Allah will accept his remorse [taubah]. He invented his own story.
Q: I heard that Nasir Abas came here. Did he meet you?
A: No, he came here to meet others.
Q: If I may know, when was the first time you heard the name al-Qa’ida?
A: After the police questioned me; during the time I was filing a law suit against TIME magazine. Do you remember when I did that? They wanted me to take 100 million rupiah to stop the case but I didn’t. But I don’t know anymore about the case. During that time, I was under suspicion but I wasn’t arrested. That was the first time I heard the name al-Qa’ida. [7] A policeman from the intelligence section whose name I forget interrogated me from morning until afternoon. He asked about that name [al-Qa’ida]. That was the first time I heard of it. Before, I never heard of it. I went to Pakistan but I didn’t hear that name. I went there to accompany my son [8] and meet some Arabs but I never heard that name.
Q: How about Shaykh Osama bin Laden?
A: I heard his name a long time ago. I read his writings, saw his tapes and met Arabs in Pakistan who talked about him when I accompanied my son, Abdur Rahim. Who didn’t know Osama? He was a mujahid against the Soviets and he had his own military that he funded by himself. He was a hero who America also praised. He was then also supported by America. America was piggybacking on him because America didn’t have the courage to fight against the Soviets. They were afraid of the Soviets and they relied on the Afghans.
Q: Have you ever met him?
A: No, no. I want to though. After my release, I hope I can meet him. [9]
Q: Where will you find him?
A: If he still exists—but how could I? On Osama, my stand in court was clear. I have sympathy for his struggle. Osama is Allah’s soldier. When I heard his story, I came to the conclusion that he’s mujahid, a soldier of Allah.
Q: So you will always be on his side?
A: Many say this and Osama is right. His tactics and calculations may sometimes be wrong, he’s an ordinary human being after all. I don’t agree with all of his actions. He encouraged people to do bombings. I don’t agree with that. He said that JI followed his fatwah. His fatwah said that all Americans must be killed wherever they can be found, because America deserves it. Therefore [according to bin Laden] if Muslims come across Americans, they have to attack them. Osama believes in total war. This concept I don’t agree with. If this occurs in an Islamic country, the fitnah [discord] will be felt by Muslims. But to attack them in their country [America] is fine.
Q: So it means that the fight against America will never end?
A: Never, and this fight is compulsory. Muslims who don’t hate America sin. What I mean by America is George Bush’s regime. There is no iman [belief] if one doesn’t hate America. There are three ways of attacking: with your hand, your mouth and your heart.
Q: Does this mean America’s government? Its policies?
A: If its citizens are good that’s fine, especially the Muslim citizens. They are our brothers. Non-Muslims are also fine as long as they don’t bother us. A witness at my trial, Frederick Burks, wrote that he’s against Bush. [10]
Q: How can the American regime and its policies change?
A: We’ll see. As long as there is no intention to fight us and Islam continues to grow there can be peace. This is the doctrine of Islam. Islam can’t be ruled by others. Allah’s law can’t be under human law. Allah’s law must stand above human law. All laws must be under Islamic law. This is what the infidels fail to recognize, that’s what America doesn’t like to see. You should read a book, “The Face of Western Civilization” by Adian Husaini. It’s a good book, a thick one. The conclusion of the book is that Western scholars hold an anti-Islamic doctrine. It is true there will be a clash of civilizations. The argumentation is correct that there will be a clash between Islam and the infidels. There is no [example] of Islam and infidels, the right and the wrong, living together in peace.

FOOTNOTES
1. Father Rinaldy Damanik is the leader of the Christian community in Poso District, Sulawesi where violence between Muslims and Christians led to hundreds of deaths on both sides between late 1998 and 2002 (and where intermittent violence continues to this day). I interviewed Father Damanik in his home in Tentena on August 10, 2005. It turns out that Father Damanik shared the same jail cell block successively for some months (September 2002 – January 2003) with Reda Seyam (legendary Al-Qa’ida film-maker), Imam Samudra (the JI computer expert condemned to death for planning the meetings and choosing the targets for the Bali bombings) and Ba’asyir. Damanik befriended all three. There are smiling photos of Reda and Damanik together, and Samudra and Ba’asyir have both confirmed their warm feelings toward Father Damanik. Damanik used to call Ba’asyir “Opa” (grandfather) and Ba’asyir’s wife would bring gifts of food to Damanik. They discussed
injustice, Shari’ah, faith in God, suicide attacks and opposing America. According to Dam- anik, they found much agreement on the sources of injustice but disagreed strongly over the means to overcome it.
2. Amrozi bin Nurahasyim was sentenced to death by an Indonesian court for having plotted the bombing of the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali along with Imam Samudra and Amrozi’s older brother, Mukhlas.
3. The story about the CIA-Mossad conspiracy is widespread among JI leaders and foot soldiers and (usually with a laugh) used to illustrate that that JI is itself a concoction of “Jewish Intelligence.”
4. Ali Imron, the younger brother of Mukhlas and Amrozi, was sentenced to life in prison for the Bali bombings after having expressed remorse for his role in the attacks.
5. Muhammad Nasir bin Abas, who trained Bali bombers Imam Samudra and Ali Imron, received his religious instruction from Sungkar and Ba’asyir in Malaysia before they sent him in 1991 for three years to Towrkhan military camp in Afghanistan. He became a top JI military trainer but also gave religious instruction. In April 2001 Ba’asyir appointed Abas head of Mantiqi 3, one of JI’s strategic area divisions, which covered the geographical region of the Philippines and Sulawesi and was responsible for military training and arms supply. Abas turned state’s evidence in Ba’asyir’s trial, outlining the structure of JI and Ba’asyir’s position as Emir. But Abas refused to openly condemn Ba’asyir or accuse him of ordering any terrorist operations, always respectfully referring to Ba’asyir as Ustadz. In July 2005 Abas published Membongkar Jamaah Islamiyah (Unveiling Jamaah Islamiyah). The first part of the book details JI’s organization, ideology and strategy. The second part is a rebuttal to Samudra’s own book, Aku Melawan Terroris, and what Abas believes to be a tendentious use of the Quran and Hadith to justify suicide bombing and violence against fellow Muslims and civilians.
In between my interviews with Ba’asyir I interviewed Abas, who says that he quit JI over Ba’asyir’s refusal to condemn or contain the operations and influence of Riduan Isamuddin (aka Hambali). In January 2000, Hambali hosted a meeting in an apartment owned by JI member Yazid Sufaat in Kuala Lumpur that included 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 9/11 highjackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf
al-Hamzi. As Abas tells it, Hambali, who was JI’s main liaison with Al-Qa’ida and a close friend and disciple of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, was given control of Mantiqi 1, which covered the geographical region of Malaysia and environs and was strategically responsible for JI finances and economic development. But Hambali was dissatisfied being saddled with the “economic wing” (iqtisod) and wanted to play a more active role in the conflict zones. The then-leader of Mantiqi 3, Mustafa (now in custody) blocked Hambali from muscling in on his area but Hambali was able to send fighters to fight Christians in Ambon (Maluku) in 1999, which was under Mantiqi 2 (covering most of Indonesia and strategically responsible for JI recruitment and organizational development). Encouraged by success in heating up the Maluku crisis, Hambali decided first to extend his (and
al-Qa’ida’s) conception of jihad to all of Indonesia (including the 1999 bombing of the Atrium Mall in Jakarta, the August 2000 bombing of the Philippines Ambassador’s house, and 17 coordinated Church bombings on Christmas eve 2000) and then to “globalize” the jihad by enlisting suicide bombers to hit Western targets and interests (including a failed plot to blow up Singapore’s American, Australian and Israeli embassies in
December 2001, and the successful 2002 Bali bombings and 2003 suicide attack on Jakarta’s Marriott hotel). Although Abas argues that JI shouldn’t be outlawed because many in JI reject Al-Qa’ida’s vision of global jihad, in fact JI’s infrastructure and leadership continue to protect (with safe houses) and condone (as “self-defense”) efforts by the likes of master-bomber Dr. Azhari bin Hussain and his constant sidekick, JI’s top recruiter Nurdin Nur Thop, who some tell me recently established a suicide squad, called Thoifah Muqatilah, for large actions against Western interests.
6. According to Abas, JI’s essential organization and ideology is outlined in a set of general guidelines for the Jemaah Islamiyah Struggle (Pedoman Umum Perjuangan al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah, PUPJI), a 44-page manual that contains a constitution, outlines the roles of office bearers and gives details of how meetings must be organized (e.g., about what to do if a quorum cannot be obtained in the leadership council). The guidelines declare that anyone who adheres to fundamental Islamic principles that are devoid of corruption, deviation (e.g. Sufism) or innovation, can take the bayat (oath of allegiance) to the Emir of JI and become a JI member. Although JI would be, in principle, open to anyone who meets these conditions, in fact only carefully selected individuals, including the Mantiqi leaders, were allowed to take the bayat and obtain copies of the PUPJI. Such individuals generally (but not always) would have undergone previous training in Afghanistan or graduated at the top of their class in courses that Sungkar and Ba’asyir designed for JI recruitment (though designation of courses as JI was unknown to potential recruitees). Abas fulfilled both conditions. Although many people (including some Afghan Alumni I have interviewed) think of themselves as JI, or are not certain of whether or not they
belong to JI, Abas insists that if they did not formally take the bayat they are considered sympathizers or supporters of JI but not members (just as some prisoners at Guantánamo are sincerely uncertain as to whether or not they belong to al-Qa’ida if they did not formally take the bayat to Bin Laden).
Abas says the PUPJI was drafted by a committee, including Ba’asyir, and then formally approved by Sungkar as the basis for JI. When asked about the PUPJI in an earlier (untaped part of the) interview, Ba’asyir claimed, on the one hand, that the PUPJI manual was planted by police and intelligence services but, on the other hand, that it contains sound principles modeled on the doctrine of the Egyptian Islamic Group (Gama’at Islamiyah). Abas says that the manual also contains elements of Indonesia’s military organization, particularly in regard to the ranking of personnel (binpur) and responsibility for territory (bintur). He adds that although the PUPJI allows the JI to conduct itself as a “secret organization” (tanzim sir) - and conceal its doctrine, membership and operations from public view – it does not allow the practice of taqiyyah (dissimulation) to extend to lying to the (Muslim) public (another reason Abas gives for his leaving JI).
7. Other members of JI who openly acknowledge sympathy with bin Laden and Qa’ida say much the same thing. For example, I interviewed the JI member who founded the first mujahidin training camp in 2000 for the conflict in Poso, Sulawesi. He had earlier been sent by JI founder Abdullah Sungkar during the Soviet-Afghan War to train in Abu Sayyafs’s Ihtihad camp in Sada, Pakistan and to study with Abdullah Azzam, Bin Laden’s mentor and the person who first formulated the notion of “Al-Qa’ida sulbah” (“the strong base”) as a vanguard for jihad. This JI member also acknowledges hosting Khalid Sheikh Muhammad at his home in Jakarta for a month in 1996. Yet, he claims never to have heard of “al-Qa’ida” applied to a specific organization or group headed by Bin Laden until 9/11.
8. Ba’asyir sent his younger son, Abdul Rahim, to the Afghanistan border during the Soviet-Afghan war to spend time under the wing of Aris Sumarsono (aka Zulkarnaen, who became JI’s operations chief) later enrolling Rahim in an Islamic high school in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Seeking a stricter salafist education for his son, Ba’asyir directed Rahim in the mid-nineties to Sana’a, Yemen, to study under Abdul Madjid al-Zindani (like Abdullah Azzam, Zindani was a legend among self-proclaimed “Afghan Alumni” who fought the Soviets). By 1999, Rahim was in Malaysia and soon under Hambali’s stewardship. Abdul Rahim now operates freely in Indonesia
(reports in August 2005, place him in Aceh, heading a new charity, Camp Taochi Foundation) but he is suspected of having taken over JI’s contacts with Al-Qa’ida remnants after Hambali’s capture.
9. Ba’asyir’s statement that he never met bin Laden is contradicted by testimony from other JI members, both free and in custody. In the following letter (authenticated by Indonesian intelligence) dated August 3, 1998 and addressed to regional jihadi leaders, Ba’asyir and Sungkar state they are acting on bin Laden’s behalf to advance “the Muslim world’s global jihad” (jabhah Jihadiyah Alam Islamy) against“ the Jews and Christians:” Malaysia, 10 Rabiul Akhir 1419 [August 3, 1998] From: Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir To: Al Mukarrom, respected clerics, teachers (ustadz), sheikhs All praises upon God who has said: “The Jews and Christians will never be satisfied until you follow their way of worship” Al Baqarah: 120 Praise and peace upon Prophet Muhammad who has said: “If I’m still alive, I’ll surely expel the Jews and Christians out of the Arabian peninsula” And may God bless us and any of his followers who want to follow his orders.Respected clerics, teachers and sheikhs. This letter is to convey a message from Sheikh Osama Bin Laden to all of you. We send you this letter because we can’t visit and see you directly. However, we send our envoy, Mr. Ghaus Taufiq [a Darul Islam commander in Sumatra], to bring this letter personally to all of you. We also attach Bin Laden’s written message in this letter and Bin Laden also sends these messages to all of you:
1. Bin Laden conveys his regards (Assalamu’ alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh)
2. Bin Laden says that right now, after “Iman” (to believe in God), the most important obligation for all Moslems in the world is to work hard to free the Arabian Peninsula from the occupation of Allah’s enemy America (Jews and Christians).
This obligation is mathalabusy syar’i (a consequence of the shari’ah) that every Moslem must not consider this obligation to be a simple matter. Prophet Muhammad, although he was sick, ordered the Muslim Ummah to prioritize their obligation to expel the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula. Therefore, as the Prophet has said, the Muslim Ummah must take this obligation seriously. It is very important for the Muslim world to work very hard to free the Arabian Peninsula from colonization by the infidel Americans.
If we can free the Arabian peninsula as masdarul diinul Islam (the source of Islam) and makorrul haromain (Holy Mecca) from occupation by the infidel Americans, Inshallah (God willing) our struggle to uphold Islam everywhere on God’s land will be successful. Stagnation and the difficulty in upholding Islam at present stems from the occupation of the Arabian Peninsula by the infidel America. This great struggle must be put into action by the Ummah (Muslim community) all over the world under the leadership and guidance of clerics in their respective countries. Under such leadership, we will prevail.
The first step of this struggle is issuing fatwah (Islamic edict) from clerics all over the world addressed to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The edict must remind the King what Prophet Muhammad said about the obligation for the Muslim Ummah to expel the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula. Otherwise, this world will suffer a catastrophe. These edicts will give strong encouragement and influence to the King of Arabia. This is the message from Osama bin Laden conveyed to all of you.
Sheikh Osama bin Laden really wants to visit all clerics and Islamic preachers everywhere in the world to share his views so that there will be a common understanding about this momentous struggle. In the end, we will have similar movements simultaneously across the world. However, Bin Laden realizes that the situation outside his sanctuary is not presently safe. He also awaits your visit with his deep respect so that this great struggle may proceed. These are Bin Laden’s messages that we convey to all of you.
We take this opportunity to explain certain facts about Bin Laden:
• At present, Sheikh Osama stays in Afghanistan, in the Kandahar area, under the protection of Taliban
• He doesn’t oppose either the Taliban or Mujahideen. He’s trying to unify both groups.
From his camp in Kandahar, Bin Laden organizes plans to expel infidel America from the Arabian Peninsula by inviting ulemas and preachers from all over the world. In this camp, Bin Laden is accompanied by a number of Arab mujahideen, especially those who previously fought in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and these mujahideen prepare to form “jabhah Jihadiyah Alam Islamy” (The global jihadi coalition in the Moslem world) to fight against America. The above information is about Sheikh Osama Bin Laden that you should know.
If you have the time and commitment to visit Sheikh Osama, Inshallah, we can help you meet him safely.
We praise God to all of you for your attention and cooperation.
Jazakumullah khoirul jaza (Thanks to God the best thanks) Wassalamu’alaukim, Your brother in Allah
Abdullah Sungkar Abu Bakar Ba’asyir
10. Frederick Burks appeared at Ba’asyir’s trial testifying that he had interpreted at a 2002 meeting about Ba’asyir between an envoy of President George W. Bush and Indonesia’s then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri. Burks said the unidentified envoy accused Ba’asyir of involvement in a series of church bombings in Indonesia in 2000 and asked for the cleric to be secretly arrested and handed over to US authorities. Megawati declined, he said.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, The Accident Waiting To Happen

Are our schoolbus passing rules too lax?

Every year in New Zealand a child is killed while getting on or off a schoolbus. Others are injured. As DANIELLE MURRAY discovers, there’s growing pressure from parents for a ban on overtaking stationary schoolbuses at all

Richard Murray will never forget the day his daughter was run over. The year was 1968 and she was seven years old. It was the beginning of the school term and Kristine had begged to be able to walk home from the bus by herself. It was supposed to be so easy – she was to get off the bus and wait for the monitor to take her to the other side of the road where she could now walk the 100 metres to the front gate without her mum or dad, just like the bigger kids. But nothing went according to plan that afternoon. The bus was early, the monitor had not arrived and there was no one to guide the children across the busy street. Even Richard, who had hoped to spy on her from behind a nearby tree, did not make it in time. When the bigger kids made a run for it, Kristine followed them. But she was not fast enough. She ran straight into the path on an oncoming vehicle.
Kristine was lucky. She survived. But every year in New Zealand, one child is not so fortunate.
Of the 120,000 Kiwi kids who take the bus to school every day every year, one child will be fatally injured by a passing motorist as he or she gets on or off the bus. This year, so far, we’ve been lucky.
In 2004, it was 15 year-old Katie Hunkin, hit in Te Puke by a four-wheel drive as she crossed the street immediately after getting off the bus. The year before it was eight year-old Lucy Waring, struck as she ran out into the road, in full view of her mother on the other side, just after her bus had driven away. In 2002, it was seven year-old Zachary Hide, killed as he ran to catch the bus as it waited for him on the other side of Waipu Cove Road in Waipu.
While current legislation allows motorists to pass a stationary school bus at a speed not exceeding 20 kilometres per hour, some say, when it comes to school bus safety laws in New Zealand, this is not enough. North American-style “Stop arms” on both sides of the bus along with bold flashing lights, alerting motorists that students are boarding and disembarking, should be made mandatory. And, they say, motorists in both directions should not be allowed to pass a stationary bus at all.
Kym Small came to New Zealand eight years ago after marrying a Waimate crop farmer. The mother of school aged twins, she began campaigning for tougher school bus laws after the death of a neighbourhood boy – killed while running to catch the bus. Not only does she want stop arms, flashing lights and illegal passing enforced, she’s also pushing for New Zealand’s 2,100-plus school buses to be equipped with seatbelts.
“They call me the Erin Brockovitch of school buses in Waimate”, she jokes in a strong American accent. But, she says, the issue is far from a laughing matter. “The laws need to be changed, children’s lives are at risk.”
The Land Transport Safety Authority does not agree. Because of New Zealand’s “generally good safety record of school buses”, there are no proposed changes to the current legislation. The argument for stop arms is not strong enough and, it says, the cost of mandatory installation and maintenance of flashing lights on all school buses unjustified. While the 20km/h speed limit could have been amended as part of the draft Land Transport Road User Rule signed on December 6th last year by the Minister of Transport Safety, it was not.
Seatbelts have been a source of debate in many countries in recent years and New Zealand is no different. Those in favour argue that passengers are safer when restrained, especially in side impact and roll-over crashes. Children, they say, are also better behaved when properly seated and thus less likely to cause driver distraction, which may in turn lead to less accidents.
Those against it, however, claim a myriad of tests show lap-¬belted occupants are at greater risk of serious head and neck injury than unbelted passengers in frontal collisions, the most common form of bus accident. Transport Canada believes lap and shoulder belt combinations are no safer because unless properly restrained, slackness causes injury. The New Hampshire School Transport Association says that because buses are higher off the road and therefore have a lower impact zone than most vehicles, wearing a seatbelt is ineffective in the more common school bus crash scenarios. In catastrophic accidents, wearing a seatbelt may even hinder the swift evacuation of passengers. And even if seatbelts were installed on all school buses, there is simply no way to ensure they will be used correctly, if at all.
Canada and Australia do not require the use of seat belts on school buses. Nor do most US states. All mini buses and coaches in the UK on the road since October 2001 must be outfitted with manufacturer installed seat belts. Buses that transport children to and from school are exempt.
In 2002, New Zealand introduced the Seatbelt Rule, making it mandatory for seatbelts to be fitted in all mini buses (Classes MD1 and MD2) manufactured after September 2003. “This will gradually flow into the school bus fleet”, says the LTSA.
But the bottom line, no matter what country you look to, is money. The New Zealand Bus and Coach Association (BCA) estimates the cost of outfitting seatbelts in buses to be at least NZ $22 Million. But while this figure may seem feasible in comparison to the approximate US $900 Million needed in America, there’s a catch. Unlike their overseas counterparts, not all Kiwi youngsters actually get to sit on the way to school. According to the BCA, one third of all passengers transported to school are carried as “standees”. Should the government enforce seat belts on all buses, it would only make sense that all those standees were required to sit – creating the demand for an extra 700 buses nationwide. And the price tag? $60 Million.
Restrained or not, taking the bus is the safest way to get to school in this country. In the ten years from 1993 to 2002, four children have been killed on the bus versus 23 in cars (between 7-9AM and 3-5PM). In that same time period, just 40 have been hurt on the bus compared to the 1,106 children chauffeur-driven.
Walking to school is also more hazardous. The BCA reports children are 38 times more likely to be injured and nine times more likely killed as pedestrians than if they travelled by bus.
But that doesn’t mean all bus operators agree that we are doing all we can for our children. Even though, according to the BCA’s Mark Stockdale, the only legal requirement imposed on school bus operators “is that it must display a yellow fluorescent “SCHOOL” sign at the front and rear”, there are some who have gone the extra mile.
Ritchies Transport in Timaru, along with the Timaru District Council, is currently testing front and rear warnings on school buses which incorporate a “Children Walking” symbol with flashing lights activated when the bus driver opens the doors.
In 2003, Ritchies Oamaru installed new signs on all its school buses encouraging motorist to slow down near stopped buses. Manager Jill McIntyre, says the “20 past a stationary School Bus” notices have created quite a stir. But while the impact on rural roads has been huge, highway traffic “seems to have taken little, or no notice.”
And last year students at Wakatipu High School launched their own initiative, Project 20K, which saw 20 km/h reminder notices displayed on all Queenstown school buses. Why did they do it? Because, says 18 year old Student Council Chairperson Olivia Hill, the older students had noticed the law was not adhered to and were concerned for the safety of their younger classmates.
So, is the law ignored? It would seem so, according to the many police officers who habitually field complaints relating to vehicles speeding past stopped school buses. According to Sergeant Dave Ryan of the Oamaru Highway Patrol, “many motorists don’t realise the speed is 20 km/h – or that it applies to both directions.”
Do the signs work? “Speed has reduced by using the signs although some motorists are slow to learn”, says Ryan, “many police officers are also asking if 20 km/h is a feasible speed on a state highway.”
Kym Small certainly doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think any speed – on either highway or rural road – is feasible at all. And while every other initiative would come at considerable cost to the bus operators or New Zealand taxpayer, changing the law - making it illegal to pass a stationary bus loading or unloading children – appears to be the least expensive option to all concerned.
She cites similar legislation in the in the United States, implemented in the 1970’s, where vehicles in both directions must stop for a stationary school bus. Children then cross the road at the front while the bus waits. Once the children are safely on the other side, the bus may carry on its journey.
“School buses only run one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon for 40 weeks of the year”, says Small, “Is it so much to ask people to stop for their kids?”
The LTSA believes it is. “A lower limit, or requiring traffic to stop completely, would not significantly improve the nominal risk.”
“Evidence shows it wouldn’t reduce the risk of children being killed, and it would be very difficult to enforce” spokesperson Andy Knackstedt told the New Zealand Herald in 2001.
But, one would have to argue, so is the current limit. In the eight years to June 2005, only 92 infractions for excessive speed past a stopped bus were issued in the whole of New Zealand.
The rule applies for the length of the bus only, there is no safety margin either at the front or the rear of the bus. The offence takes place only if that bus is stopped “for the purpose” of embarking or discharging young passengers and the “‘difficulty for motorists is determining when this is not the case”, states Marie Hrstich at the LTSA. And because it takes place for such a short piece of road – that being the length of the bus – and over a small period of time – the two to three seconds it takes to pass - catching an offender in the act can be difficult.
“I would imagine it being easier to enforce a law if vehicles had to come to a stop”, says one senior police official, who did not wish to be identified.
Nevertheless, maintains the LTSA, “The 20km/h speed limit is consistent with protecting children.”
But when six year-old Aaron Jones ran to the front of the bus to cross the street and into the path of a truck in the Hawkes Bay in September 2001, it proved fatal. Police confirmed the driver was within the speed limit and crash reconstruction corroborate their findings. Yet the little boy still died.
Ask Richard if he thinks the 20 km/h speed limit is consistent with protecting children and he will tell you it’s not. He says that when Kristine was hit all those years ago, the vehicle that smashed into her was travelling well below 20 km/h – “a crawl’s pace” – and still, it was not able to stop in time.
Ask Kristine, now 44 years old, and she will show you the scars to prove it.
Many doctors also disagree, including Dr Philip Morreau, a paediatric surgeon at Starship Children’s Hospital. “There is no doubt that a car hitting a child at less than 20 km per hour can seriously injure it or kill it.”
“Surely the parent who backs over his own child in the driveway is not driving over 20 km an hour” says Richard, “and we know how fatal that can be.”
But the Minister for Transport Safety was not convinced. “The government has no proposals at this time to require other vehicles to come to a complete stop around a school bus” said Harry Duynhoven before signing the new Road User Rule in December 2004. Rule 61001, which re-instates the 20 km/h speed limit when passing a stopped school bus, came into force 27 February, 2005.
Requiring traffic to stop for stationary buses is not practical, say most New Zealand lawmakers and because we have such a good safety record, the legislation is not in need of change. Others are worried about the possibility of motorists, particularly in rural areas, getting stuck behind a slow schoolbus for its entire journey, unable to legally pass it while it is stopped and unable to practically pass it once it is moving again. But those fears could be dealt with by making it a requirement for drivers to wave traffic on once the bus doors had closed and the bus itself was preparing to move
It may not seem like a lot. One child out of 120,000, killed by a passing vehicle either getting on or off the bus. But in the United States, the average number of children killed over the past ten years is six. Out of 23.5 Million – a student passenger population 196 times the size of New Zealand.
“Stopping for a school bus takes a few seconds ”, says Small, “it’s a shame some people think their lives so important that ten seconds of their time is more valuable than a child’s life”.

Guidelines for New Zealand school children: After getting off a bus, students must wait on the side of the road until the bus has moved at least two power poles away, so that they have a clear view of the road before crossing – Min of Education info
According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Transportation, the most dangerous part of riding the school bus is the loading and unloading of passengers where 78% of all school bus related fatalities occur. Of that 78%, 53% of children are killed as result of being hit by a vehicle as they get on or off the bus. (Traffic Safety Facts, 1999, U.S. Department of Transportation).
In New Zealand, the only legal requirement to distinguish a school bus is that a school bus being used to carry children to or from school must display a yellow fluorescent “SCHOOL” sign front and rear, the rear sign being mounted at least 1.5m from the ground, in the centre or to the right. The sign must be 825mm wide by 300mm tall – Traffic Regulations 1976
The State of NY does allow standees on yellow school buses
Most fatalities occur at the end of the day – in a recent Australian report, 19 of the 22 children fatality injured were killed as they got off the bus after school. In the US, 73% of pedestrian fatalities occurred after school, 41% between 3-4PM. (http://www.atcouncil.gov.au/schoolbus.htm), www.nhtsa.dot.gov

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, The Kyoto Conspiracy

How Enron hyped global warming for profit

Not one single day goes by in New Zealand now without a reference somewhere to global warming, and New Zealand’s requirement to comply with the Kyoto protocol. But few people realise that Kyoto was the brainchild of a corrupt multinational energy company, looking to make a buck out of the green movement. KEN RING explains

Amidst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is sup-posed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten especially amongst the greenies how Kyoto was born in the corridors of very big business. The name Enron has all but faded from our news pages since the company went down in flames in 2001 amidst charges of fraud, bribery, price fixing and graft. But without Enron there would have been no Kyoto Protocol.
About 20 years ago Enron was owner and operator of an interstate network of natural gas pipelines, and had transformed itself into a billion-dollar-a-day commodity trader, buying and selling contracts and their derivatives to deliver natural gas, electricity, internet bandwidth, whatever. The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to put a cap on how much pollutant the operator of a fossil-fueled plant was allowed to emit. In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade program, the forerunner of today’s proposed carbon credit trade. This commodity exchange of emission allowances caused Enron’s stock to rapidly rise.
Then came the inevitable question, what next? How about a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program? The problem was that CO2 is not a pollutant, and therefore the EPA had no authority to cap its emission. Al Gore took office in 1993 and almost immediately became infatuated with the idea of an international environmental regulatory regime. He led a U.S. initiative to review new projects around the world and issue ‘credits’ of so many tons of annual CO2 emission reduction. Under law a tradeable system was required, which was exactly what Enron also wanted because they were already trading pollutant credits. Thence Enron vigorously lobbied Clinton and Congress, seeking EPA regulatory authority over CO2. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars - $990,000 - to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promotes global warming theories. Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to “reduce” global warming. Executives at Enron worked closely with the Clinton administration to help create a scaremongering climate science environment because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a monstrous financial windfall. The plan was that once the problem was in place the solution would be trotted out.
A lawyer named Christopher Horner was hired who had worked in Senator Liebermann’s Environment Committee. Horner, employed by Enron, became director of relations with the Federal Government. That was in 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was drafted. According to Homer, on the second day at the job he was told that the Number One Objective was to obtain an international treaty that would impose cuts in CO2 emissions, but at the same time allowed trade with emission rights. Enron had the biggest natural gas production behind Russia’s Gazprom. Enron was making a lot of money trading with coal, but they had already calculated that the profits they would lose with coal would be more than compensated by the profits derived from its privileged position in other areas. With clever positioning and anticipation Enron had bought the world’s biggest wind power company, GE Wind, from General Electric. They now also owned the biggest solar power company in the world, in society with Amoco (now belonging to British Petroleum – BP). Enron then started to finance everything related to the global warming hype, including grants to scientists – but asking for results favorable to their interest – “proof” that humans were responsible for the excessive emissions of CO2 through fossil fuel burning. The fire of malaise, now lit and kindled, only required feeding.
The expressive term ‘Baptist-bootlegger’ derives from the days of prohibition. Under prohibition bootleggers and those who trans-ported and supplied illegal alcohol made fortunes. One such entrepreneur was Joseph Kennedy whose second son, John, became US President in 1961. The bootleggers had allies in the Baptists and other teetotalists, who believed that alcohol was a deadly threat to the social order, and had worked for decades to get prohibition onto the statute books. The Baptists provided the political cover and the bootleggers pocketed the proceeds. In public the two groups maintained a great social distance from each other. Now Enron had positioned itself at the centre of an awesome Baptist-bootlegger coalition. The gargantuan rents which Enron energetically sought could be realized only if the Kyoto Protocol became established as part of US and international law. Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO saw Enron as not only making billions from sales of the natural gas which was to displace coal as the preferred fuel under the Kyoto commitments, but he realised that as the main if not the only international and domestic trader in the new barter world of carbon credits, Enron could realise hitherto unimagined wealth. Such credits, of course, would only become bankable pieces of paper if governments, particularly the US Government, established and policed a global policy of decarbonisation under which a global tax on carbon was to be enforced.
As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace. A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron’s way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to moderate the political aspects of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission. The purpose of this commission was clear – high-level trashing of dissident scientists. Setting up a panel to do this was simple; just look at the recent issue of Scientific American where four attack dogs were called out to chew up Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish The Skeptic Environmentalist demonstrating that global warming is overblown. David Bellamy, the world’s foremost environmentalist also stepped out of line with his widely printed article “Global Warming? What a load of old Poppycock.” In the same way Galileo was forced to publicly utter that the moon had no effect on tides, so Bellamy under pressure backtracked on some of his claims.
Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.” One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Recently he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA. True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public, self-censoring them while it pleaded with the Bush administration for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That pleading continues today – the remnant-Enron still views global warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate oblivion. Some greenie campaigning in America is still directed from this source. On July 7, 2004, Kenneth Lay was indicted by a federal grand jury for his involvement in the scandal.
Everyone knows that a few hundred votes in Florida tipped the election to George W, but few are aware that West Virginia, normally a Democrat stronghold, went for Bush because the coal industry in that state decided to back him because he would not endorse Kyoto. Without West Virginia, the vote in Florida would have made no difference.
”Enron stood to profit millions from global warming energy-trading schemes,” said Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association and American Coal Coalition. The investigation into the collapse of Enron will reveal much more about the intricacies of the Baptist-bootlegger coalition which was promoting the Kyoto cause within the Republican Party and within US business circles. Coal-burning utilities would have had to pay billions for permits because they emit more CO2 than do natural gas facilities. That would have encouraged closing coal plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of power plants, driving up prices for those alternatives. Enron, along with other key energy companies in the so-called Clean Power Group – El Paso Corp., NiSource, Trigen Energy, and Calpine – would make money both coming and going – from selling permits and then their own energy at higher prices. If the Kyoto Protocol were ratified and in full force, experts estimated that Americans would lose between $100 billion and $400 billion each year. Additionally, between 1 and 3.5 million jobs could be lost. That means that each household could lose an average of up to $6,000 each year. That is a lot to ask of Americans just so large energy companies can pocket millions from a regulatory scheme. Moreover, a cost of $400 billion annually makes Enron’s current one-time loss of $6 billion look like pocket change. Little wonder Americans and the incoming Bush administration did not want a bar of it.
In NZ the Labour government was forced to agree to the Kyoto Protocol because the Alliance Party self destructed and Labour needed the Greens for support in Confidence and Supply. The cost of that support was agreement to GE legislation and the Kyoto Protocol. Labour could see that the GE debate had no financial return, but the carbon credit trading game looked much more promising. Positive credit-trading with all our trees acting as CO2 sinks made politicians see dollar signs. But just as Enron came unstuck mired in financial ruin and scandal, so too is the Kyoto Protocol set to ruin economies and bring down governments and any players foolish enough to be taken in. Enron collapsed in a quagmire of bribery, misinformation, energy price manipulation and the use of political connections to exert pressure on energy boards. Anything connected to the Kyoto Protocol will turn out to be good money after bad, because a scheme instigated by half-truths and hype must eventually collapse under the weight of the spin of its own cover-up. The half-billion dollar debt NZ now owes could be just the beginning. In 2002 Helen Clark said “Climate change is a global problem ..the Kyoto Protocol is the international community’s response to climate change and New Zealand is playing its part”. This contrasted strongly with Enron’s own internal report expressing doubt that global warming was real. It is hard to accept that Clark does not know that the Protocol only became real through Enron. Real problems are the gullibility of satellite western economies, the dangers of being the tail of giant corporate dogs and the perceived need to appease the EU for trade deals. Global warming itself does not even get a look in. In NZ the only funding for environmental research comes to the NZ Climate Change Office for the Ministry for the Environment and is funded through the Ministry of Fisheries and the Public Good Science & Technology fund. The particular institute concerned has all the appearance of an independent research body whilst at the same time proclaiming to be spokespeople for government policies re the environment. In this way debate is suppressed in NZ, because there is no funding for alternative viewpoints, no panel for review or accountability of government-science agendae and no voice of balance in government-funded public media.
I suggest you look out the window to see if there is any catastrophe happening. While looking, check to see if any ocean is yet rising. Also look up – exactly where is this methane cloud? Please, someone,
explain how heavier-than-air car emissions can get 6-8 miles up where weather is generated? We are not all that taken in. Despite all the handwringing and increasingly desperate hysteria, where global warming is concerned there has been a failure to force this paranoid religion onto the world. Since the Rio Conference in 1992, the greens have tried using the threat of global warming to induce Protestant guilt in us all, to cap growth, to change lifestyles, to attack the car, industry and the Great Satan of America. They have lost. Only schoolchildren remain rich fodder willing to believe it is up to them now to Save The World, which hasn’t needed saving one iota during the last 4,000,000,000 years or it wouldn’t still be here. Now it is surely time to face the facts: there isn’t a snowflake-in-hell’s chance of global warming altering real life. But the failure of the greens is not just with the public. While playing the climate-change card at the G8 Summit, the final Gleneagles’ declaration shows that the leaders of the developed world have no intention of sacrificing growth and economic success for an ascetic global warming religion. To quote Michael McCarthy, the environment editor of the Independent: ‘The failed agenda that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wide Fund for Nature and others were complaining of – that the US has still not agreed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions – was the green groups’ own agenda, not the British government’s. At G8 the idea of capping greenhouse gas emissions was cleverly replaced by an emphasis on technological innovation and imaginative development. The Kyoto Protocol is effectively dead.

SIDEBAR
In NZ almost the only funding for environmental research is invested in NIWA and comes via the NZ Climate Change Office for the Ministry for the Environment, but mostly funded through the Ministry of Fisheries and the Public Good Science & Technology fund. The institute has all the appearance of an independent research body whilst at the same time acting in the appointed role of spokespeople for government policies on the environment. NIWA is a fine organisation when it comes to marine biological research, but when it comes to climate projection theirs must still be only an opinion. Sadly, though, other opinions that might make for lively debate are somewhat suppressed in NZ, because there is no funding for alternatives, no panel for review or accountability of government-science agendae and subsequently no voice of balance across most government-funded public media. Consequently the work of NIWA is perceived in some quarters as having become politicised which is sad for an otherwise valuable and necessary national research resource.

REFERENCES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2002/Feb/20020226Comm007.asp
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26124
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/EvansEnron.html
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=204
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/opeds/80320040418_landrith.html
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CAC72.htm
http://www.niwa.co.nz/pubs/ar/2004/14ncc.pdf

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, A left-wing conservative

WILL THERE ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND?

British MP Frank Field came downunder recently on behalf of the Centre for Independent Studies, and took the time to sit down with JAMES MORROW to discuss the growing crisis in English society – from drunken yobs to home-grown Muslim terrorists – and share his ideas on just what can be done to rescue the ‘mother country’.

INVESTIGATE: I’d like to begin by reading the following extract from The Age’s ‘Eye on Britain’ column, and get your reaction to it: ‘Come the weekend, the high streets of Britain are puddled with vomit. It is part of a ritual that begins in the early evening and ends in the wee small hours, when pubs and clubs close. As their patrons pour out, there seems to be a collective loss of control; bellies give up their contents, bladders burst and tempers fray. The action is caught on closed-circuit television and makes grim viewing.
‘As the police try to restore peace, fights break out like forest fires; when one is dowsed, another flares. The night air is putrid with the smell of food you’d think twice about feeding to the Empress of Blandings. Oaths and invitations to engage in fisticuffs ensure that sleep for the unfortunate residents is impossible. Even on the coldest of nights, the population seems to have dressed for the beach. In the morning, you’d think the place had been paid a visit by Vandals and Goths.’ Is this an accurate description of life in 21st Century England?
FRANK FIELD, MP: In my experience of it is, certainly in some areas. It’s not like this every night but certainly towards the weekend and the weekend itself. In my experience the police don’t try and take the licenses away from people who are serving people who are drunk; they say they need more proof than people falling out of pubs at two o’clock in the morning legless to show that people are being served inappropriately. And when the police do do something they then treat it like a military operation, charging up and down the street, some of them on horssback, and then the whole thing cleaned up in the morning and repeated the next night. So yes, for some areas it is an accurate description. And presumably things will become worse when the government gets is new 24-hour licensing scheme approved. That whole approach comes about, to me at least, because a few cabinet ministers have friends who rush to the pub late at night and down a few quick pints before closing, and think that if hours were extended they could drink ina more civilized manner.
INVESTIGATE: Is this happening across all strata of society, or just in poorer areas?
FF: It’s widespread – the aim of many people is not to go and have a drink the aim is to go and get drunk – I know one banker who is on a million pounds a year, and every weekend he goes to the pub with the aim of getting as drunk as possible, and he drinks about 17 pints a session. But this sort of behaviour, when it is in the lower classes, it wreaks much more havoc. And one of the reasons why it makes more of a difference to poorer people is because if they have problems with a neighbourhood, they can’t toddle off and move somewhere else. So maintaining order is more crucial to them than it is to the rest of us.
INVESTIGATE: Can you paint a picture of life in some of these areas and what makes life so intolerable there? It sounds like the social fabric has really been ripped in some places in England in a way we haven’t seen so much in Australia.
FF: Well there are certainly some areas you don’t go into if you don’t want trouble. But what is more important is the sort of low-level terrorism of unacceptable behavior which is making life in poor areas miserable and is now spreading to middle class areas. I thought at first that people were exaggerating about this sort of thing, but I still remember the time ten years ago when a group of very serious working class pensioners came to my offices and described what life is like when there has been a complete breakdown of younger people having any respect for older people. They told me of young lads running over their roofs, peeing in their letterboxes, and smashing on their windows and giving them a heart attack when they were watching TV.
I said, ‘have you been to the police?’ And you can imagine the look of these poor red-strained sleep-deprived eyes looking at me and saying, ‘oh no, we’ve got to go through this again! We went to the police and the police said we have no control of these people.’
I started thinking about what might we do about this and how we could implement government policy to help. At the time I said we needed surrogate parents in society because of the breakdown of the family, and my idea was that we should give the police powers to show warning cards and then be able to show a red card, and the penalty would then be immediate. Now some of that the government did in a convoluted way with the creation of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and the like, in which the criminal justice system gets involved and you go off to collect evidence and they set it up in an adversarial way, but the problem is months and months have gone by since the offense.
The problem with this is that I don’t believe we need to get more people criminal records, but this is what happens now. Often, I just don’t think that the behaviour as appalling as it is warrants the criminal justice system. But people get bored doing one thing, so they ratchet it up, and unless you can nip them in the bud, which I wanted to give the police the power to do, the yobbos will be on to the next thing and on to the next thing – they’ll go from breaking windows to stealing cars. And the horrors that they would visit on pensioners would increase.
INVESTIGATE: And what has happened in these families where there is no control – where are the parents to say, ‘this is not acceptable’?
FF: Oh, you can see even with 3-year-olds which ones able to bully their parents. I was walking through a forest recently and I saw father in what must have been his early 20s, and his young lad ran away by this rocky pool which was really quite dangerous. Well, the dad gave him a whack, and his kid cried, and then he gave him a cuddle and mussed his hair, and the son knew that he wasn’t supposed to do that. I didn’t have courage to say it, but I felt like going up to him and saying, ‘would you like to come sort out the youth of Birkenhead?’
Similarly you need in a community other people in the neighbourhood not being frightened of saying, ‘stop doing that’ so that younger people know that in a public space other people have a say in how you behave.
On the parenting side, we assume that parental skills are passed on by osmosis, just as what makes a civilized nation is passed on. But that respectability that we’re talking about as a nation was built up over 150 years, it doesn’t happen overnight.
INVESTIGATE: The columnist Theodore Dalrymple says that many social problems occur when poor people see rich people acting out certain pathologies, but that poor people are unable to handle the consequences and insulate themselves.
FF: Well, some of the rich can’t handle it either, particularly with drugs. But when you’ve got neighbours from hell and you don’t have a bank balance and can’t leave, that’s terrible for poor people. Similarly, people who are better off can get their life back together in some way if they have a circle of friends and associates to help, and most of those things are not present in a working class community. The carriers of culture in working class communities are not always in the position to see whether in fact that culture is carried on, and indeed behaviour is often so bad that those who purvey culture do wind up moving out.
INVESTIGATE: In a way it is the downside of social mobility.
FF: One of the things the post-war education reforms in Britain did is break off the cleverest of the working class, and that certainly had a big impact on leadership in working class areas. I’m not in any way making a plea to turn the clock back, it’s certainly been a good thing, but you used to have the people who would run their trade union or friendly society and other local institutions of culture now running corporations. And I see the impact as I go around the world and I see the number of Birkenhead boys and girls who’ve made their fortune somewhere else – that would have been inconceivable fifty years ago.
INVESTIGATE: What role does deindustriali- zation have to do with all of this? Does the fact that there’s not as much unskilled work around for those left behind make a difference?
FF: When I came to Birkenhead there were 16,000 dockworkers. Today, there are 400 dockworking jobs in my electorate. When you lose unskilled jobs that do pay well, you change the social ecology of the area, not just the economic ecology, in that unless an area pays family wages, you put men at a huge disadvantage in whether they’re marriageable or not.
INVESTIGATE: How do the 7/7 tube attacks come in to all this? Those guys had been on the dole for years. Are we creating cultural cesspools that immigrants can come into and get sucked into as well?
FF: Well, we had two bomb attacks, and the ones who failed turned out to have also been the ones who were on welfare. What lessons you draw from that I’m not sure, but it does of course make you think about the success of the welfare-to-work program, through which it was virtually assured that no one remainded more than 6 months on the dole. Now some of these guys had been on the dole for 10 years!
I don’t know whether you saw the recent poll that said that 6% of British Muslims thought the attacks were justified – that’s 90,000 people – and that something like a third sympathize with the attackers who say we’re so decadent that the society should be wiped out. And does all of this come back to the behaviour policies we talked about. We need to have a serious conversation about the our society. What is required in a good life? What sort of qualities do we expect from ourselves and our politicians so that life continues and we’re not blown to smithereens?
That, incidentally, is also the question in international politics in that were are now suddenly confronted with how to stop nuclear weapons from going into the hands of terrorists. The chances are that we will have a nuclear terrorist attack somewhere within the next 10 years – if that doesn’t concentrate the mind, I don’t know what will.
INVESTIGATE: So are we too decadent to defend ourselves, as the terrorists say?
FF: Look at that description of life you gave at the beginning of our talk. If you were an immigrant, would you want your son or daughter to be a part of that? Of course not. We need to have a discussion about what we think about citizenship, and find out what people value about the place they’re in, and I think some of the things we hear will be very unpalatable to the elites. And when you’re a Muslim and you’re trying to save your kids from the barbarism, all around you, that creates an internal tension – the kids must feel that their parents have a point.
INVESTIGATE: What do you think Muslims would say in such a conversation?
FF: ‘How dare you instruct us in civilized behaviour when you allow your young to run in the street and run around drunk and abuse drugs!’
INVESTIGATE: Sounds like we need a rebuilding from the ground up…
FF: That is what is so extraordinary in Britain. Although the elites built civil society they used
national policy as framework, and that translated into character, but then character became a dirty word. And that’s created a big divide with Muslims. But I think the biggest tension there isn’t going to come over civilized values like respect, or hard work, it is going to be about tolerance, and instructing them that tolerance is a two way process, and that that is a virture that has to be universally applied

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, Stroke Drug

Stroke, Neuroprotection and Spin - is Neuren a good bet?

They strike, often without warning, and leave devastated lives in their wake. Now a New Zealand company believes it’s on the verge of a breakthrough in treating strokes, although it is not without its critics, as SHEILA DOGGRELL notes

Stroke (the sudden onset of paralysis) is the third leading cause of death in Western industrialised countries, and the leading cause of disability. Fifty to 70 percent of stroke survi-vors regain functional independence, but 15 to 30 percent are permanently disabled. These disabilities include problems controlling movement, loss of sensations (touch, pain, and temperature), problems using or understanding language, problems with thinking and memory, and emotional disturbances.
The New Zealand company Neuren is developing drugs to help people who suffer brain damage from strokes, road accidents and heart attacks. All of these conditions cause nerves to die, and this underlies the long-term damage. One of the agents being developed to stop the nerve dying (to be neuroprotective) is glypromate. The news that glypromate is to be fast-tracked in its clinical testing has seen a surge in Neuren’s share values. However, the claims made by Neuren are being challenged on a web share chat room by a correspondent known only as ‘Labrat’. So, what is the likelihood of glypromate being a useful neuroprotective?
One of the reasons that stroke remains so devastating is that we have few treatments for it. Any successful treatment will have a huge market and will potentially be very lucrative for the company marketing it. Thus, it is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies, including Neuren, are attempting to develop treatments.
The most common type of stroke is due to a lack of blood supply (ischemia) to the brain and occurs when a blood vessel to the brain becomes blocked. Without the blood that carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain, the nerves in the brain progressively die.
Are there any warning signs that a stroke is imminent? Some people have a mini-stroke (transient ischemic attack, TIA) before they have a full blown stroke. With mini-stokes there are similar symptoms to strokes – weakness on one side of the body, and trouble in speaking, understanding, seeing, and walking. The only difference is that with a mini-stroke the symptoms resolve within an hour or so, whereas with a full blown stroke they don’t. Mini-strokes are due to a partial blockade of the blood vessels in the brain.
About one-third of people who have a mini-stroke will go on to have a full blown stroke within a year. These people may be the lucky ones as they have been warned to take steps to prevent a full-blown stroke. Such steps include taking aspirin to help prevent blood clots forming in narrowed blood vessels. Unfortunately, most people do not know that a stroke is imminent.
When treating stroke it is important to distinguish between ischemic stroke and the other kind of stroke, a hemorrhagic stroke. In hemorrhagic stroke there is a burst blood vessel and bleeding into the brain. In ischemic stroke, a new approach is to use an agent to unblock the blood vessel by dissolving blood clots, in the same way as coronary arteries are unblocked after a heart attack. Clot dissolving agents make a hemorrhagic stroke worse. So, when stroke is suspected a CT scan is used to distinguish between the ischemic and hemorrhagic types.
If it is an ischemic stroke, clot busting drugs can be given. If they are given within the first 3 hours of the onset of stroke, unblocking the blood vessel to re-supply the brain with oxygen and nutrients, leads to better outcomes (less disability). However, there is major drawback with these drugs – we don’t really know why, but if they are given any later than 3 hours, they make things worse. In New Zealand, clot busting drugs are only administered in specialist centres. Unfortunately, only a few people with strokes get to these centres within the 3 hours.
So what else can be done to stop the nerves from dying? Many pharmaceutical companies have tried and failed to develop neuroprotective agents. Dr Richard Green from AstraZeneca has been involved in the development of neuroprotective agents for many years. When Dr Green visited New Zealand, he discussed what was needed for a drug candidate to become a neuroprotective suitable for use in stroke. For instance, in testing, realistic animal models of stroke must be used, and the drugs must be administered after the stroke. Indeed, neuroprotective drugs that are helpful when administered long after the stroke would be particularly useful.
So, how does Neuren’s glypromate measure up? It was back in 1992 that Dr Peter Gluckman (Neuren’s Chief Scientific Officer) first proposed a protein in the body known as insulin-like growth factor was neuroprotective using an animal model of brain injury. Subsequently, Dr Gluckman’s group showed that the neuroprotective effect could be mimicked by a tiny fragment of the protein. That tiny fragment was initially developed as glycine-proline-glutamate (GPE), but is now known as glypromate.
When glypromate was injected directly into the brain, it was shown to be neuroprotective in an animal model of ischemic stroke. More importantly, it was effective when given 2 hours after the stroke. But it is difficult to imagine injecting drugs deeply into the brains of people without the needle causing serious damage!
A major breakthrough came in 2004, when Dr Gluckman’s group showed that glypromate was neuroprotective after administration into a vein in the neck of rats that had had an ischemic stroke. This suggests that glypromate can be administered intravenously to human stroke victims. Also, of interest was that glypromate was neuroprotective when administered 7 hours after the stroke in rats. This will give a greater opportunity to use the drug than the 3-hour limit with the clot busters.
After evidence of a benefit in an animal model of a medical condition, the next stage in drug development is clinical trial. Thus, having been shown to be neuroprotective in an animal stroke model, glypromate has gone into clinical trial. No results of clinical trials with glypromate have been made available to the general public or published in peer-review journals to date. Going into clinical trial is no guarantee that a drug will be successful – most drugs that make it to clinical trial do not become commonly used drugs in medical practice.
So why isn’t Labrat convinced? Apparently, glypromate acts as a NMDA site blocker, and Labrat thinks this is a problem. Indeed, synthetic NMDA site blockers have already been made and tested in stroke. One of the early difficulties in stroke is that the nerves release huge amounts of glutamate that act at this NMDA site to promote more nerve death. So, logically, anything that blocks the NMDA site should be neuroprotective. The main problem with many of the synthetic NMDA site blockers was that they caused too many side effects to be used in stroke victims. However, recently a weak synthetic NMDA site blocker (memantine) has been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, another indication for neuroprotective agents. So, it may be possible to use an NMDA site blocker after all in stroke, provided it is too weak to cause side effects. Perhaps it is time to give NMDA site blockers another chance.
Neuren have obviously highlighted their work and the best interpretation of it, but Labrat seems to have a problem with this spin. But surely, it is standard procedure for companies that list on the stock exchange to put the best spin on their products, and all pharmaceutical companies do this, so why not Neuren? As, Labrat points out, other people have done work with glypromate, which is not highlighted by Neuren. Thus, glypromate was first described as having effects on nerves in 1989 by a group from the well-respected Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Other groups have shown that glypromate is neuroprotective, and are (as is Neuren) trying to develop similar drugs as neuroprotective agents.
Labrat objects that Dr Gluckman has been telling the media since 1998 that Neuren ‘expect’ or ‘plan’ or ‘hope’ or ‘could’ start clinical trials ‘within months’ or ‘within 2 years’. I agree that this is a problem, but I don’t think the problem is with Gluckman/Neuren. Surely, it is up to the media, to pin him down.
The Business Herald has reported that ‘Glypromate helps stem the loss of brain function after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery’. Where is the evidence for this? If the Herald has been shown clinical evidence from the Phase II trial to support this, it may have been reasonable to have reported that ‘early evidence from a Phase II trial suggests that glypromate may be useful in reducing the loss of brain function after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery’.
Also from the Business Herald: ‘Neuren also says the drug can be used after strokes or other brain injuries – markets totalling a further US$4.5 billion’. This seems to be implying that glypromate has been shown to have major benefits in humans after strokes or brain injuries. If this was really true, the shareholder would all be guaranteed to be millionaires! Surely, it would have been more realistic to have reported that ‘Neuren is also developing glypromate for use after strokes or other brain injuries. Encouraging results have been obtained in animal studies, and they now hope to take the drug to clinical trial for this indication’.
Neuren is not the only company with promising leads for the treatment of stroke. Clinical trials of 12 different agents for the treatment of stroke have been reported in the peer-reviewed literature in the last year. However, in recent years, many of the major drug companies have abandoned their stroke programmes after the spectacular failure of the synthetic NMDA site antagonists.
The large pharmaceutical companies run several programmes for developing drugs for different indications simultaneously. With this approach, it is hoped that the millions lost by drugs that fail in clinical trials, can be countered by drugs that succeed. Small pharmaceutical companies are not able to spread the risk. Thus, they are likely to loose it all, or make millions.

In summary
• Stroke is a devastating condition, presently without good treatments
• Neuren’s glypromate (and related drugs) shows promise in early development for use in brain injury
• All investment in small pharmaceutical companies is speculative!

About the author
Sheila Doggrell is a biomedical researcher, lecturer and writer. She was working at the University of Auckland at the time the early development of glypromate was being undertaken. However, she has never had links to the research of Dr Gluckman or any of the companies he has/is involved with, and is not ‘Labrat’.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, Darwin's Rogue Monkey

How a diehard evolutionist used junk science to kickstart the sexual revolution

He’s often referred to as the Father of the Sexual Revolution. But Alfred Kinsey was no saint, despite the way he’s portrayed in a DVD release this month. IAN WISHART backgrounds the real Kinsey

Back in 1948, evolutionary biologist Alfred Kinsey published a book that turned the world upside down, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. Kinsey followed it up five years later with Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, and in doing so set off a media firestorm that continues to this day. In fact, as gay film director Bill Condon pointed out in publicity interviews for his film Kinsey this year, without Kinsey there would be no Playboy, no sex in the media, no sexual revolution.
What Condon doesn’t point out is there would be no gay marriage movement, and no paedophilia rights movement either. In short, Alfred Kinsey’s “groundbreaking research” is recognised by most experts as paving the way for the western culture we have today.
Kinsey’s motivation for studying human sexual behaviour and publishing the findings was ostensibly to research one of society’s hidden taboos so people could judge for themselves what was “normal”. Unofficially, however, Kinsey’s motivations were a lot less scientific and more driven by his own desire for gay sex and paedophilic pornography.
This month, Kinsey the movie is being released on DVD and video. The film flopped at the box office, but its release for home viewing will make it more accessible. So how does the movie stack up against the reality of what Kinsey was up to? Read on.
In the film, Kinsey is portrayed by actor Liam Neeson as a committed evolutionary scientist who didn’t want moral issues like love or fidelity interfering in the pure science of studying sexual behaviour. Kinsey is portrayed as being a stickler for impartial, objective scientific facts.
Granted, director Condon concedes a scene to Kinsey’s bisexuality, sleeping with a young male research assistant, Clyde Martin who then ends up sleeping with Kinsey’s wife as part of their ‘liberated’ household. Granted, also, that Condon acknowledges how Kinsey’s ‘research’ turned into staff orgies where wives and partners were swapped so Kinsey and his crew could film them, in flagrante delicto, for the purposes of figuring out how to make women achieve orgasm and other ‘scientific’ niceties. In the film, Condon refers briefly to the moral pain of Kinsey’s pursuit of scientific free sex, by showing the strain on his researchers’ marriages and indeed on his own family (his son practically disowned Kinsey).
But overall, the film version of Kinsey remains a sugar-coated, great evolutionist, ‘all hail the man of science who gave us sexual tolerance and freedom’ hagiography reinforcing Kinsey’s sexual myths and fantasies.
Here’s the reality of Kinsey’s research. Kinsey cruised gay bars, prisons, brothels and other less salubrious locations to find suitable interviewees for his sexual behaviour study, because most eligible American men were overseas fighting in World War 2. Unsurprisingly, his published research then purported to have discovered that between 10 and 37% of American males were gay or bisexual. As studies in the past decade have established, the real incidence of homosexuality in the wider community is less than 1%, but Kinsey used his false data to assert that homosexuality was entirely normal in the human species. Similarly, he published extensive data on adults having sex with children, and likewise determined that this was a “natural” process because children were “naturally” sexual creatures.
Bill Condon’s film makes a glancing reference to the paedophilia issue in a scene where Kinsey interviews a sexual psychopath who claimed to have had sex with or raped more than 9,000 men and women between 1917 and 1948, including more than a thousand pre-pubescent children, and hundreds of animals as well. Although the movie portrays Kinsey as disapproving of anyone being forced to have sex, Condon is rewriting history.
According to Kinsey researcher Judith Reisman, the world’s first sexologist used paedophiles to collect data on their ‘experiments’ on children. Not one child but certainly hundreds and possibly thousands. “Kinsey’s study claimed young boys could orgasm, and in his book cited the children’s “screams,” their “convulsions,” their “hysterical weeping,” “fighting” and “striking the partner (adult)” which are judged by Kinsey as reflecting “definite pleasure from the situation,” writes Reisman.
The Kinsey study has been used to support the contention that sexual activity in children is natural and healthy and should not be repressed. It has also been used by the North American Man Boy Love Association – which hit the headlines in NZ recently over gay bookstore owner Jim Peron’s alleged advocacy in favour of child sex – to support their own calls for lowering the ages of sexual consent with children.
But Reisman, in a statement countering the release of Kinsey, wrote:
“Kinsey’s data are based on reports from co-workers who sexually abused more than 300 minors to prove that children ‘enjoy’ sex with pedophiles. Some of the victims were only 2 months old and subjected to more than 24 hours of non-stop sexual atrocities. One Kinsey contributor was a WWII Nazi officer. His young victims had to choose between rape or the gas chamber.”
That officer was “Dr. Fritz von Balluseck”.
In 1998, a British Yorkshire TV documentary, Kinsey’s Paedophiles, revealed that Kinsey’s links to the former Gestapo director were discovered when von Balluseck was placed on trial for the sex-slaying of a little girl in 1956. German newspapers covering the case found letters from Alfred Kinsey thanking the paedophile for his regular reports on his ‘experiments’ with children. Apparently Kinsey’s correspondence with the Nazi continued right up until 1954. Kinsey’s encouragement of the man’s ‘experiments’ undoubtedly led to the child’s grisly death.
Kinsey in one letter warned the Nazi to “watch out” in case he got caught, but to keep sending the data.
None of this is covered in the movie.
So what are the implications of Kinsey’s work for modern society?
Firstly, as the movie itself correctly shows, back in the 1930s there was no data at all on how often people had sex, what positions, who with or any of the other myriad pop-psychology questions that are now run of the mill in women’s magazines. In a biog-raphy published on the website gayhistory.com, Andrew Wikholm writes, “Kinsey, an ardent atheist, considered most of what he read about sex prudish because it was based on traditional ‘Judaeo-Christian’ ethics he considered repressive.”
In other words, Kinsey set out to conduct a study that would reinforce his own liberal attitudes to sexuality, not because of pure scientific motives but because of his atheism and his belief in the Darwinian view that humans were merely animals and morality was repressive.
New Zealand gay activist and atheist fundamentalist Chris Banks, a one-time Queer Nation host, positively fizzes at the bung in his praise of the Kinsey movie earlier this year, for precisely the same reasons:
“Dr Albert (sic) Kinsey is a landmark American figure in gay/lesbian history, as one of the first scientific voices to lend evidential weight to debunk claims that homosexuality was abnormal…he was a social and sexual liberal in a time of stifling puritanic conservatism. And, as the film shows, he was one of the first to debunk Christian junk science and replace it with solid evidence about real human behaviour.”
Presumably Chris Banks would endorse Kinsey’s logic, depicted in the movie, that if it happens it must be natural and therefore “not abnormal”. Using that same definition, paedophilia should be legal, along with bestiality and even cannibalism.
But what if Kinsey’s research was actually wrong? What if the so-called sexual liberation he claimed to have found was in fact a phenomenon he created, the result of the study being skewed by his many interviews with paedophiles and gays (reflecting his own personal biases)? What if Kinsey’s reports, being the admitted only studies of their kind, in effect set the agenda: telling the people that a certain set of activities is so normal that everyone’s doing it, and sooner or later it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as people rush to try what Kinsey claimed everyone else was doing anyway?
That’s why Chris Banks’ appeals to Christian “junk science” are themselves specious – up until Kinsey there was no science on the issue, one way or the other. And to use Kinsey as evidence that homosexuality is normal and widespread is likewise to accept that paedophilia is a normal sexual activity, as Kinsey implied it was.
Except that, fifty years later, we now know Kinsey’s research was Darwinian “junk science” that today has been largely discredited in subsequent studies.
For example, the incidence of homosexuality. While Banks is approving of Kinsey’s “solid evidence” proving homosexuality rates of 10% to 37%, Kinsey was so far from being accurate it wasn’t funny. The biggest sexuality study since Kinsey is Sexual Behaviour in Britain, published in 1994 and based on interviews with 20,000 men and women. It found that true homosexual orientation was limited to 0.6% in men, and a staggeringly low 0.1% in women. Ninety percent of people claiming to be gay, the study found, are actually just uninhibited bisexuals when push comes to shove. But when you consider that Labour’s Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1986 was pushed through on the strength of publicity campaigns quoting Kinsey’s mythical 10% figure, it is easy to see the impact of Kinsey’s evolutionary junk science on popular culture.
The poisonous Kinseyisms also live on in the New Zealand education system. Our sex education curricula is largely based on the falsified data in the Kinsey report. The Auckland sexual abuse HELP Foundation is currently touting a “Keeping Ourselves Safe” programme in daycare centres in the region. Among the gems from this taxpayer-assisted programme, under the heading “Common sexual behaviour among two year olds” is the answer, “they masturbate”. The same answer is given for three, four and five year olds. The HELP Foundation apparently doesn’t make a distinction between twiddling with your bits or vaguely exploring while you are bored as a child, and full blown sexual masturbation. Traced to its roots, the 1994 book Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia by Vern and Bonnie Bullough tells readers:
“Kinsey reported that 32% of boys two to 12 months old were able to reach climax. One boy of 11 months had ten climaxes in an hour and another of the same age had 14 climaxes in 38 minutes.”
Human Sexuality also reports that babies get “turned on” by sucking their mother’s breasts, and that parents who don’t educate their children sexually at an early age are “inhibited”, having “an implicit goal of keeping dormant the young child’s pervasive curiosity and imitativeness, postponing the onset of sexual self-gratification, and limiting sexual activity.”
The way that “inhibited” parents achieved this terrible end was this gem of a paragraph:
“The family attempts to govern how, when and how many of the ‘facts of life’ the child learns. As part of the conspiracy of silence, parents maintain a secrecy and privacy concerning their own sexual activity…as aids to sexual control in the home (eg, closed bedroom doors, separate sleeping arrangements for each child, separate bathing, and early modesty training).”
The Kinsey research on child sexuality is also the basis of claims in the 2003 parenting bestseller Mothers & Sons: Raising Boys to be Men, which criticises “inhibited” parents of yesteryear and urges parents to embrace the fact that we now know “male and female babies…have orgasms” as part of an entirely natural process of child sexuality.
Neither the encyclopedia nor the bestseller point out, as Judith Reisman has done, that the only ‘scientific’ study in the world is the Kinsey one, and Kinsey obtained his data this way:
Kinsey had 317 to 2,024 children timed with stop-watches by his hired and volunteer child rapists who sodomized and digitally and genitally assaulted the children for 24 hours around the clock to get what the rapists’ called infant ‘orgasms’,” says Reisman. “[See] Table 34 from Kinsey’s book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (p. 180) in which he claims his 5 month old victim had three ‘orgasms’, although the rapists didn’t provide the “time involved.” This is the source of the phoney “orgasm” data being cited by sexuality “experts” nationwide.
“Oh, what was the “orgasm” the little five month old had? Well the children, he said, screamed, some fainted, many of the “younger” ones wept “hysterically” and struck their “partner” (page 161, recording the adult rapists). But not to worry. Kinsey, who had a habit of sexually torturing himself, called the children’s terror and pain “orgasm.” For “orgasm” for Kinsey was pain. His Kinsey Institute biographer, James Jones, testified that Kinsey circumcised himself with a knife in a bathtub without anesthetic.”
So what do we call mad bisexual ‘scientists’ like Kinsey, supported by apologists like gaynz.com’s Chris Banks, who conduct monstrous paedophilic experiments on two month old babies? We make movies about them and call them heroes of the sexual revolution.
If you watch the Kinsey DVD, bear in mind that not only is its director a gay activist, but exec producer Francis Ford Coppola is also close to convicted paedophile film director Victor Salva who was found guilty of sodomising 12 year old boys on a joint Coppola/Salva film production. After his release from jail, Coppola immediately rehired Salva to direct what critics described as another ‘homoerotic teen flick”.
Also bear in mind that the 2005 movie was bankrolled by the Ford Foundation, which had earlier agreed to fund a PR campaign for the Kinsey Institute to try and repair its battered and discredited image. In other words, Kinsey is little more than part of a public brainwashing exercise.
The Kinsey Institute, incidentally, denies that its founder was a paedophile, despite the testimony of a number of people and the detailed nature of the data that Kinsey published. On its website, the Institute claims Kinsey never asked paedophiles to experiment on children or time their ‘orgasms’ with stopwatches. The Institute also emphatically denies that thousands of children were abused, citing only the 317 that Kinsey’s report alluded to. However, contrast those denials with admissions by Kinsey associate Dr Paul Gebhard in 1992 that paedophiles were told to use stopwatches “at our suggestion . . . we would ask them [paedophiles] to watch it, and take notes, and . . . report back to us.”
And on the Donahue TV show, former Kinsey photographer Dr C A Tripp told the audience “Kinsey would only listen to ‘responsible pedophiles’ who used stop watches to time their thing.”
Intriguingly, all four directors of the Kinsey Institute throughout its history have made totally contradictory statements about what went on. None, however, has released the names of the hundreds of victims of the paedophilia experiments to authorities, even though many are still likely to be alive – the youngest in their fifties.
Commentator Michael Craven, writing on the controversy recently, noted that the full scale of paedophilic experiments was verified by a Masters & Johnson scientific report back in 1980:
“In Ethical Issues in Sex Therapy, Volume II (1980), influential sexologists Masters, Johnson, Kolodny, and Weems present a series of papers reprising the history of the research on the “Ethics of Sex Research Involving Children and the Mentally Retarded.” One important essay by Albert Jonsen and J. Mann, states that Kinsey “included observational reports on the speed of reaching orgasm in 1,888 boys, ages 5 months to adolescence, who were timed with a stop watch,” and “147 pre-adolescent girls, for a total of 2,035 children. The authors cite their “personal communication” with Kinsey and co-author Wardell Pomeroy, who validated the 1,888 boys in the Kinsey reports.”
As for the movie, the public, in the US at least, voted with their feet. The movie took only US$9 million at the box office (it cost $10 million to make).
Finally, look at the evidence. Although Bill Condon’s puff piece portrays Christians as prudish idiots objecting to the progress of Kinsey’s science, the reality is that many of Kinsey’s fiercest opponents were other left wing thinkers who could smell the fraud. Additionally, a sexual abstinence campaign introduced in 1950 saw STD rates plummet to only 3.9 cases per 100,000 people by 1957.
Kinsey was appalled at the abstinence campaign, and called for comprehensive sex education and contraceptive advice for children. His advice was followed in the US and later New Zealand by Planned Parenthood and its NZ affiliate, the Family Planning Association.
By 2000, 52 years after Kinsey’s sexual revolution was launched, US gonorrhea rates alone had skyrocketed to 589.8 cases per 100,000 men, and 656.6 cases per 100,000 women, and that was in the 20 to 24 age group only, let alone everyone else.
In the 1950s, children did not appear in the STD statistics, and only around 10,000 adults were found to have sexual diseases during an entire year. Today – as WorldNetDaily reports – 8,000 teenagers in the US contract an STD every day of the week. In the US, every year, there are 70,000 new incidents of syphilis; 650,000 gonorrhea; 64,000 HIV; three million Chlamydia; five million trichomoniasis; one million genital herpes; 5.5 million human papillomavirus (genital warts, can lead to cervical cancer).
Additionally, there are a further 20 or so other STDs that afflict modern society. In Kinsey’s day, it was just gonorrhea and syphilis.
So much for Kinsey’s claim that freeing up sexuality was the only way to improve the ‘appalling’ STD rates of 3.9 cases per 100,000 people.
But never mind. Like the safe sex myth that condoms will protect against STDs, the Kinsey myths about human sexual behaviour will continue to indoctrinate young people as long as there are liberal media outlets who keep ignoring the facts, and people like Chris Banks prepared to promote Kinsey’s junk science
as reality.
Oh, and here’s the real kicker. In the movie, Kinsey is portrayed as falling ill because of the hounding he got from horrible fundamentalist Christians. In fact, Kinsey fell ill from the venereal disease orchitis, his health gradually worsening until he was finally killed by a heart attack in 1956.
Kinsey, R16, contains sex scenes, 113 minutes

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, Heidi Seek

A 29 year old mystey reignites

When Wellington mother Heidi Charles vanished without trace in the summer of 1976, one person more perplexed than most was a twelve year old Ian Wishart, who lived almost next door to the Charles home and was good friends with her two sons. Wishart remembers Heidi Charles as a loving mother who adored her children. Was she murdered or did she disappear deliberately? Now journalist and author SCOTT BAINBRIDGE has re-opened the mystery in this extract from his new book, Without Trace

Rotorua on New Year’s Eve, 1976. The city was buzzing with the festive spirit. In a day crammed full of activi-ties for locals, holidaymakers and tourists alike, it was estimated the population in Rotorua that day exceeded 70,000. Towards midday, crowds began lining the streets of the central business district to watch a parade of floats proceeding around Fenton and Tutanekai Streets, and then repeating the route. The lakefront was alive with musical bands and cultural performances. A fairground had been set up, and Lake Rotorua was busy with many water-based activities.
Amid the bustle and throng of activity it would be easy for somebody to slip away without being noticed, and simply disappear of the face of the earth.
That is indeed what happened to Heidi Charles, a 36 year old German-born mother of two. She had been holidaying with her family when she mysteriously disappeared during festivities that afternoon. Her case still ranks as one of the most baffling missing persons cases of the 1970s, made more notorious by rumours of links with a famous unsolved murder 19 months earlier.
Heidi Rittberger was born in 1940 in Tilsit, East Prussia, then part of Germany. The second largest city in Kaliningrad, it is situated near the border of Lithuania. At the end of the Second World War, the territory was claimed by the Soviet Union, and the name Tilsit was changed to Sovetsk. Today it is still known as Sovetsk, and remains part of Russia. To escape the Nazi regime, and perhaps with foresight of what was to come, the Rittberger family fled to Switzerland.
Heidi was studying dentistry when she met Englishman Robin Charles while on holiday in Austria in 1959. In 1961 they married and moved to Assam, India, where Charles managed a tea plantation for the Jokai Tea Company. The couple remained in India for a further ten years, and during that time had two sons.
Charles’ contract expired in 1971. After briefly returning to England, the family moved to the small African state of Burundi, where Charles worked for a Dutch tea firm.
In March 1976, the family emigrated to New Zealand. They wanted a place to settle and raise their boys where they could acquire a solid education. Charles secured employment as an auditor for a tyre company in Lower Hutt, and the family purchased a home in Cheshire Street, Wilton.
Heidi was a loving wife and doting mother to her sons. Despite English being her second language she was fluent after the years spent in the colonies. She quickly became used to her new surroundings, and made a few friends.
With the boys at school, Heidi busied herself with redecorating the family home, and resumed her studies at Victoria University. Towards the end of the year she was looking forward to a visit from her father, Dr Rittberger, and his companion, Frau Bruder, who were retired and living in Stuttgart, Germany.
Her father and Frau Bruder arrived in New Zealand in mid-December. After spending Christmas morning at their Wellington home, the family and their two guests piled into their Volkswagen campervan and drove to Rotorua. On Boxing Day they checked into the Okawa Bay Motor Lodge, where they had earlier booked a family cabin.
Okawa Bay is about 14 km northeast of Rotorua City, and the motor camp is situated on the shores of Lake Rotoiti. For the next few days the family enjoyed visiting the city’s attractions and relaxing at the camp.
Shortly before midday on Friday, 31 December 1976, Charles, Heidi and the boys left Dr Rittberger and Frau Bruder at the motor camp and drove to Rotorua’s city centre to do some shopping.
After dropping the boys at the lakefront fairground, Robin and Heidi parked their campervan in Arawa Street at 12.30 p.m. Heidi planned to buy food at a local delicatessen for the night’s meal, and told her husband she wanted to go by herself. It was agreed they would rendezvous an hour later near the swings at the lakefront. Charles watched as she walked from Arawa Street into Fenton Street.
An hour later, Charles met the boys at the swings as arranged. They waited until 2 p.m. Heidi did not turn up. Thinking she may have returned to the campervan with the groceries, Robin returned to Arawa Street, and decided to drive closer to the fairground, but could not get through due to the procession.
He then parked the vehicle behind Durrants Supermarket, and returned to the boys where they waited until about 4.30 p.m. When Heidi did not show up, Charles thought she may have become lost, and had taken a taxi back to the camping ground. They returned to Okawa Bay in hope.
Heidi was not there. An anxious Robin Charles left his sons with the older couple and returned to Rotorua city centre. After driving around likely places, he checked at the local hospital in case Heidi had met with an accident. She had not been admitted. He then went to Rotorua Police and reported her missing.
Heidi Charles was described as being of medium build, and 167 cm in height. She had shoulder-length brown hair with a centre parting, and brown eyes. When last seen, she was wearing orange slacks, a blue and white striped sports shirt, and a navy blue cardigan, with light tan canvas shoes. She was carrying a brown leather handbag, which contained her driving licence and purse. Heidi was understood to have had about $400 cash on her at the time, as well as the family chequebook. Charles said they had split $400 between them, but believed her father had given her a further $200.
Heidi spoke fluent English, but with an accent that could easily be mistaken for a New Zealander of Dutch heritage.
A small team of police led by Rotorua CIB Sergeant Ron Leitch began making enquiries on Saturday, New Year’s Day, 1977. A check on local motels, hotels, travel agencies and the bus stations was carried out. A description of Heidi was circulated throughout all police stations in the country. At this early stage police were keeping an open mind and did not suspect foul play.
Former Assistant Commissioner Brion Duncan was a detective inspector at Rotorua CIB at the time.
‘Initially the case was given to the uniform branch because it was assumed she may have become lost or had a mishap of some kind. The whole township was covered, in particular ladies restrooms, travel centres and motels. When it became apparent it would possibly lead to a full-scale enquiry, the search area was expanded to include hot pools and bush-covered areas.
‘There was an initial thought she might have fallen into one of the hot springs. It was assumed that once you fell into one of those that would be it. Gone for ever. We tested this theory by throwing in some sheep carcasses, and after a short time they would bubble up to the surface. Those tests dismissed that theory.’
Robin Charles told police he and Heidi had a happy and loving relationship, and she doted on her two sons. She had been looking forward to moving to New Zealand and had felt very settled here. This fact was confirmed when police later interviewed neighbours and the few friends they had made since arriving in New Zealand just over seven months earlier.
For Heidi to leave her family of her own volition was simply unbelievable and totally out of character. Those friends that she had lived in Wellington, and she knew nobody in Rotorua.
Of her mood at the time, Charles stated she had been happy about seeing her father again, but had been feeling the strain of having to interpret for her family. She was the only one in the group who could speak both German and English. Because her father could not speak English, he placed a heavy reliance on Heidi to accompany them, and shop for him and Frau Bruder. This stressed her somewhat. Charles had not been surprised Heidi wanted to go shopping by herself, as she needed some time out.
Information filtered in as to Heidi’s movements after 12.30 p.m. Three shop assistants from a women’s fashion store in Tutanekai Street, Rotorua, stated they had seen a woman matching Heidi’s description, browsing in their shop around 4 p.m. on Friday, New Year’s Eve. Although remaining in the shop a while, she made no purchases. This would have been around the time a worried Robin Charles contemplated returning to the motor camp, which he did 30 minutes later.
There were a number of possible sightings of Heidi in the Waipa area, Dannevirke and Blenheim. There was also an unconfirmed sighting of Heidi late Friday afternoon at a Rotorua motel. These were checked but found to have no substance.
By Wednesday, 5 January, police had no clear direction as to how enquiries would proceed. Then, during that day, they received a vital lead from two independent motorists. These people separately witnessed a woman matching Heidi’s description hitchhiking along the Atiamuri Highway, seven miles southwest of Rotorua, on Sunday, 2 January 1977. The estimated times were between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.
The sightings were considered genuine, but what mystified police was the apparent lack of any rational explanation to her actions.
It was unlikely Heidi had become lost and was attempting to find her way back to Okawa Bay. The recent sightings placed her walking in completely the opposite direction. She was spotted heading in the direction of Taupo or Tokoroa. Even though English was her second language, Heidi spoke fluent colloquial English, and would have the confidence to ask for directions back to Okawa Bay. She would have done so much sooner than two days later.
One theory was that Heidi planned her own disappearance. This was out of character, but there were no reported accidents, or any reports of suspicious activity.
The sightings of Heidi walking along a busy road made the theory of a planned disappearance unlikely. People who choose to disappear usually have a method well planned in advance. On a busy street without anyone knowing her circumstances, it would not have looked suspicious if she had climbed into a car parked at a pre-arranged place, and simply driven off.
Heidi would know her family would be concerned enough to contact police within hours of her non-appearance at the lakefront. Knowing police would be looking for her as early as Saturday, it was unlikely she would attempt to walk along a busy highway a day later, if she had not wanted to be found.
If Heidi had been abducted it would have been in the area where she was last positively seen — which was in the middle of the day, in a busy city street. Or, if the latest sightings were genuine, she may have been the victim of an offender in a car she accepted a ride in.
When this latest information was released, the public immediately compared the circumstances of Heidi Charles’ disappearance to another similar unsolved case 19 months earlier. Were they related?
On 31 May 1975, Queen’s Birthday weekend, 18-year-old Mona Blades disappeared while hitchhiking from Hamilton to Napier. She was last seen in an orange Datsun 1200 stationwagon, which had turned into Matea Road, a metalled side-road off the Napier–Taupo highway. It was widely suspected the driver of the vehicle murdered Mona Blades. The owners of around 300 orange Datsun stationwagons were interviewed, but neither Mona nor the driver were ever located. Today this case still remains unsolved.
Heidi Charles also disappeared on a public holiday, in the central North Island, while supposedly hitchhiking. Could these cases be linked?
On Sunday, 9 January 1977, Sunday News published an article expounding this supposition. The story made mention that police had not discounted a theory Heidi Charles was the second victim of Mona Blades’ killer. This was based on views that Rotorua was considered a key area in the Blades case, and because one of the prime suspects lived there. This sent conspiracy theorists into a frenzy with rumours of a serial killer operating in New Zealand.
The next day, Monday, 10 January, Detective Senior Sergeant Ned Ryan angrily responded to the claims as ‘arrant nonsense’.
Based in Rotorua, Ryan and Detective Inspector Phil Berryman, from Hamilton, were in charge of the Mona Blades investigation from the outset. Several days earlier, Ryan also inherited the Heidi Charles file when the case was upgraded.
Ryan angrily refuted the newspaper’s assertions as ‘sensational and totally unfactual reporting’.
In 1985 Ryan said the following:
‘There was never any known link between the disappearances of Mona Blades and Heidi Charles. We are absolutely certain Mona Blades was killed in the vicinity of Matea Road. Although there were perhaps half a dozen or so people we interviewed in the Rotorua area, there were none we considered to be prime suspects.
‘When Heidi Charles disappeared, we did not consider it to be in a similar vein. The sightings near Atiamuri were never substantiated. We had police driving that road on the day she was supposedly seen. This wasn’t ruled out, of course. When CIB was passed the file in the first week without any results, we did look into the aspect she had been abducted and killed, but there was never any evidence of such. There certainly were no actual suspects we had in mind.’
If police publicly refuted the link, it was certainly an avenue they considered privately.
What police did not admit was there were actually two men interviewed independently, in relation to both cases. Both were living in the Rotorua area at the time Heidi Charles disappeared, and one was known to have had access to an orange Datsun stationwagon at the time Mona Blades disappeared. Both men had a history of violent sexual offending.
A police source says suspicion fell on these two men after a list was compiled of possible suspects, in the event they would find Heidi Charles’ murdered body. However, it was learned both men had reliable alibis that were thoroughly checked and their names cleared.
In 1999, Rotorua Detective Inspector Graham Bell examined a theory there may have been a serial killer in New Zealand during the 1970s. Bell claimed a high number of unsolved murders during the decade involved female victims hitchhiking, or at risk to an offender in a vehicle. Mona Blades, Jennifer Beard, Tracey Patient and Olive Walker were all killed by an offender in a car, and their bodies dumped in remote locations (Mona’s body was never found but it was considered she was killed and her body hidden in dense bush in the desolate Rangitaiki Plains). However, Bell stressed it was unlikely these particular cases were linked.
Heidi Charles was not mentioned in Bell’s examples. Although there was no evidence of such, it was possible Heidi had been abducted and killed in a similar manner.
As the enquiry progressed into its second week, police maintained an open mind to her fate. To date there was no evidence suggesting she had been abducted and murdered.
Evidence pointing to the possibility Heidi planned her own disappearance was strengthened when two employees of Okawa Bay Motor camp came forward stating Heidi approached them on two separate occasions. She allegedly made enquiries about alternative methods of transport from the camp, sometime between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve. If these assertions were correct, it could be assumed Heidi had been considering leaving her family from at least the time the family arrived in Rotorua.
Robin Charles stated he had a loving relationship with his wife, and she had a close bond with her sons. Friends the family had made supported this fact. For Heidi to voluntarily leave her husband and sons was inconceivable. But perhaps Heidi had been secretly unhappy and was waiting for her father to arrive before making a decision to leave? She was the only one in her family able to converse with him. Perhaps Heidi had discussed her feelings with her father and he offered to assist her in leaving?
Robin Charles stated he had given Heidi $200 cash. He was aware Dr Rittberger had given her a further $200 cash. Therefore she was carrying a total of $400 cash, as well as the family chequebook. She had insisted on going shopping alone.
Four hundred dollars was enough money for an airfare to Australia. Instead of going to the delicatessen, had Heidi walked to a travel agency and booked a flight overseas? She had arranged to meet her family an hour later. One hour would be sufficient time to book a flight, and quickly find a way out of town.
But it was New Year’s Eve, and many of the travel agencies in town were not open. Police checked the agencies open, but there were no sightings of Heidi, or record of her making any arrangements.
If Heidi had been in a hurry to leave town, then her actions displayed
a relaxed attitude. While her worried family was racing back to Okawa Bay, she was patiently browsing in a clothing store several hundred metres away.
The scenario of Heidi spontaneously leaving her family is uncharacteristic, but is feasible. She had the financial means to travel to Australia. But having to find a way out of Rotorua to an international departure point showed the lack of a clear strategy.
If the sightings of her hitchhiking in the Atiamuri area were correct, it would prove she had no clear plan.
She would know a missing persons report would have been filed that evening and police would be searching as early as Saturday. Yet on Sunday she was seen by two separate motorists, hitchhiking on a busy stretch of highway, which local police were driving over in an attempt to locate her.
Brion Duncan doubts Heidi left New Zealand.
‘Heidi leaving the country was certainly an early possibility. However, we located her passport on the Monday, and kept an eye on the possibility she might apply for a new one, or even a passport under her maiden name. This never eventuated.
‘The day following the missing person report, the uniform branch was quick to check with all the local travel outlets, like the transport centre, bus companies and travel agents, but there was no proof she left the city by bus or any other form of public transport. When enquiries were stepped up, we checked all airports and ships, but there were no signs she made attempts to leave the country.’
Dr Rittberger left New Zealand in mid-January and regularly kept in contact with Rotorua Police and Charles of news of his daughter.
Meanwhile there were further sightings.
While Ned Ryan was busy admonishing the press, police received a call from the manager of a hamburger bar in Pt Chevalier, Auckland. The man stated a woman matching Heidi’s description patronised his restaurant at 6 p.m. on Sunday evening, 2 January – two days after she was reported missing.
What prompted his suspicions was upon asking about her accent, the woman replied she came from a part of Germany that was now Russian. This was a vital piece of information because the personal background of Heidi Charles had not yet been released publicly.
Several days later, two further people came forward saying they had seen a woman matching Heidi’s description, shopping in the vicinity of the Pt Chevalier shops on Thursday, 6 January. Local police carried out shop-to-shop enquiries in the area she was allegedly seen, but did not hold out hope she was still in town.
As optimistic as these latest sightings seemed, Brion Duncan questioned the validity.
‘There were many alleged sightings of Heidi, but none we could absolutely confirm. Hopes were not pinned on the Pt Chevalier sightings. If we considered them genuine, a large team of officers would have immediately been sent up to Auckland to search the area thoroughly.’
If the hamburger bar sighting was genuine, one would have to question the weight of the two independent sightings earlier that day in the Atiamuri area. However, it was viable for Heidi to have been picked up while hitchhiking between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., and driven to Auckland to be in time for the 6 p.m. sighting in Pt Chevalier.
There were no more reported sightings of Heidi Charles after Pt Chevalier. By mid-February, searches in the bush-clad hills around Rotorua were scaled down and police shifted focus to Wellington in case she attempted to make contact with family or friends, but to no avail.
Searches were called off and information ceased to filter in. Police were perplexed as to the fate of Heidi Charles. There was no evidence she had been abducted and killed. The police investigation proved she couldn’t have left New Zealand. Police now tended to believe she left her family, created a new identity, and was living somewhere in New Zealand.
Even if this was uncharacteristic, it seemed the only logical explanation. But if she had started a new life, wouldn’t she have needed assistance from a third party?
If Heidi had not used the $400 cash on a ticket out of New Zealand, she could have used it to help establish a new life somewhere locally. This money would not have lasted long. She had the family chequebook, but enquiries revealed it had not been used.
It was possible she had met another man. She may have made arrangements to meet him in Rotorua that New Year’s Eve. Upon meeting at a specified place and time, they could have left town together without creating suspicion.
Or more likely, Heidi may have arranged to leave Rotorua by her own means. This would account for the two separate queries she allegedly made at the motor camp about alternative transport from the camp. Once in town and separated, she may have realised the lack of transport facilities being a public holiday, so she made her own way out of Rotorua. On the Sunday afternoon she found a car to take her to Auckland and to her destination.
Whatever happened, the Heidi Charles case remains one of the most puzzling missing person cases of the 1970s. Police remain divided about her fate. By the very nature of their circumstances, Mona Blades, Jennifer Beard, Olive Walker and Tracey Patient have all become household names. Yet the average person today has not heard of Heidi Charles. Public and media interest in the aforementioned cases remained high for years afterwards, yet very little was reported about Heidi Charles after the Pt Chevalier sightings. We may never know.
There has been little reported since about the case.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Oct 05, The Girl Who Wants To Divorce Her Parents

How a night of underage group sex destroyed a family

It is shaping up as a New Zealand test case: the ‘right’ of a child to divorce her parents because she wants the ‘right’ to associate with older men. At least, that’s the issue at the heart of this Shakespearian tragedy playing out in one of Auckland’s leafier suburbs. IAN WISHART and NEILL HUNTER report

It was a hot November afternoon, sticky, redolent with the prom-ise of Christmas and lazy languid days on the beach, and if the kids at the bus-stop by a well known girl’s high school in Auck-land had been old enough to remember Alice Cooper’s teen anthem, School’s Out For Summer, they’d have been singing it. In other words, it was one of those afternoons. As the TV news camera car pulled up at the traffic lights, windows rolled down to lure as much of the light summer breeze as possible into the vehicle, there was little interest from the girls at the bus-stop. Except for one. While, all around, her friends chattered amongst themselves incessantly, punctuated occasionally by giggles or peals of laughter, one girl locked eyes on the cameraman in the passenger seat, gave a waifish smile, and promptly hoisted her skirt into the air, Marilyn Monroe-style.
No one else around her batted an eyelid, but for the news crew being flashed by a fourteen year old girl was an unnerving indicator of how sexualised kids were becoming.
Labour’s plan to legalise sex between 12 year olds may have been shot down in a storm of protest two years ago, but there’s little doubt that underage teens are increasingly being seen as fair game.
Which is where Megan’s* story comes in. To friends and family, Megan was just an ordinary 14 year old, but to a 21 year old St John’s Ambulance worker and youth programme leader, Sam Brens, and two other men from St Johns, she and her underage friends were precocious sex kittens ripe for an orgy. The narrative of her journey, from schoolyard to a packed Auckland courtroom where three men were to face charges of statutory rape, is a gruelling one.
Some of it has been pieced together from entries in Megan’s diary, some from police investigations, still more from interviews with some of Megan’s friends. Her mother Donna, for example, discovered late in the piece that Megan was not the only girl the three men had preyed on. She located a second 14 year old, Phoebe, who in turn told of a third victim, Tiffany.
Megan’s father told Investigate:
“Phoebe described to Donna during that phone call her contacts with the men. The modus operandi used on Megan was the same as on Phoebe, and also apparently with Tiffany: One of the men would befriend the girl (initially through a text message), then have sex.
“Then, eventually, he would introduce the girl to one of the other three men. The second man would have sex with the girl. This was followed by group sex. Phoebe said she was eventually having group sex with all three of the men. All three men are members of St John’s Ambulance, at least two of them were leaders in St John’s youth programme for six to 18 year olds.”
On the St John website, incidentally, the organisation boasts of its youth programme: “Providing a safe and secure environment for young people to learn new skills, meet new people, experience new things and, of course, have fun.”
“Yeah, they had fun all right,” says Megan’s father, Murray. “In my view, those three men are paedophiles, and there they were leading the youth group.”
It had begun, as far as police know, in early to mid 2003 while one of the ambulancemen commuted on a bus packed with hormone-charged schoolgirls from two nearby schools. The man was, according to Megan’s friends, “good looking”.
“We used to sit either behind or in front of him,” says Jill, now sixteen and appalled at the events of the past two years. It seemed innocent fun at the time, a little flirting with a good-looking older guy on the bus, but it graduated to an exchange of text messages. As Jill tells it, Megan was drawn like a moth to a candle to the illicit mobile messaging game. Megan didn’t use the bus, and seeing as she hadn’t met him, and he didn’t know what she looked like, she felt less inhibited in sending “jokes and stuff” to the St John’s worker because she thought she’d never meet him so it didn’t matter,” recalls Jill.
But it did matter. The 20 year old was soon trying to persuade the girls to meet him socially.
“He used to text me and my other friend and ‘say do you want to meet, I’ll send a taxi?’ and we’re like nah-nah because we knew what he was like,” says Jill.
So why didn’t Megan? Why did Megan take a walk on the wild side where some of her friends knew not to go? She at least, given her family background, should have been safe: a tight-knit, upper socio family with a strong Christian faith, plenty of support and plenty of communication.
Jill remembers the old Megan.
“She wasn’t like that before. He changed her.”
He changed her…a young teenager’s words resonate long after the late night interview, her parents nearby. Two girls have spoken to Investigate on the condition of anonymity and they are quite clear, Megan wasn’t previously doing ‘bad stuff’. One of the girls in front of us was angry enough about what was happening to her friend that she gave a statement to the police.
According to Megan’s close friend Kim, it was July 2003 when she discovered Megan had taken text and stranger-danger messages to new levels. Kim confronted 20 year old ambulance worker Karl Berghan about his sexual relationship with a 14 year old: “do you realise how old she is?”
But nobody told Megan’s brothers or parents. Between July and December 2003, the 14 year old and the older man rendezvoused on numerous occasions, sometimes socially but frequently for sex. Then, in December, a dark new twist on a hot summer night, documented by Megan’s father.
“After spending the day at home with her family, our daughter slips out her window at night where she is picked up by Karl Berghan and his 21 year old friend Sam Brens. They take her to Shakespeare Park where the two men have sex with her. Our daughter had never met Brens before that night. Our daughter said that Brens came along because Karl Berghan wanted to watch our daughter have sex with another man. Our daughter has said that she was intimidated into going through with the sex…”
When Megan’s friend Jill discovered Megan had become a sexual plaything for the older men, she confronted Sam Brens.
“I said, ‘Oh that’s so yuk, you’re way older than her’,” she tells Investigate.
Megan’s parents at this point still weren’t aware of what was happening to their daughter, not until a room clean-up three weeks later.
The discovery that Megan was on the Pill, in mid January 2004, was made by her mother. If it seems odd that a 14 year old can be on the Pill without parental consent or knowledge, and despite the risk of fatal blood clots, you can thank Labour for that policy, part of its “wimmins” legacy from the 1973 wish list referred to in the May 05 issue of Investigate.
It is a double indictment because sex with a 14 year old girl by anyone is a crime, punishable by jail, regardless of whether the child “consents”. Labour, in a move championed by Helen Clark, appears to turn a blind eye to sex with children, endorsing instead a campaign of sexual education and contraception and, if necessary, abortion for children, all of it without parental knowledge.
Faced with a government that made it easier for children to work as prostitutes, and which wanted to make sex with 12 year olds legal in some circumstances, it is perhaps little wonder that Megan’s family would soon hit bureaucratic brick walls when they tried to get the statutory rape of their young daughter investigated.
When mum Donna made the contraceptive discovery, Megan fled the house. She wasn’t located until one the next morning, at a friend’s place. The following day, say her parents, she “confessed” to being involved with an older man. She neglected to mention being involved with two men.
As a mark of her still-childlike mental state, Megan used her father’s cellphone that evening to send a secret text message to her new sexual partner, Sam Brens, asking him to come and pick her up. It is the beginning of a long and tragic rollercoaster ride for Megan’s family.
Her father Murray, tried to trace and identify the men who’d been raping his daughter. When he discovered Karl Berghan and Sam Brens worked for St John’s Ambulance, he was stunned, but recovered sufficiently to pay a visit to their employer and get them suspended, at least temporarily.
Megan, meanwhile, was leading Murray and Donna on a chase. Just a week into the new school year, she ran away from school.
“We find her at a friend’s house the next morning at nine am, five minutes walk from where Karl Berghan works in Takapuna,” Murray wrote in a diary note. “Megan later says she spent the night in a park in Takapuna. We did find out with the police, that late that night, our daughter had walked into a strange house on Takapuna beach, introduced herself to four men having a barbeque, told them she was 16, and had a beer. On her return we find Megan’s diary in her bag and discover the events that occurred with KB and SB during 2003. The diary will be used as court evidence in the upcoming court case against the two men.”
But it is the events that followed the discovery their daughter had been raped that are most perplexing to Megan’s parents, and perhaps to parents everywhere. What should have been a straightforward criminal investigation of two men for having sex with a minor, instead became a story about a 14 year old’s right to have a boyfriend without her parents intervening. It is this essence, if you like, of the case that is a microcosmic example of the Labour Government’s social engineering.
Murray and Donna’s initial reaction, after talking to their daughter and counselling her, was to call the police. But the police reaction was to get CYF involved. Now remember, there was no suggestion in this case of sexual abuse happening within the family. There was no suggestion that Megan was not being brought up in a loving household. This was a criminal case, little different in law than if Megan had been accosted in a park by strangers and sexually assaulted. In such a circumstance, CYF would not be called in. But in this case, police asked Murray and Donna to get CYF involved.
It happened because initially the family tried to deal with Megan, but Megan kept running away from home. Murray or the police would pick her up in the middle of the night, often close to where Karl Berghan lived or worked.
Murray says it took five weeks of this repeated behaviour before he finally convinced police to investigate the statutory rape issue. He thinks it took that long because the police youth aid officer originally handling Megan’s file was stuck in the mindset ‘runaway teen, hormones, parenting issue’.
Police youth aid, according to Murray, “even got angry with me and told me I wasn’t listening to them. I thought reporting it to CYF as police asked me to do was part of the investigation process. Then police told me I had to make a complaint so I went to the area commander and spent about one and a half hours with them, then I went back to youth aid who still told me I wasn’t doing things correctly and hadn’t made a complaint.” Eventually, Murray managed to convince police that his daughter was a victim, not a juvenile delinquent, but only after detectives took over. Detectives saw what their colleagues in uniform apparently could not, went hunting and when they cornered their prey with arrest warrants, two came quietly while another fled his work place, only to be caught later.
And there one might feel this story could end – police proactive, parents’ story believed, offenders arrested for enticing under-age girls into carnal knowledge which is how one lawyer described it. Surely these parents could focus on recovering their daughter from the dark side and leave police to do their job. After all, CIB investigations were now revealing that there were four other young teenage victims, so they were going to be busy.
But the urging of police youth aid to bring in CYF eventually poisoned the entire criminal case. And that’s because the prevailing social attitude today is that children can choose to have sex, and that’s a valid choice. Fourteen year old Megan was infatuated with her 20 year old boyfriend. As far as she was concerned, her parents had no right to interfere in the way they did. Twenty years ago, such a claim from a person still legally a child would have been laughed out of court, and often was. But in modern New Zealand, that’s all changed.
When Labour’s Helen Clark lobbied hard for under 12 year olds to have the right to an abortion without their parents even being told, let alone giving consent, she was not only saying that children have a right to be sexually active, but that parents don’t have a right to know.
Just weeks ago, newspapers carried reports that 11 year old girls receiving MeNZB vaccinations in front of their classmates were being asked by health officials “are you sexually active?”. The question wasn’t being asked with a view to prosecuting anyone, but merely because the vaccine is not safe in pregnancy. The newspapers reported that one young girl had been found to be pregnant, but there was no report of anyone being arrested for having sex with a child. Instead, the New Zealand Government appears to have adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy based on a misguided belief that asking children who’s having sex with them is abuse in and of itself. While such a policy may be mooted with genuine intentions, it is fundamentally flawed not only because it lets paedophiles get away to prey on others, but also because it rapidly conditions society into thinking it no longer has a right to ask the questions, and that if a child chooses to have sex, and it is consensual, who are we to interfere?
When you add into the mix the growing number of kids who’ve gone off the rails, child prostitutes as young as nine, and 12 to 15 year old school students mating like rabbits, and then factor in the huge growth in violent crime, it is also easy to see why police no longer assign a high priority to such grey area sexual offending.
So when CYF became involved in Megan’s case, although initially supportive of the parents’ efforts to deal with the situation, that quickly changed as the CYF worker assigned to the case developed an empathy with the opinionated and articulate 14 year old who blamed her family, rather than her boyfriend, for the whole mess.
The CYF file note from January 27, 2004, states:
“Parents seem to be adequate protectors and have tried to address the issues themselves by involving the Police, engaging in the Tough Love programme and willing to link Megan to counselling.”
On February 4, another CYF note reads: “Parents are protective and willing to engage with whatever support and resource they can access to address the difficulties.”
February 6: “Mother did sound committed and said a member of the family will sit with Megan day and night to prevent her from running away. She really wants a social worker to talk to Megan, as they felt that may curb her behaviour. Mother appeared to be doing all the right things in attempting to manage Megan’s behaviour.”
24 February, 2004: “The parents were very cooperative and supportive of Megan. It appeared that they had her best interests at heart…The parents definitely want to assist their daughter.”
All of those file notes record the actions of good, supportive parents. But things were about to change. On March 4, 2004, CYF arranged for Megan to meet with a counsellor from an organisation called the Rosa Counselling Trust. Megan’s par-ents, again, were “supportive”, believing the counsellor would gently bring Megan out of her confused and traumatised state, typical of victims of sexual abuse.
“I tried to speak to the Rosa counsellor prior to their meeting with Megan,” writes her father in a diary note, “but they are completely closed to any input from me. Megan has first session with Rosa Counsellors – 30 minutes duration. She is still in a negative mood and not talking to her parents since running away two days previously. The assessment the Rosa counsellors make during these 30 minutes is crucial to the disastrous events that follow in subsequent weeks. As parents we thought we had faced a nightmare in the past 7 weeks, however the CYF-appointed Rosa counsellors were about to make matters far, far worse.”
Megan spent just half an hour with the counsellor. But in that half hour, the counsellor quickly concluded Megan’s problem wasn’t the fact that the 14 year old was having group sex with several adult men – it was her domineering family. And this comment, without having spoken to the family.
The next day, the counsellor – whom we’ll call Flora – met with Murray and Donna to discuss her conclusions, which Murray again noted:
“They announce that ‘Megan is at the greatest risk in the home environment’. They are completely closed to any input from the parents and illustrate gross incompetence.”
Further than that, Flora allegedly contacted CYF immediately after her session with Megan and told CYF that Murray and Donna were “problem parents”. That phone call and subsequent diary note are recorded in the CFY file on the case.
Murray was seething, and wrote in a complaint to the Ombudsman’s Office:
“Flora, the Rosa counsellor who counselled our daughter, has no qualifications whatsoever. Flora took an instant disliking to the father from the moment she met him. She has described this in detail in writing. Her reasons for disliking the father are that he wanted to talk with her and tell her the background about the sexual crimes his daughter was a victim of, before she counselled his daughter.
“Flora refused to counsel our daughter in connection with the sexual crimes, she counselled our daughter that her greatest problem in life is her parents, and that she should leave home as soon as she was able.
“Flora maintained that the relationship between our 14 year old daughter and the adult men who committed the sexual crimes on her was ‘love and romance’ (the men have been arrested and are currently awaiting trial for the sexual crimes committed on our daughter).
“Flora refused to listen to anything the parents said (she told us she did not need to listen to us as she had 20 years’ experience and had heard it all before). Upon meeting Murray for a few minutes when he dropped his daughter off for her first session, she later that day contacted CYF and recommended that our daughter be immediately
removed from the family.
“The outcome of the counselling, and of CYF’s behaviour toward us, is that our family has now been destroyed.”
Investigate has spoken to Rosa Trust, but spokeswoman Rowena Manning refuses to discuss the specifics of the case. We’d have liked to get an answer to an obvious question: “does a counsellor who condones sex between two 20 year old men and one 14 year old girl as ‘love and romance’ deserve to continue working in NZ?”, but sadly, that’s too specific. Investigate understands Rosa has however denied making the comment.
But if it didn’t say it, the documents in Murray’s possession suggest that Rosa was definitely treating the case as if it was just a case of teenage love and angst.
Over the following week, matters slid from bad to worse. Although still with her parents at that point, Megan “wigged out” at one point when told she couldn’t dye her hair blonde, and began smashing crockery. So much crockery, in fact, that her mother felt compelled to call police, who removed Megan to an undisclosed CYF location for the night. CYF’s attitude towards the parents in the wake of Rosa’s recommendations was also rapidly changing.
A CYF diary note of 12 March by social worker Karen Goodwin states: “I advised [Murray] that by focussing on Megan’s previous sexualised behaviours it is not helping her move on.”
At that March 12 meeting, the parents say they are forced to sign a “temporary” order placing Megan in CYF’s care. CYF refused to change the counsellors, despite numerous requests from the family who
regarded them as quacks.
For the parents, the problem seemed blindingly obvious. Older men had seduced a child into a deviant sexual relationship, the child was infatuated and throwing tantrums at not being allowed to continue her relationship with the men. Her behaviour, argued the parents, stemmed from the fact that she had been sexually abused. Under the law, this is certainly the case: Sam Brens and Karl Berghan had sex with a child. Statutory rape. End of story.
At the touchy-feely new age school of social work that many counsellors now graduate from, such views are seen as out of date. And parents who don’t like their kids being lured into group sex with adult males should apparently just “get over it”.
During the temporary custody arrangement, Megan was staying with a family friend down the road whose daughter attended the same school as Megan. According to Murray and Donna, they didn’t try to contact Megan directly during this time, and spoke only to the caregiver, their friend. Additionally, on all but one occasion, the calls to the caregiver were made while Megan was at school. Yet according to Megan’s social worker, the mere fact that her mother was ringing up at all was “a source of distress”. The parents were ordered by CYF to back off, and warned that the next step would very likely be the permanent removal of Megan from their care.
Again, Murray diarised the conversation of 25 March:
“Later, Karen Goodwin phones me:
• She informs me that from now on, Donna is only permitted to telephone Mrs [Caregiver] 3 times a week and for a maximum of 15 minutes per phone call.
• She accuses Donna and I of “putting ideas of prostitution into Megan’s head”.
• She tells me that they wish to hold a Family Group Conference and because we do not have extended family in this country, the Rosa counsellors will represent Megan.
• She says that Megan’s greatest problem is her parents.
• She says that CYF refuse to change the counsellors of Megan.
• She does not address any of the issues I raised in the letters regarding Rosa counselling incompetence.
• She tells me that if I do not allow Megan to go to Rosa counsellors they will go to court to have Megan permanently removed from our care. They say that if this happens we will never see our daughter again.
• She says that the process to achieve this has already commenced.
• When I asked her if she believed the state would be better parents for Megan than her own parents she said “Yes”.
Although Goodwin denied many of the allegations in a response to the Ombudsman, the family have obtained the full CYF file on their daughter and say they believe their interpretation of what was said is correct. As Murray put it in his comment to the Ombudsman, “A cursory glance at Ms Goodwin’s notes in the CYF computer system will leave the reader with no doubt as to what she thought of us
as parents.”
And from the documentation Investigate has seen, there is evidence of some kind of clash. For example, Goodwin’s file note of 25 March records:
“[Father] said he has not said Megan should come home, but that he wants the temporary custody arrangement cancelled. I said the next step could be possible court action.”
Another CYF diary note from May has Goodwin writing: “I have at times recommended for this case to be presented before the court…On the 25 March 2004…I advised the father at this stage that court action may be the next step. The Social Worker was anticipating that court action would be the next step in order to keep Megan safe.”
Another note records: “CYPFS to take court action against Father of Child for custody of Megan.”
Yet CYF area boss Peter Topzand at one point – before the file was released to the family - rejected the family’s complaint that CYF had been heavying them: “I have asked Karen Goodwin about your assertion that she said she would be initiating court action to remove Megan and that you would not be seeing Megan again. Karen emphatically denies this and believes you must have misunderstood her.”
Goodwin later apologised via the Ombudsman if Megan’s family felt threatened. Remember, the family had approached CYF to seek expert sexual abuse counselling for their troubled daughter. Instead, they’d been cut out of their daughter’s life by Rosa Counselling Trust, the organisation CYF had hired to do the counselling, an organisation that allegedly wrote off the statutory rapes as “love and romance”. Maybe grown men having group sex with a 14 year old is love and romance in Auckland’s west, where Rosa is based, but it shouldn’t be treated as such at CYF.
Murray and Donna’s instant reaction was to find out everything they could about Rosa and its counselling staff.
The parents believed the counsellor was unqualified.
“The counsellor’s letterhead displays the letters MNZAC and MCTAANZ prominently. MNZAC indicates that she is a member of the NZAC. We made extensive enquiries to establish what MCTAANZ represents. NZAC they said they had no idea what the letters MCTAANZ represent. They referred us to the counselling department at the Waikato Institute of Technology who have also never heard of the qualification or membership association. So we wrote to 350 NZAC members asking if anyone knew what the letters MCTAANZ represented. One counsellor replied that it represents: ‘Creative Therapy Association of Aotearoa New Zealand’. She said that anyone could join, there were no entry requirements except payment of a $50 annual subscription.”
Rosa’s trustee and spokesperson Rowena Manning denies her organisation is staffed by bogus quacks, saying her team is qualified by virtue of learning counselling on the job over a long period. The letters, she says, are not intended to imply qualification, only association affiliation.
“Anyone who practices in that agency (Rosa) is required to be either an applicant member or a member (of NZAC).”
We agreed, in return for an interview, to not mention the names of the counsellors involved in Megan’s case. Manning claims “both those counsellors had qualifications, both go overseas for training, over the past two years they have been employed by us and one gives training in tertiary institutions in the US and England. They are very experienced and competent but as far as their academic qualifications go I would have to check them.”
She agreed they were her staff but she did not have their qualifications “at my fingertips” and offered to try to obtain them by deadline. She telephoned later to say she had been unable to get them.
The agency began nine years ago and Manning says “the two senior counsellors that work for us have over twenty years experience individually”. Manning says she is a “community member appointed to the human ethics committee” of Massey University and has a good working knowledge of ethical issues.
As the famous saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. No matter how sincere Rosa feels it was in the way it approached Megan’s case, her family feels Rosa fundamen-tally misunderstood both the law and its own role. Murray and Donna say they’re the ones now being sent to Hell in a handcart because of what they assert is Rosa Counselling Trust’s total incompetence.
When they protested to the New Zealand Association of Counsellors, NZAC, they claim they were stonewalled. The NZAC simply asked Rosa to file a report, then made a decision exonerating the
organisation without seeking any input from Murray and Donna. To top it all off, the NZAC told Murray not to write to them on the subject again.
Incensed, the parents went over the heads of both Rosa and NZAC, emailing details of their case to hundreds of professional counsellors both in New Zealand and overseas, asking whether as parents they were overreacting, or whether in fact they’d become unwitting guests at a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party thrown by CYF and Rosa.
The response from other counsellors reassured them Rosa appeared to have crossed the line.
“I was very disturbed to read of the events you outlined in your email to me,” wrote Lyn Coker, a member of NZAC. “I am shocked that any counsellor would express the views your daughter’s counsellor did regarding your daughter’s sexual abuse.
“If what you tell me in your email is correct, then this counsellor has, in my opinion, committed a serious breach of trust and crossed professional boundaries. The fact that the counsellor reacted so strongly without knowing you appears to be a case of transference.
“With regard to your daughter – if the counsellor formed an alliance with her against you and your wife – your daughter is likely to be very confused. And once a teenager has made a stand, it is often hard for them to back down or see things from another perspective. She would benefit from proper professional help.”
Janne Sergison, another NZAC affiliate, wrote: “I’m sorry you had such a bad counselling experience with your daughter. Your counsellor in my opinion did not behave very professionally. Your daughter may have been seeing the whole situation as one of love and romance BUT the fact remains she is a 14 year old kid.
“There were crimes committed. In fact, consensual sex under 16 is statutory rape. This is because a child under 16 is regarded as being developmentally not ready to give informed consent as they do not understand all the dynamics. Also, the effects are just as bad as any other abuse, as you are probably finding out.”
Said Warwick Smith, another NZAC member: “Sadly, the impact of such trauma has a profound effect upon the victim that takes time and skilled help to overcome. I am astounded that any counsellor would have taken such a position in regard to what is a criminal act and viewing it as ‘love and romance’.”
On the international front, support was just as strong. Dr Graham Cocking, the Registrar of the International Society of Professional Counsellors (ISPC), told Murray: “Under ISPC rules, the type of counselling discussed would be unethical.”
The co-Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Counselling Association, Professor Donald Anderson, told Murray he had “deep concern” about what had happened, while a professor of
Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary, Bryan Hiebert, said: “The situation you describe sounds like a travesty…it sounds like you have a strong case for pursuing litigation.”
Indeed, a large number of the international experts made the same comment: “I would consult a lawyer.”
The New Zealand Association of Counsellors may well find itself on the wrong end of litigation, as one of several co-defendants, if the parents decide to sue. NZAC, the ‘governing’ body for counsellors, purported to hold an investigation of Murray’s formal complaint without disclosing to Murray the contents of Rosa’s submission, or allowing Murray to comment on it. In other words, the NZAC simply rubber-stamped Rosa’s denial of wrongdoing without any real attempt at an independent investigation.
Little wonder that another NZAC affiliate, Steven Dromgool, agreed with his colleagues in saying, “I unsurprisingly think that you have experienced abusive and coercive counselling and an enormously abusive response by the NZAC.”
So where did this leave the family? In the midst of their battles with CYF and Rosa Counselling Trust, Murray had managed to persuade the local CIB to arrest and charged the two men who’d engaged in group sex with his daughter in a public park. As police investigated, they discovered four other underage girls who’d also allegedly been caught in their web, but only one other who they could positively identify, Phoebe. Two of the St Johns Ambulance men who’d raped Megan had also allegedly raped Phoebe, along with a third St John’s volunteer.
Throughout 2004, Megan remained living at home, after returning from her initial temporary custody arrangement. During this period, she cooperated with the police investigation, giving statements and providing information. But on 11 May 2005, just weeks before the scheduled criminal trial of three men on statutory rape charges, she stunned her parents once more.
“I wasn’t home,” says Murray, “but Donna was. It was in the afternoon, and suddenly Megan walks in with six girls from her school, all carrying boxes. They pushed past Donna and went straight to Megan’s room and began helping her pack all her things into the boxes. They were really abusive to Donna. It was really intense. And that was the last we saw of our daughter until the trial.”
The writing was on the wall, only Murray and Donna didn’t want to see it. Now 16, Megan had no intention of testifying against the men or remaining in her parents’ home. With the assistance of a school teacher and a youth pastor at a nearby church, she’d arranged not only a “safe house” to stay at, but also to receive payment of the Independent Youth Benefit, which the government pays to children who want to leave home without their parents’ permission.
When the trial opened in July in the District Court at Auckland, Murray and Donna and their two teenage sons – Megan’s older brothers – sat in the courtroom waiting for Megan to enter. When she did, she didn’t even look at her family. She simply walked straight past as if they didn’t exist, saving her greeting smile for the men standing in the dock, the men accused of statutory rape. The other police witness, Phoebe, had disappeared.
As the judge enters, a solitary young woman stands alone in the witness box on yet another cold, grey mid-winter day. Megan makes her final decision. Slightly built, she looks younger than her 16 years and three months, neatly dressed in a light coloured fur collared jacket, dark shoulder length hair tidily styled, head slightly bowed.
She says “no,” she won’t testify.
And, each time the judge asks her a question that faint smile reappears again, not in amusement, probably only nervousness as her body swings slightly side-to-side, her answers barely audible. “No,” she will not give her evidence. Finally, all efforts of by the veteran judge to firmly yet gently ensure she understands her actions, all efforts are exhausted.
The young student leaving court smiles briefly again towards three young men sitting tightly side by side in a low narrow wooden cubicle. Two security guards stand like sentinels nearby. Later one of the lawyers tells Investigate: “None of these boys have ever been in trouble before, all have good jobs, one of them is training to be a nurse, another employed by a large public company and doing extremely well. I’ve had to represent people who are always in and out of court and couldn’t give a toss, that’s life but these boys have never been in strife before and facing charges that if convicted could have seen them go to prison.” Then he quickly adds for effect: “Scary stuff.”
There is an ironic footnote to this tragic case, however. As this article was about to go to press, Megan tried to take legal action to prevent it, wrongly assuming that Investigate was going to name her.
The legal action is understood to be a New Zealand precedent, because it is an application by Megan herself to be made a Ward of the Family Court. In essence, Megan has applied to divorce her parents. Who put her up to it? Arguably the team at YouthLaw Tino Rangatiratanga, but with the collusion of a guidance counsellor at her high school who gave Megan copies of a document her father had sent to the school, and physically accompanied her to see a barrister. As Murray makes the point, “What kind of country are we living in now where a government school teacher takes a child to see a lawyer in order to divorce her parents?”
It is as part of that application that Megan also tried to seek an injunction to prevent the story being told.
And the irony is this: After refusing to identify the men in the dock when she was in court, and after refusing to testify on oath, Megan then filed a sworn affidavit against Investigate, drafted by YouthLaw, admitting she had underage sex with the men:
“In about the second half of 2003, when I was fourteen, I was having a sexual relationship with my, then, 19 year old boyfriend. We had at that time been together for about six months. My parents did not know I was sexually active.
“My boyfriend asked if I would have a “threesome” with his friend. I consented. As a result I had sexual relations with both my boyfriend and his friend whom I now know to have been 21. It happened on only the one occasion. I was a willing participant. I was not forced and I was not a victim. I realise now that it was a very silly thing to do and I very much regret it. I want to put the incident behind me and get on with my life.”
“Because of the pressure from my parents the Police did investigate and when I was interviewed again and under pressure from both my parents and the police I made a full statement identifying the men, in the hope that it would improve my relationship with my parents. The Police decided to prosecute.
“As the date of the hearing approached I retracted my statement. The Police that I talked to said they did not want to continue with the prosecution but because of the pressure my father brought to bear, the prosecution continued anyway.
“The two men were charged with unlawful sexual intercourse. The Court trial commenced on the 25th July 2005 before a jury. I was the first witness. I had previously told the lawyer prosecuting the case that I did not want to give evidence. I was asked a couple of times to identify the accused but refused. As a result the case against the
Defendants was dismissed.
“In addition to my IYB I have just started working part time. I earnt $230 for my first two weeks. I continue to attend school. I intend to sit NCEA Level 1 at the end of the year and return to school for years 12 and 13. I hope to go to University to study Law.”
Megan’s story raises a number of important issues. Regardless of how Megan felt about having group sex in a public park with two men – one of whom she’d never met before – the community has a wider public interest in ensuring that legal boundaries, especially those on sex between adults and children, remain in place. Although the men’s lawyers argued that they had never been in trouble before, there were up to five underage girls who had been seduced by three men in their 20s. One incident could be construed – on a good day – as star-crossed love. Perhaps. But adult group sex with a 14 year old, and a number of victims in law, raises much bigger questions about how far societal tolerance should go.
The case also brings into focus the sexualisation of children. Once upon a time, adults having group sex with a 14 year old would be regarded as rape not just by the law but by the 14 year old and her peers as well. Today, it’s increasingly no longer the case. The reality is that Labour’s legalisation of prostitution appears to have dramatically
increased the number of child prostitutes on the streets, and police are doing nothing about them either. Megan doesn’t want her story told because she feels it is personal. But it is a personal story played out in an orgy in a public park, involving men who allegedly had preyed on other underage victims.
Is the story a matter of serious public interest? Or does this case mark possibly the last time that a statutory rape charge will be heard in a New Zealand court, because of changing public attitudes to sex with children? Is it a victimless crime simply because Megan does not consider herself a victim, or does society have a wider interest in protecting other children from the advances of the same men? And should Megan have the right to divorce her parents, or is that an ongoing manifestation of the original trauma, compounded by transference and bad counselling?
If readers wish to comment on this story, they are welcome to post messages at our new blog site, www.thebriefingroom.com, or email us your thoughts to editorial@investigatemagazine.com.

*The names of Megan, her parents Murray and Donna, and friends Phoebe and Tiffany, have been changed. The names of the accused have not been changed. All photos in this article feature models, not the girls concerned

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Sep 05, Sexy Beef, Lesbian Gulls

The hidden sex hormones being added to beef

There’s nothing more red-blooded than a juicy slab of steak, but BARBARA SUMNER-BURSTYN reports that a female sex hormone linked to ‘gay’ behaviour in animals is being pumped into some New Zealand beef cattle, without being disclosed on food packaging labels

Butchers dancing like Hari Krishna’s, senior citizens thrashing out hard rock, the Evers-Swindell twins smiling furiously, meat, espe-cially red meat is hot right now. “New Zealanders are fond of their meat,” says Richard Umbers, managing director of supermarket chain Progressive Enterprises. And quality, he comments, is everything.
Meat and Wool New Zealand agrees. Their website extols the benefits of year round outdoor grazing. ‘Livestock grow to good weights with little need for veterinary drugs, chemical inputs or feed supplements.’
But like ‘fog facts,’ – important things known but not known that nobody seems able to focus on anymore – described in Larry Beinhart’s book, “Fog Facts’ Politics: What We Don’t Know and Why We Don’t Know It there’s more going on in the paddocks than just grass munching.
Hormone Growth Promotants for example. Known in the industry as HGPs, the official line is that the sex hormones implanted into the ears of cattle are natural or nature identical substances that simply replicate
nature, mimicking the hormones lost through castration and equating to other natural dietary sources of hormones such as eggs or soybeans.
But how do New Zealanders feel about growth promoting hormones implanted in their meat patties? Rod Slater, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau says that at the time of establishing the Quality Mark in 1997 consumers surveyed showed a clear preference for meat free of hormone additives. He says they no longer survey this but he is convinced our attitudes have not changed.
Until a few weeks ago The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) agreed. In the section relating to HGP’s in meat the NZFSA declared it was ‘their policy that consumers should be provided with adequate
information so they can make informed choices about food matters such as this, and good food labelling is important in this process.’
But question your butcher about HGP’s and he’ll look at you blankly. Read the labels on the packaged meat at some supermarkets and you’ll be hard pressed to find any acknowledgement of hormone use, despite the fact that they’re implanted into around 80,000 head of cattle each year. While that figure is low, about 2 percent of our total market, if you’re a meat eater, that’s a potential additive you didn’t bargain for.
The NZFSA endorsement of food labelling to ensure informed choice has now disappeared from their website. (1) When questioned about the presence of artificial hormones in New Zealand’s meat chain and the lack of labelling Sandra Daly, Director of Communications reports they are a science-based organisation and based on the scientific evidence, there is no consumer protection basis for banning HGP use for beef production for New Zealand. (2)
Australia endorses that position. In a major report the Australian Department of Health and Aging found that the human safety and toxicology of HGP’s have been extensively assessed by regulatory authorities in Australia, the USA, Canada and New Zealand, in addition to expert scientific committees from the World Health Organisation. The NZFSA says the report forms a part of the information New Zealand considers in developing their views on HGPs. They comment that all international bodies and national regulatory agencies accept the safety data that residues of registered hormones do not pose a threat to consumers.
All that is, except the European Union (EU). The use of HGPs was banned by The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in 1988. The WTO responded that the ban was unscientific. In 2003 the EU completed a full scientific risk assessment, re-evaluating the potential risks to human health from hormone residues. This resulted in the permanent prohibition of estradiol 17ß. Their precautionary approach extends to five hormones (testosterone, progesterone, trembolone acetate, zeranol and melengestrol acetate) that have now been provisionally prohibited. (12) In addition to estradiol 17ß there are seven registered HGP’s in New Zealand including those containing progesterone and trembolone acetate. (13)
In banning HGP’s the EU say they have considered all social, economic and political factors. They concluded that estradiol 17ß was a ‘complete’ carcinogen and that others such as trembolone acetate the synthetic equivalent of testosterone, should be viewed as having potentially endocrine-disrupting, developmental, immunological, neurobiological, immunotoxic, genotoxic and carcinogenic effects. The EU claims there is a lack of data to support an alternative view. They also contend that despite the WTO rulings there is limited information available on the levels of the various metabolites, or breakdown products, despite this information being relevant.

The EU also suggests that young children may be more sensitive to low levels of the hormones than previously thought. The authors conclude that in light of recent progress in our understanding of estrogen levels in children, possible adverse effects on human health by consumption of meat from estrogen-treated animals cannot be excluded.
The WTO has consistently ruled against the EU. Despite WTO-approved retaliatory economic trade sanctions imposed by the United States, the EU continues to defy orders to lift the ban. EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy stated in November last year that the EU ban on certain HGPs was based on a thorough and independent scientific risk assessment. (12).
The precautionary principle exercised by the EU appears to be echoed by a leading comparative cancer research programme at Cornell University. They say that while there’s no evidence to suggest that eating meat from hormone-treated animals affects breast cancer risks, a conclusion on lack of human health effect can only be made after large-scale studies to compare the health of people who eat HGP meat to people who don’t. These have never been done. Cornell also acknowledges that large epidemiological studies have never been done to assess whether or not early puberty in developing girls is associated with having eaten growth hormone-treated foods. (14)
The Australian report concludes that even with the EU’s latest data supporting the ban they can find no grounds for amending Australia’s regulatory position on HGPs. (6) New Zealand takes the same position.
Derek Moore, New Zealand manager for Elanco the makers of Compudose, one of the most widely used HGPs in New Zealand, is verbose in his dismissal of any concerns surrounding the products. “There is no question that the EU position is a form of trade embargo and market protectionism. It’s a non-tariff trade barrier.” He went on to describe the precautionary principal (the EU’s better-safe-than-sorry approach to implementing health regulations) as entirely arbitrary. “I give it no weight,” he said and added that the science in favour of HGPs was so unequivocal that there was really only one side to this issue, the side of the facts.
Compudose is a controlled release estradiol. The package insert says Estradiol 17ß is a naturally occurring substance. In the material safety data sheet published by Elanco, the emergency overview for the product states that estradiol may enter the body through the skin, causes cancer and is highly potent. Fetal changes, reproductive tissue damage, mental disorders are also mentioned, as are increased breast size and other feminizing effects in males occupationally exposed to estrogens. The published warning for the product says that even intermittent absorption of small amounts of estrogen through the skin may result in accumulation of relatively high systemic levels with concomitant negative health effects on children whose parents work with estrogen products. (3) Elanco, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, is at pains to point out that its product does not pose any health risk, either to those handling the product or to consumers who ultimately eat the implanted meat. “The data is pointing out the hazards of exposure,” says Moore, “that is entirely different from the risk.”
Compudose is implanted only in the skin immediately beneath the ear of a cattle beast. Disposal of ears of implanted cattle is an issue. NZFSA says they are discarded as waste, rendered or used in gelatin production. Gelatin is made from skin (pigskin and hide split) and bone taken from slaughtered animals that have been approved for human consumption. The resulting gelatin is then used in a plethora of locally produced products. A report by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) said that failure to discard implanted ears could lead to mg amounts of hormone residues to enter the food chain and cause acute toxicity in consumers. The NZFSA responds that Australia allows HGP implantation in other parts of the body. But as Elanco New Zealand points out, the product and all product use guidelines are the same as in New Zealand. Martin Holmes, a spokesperson for the APVMA says that, as in New Zealand, Compudose is implanted only in the ear.
A further issue is the use of antibiotics. Elanco acknowledges that the implant may be dusted with the antibiotic tetracycline. Derek Moore is unsure if the New Zealand version contains any antibiotic. He suggests that perhaps the implant is coated in talcum powder.
In the United States the needle used to insert the implant is also often coated with an antibiotic. Vet Services in the Hawkes Bay are adamant they do not use antibiotics to cleanse needles. But either way the trace use of an antibiotic for non-therapeutic purposes is concerning. In the United States a bill currently before the US House of Representatives (The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2005) stated that non-therapeutic overuse of antibiotics in animals was creating severe antibiotic resistance in people. The task force cautioned that if current trends continue, treatments for common infections could become nonexistent. (7) Again the EU is at the forefront of precautionary measures, banning the use of all non-therapeutic veterinary antibiotics identified as similar or identical to those used in humans. Elanco says it has yet to be demonstrated that non-therapeutic use of antibiotics has a detrimental effect on humans.
So why use HGPs at all? The industry calls them ‘quality enhancers’. In a local trial cattle treated with Compudose had an average weight increase of 23.5% (9). Cattle treated with HGPs grow faster enabling them to be sent to the works in shorter time, lowering the farmer cost of beef raising. It’s estimated that for every dollar spent on an HGP there is a five-dollar return.
Because of the EU ban and restrictions in nine other countries considered minor markets HGPs are strictly controlled in New Zealand. They include identification prior to or immediately after implantation, double-tagging, strict dose notation, a level of paper work that one vet described as onerous, implantation by trained and certified implanters and a requirement that all lost tags be replaced immediately. Once HGP cattle reach the works they must be separated from other animals and either killed in a separate area or only after all the equipment is completely cleansed. Abattoir workers spoken to described the processes as time-consuming. The NZFSA reports that failure to abide by any conditions outlined by MAF could result in prosecution and fines of up to $100,000.
But an inspection by a team from the EU in May found the systems were not quite as robust as the authority suggests. (11) The team reported a number of issues, such as the accuracy in accounting for all doses of HGPs passing through the distribution chain. They were concerned that administration of HGPs and completion of the records were being carried out by the farmers themselves and they called for tighter control on use of animal remedies that contain active ingredients that are banned in the EU. The New Zealand Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines group who manage HGPs say they have now taken corrective actions.
Perhaps the most salient point for New Zealand meat consumers is the fact that all identification procedures and separation effort is designed solely to protect our standing with the EU. “There is no emphasis on ensuring the local market can access non-HGP meat,” admits the NZFSA. (8) They advise that there are three main mechanisms for post-slaughter separation and identification. Organics such as those run by Biogro, the New Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau’s domestic Quality Mark and Qualmark. (Qualmark reports that they do not certify meat)
New Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau advises consumers to look out for their red tick of hormone-free approval. Seager Mason, tech-nical director for BioGro says organic food by definition is free of additives. “The whole point of organics is the system for monitoring the producers. Food producers should always declare the means of manufacture.” He comments that any decision on the safety or otherwise of food ingredients should be made by the consumer not the ‘vested-interest’ producer. He adds that regulators have made a deliberate decision to exclude the public from decision-making. “In essence they’re saying they know best, that we should just trust them. It’s patronizing at best.” He comments that when a government department calls itself a ‘scientific organisation,’ they’re about to give you the benefit of political or personal opinion. “We’re educated to a high level in New Zealand. Surely we are able to assimilate facts and opinions and make our own decisions.”
Such is the adherence to the ‘science’ of HGPs and the belief that the EU ban is nothing more than market protectionism, the only risk acknowledged by the NZFSA is a trade risk. Implanted animals in New Zealand are not tested for residues of any of the registered HGPs. Instead up to 450 non-implanted cattle are tested to ensure compliance with the identification regulations to protect the export market.
NZ Food Safety Authority director of animal products Tony Zohrab was reported recently as saying any decision on the use of HGPs is very much a commercial one between farmers and processors. The organisations official position is that while consumer perception obviously plays a role in decision-making, wherever possible, when that perception is at odds with scientific evidence, they prefer consumer education to scientifically unjustified regulation.
Elanco’s Derek Moore says their own consumer research shows people want safe and affordable food. “The use of HGPs and antibiotics in animal production is of very low concern.” And he comments that banning things is unacceptable in our modern marketplace.
He’s right of course. HGPs should not be banned. The tracking and status of HGP cattle in New Zealand is comprehensive and effective. Labeling for the local market is no more commercially onerous than separation for the European market. Consumer choice is promoted as the ultimate freedom. It is the market that must test the validity of claims in support of HGPs. It is the market that must sort out whether consumers really want to eat meat grown with growth promoting hormones.

THE LESBIAN GULLS
The issue of estrogen in the diet is a controversial one. Scientists have discovered a number of foods – most notably soy – that contain high levels of phytoestrogens, the plant equivalent of the female sex hormone.
Although initially dismissed by some as “soy conspiracy theory”, research on the effects of phytoestrogens and other estrogen compounds on human sexual development is now widespread, particularly because of soy’s use as a milk substitute for infants.
New Scientist magazine reported two years ago that girls raised on soy infant formula are more likely to suffer menstrual discomfort, and boys born to vegetarian mothers are five times more likely to suffer genital abnormalities. Other studies have reinforced suspicions about diets high in phytoestrogens, and some scientists now believe there’s evidence that they could be a factor in causing homosexuality.
The first evidence came in from the animal kingdom, as Science News online reported:
“While the health community has recently begun a host of studies to explore a possible link between estrogenic pollutants and cancers in women, few researchers have focused on the related reproductive risks such environmental hormones may pose for both sexes. That’s unfortunate says Theo Colborn, a zoologist with the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., because reproductive effects are likely to be “much more widespread.”
“Indeed, she notes, animal data are beginning to suggest that far smaller exposures are needed to trigger reproductive effects than to induce cancers. And because some of these reproductive changes may be subtle, they could evade detection for decades – even a lifetime– unless hunted for explicitly.
“Colborn has convened a number of symposia in the past few years for researchers who study reproductively impaired wildlife populations or laboratory animals exposed to environmental hormones. Most of these scientists, she says, describe the links they’re finding between impaired reproduction and “hormonal” pollutants as sobering—if not downright scary.
“Indeed, she and many other environmental scientists worry that if hormone-like contaminants can feminize male animals, these ubiquitous pollutants may also underlie troubling reproductive-system trends being witnessed in men.”
A University of California, Davis, study by avian toxicologist Michael Fry in the 1980s determined that estrogenic pollution lay behind the “lesbian behaviour” of seagulls. Significantly, to test their theory, they injected normal seagull eggs with estradiol, the additive being pumped into some New Zealand and Australian beef.
“To connect these effects with estrogenic pollutants, Fry and his colleagues conducted a number of experiments during the 1980s. In one, they injected eggs of contaminant-free gulls with estradiol…When the hatchlings emerged, they exhibited the same array of feminized sex organs as DDT-contaminated Western gulls on Santa Barbara Island, off the coast of California.”
The estradiol, and a range of other estrogenic pollutants like DDT, effectively “chemically castrated” the males, Fry says.
As Science News reported: “He suspects the males’ likely lack of interest in mating explains not only why female gulls dominated Santa Barbara Island’s breeding colony in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also why the females cohabited.”
Increasingly, scientists suspect environmental hormone pollutants caused by human agriculture and industrial waste are working into the animal food chain and creating more instances of so-called “gay behaviour” by animals.
The question is, what are the hormones doing to humans?
Ian Wishart

REFERENCES
1. NZFSA chemicals in food: Date accessed, 12/6/2005"
http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/consumers/food-safety-topics/chemicals-in-food/hgps/
2. Answer to question 30 from NZFSA, document on file
3. ca_msds_compudose.pdf
4. compudose – Elanco.pdf
5. Compudose.pdf
6. review_HGP.pdf
7. http://www.theorator.com/bills109/hr2562.html
8. Q & A document from NZFSA on file
9. http://www.country-wide.co.nz/article/3484.html
10. Andersson, A-M and N.E. Skakkebfk (1999): Exposure to Exogenous Estrogens in Food: Possible Impact on Human Development and Health.European Journal of Endocrinology 140 477-485. Balter, Michael (1999): Scientific Cross-Claims Fly In Continuing Beef War. Science Vol 284 1453-1454
11. http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/acvm/publications/agvet link/issue-21/article10.htm
12. http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleases Action. do?reference=IP/04/1345&format =HTML&aged= 0&language=en&guiLanguage=en
13. http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/acvm/registers-lists/acvm-register index.htm?setup_file= acvmreg.setup.cgi& session_file= &_dmode =b&LICID=&TRADE_NAME =&PRODUCT_TYPE=Hormonal +Growth+Promotant &NAME =&COMMON _NAME=&DATE_ SINCE=& DATE _BEFORE= &sort_by= 0&sort_order =forward& rows_to_return=10&submit_search=Search
14. http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Factsheet/Diet/fs37. hormones.cfm

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Sep 05, From RussiaWithout Love

LOST IN TRANSLATION

She was a Russian dancer. He was a suburban New Zealand psychopath. IAN WISHART has the story of a paedophile’s manipulation of the law to gain access to children, and a trail of wrecked lives he’s left behind him

Teardrops well, glistening in the soft evening light, but they never fall. “I can’t cry anymore,” she says after a moment, gathering herself again. “I don’t cry,” she repeats, softly, more to herself than anyone else. Her name is Elena Reznikova*, and on a cold August night she’s a long way from home, back in the Ukraine. The story, of a journey from her life as a Russian ballerina to be surrounded by semi-stacked boxes of files in a tatty West Auckland suburban law office after hours, is a long and (like many Russian stories) tragic one.
Daughter of a Soviet Air Force pilot, her mother a nurse, Elena Reznikova had a relatively normal childhood in communist Russia. Born in the remote province of Khazakstan – a legacy that would return to haunt her in New Zealand, Elena’s parents shifted to a home in rural Ukraine, not far from a local nuclear power station named Chernobyl. She draws back the collar of her turtleneck sweater: “See, I still have scar from cancer,” she notes, touching her throat. Her voice is hoarse and barely there.
As if sensing the unspoken question, she adds: “I have lost my voice, all year. Stress. It will kill me eventually, I think.”
Stress. Now there’s an understatement.
It was back in February 2001 that Elena met New Zealander Paul Copeland, courtesy of a Russian bride internet agency.
“I wanted to get out of Ukraine, out of Russia,” she reflects. “I met a person on internet line. He look good. He promised me beautiful life, I would ‘bloom like a flower’. I fell in love with his photos, I was ready to take care of his children. He said he needs a woman who will look after his children, who will cook, who will clean – and I was the best – and I was ready to be a stepmother, to be friendly with his other partners. Because he was like me, he had three different children from three different relationships. Can you imagine this madness?”
Elena had been married and divorced. Like thousands of Russian women, she was deserted by the men in her life because of appalling economic conditions over there.
“My friends told me, ‘don’t give up, you can find a good man’. Because it is impossible to find in Ukraine, with children, it is economic, men are unable to provide.”
Copeland, she says, was everything she thought she wanted in a man. “All my girlfriends were crazy about him because he was good looking, charming, gentleman, just a little bit drunk, but we just thought he liked his beer, as we do in the Ukraine.”
But Elena had no idea the New Zealander had a very dark past, despite an incident that ever so slightly foreshadowed what she would later discover.
“My neighbours came over. We have a tradition in Russia to make a person drunk because we want to know how he acts when he is drunk, because people are different when they are drunk. Paul was drinking and drinking, and he started to try and jump off the second floor balcony, because he said he was trying to escape being locked up.”
In 1989, Paul Copeland hit the headlines throughout New Zealand for trying to murder his first wife with a crossbow in Tauranga. It was a well-publicised court case, with testimony of terror.
As an NZPA report from his trial in May 1990 recounts:
“A 32 year old Tauranga man tried to kill his estranged wife by shooting her with a hunting bow and arrow…from only a feet away…the broadhead spear arrow penetrated part of the woman’s liver, stomach and one of her lungs, poking out the other side of her body.
“She managed to make her way to the kitchen where she tried to use the phone but was prevented by Copeland, who forced her up against a wall in the hallway opposite the kitchen.
“Feeling dizzy, she had slid down the wall but managed to get up again to make her way downstairs and to her car where her young daughter was waiting for her. She had collapsed beside the car and neighbours who saw her had rushed to her aid,” the Crown Prosecutor was recorded as telling the High Court at Rotorua.
“Copeland, from an upstairs window, had asked several times if she was dead yet.”
He was found not guilty by reason of “temporary” insanity. Copeland, you see, had always been troubled. His father was named in investigations as a violent, alcoholic paedophile, who’d allegedly sodomised his young son. In his early teenage years, Paul Copeland allegedly returned the favour by raping one of his younger sisters. There were burglaries, drug use, car thefts and fraud charges. Violence towards animals was also a Copeland trademark – executing cats and other small animals by bludgeoning them, revelling in the gore. Little surprise that the teenager ended up in the Tokanui mental institution as a result of his behaviour. Family members would later talk of assault convictions in Australia, drink driving and firearms convictions.
None of this, however, was contained in the internet dating agency files as Copeland linked up with Reznikova in far off Ukraine. Instead, the New Zealander turned on the charm, promising marriage and more to the former ballerina and mother of two boys.
“He said he wanted to make me pregnant, that this was beautiful because I need a baby girl, so we need to do it immediately because it would be easier to get visas.”
By August 2001, Elena was pregnant with their child – her third.
“Paul was very good for about two weeks after I got pregnant, then he started to drink, he said he’d spent all the money for tickets, nearly, and I said ‘listen, we have to have money for tickets to go to your country’.”
In September that year, the couple and Elena’s youngest son, Yuri, landed in Auckland.
“I couldn’t speak English. None. I couldn’t put sentence together. I couldn’t make myself understood. I left behind my eldest son because the immigration people in Moscow said it would be hard to get him out here, because Paul didn’t have enough money to pay. But he promised me he would bring him out later.
“I’d always wanted to speak English well, like I do now. I wanted my children to speak English, and I wanted to have a good job and be happy. So New Zealand looked to me like a countryside that I liked, because my family came from the countryside. We had 100 turkeys. My family grows vegetables, we have lots of food, very hard working people.”
Clean and green the countryside in her new home might have been, but behind the four walls of Copeland’s house she began to discover his demons.
“When I arrived in September I used to clean the house because I was a good cleaner…and I found some photos of other women with children, in Spain, Africa and elsewhere. So I asked him, ‘was this your previous girlfriend?’ He said ‘no, I just used to live with her for a while’. I said ‘why didn’t you bring her to New Zealand?’. He said ‘she wasn’t good, but her children were good’.”
Elena wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
“When we first arrived, we had sex all weekend, every day, but when his other children arrived he wasn’t interested in me, he doesn’t have sex with me. I’m asking him, ‘Paul, I’m waiting for you upstairs’, but he never came up. I’m four months pregnant but I’m a woman who is still healthy, you know.”
Over the weeks and months of her pregnancy that followed over the summer of 2001, Elena claims Copeland became more and more distant, more focused on the children, including Elena’s six year old Yuri.
“On the beach I noticed that he was putting his fingers in between the children’s legs every time he picked them up. His children always used to scream in the bath. I said to him, you bath boy, I bath girl. He was always present in the bath when the children were there. I don’t leave babies in the bath alone, but when children are five or older it is a different thing.
“I often heard the children sobbing, and once [his daughter Amanda, from his second wife] came out crying and I asked ‘who hurt you’, and she pointed at Paul saying ‘him’.
“He used to call me worthless, and good for nothing whore. On the few times we had sex after that he became violent, even though I was pregnant. He never kissed me, and turned my face away during the act of intercourse. He was cold and brutal. Then, at the end, he got worse. He had so much sex with me at the end that I had premature baby.”
Their child, Nicholai, was born in March 2002, with complications.
“When he was born the baby didn’t breathe, and he said ‘I don’t know why I should have to buy expensive medicine just to keep the baby alive’. He refused to buy medicine, so I used to go to the church, and there was a very good woman there and she gave me $20.”
When the baby had to be rushed to hospital, Paul Copeland allegedly took his time.
“He wanted the child to die. He told me. He didn’t want to take me to hospital. He went so slow. As a mother, I’m lucky I have medical skills to keep this child healthy and alive, so when he got better – it was four months later – I moved out of the house.
“There was a neighbour across the road, and everybody knew about his background, nobody told me, it was a huge secret from me. And when I used to speak to people in the church, everywhere, people used to be so nice, they understood my problem and thought they would encourage him to marry me, so I would get residence. But I wanted to go back to Ukraine because I left my son behind and he told me I will never see him. Then he said if I went back he would keep my two other children with him, so I used to carry on in the home, being with him together, and no one could help.”
When she tried to get Copeland to sign their baby’s birth certificate, he spat the dummy.
“He screamed at me about a former wife who had taken his money. He called her ‘a bitch, a whore and a lesbian’, and swore that no woman would ever get anything from him, although he did eventually sign
the certificate.”
During this time, she says, Copeland would often threaten to have her deported back to Ukraine without her children. “I’ll keep them, and you won’t be able to go to court because I’ll make you leave the country.”
Copeland also took the unusual step of publishing a photograph of his fiancée onto an internet porn site, along with a story about their sexual exploits when he first met her in Russia:
“My Elena didn’t like to drink, that was a problem! Still, I had my two beers and the offer of SEX was on, it was the Russian wash down now with no hot water from the tap. So Elena would fill a basin with hot water, and I would sit in the bath. Elena would wet me then with soap wash my body down, then rinse me. Now, guys who haven’t experienced this, it is good, very good to receive this care. So we are clean now, and it’s time to get dirty, so it’s off to the bed again for a lesson in Russian! The sex was good, very good…as will be revealed soon.”
The revelations are too graphic to reprint in a magazine.
Elena could see no way out. Although her understanding of English was growing, she still found it hard to speak it, and many people simply wrote her off as “an over-emotional Russian”. But the woman from the church who’d paid for the medicine to save Nicholai’s life turned out to be a guardian angel.
“So that woman, she said ‘I will help you go to a Women’s Refuge’. I said ‘what is that?’ Because we don’t have that in our country. Can you imagine how crazy it seemed for me to leave for Women’s Refuge with four months old baby, and leave the man whom I loved, believe me. Later on I realised it was only about that he wants children to abuse.”
Elena fled on a Friday afternoon with baby and older son in tow. She asked the Women’s Refuge to help get her deported back to the Ukraine on the grounds that her immigration status was now void because of the relationship break-up. And she didn’t have the money herself for airfares. But on Monday morning, Paul Copeland had already obtained a court ruling preventing Elena from taking baby Nicholai out of New Zealand.
The Russian mother was trapped. Her own immigration status meant she now had to leave New Zealand; the court order meant her four month old baby son could not go with her. Paul taunted her by threatening to keep Yuri as well.
“He always told me that he would send me back to Ukraine but he was keeping Yuri with him.”
Even so, Elena Reznikova still had no idea just what her fiancé had done in his past. It wasn’t until Paul’s sister picked her up from the Refuge that the missing pieces of the jigsaw began to tumble into place.
“She told me her brother is a paedophile, and he raped her and two others. And their father was a paedophile. It was like a dream for me because she got my Russian dictionary and she showed me the words. I hadn’t realised then that he had tried to kill his ex-wife. I was more shocked when I found that out.”
It was at this point that Elena was introduced to Copeland’s third wife, a woman named Elizabeth who’s still living in hiding, 11 years after first meeting Copeland. Elena had found a contact number for her and rang her from the Women’s Refuge. Elizabeth says she could barely understand the distressed Russian woman with the thick accent, but she took down bottles so she could feed baby Nicholai. When she heard Elena’s suspicions that the children had been sexually abused, this former Copeland bride heard the penny drop. Elizabeth immediately phoned Copeland’s sister when she got home, who explained that Paul had also sexually abused her when she was a child. “You should believe Elena,” Copeland’s sister told Elizabeth.
It turned out Elizabeth was another foreign woman lured into Copeland’s orbit in 1994, just four years after his trial for trying to murder his first wife. Elizabeth’s own marriage was in difficulty, and she says Copeland was “very romantic” and charming, and convinced her to leave her husband. She says he acted like a father to her two daughters, and “got me pregnant two months after we met”.
Sound familiar? Copeland told Elizabeth it would be easier to get residency if she was pregnant.
Once his victim was trapped, Copeland moved from suave suitor to Hannibal Lecter, catching the neighbour’s cat, gassing it to death, and then burning it in front of his wife despite her pleas to spare the creature.
A recent study suggested people who torture animals are more likely to be sexual abusers. On the Richter scale of deviance, Paul Copeland was already an 11.
After Elizabeth and Paul’s son, Timothy, was born in 1995, he again turned his attention to Elizabeth’s two older daughters, often watching them shower, poking them frequently with a toilet brush while they were naked, assaulting them, verbally abusing them, making one of the girls pick up excrement in the garden using only her bare hands.
Elizabeth worked nights, leaving her husband to babysit six month old Timothy and her two daughters. The children’s grandmother would often pop in and find the girls weeping and distressed. He teased one of the older girls about her weight, calling her Moby Dick, and suggested to a family friend the other “would be a slut and pregnant” by the time she was 14.
It was around this time that Elizabeth, wife number three, discovered a box under the stairwell containing files relating to Copeland’s childhood and the fates of wives one and two.
She read of the bow and arrow attack on wife one, the declaration of temporary insanity and the very brief spell in Tokanui Hospital before the psychopathic Copeland had convinced the cuckoo-keepers he was sane enough to fly the nest. She read of how Paul had allegedly been raped by his own father, and a history of sex abuse in his family. She discovered how he’d met wife number two, a German woman (mother of Amanda), and burned her passport and all her papers. How he’d smashed all the windows in his house on one occasion, and psychiatric reports detailing the horrific tortures he’d practiced on animals as a child.
Naturally, after reading all this, Elizabeth became absolutely terrified about what might happen to her and her children.
When she tried to leave, and she did so half a dozen times, Copeland would invariably track her down, stalk her and terrify her until she returned. In the end, however, he booted her out along with her two daughters. Elizabeth says he physically threw them out the door, locked it and stayed inside with Timothy and Amanda. By the time Elizabeth returned with help, Copeland had barricaded both of his biological children in an upstairs bedroom.
Elizabeth staked out the local supermarket and tried to grab Timothy from the shopping trolley while Copeland’s back was turned, but he foiled the rescue by screaming “Help, this woman is stealing my son!” He put Timothy in hiding. Police eventually found the two year old at Copeland’s sister’s house.
The stalking and terror got worse, however, and eventually Copeland managed to convince Elizabeth that he would leave her alone if she’d just give him access on alternative weeks to Timothy.
Mindful of the crossbow attack, Elizabeth signed the custody form.
It was after that, she says, that she noticed her little boy’s behaviour change markedly on his return from access visits; it was, she says unusually aggressive and strange.
This, then, was the story of wife number three.
The woman who would have been number four, Elena, is deeply saddened at the fate of Copeland’s first two children.
“Last time I saw Timothy and Amanda they put their heads down, they know that I know their problem but I can’t help them. They don’t talk, they’re very embarrassed to tell anybody what’s happening to them because they’re scared that their father will kill them. He told them, ‘I will kill you if you tell anyone’. He told it to my son but my son is Russian and Russians are very strong. We have a, how do you say, self, self preservation, as a child when you’re young. You learn to save yourself in a difficult situation, even losing your life.”
In the past year, Elena’s older son Yuri has told of being made to watch naked children on Copeland’s computer during the months that Copeland has had Nicholai in his care, and Elena’s family friends say Nicholai has complained of a “sore bottom”, and “dad touching me in the bottom”. The boy has also returned from Copeland’s care walking strangely.
“I have three boys,” says Elena. “I have a lot of experience as a mother of boys. When they are small their penises never stand up, they don’t have hormones for sex, but my little boy, his penis is so sensitive. I think it has been massaged. He wakes up at night and says ‘it hurts’. I am so scared what will happen to him if he goes back to his father. This child has already been damaged.”
Yuri says he and the other children witnessed Paul Copeland interfering with Nicholai’s genitals and bottom – in fact, all the children were made to watch it.
Elena obtained a psychologist’s report on Yuri two years ago, and she says the psychologist was convinced Yuri had also been abused.
She says one of the most frightening things about Copeland is his psychopathic aloofness.
“He’s absolutely normal in public, but he’s not normal. His body language is absolutely absent. He doesn’t move, there’s no body language. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a former criminal anymore because I was scared that one day I would have to protect myself and the lives of my children. He told me I would never see my eldest son again, and I haven’t seen him in four years, his threat came true.
“When I go to bed I feel that I’m already dead or am unable to leave, or help my children to be happy, to be together. The man is killing me psychologically, emotionally. He would like to kill me physically. He has already tried to kill his ex-wife.
“My second relationship, my partner said ‘Elena, I can’t pay these bills for lawyers, this is crazy, just give the child away’. I said, ‘Peter, this is sexual abuse’. He said, ‘I know’. He said, ‘sorry Elena, I do love you but with all these problems I don’t want you. I don’t want your children’.”
Nor has the New Zealand Government come to the rescue of the children. The Immigration Service has cancelled Elena’s right to stay in New Zealand, and wants to deport her, if necessary without her children who would be left in the care of Paul Copeland.
“My application for residence was cancelled because I was born in Khazakstan. It’s another nonsense. Khazakstan is part of Russia and it appears on my birth certificate, but my parents took me out of Khazakstan when I was two months old, so Immigration Service asked me for a police certificate from Khazakstan, and it’s impossible to get! It’s so stupid.”
It wouldn’t be the first time New Zealand’s bureaucrats have been called stupid.
With Copeland continuing to stalk her and harass the men helping her, Elena found herself increasingly isolated. No money to keep up her fight to stay in New Zealand long enough to get the non-removal order lifted, no money to buy groceries. No work permit. She turned, reluctantly, to prostitution to pay the bills.
“I hated it. I did not want to do. But how else could I survive? How else could I provide?”
Today, she sells other services.
“My flatmates discover my cooking and cleaning is so good, they pay me to do all of it.”
With the help of a Russian-speaking lawyer, she’s launched a renewed bid to secure New Zealand residency and, as at the time of writing, she has temporarily wrested back control of her children from Paul Copeland and is helping heal their scars.
“I got Nicholai back two weeks ago,” she murmurs. “He wakes at night, but I think he will get better. I love him. Once I didn’t want to stay in New Zealand. Now I do.”
The most stunning aspect of the whole story, however, is why on earth a man with Paul Copeland’s psychiatric history, a sexual predator who raped his own sister and tried to murder his wife with a bow and arrow, a man who enjoyed killing cats in the cruellest ways he could find – why such a man would be allowed anywhere near a child by CYFS’ social workers and psychologists.
For Elena, that is the biggest mystery of all.

*All names except those of Elena Reznikova and Paul Copeland have been changed for privacy purposes

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Sep 05, Body Blow

Fair trial or kangaroo court?

They were front page news, branded as dishonest liars and snake oil merchants by an Auckland judge but, as IAN WISHART investigates, were the team behind Body Enhancer really proven guilty?

Sylvia Gallot leans forward across the table, eyes flashing like obsidian in a lightning storm – an indication, per-haps, of both the fury and the determination inside. “I did not believe that any court would come back and reach the decision they reached. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Because they had to prove that our product didn’t work, and they certainly didn’t prove their side of the story.”
It is, as every first year law student knows, an absolute maxim of justice that prosecutors in a trial must prove the defendants are guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”. Defendants do not have to prove themselves innocent.
So when the New Zealand Herald splashed across its front page one Saturday morning in June: “Fat Loss Couple Branded Liars For Bogus Product”, the Auckland couple behind the Body Enhancer phenomenon knew their world was collapsing around them, and as far as they could see “justice” had nothing to do with it.
It was in August 1998, four years after retiring as an associate deputy principal at a large girls’ high school, that Sylvia Gallot (rhymes with Jello) first flicked a switch on live radio to advertise an unknown weight loss formula she called Body Enhancer. Since then, the brand has become ubiquitous on talk radio as Zenith Corporation, the company Gallot runs with her husband, Winston, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars a year into marketing the weight management equivalent of the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices.
“There was a time,” recalls Winston Gallot, “when one pharmaceutical company had access to the figures on major drug sales, and they showed us the figures for Xenical. We were selling considerably more Body Enhancer than Xenical was selling in NZ. I remember the sales manager saying, ‘Boy, Roche won’t be happy about that!
“Imagine us, a little minnow like Zenith, an obstacle in the path of a company like Roche. Are they going to be happy? Not in my view.”
Roche probably wasn’t too happy either about taking a shot across the bows during the court trial from Boyd Swinburn, one of the prosecution’s star expert witnesses.
“I have conducted randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials with the weight loss products dexfenfluramine and orlistat (Xenical). These trials demonstrate not only how effective these compounds are but also document their side effects. However, even with the evidence of effect, I have been publicly critical of the implied claims in the Xenical promotions for the amount of weight loss that might be expected from the drug. The trials show an average weight loss of 2-4kg, whereas the advertising implies much greater losses. When the gap between the actual evidence of weight loss and the implied effectiveness of the product is large, the public is likely to be misled. The consumers of weight loss products are particularly vulnerable to ‘magic bullet’ claims.”
Nonetheless, Xenical wasn’t in the dock.
If nothing else, the Body Enhancer trial epitomised the standoff between pharmaceutical giants and the natural supplements industry. The chemical companies have long complained that they have to do extensive testing on their products, while dietary supplement makers do not. It is this complaint, and the special relationship between the pharmaceuticals and the Government through the drug-buying agency Pharmac, that lies at the heart of current moves by the Government to crush natural health suppliers under a truckload of red tape disguised as “synchronisation” with Australia. This, despite the fact that there are only a couple of known cases of deaths resulting from supplement use in New Zealand compared with many deaths as a result of pharmaceutical medication.
Investigate was approached several years ago by a pharmaceutical ‘insider’ – a senior executive offering to blow the whistle on monetary kickbacks to officials, wastage and massive profiteering: “You know something?” he asked, “take a pill that my company is selling to Pharmac at $5.50 a unit. We’re manufacturing those for about two cents each. That’s a 27,500% profit margin. And you’re paying for it.”
Unfortunately, the executive’s motivation in approaching the magazine was to gain leverage in a confidential settlement deal, and he chose the money rather than the chance to bag his former employer at the end of the day. Nonetheless, his claims are corroborated by others in the industry, who also remember the days of pharmaceutical giants offering GPs overseas holidays, new TVs and the like if they prescribed company A’s drugs instead of company B’s; so the doctor’s choice of drug for patients may not be motivated by what is best for them but for how many nights at Phuket the deal is worth to the doctor.
For its part, Zenith Corporation has been one of the most high profile dietary supplement companies, responsible not just for Body Enhancer but also the huge-selling Bee V Balm, which hit international head-lines thanks to a discovery that bee venom could, strangely, assist in reducing inflammation and pain. So Zenith, then, was the latest in a string of disruptions to the equilibrium of the pharmaceutical industry which is being forced to battle an increasing consumer swing away from conventional medicines towards dietary supplements.
It didn’t take long for the Commerce Commission to sniff out the new kid on the block. Little over a year after launching Body Enhancer, Zenith Corporation received a visit from the Commission’s Simon O’Callaghan and an assistant.
“They said they had a complaint from someone who’d purchased Body Enhancer,” remembers Sylvia. “He was a man who had a number of medical issues, we had actually refunded him a hundred dollars from what I recall, and we had also given him discounted product but he still wasn’t happy. So the Commerce Commission came to see us with one of our brochures and asked us, ‘from where did you get the statements you’ve used in the brochure?’, and we said ‘from the manufacturers’.”
Zenith, at that stage, did not manufacture the formula themselves.
“The product in its infancy was a product called Metafit,” says Winston, “which had been selling in the US and is still selling today I believe. That basic Metafit formula was used by a chemist here in Auckland to produce a weight management product for the Australian market, and he developed the product, it was called ProteCol, it had been selling in Australia, in Queensland for about six to nine months
before a similar product was released here in New Zealand that eventually became Body Enhancer. The formulas in New Zealand and Australia were identical. It was manufactured in Auckland here for both markets by Immuno Laboratories.”
Zenith, in essence was the retailer, and Immuno Laboratories was the manufacturer/wholesaler, supplying its product under different brand names on both sides of the Tasman. So when the ComCom came calling, demanding to know the basis for claims that Body Enhancer “will assist” with weight loss, Winston Gallot’s first reaction was to show them where those claims were being made by the actual manufacturer.
“These statements were made on the ProteCol brochure, of the same formula product, that was selling in Australia and made by Immuno, which pre-dated Body Enhancer, and we had it on a signed company statement. When the ComCom came to see us originally their whole purpose was to establish where we got those statements from, We gave them clear evidence, on Immuno letterhead with a company stamp and a director’s signature at the bottom, to show where these statements came from.”
Ah, yes, therapeutic statements. In the eyes of Labour’s health regulators, it should be illegal to make therapeutic claims about natural health products. It doesn’t matter that TV viewers are bombarded with advertisements from major cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies selling “a younger, healthier you”, it doesn’t matter that women’s magazines would go out of business if ads promising some kind of therapeutic benefit were banned.
It doesn’t even matter if you make a product as fat-laden as snack food – you can still purchase (yes, that’s right, you cross their palms with silver) a Heart Foundation ‘tick’ endorsing your product as healthy. As long as you are a multinational pharmaceutical or food brand, there’s a very good chance you’ll never be touched by the regulators.
In the Auckland District Court, Judge Lindsay Moore did not intend to be moved by claims that regulators were picking on the little guy:
“Whether, in New Zealand or elsewhere, there are products similar to Body Enhancer promoted by representations similar to those which are the subject of the charges before the Court is irrelevant to the determination of whether such representations are liable to mislead the public, false or misleading. All evidence and submissions of that sort illustrate is the apparently sizeable on-going market for products claimed to be of benefit to the many people desirous of loosing weight, improving their body form and image, or both. It has never been a defence to any criminal charge that other persons are apparently getting away with identical or similar conduct. One of the fascinations of the criminal law is the frequency and extent to which apparently intelligent and prosperous people continue to be taken in by fraudulent schemes the general natures of which are widely known and understood within the community at large. Ponzi schemes and advanced fee frauds
(including of the Nigerian variety) are obvious current examples.”
One moment the Gallots were on trial for promoting a weight management formula, and the next they’d joined the ranks of Al Capone. Clearly, Judge Moore seemed excited about this trial.
“We are not in the High Court now, Mr Katz,” snapped the Judge to Zenith’s barrister, John Katz QC, after the lawyer objected to the casual way the prosecution’s documents had been thrown together, making cross-examination difficult.
“No,” thought one observer in the public gallery, “that’s patently obvious.”
The Gallots grimaced. From what Katz had told them, Judge Moore appeared to have made up his mind before the trial even began.
“There was a pre-trial hearing in chambers,” says Winston, “and both John Katz and our supporting solicitor, Wendy Duggan, were present, and at that hearing the judge made reference to ‘this quack remedy’, and Katz made specific reference to that terminology in his opening address by saying ‘We’re not dealing here with a quack remedy’, and he made that reference specifically because the judge had made it in chambers, so he felt we were fighting an uphill battle right from day one.”
As Judge Moore had succinctly observed, this was not a civil case, it was a criminal trial. To that end, the burden of proof fell on the Crown, and it was a high burden:
“A conviction can be entered only if the informant proves the guilt of the defendant beyond reasonable doubt. That means to have proved to that standard the essential elements of that charge.”
But having set that as the benchmark, in Investigate’s view both the prosecution and the judge dismally failed to reach it and, worse, Judge Moore appears not to have realised his apparent error at law. You see, the essence of the charges was that Zenith Corporation was making false claims about Body Enhancer and its benefits:
“13. False representations – No person shall, in trade, in connection with the supply or possible supply of goods or services or with the promotion by any means of the supply or use of goods or services,
(e) Falsely represent that goods or services have any sponsorship, approval, endorsement, performance characteristics, accessories, uses, or benefits; or”
But remember, the prosecution must prove that the claims are false. On paper, Judge Moore appears to have recognised this: “There is no obligation upon a defendant to prove its innocence or to prove anything else.”
Unless the prosecution could prove beyond reasonable doubt that Body Enhancer did not assist appetite control, or weight loss, or the building of lean muscle mass, or an improvement in vitality, then by definition of logic the charges had to fail.
At the risk of labouring the point, the Commerce Commission and its lawyers had to prove that Body Enhancer didn’t work, before they could label its promotional claims as “false”. Instead, they pulled a stunt and in Investigate’s view Judge Moore fell for it, casebook, wig and gavel.
The stunt was simple and spectacularly executed. In-stead of proving that Body Enhancer itself did not work, the ComCom did the legal equivalent of tar-and-feathering, insinuating guilt by association. Over the course of six weeks, the ComCom case was built on attacking the merits of individual ingredients in Body Enhancer, based on overseas studies, rather than by simply testing the product itself.
If the individual ingredients could be shown to be worthless, argued the prosecution, then it must logically follow that the final product would be useless too. To demonstrate the faulty logic – both with the prosecution and their scientific experts who advanced it, and the judge who swallowed it – consider this analogy: Try putting these ingredients in a pot together – instant coffee, boiling water, softened butter, sugar, vanilla essence, eggs, flour, cornflour, baking powder, milk and coffee icing. Now, without doing anything else, sample a few raw spoonfuls. You’ll probably gag as you do. Those ingredients, however, when mixed in the right portions and in the right sequence, with the right application of thermal energy, will reward you with a vastly more palatable coffee cake at the end of it. The secret is not just assembling the right ingredients, but developing a recipe that works.
This, say the Gallots, is what they did with Body Enhancer, in association with a highly qualified biochemist, Dr Munem Daoud.
“If you want to understand how this product works you’ve got to understand the concept of synergy,” insists Winston Gallot. “It’s all to do with synergy. It’s not only individually but the collective impact of the ingredients over the period of the course. It won’t happen in the first few weeks because you’re trying to build up a threshold level concentration of these ingredients in the body so that ultimately they’ll reach the point where they can go to work if they’re allowed to by the individual.”
The District Court, however, was having none of this “synergy” nonsense. If the ingredients thrown together in a pot didn’t taste like coffee cake then clearly they never would.
Star witness for the prosecution in this matter was Dr Peter Barling, a senior lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Auckland. Despite making the point himself that he had not studied the potential synergistic benefits of the Body Enhancer recipe, and that benefits may exist, Barling proceeded to pour scorn on the individual ingredients. Of the hydrolised collagen, Barling said in court:
“Hydrolyzed collagen – 2100 mg/day. Collagen is the main protein component of connective tissues, such as skin and bone. In its native state, it ends to be rather indigestible, but is sold as gelatine – the main protein component of most jellies. Once digested, collagen is converted into a mixture of the twenty amino acids normally present in protein structure and equally available from an source of high quality protein such as milk, other dairy products, meat, fish, eggs and cereals. Both gelatine and hydrolyzed collagen end up being absorbed as the same mixture of amino acids. A phone call to New World, Titirangi on 20th January 2002 indicated that they sold Pam’s Jelly powder in an 85 g pack for 42 cents. This makes 500 ml of jelly. So the value of the hydrolyzed gelatin in a day’s supply of Body Enhancer is approximately 1.04 cents, and equivalent to less than one tablespoon (12 ml of) jelly.”
Commenting on Barling’s findings, Judge Moore was in jovial mood.
“If, in the advertised representations relating to Body Enhancer’s protein content, generalities were replaced by reference to a small tablespoon of jelly and a large tablespoon of milk, only mirth, not sales, would result. The upshot, and it could be applied to many of the other alleged active ingredients as well, would be wonderfully reminiscent of Euripides’ use, in Aristophanes’ The Poets, of references to a little bottle of oil to deflate high flown language. Those with more modern tastes might be tempted to create ditties after the manner of W.S. Gilbert. ‘With the twelfth of an egg and a teaspoon of bran …’ sounds like something from The Sorcerer.”
On the face of it, things sound bad for Body Enhancer at $80 a bottle. But the truth is a little less stark, and Sylvia Gallot is furious:
“Barling said something incredibly stupid, about gelatine. He said I can go and buy a teaspoon of gelatine and it costs me four cents. I don’t think he’s actually researched the Dalton size of collagen. There’s gelatine and there’s gelatine, collagen and collagen. You can get collagen with a Dalton size of up to 10,000 Daltons and there’s no way that can be absorbed. We buy a very expensive collagen at $23 a kilo that’s got a very tiny Dalton size, and that’s not going to be in a teaspoon of jelly worth four cents. This is something they ignored.”
Barling admitted that Body Enhancer did contain a high quality protein “in a very absorbable form that the body could utilise very quickly to help replenish and rebuild muscle tissue…in my opinion this claim is true”, but the good judge just brushed right on past that, nodding approvingly at suggestions that the protein could also be found in some foods so one wouldn’t necessarily have to purchase Body Enhancer to enjoy the benefits of the protein.
By the same logic, because you can buy steak in the supermarket and cook it yourself, restaurants must be breaking the law by charging $30 for a steak dinner.
Again, says Winston Gallot, the court totally missed the point – Body Enhancer gave customers all the ingredients they needed in a concentrated daily dose, precisely so they didn’t have to hunt out obscure foods in the right combinations. If you remember the beef and lamb TV ads from a few years back comparing the iron in a lambchop to a monstrous plate of spinach, you might get the picture.
Gallot says Judge Moore ignored the evidence in front of him, in favour of an “ordinary bloke’s guide” to pharmaceutical production.
“If you were going to take a two month programme of Body Enhancer,” explains Gallot, “and these ingredients could work individually, you’d take one ingredient one day, one the next, and so on down the list for two months. But it would never work. The body would dilute each ingredient over time, so the others as you added them couldn’t work with them anyway, and there would be no synergy. So you take them all together, for a very good reason – that it takes some time for these ingredients to accumulate in the body and build to that threshold level of concentration where they can start to work in the body.”
But the synergy argument is even more compelling, says Gallot, when one realises the complexities of getting some minerals actually into the bloodstream.
“There’s an assimilability issue here too, on the quality of the ingredients you use. You could go out and buy some zinc tablets for 10 dollars, but most of it is just going to pass right through your system, because at a cellular level your cells will not recognise the zinc as a food so the cells will not accept it. You go out and buy a $30 bottle of zinc tablets that are covalently bonded, in other words they’re wrapped in protein, when that chunk of mineral approaches the cell walls wrapped in protein it is recognised as food, the perforations in the cell wall will open and the zinc is absorbed and utilised by the body.”
But apart from the paint-by-numbers approach to sci-ence endorsed by the Court, the judge arguably mis-directed himself as to the relevance of the instruc-tions for use of Body Enhancer. Both in the instruc-tions on the packet and throughout the company’s radio commercials, and there were many, it was made abundantly clear that Body Enhancer would only work if customers drank six to eight glasses of water a day as part of the programme, and avoided food after dinner so as to allow the ingredients to work on an empty stomach. Exercise and sensible eating habits wouldn’t hurt either.
Despite the fact that all these factors were highlighted, Judge Lindsay Moore apparently figured the case would run better if he could ditch the evidence and promotional literature that didn’t suit his own views:
“As the wording of the informations [charges] makes plain, the representations charged are representations as to the product Body Enhancer, not as to any programme or regime of which it is said to form part. The defendant’s recommendations as to dosage, frequency and timing of use, and steps to be taken in association with the use of that product are by no means irrelevant, but only the first two fall to be considered when suitability for purpose, or benefit, are evaluated. That is because in every charge the challenged representation is a representation as to the product, and to it alone.”
In a legal sense, it is difficult to see how the prosecution can prove the claims about Body Enhancer’s effectiveness are false, if instructions on how to use it are ignored. The product does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a box with detailed instructions on how it has to be used. Without those instructions, the product is just gunk in a bottle.
Judge Moore didn’t see it that way.
“There is an obvious distinction between taking a product as recommended, in the simple sense of how much and how often, and following a wider regime involving not only consumption of the product, but also other dietary and/or lifestyle components which could of themselves give rise to the benefits of the type claimed for the product. In that later situation, benefits could occur which promoters of the product, and their less perceptive customers, attribute to the product, when in reality those same benefits could have been obtained from following the regime without any consumption of the product.”
But here’s the rub. To make an assertion, as the prosecution did, that the weight loss attributed to Body Enhancer was the result of people not eating after dinner, the prosecution first had to run a scientific test of the product to see if that was indeed the case. A controlled trial. And it was never done.
“Has the Commerce Commission ever run a scientific trial to prove that Body Enhancer doesn’t work?” Investigate asked Winston Gallot.
“No they haven’t. They’ve had five, six years to test the product. We did test it with two independent assessments of the product that proved over 90% of people had successful results. They’ve never tested it. They cannot say that Body Enhancer does not work.”
It is staggering that criminal charges can be laid, a company and its directors dragged through the mud and their business destroyed, without the Commerce Commission being required to first check whether their suspicions were actually true. Zenith Corporation could only be guilty of making “false” representations about its product if, and only if, the Crown proved that Body Enhancer did not assist with weight loss or increased vitality when used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. And the only way to prove that was a controlled scientific trial. The prosecution never did one.
Legally, Zenith Corporation had to prove nothing. Zenith did not have to prove that its ingredients were effective at either an individual or synergistic level. Zenith didn’t even have to prove that Body Enhancer worked at all. The burden of proof fell on the Crown in all charges. In Investigate’s opinion, the only “quack” in the courtroom was the Beak.
Intriguingly, the prosecution made much of the fact that Zenith’s own scientific trial of Body Enhancer, carried out by a registered Waikato health provider, was not a full randomised double-blind trial and therefore of “limited” assistance. Nonetheless, regardless of its deficiencies, it was still one scientific trial more than the prosecution had done.
And given that there is no scientific study proving Body Enhancer doesn’t work, let’s take a look at a study suggesting it does.
In February 2003, 106 people in the township of Huntly and nearby environs signed up as volunteers for what the local health provider, Raukura Hauora o Tainui, was billing as a “controlled randomised study” of Body Enhancer.
On Raukura’s part, the motivation was simple - a large number of locals had weight issues, and Zenith was offering $200,000 to get the study done.
Researchers divided their volunteers into three groups. Group A would take Body Enhancer and also participate in physical exercise. Group B would only take Body Enhancer, and Group C would only participate in physical exercise.
Forty-one people were enrolled in Group A, and 35 completed the six month programme, a completion rate of 85%. They were required to exercise communally three times a week at the local fitness centre under the supervision of a qualified fitness instructor. Additionally, they had to take Body Enhancer.
The 41 Group B participants had it easy. All they had to do was sip 15ml of Body Enhancer each night before they went to bed, and drink six to eight glasses of water a day. Apart from their normal daily activities, there was no special exercise routine for those in Group B. Only one person dropped out over the six months, meaning nearly 98% of those taking part completed the programme.
The final 24 in Group C, those doing exercise only, had the lowest completion rate: 83%.
So to the results. The average weight of Group A participants was 97.4kg when they began the programme, and 91.5kg at the end. On average, participants lost 5.8kg in weight. The study showed there was no appreciable weight loss for the first few weeks, and the biggest benefits kicked in between weeks 8 and 16, midway through the trial. The average waistline improvement was 2.1 inches over the six months. The biggest weight loss was 14.5kg for one lucky volunteer.
Group B, those taking only Body Enhancer, enjoyed an average weight loss each of 4.3kg, with one participant recording a massive 13kg weight loss. Remember, no one in Group B was doing an exercise regime. Of the 40 who completed the course, four of them gained weight – on average 1.3kg, but the other 90% all lost it.
“When compared with the resultant weight loss of Group A (which included physical activity),” wrote the study authors, “it suggests that Body Enhancer was a major contributor to the weight loss experienced.”
The average ages of the two groups tell a story as well. Group B’s average age was nearly 43 years old, while Group A’s average was only 35.7 years. That makes the weight loss for the older middle-aged spread team even more remarkable, although it may be a factor also in the smaller decrease in waistline measurements of only 1.3 inches on average.
But it was the fate of those in Group C, the people doing exercise only, that really told the story. Although, again, someone achieved a 13.5kg weight loss, the average loss for the group was a disappointing 1.3kg, less than a third that of those taking Body Enhancer only and putting their feet up. Seven of the 20 who completed the exercise-only regime (35%) actually gained weight, compared with only 10% of those taking Body Enhancer.
Appropriately enough, perhaps, all of this information flowed like water off a duck’s back when it came to the good Judge Moore, who was critical that the study had not distinguished between the product itself and the lifestyle regime recommended on the packet of no food after dinner and drinking plenty of water.
“His [study leader Dr Tane Taylor’s] approach did not grapple with the issue of the efficacy of the product as opposed to the regime within which it was taken. When cross-examined upon that topic Dr Taylor agreed that it was possible that if someone took a tablespoon of flavoured water, but ate nothing between dinner and bed, they could lose weight.
“When pressed on the issue of whether, that being so, people should pay considerable money for what could prove to be the equivalent of a bottle of flavoured water, Dr Taylor made plain that he was concerned with the outcome for the patient. So he did not necessarily agree that it was essential to know whether the product was providing benefit over and above what was referred to as the exercise and dietary package.”
Judge Moore’s intransigent attitude to Body Enhancer might have been justifiable, had he demanded the prosecution carry out a randomized controlled trial of their own on Body Enhancer to assess that very distinction he was so keen to make. But he didn’t. No prosecution study of Body Enhancer was ever done, even though the prosecution was required by law to prove the product did not work. Judge Moore’s apparent biases were, in Investigate’s opinion, unsupported by the evidence before him, irrelevant and speculative, especially as the test results on Body Enhancer only were three times better than for those who went to the gym three times a week. In the spirit of the Clairol herbal essence shampoo commercial, if I can lose nearly five kgs in weight just by sipping flavoured lolly water and not eating after dinner, “I’ll have what she’s having!”
Judge Moore, however, was scathing:
“The product Body Enhancer has been proved beyond reasonable doubt not to be suitable for any of the purposes claimed and not to confer upon its users any of the benefits alleged.”
Of Sylvia and Winston Gallot, he wrote:
“Far from being relative innocents they were considerably shrewder, tougher, and more determined than those with whom they dealt. They saw, seized on and exploited an opportunity to make very large profits. From that they were not going to be deterred. If charm seemed likely to work, they used charm; if lies seemed likely to work, they used lies; if aggression seemed likely to work, then there was no shortage of that. They were both scientifically literate. They obviously appreciated the significance of properly conducted clinical trials, also the significance of the absence of such trials of the product.”
It’s a shame, say the Gallots today, that there’s an absence of trials of the product by the prosecution.
“The ComCom really had to establish that Body Enhancer didn’t work,” argues Winston, “to make the judgement as strong as it did. They never even got close. They opened their textbooks, they used medical references on the ingredients only. But the ComCom had six years to test Body Enhancer, and they never tested it. Why didn’t they test it?”
Of Sylvia Gallot, Judge Moore said:
“There was far more than just one piece of dishonesty exposed, and not only upon his part. From her husband’s evidence it appears that Mrs Gallot had no tertiary qualifications, but she had taught science at senior secondary school level and risen to a position of authority at a major secondary school.”
The clear implication was that Sylvia Gallot had dishonestly obtained teaching positions without disclosing she had no tertiary qualification. It’s an inference Gallot roundly rejects. “I had a 27 year career in teaching. I was not required to have a degree when I entered, and I never hid that fact.”
One of the convictions Judge Moore entered against Zenith centred on a claim in its instruction pamphlet that: “Regular use of Body Enhancer will assist with … Liver detoxification”
Said Moore, this “first conveys the sense that there is such a process as liver detoxification. It does not assist an advertiser to claim suitability for a purpose that does not exist, or a benefit of use that does not exist. A claim that a particular process or outcome exists when it does not is not only liable to mislead but false.”
Judge Moore may not have heard of it, but the phrase “liver detoxification” appears in orthodox medical journals, as Investigate discovered. The British Medical Journal, the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding, and the European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology all discuss “liver detoxification”, and an article on the US medical website WebMD discusses it in context with obesity related issues and diet:
“Here’s where “liver detoxification” might come in. When the liver is working double-duty to protect you from an onslaught of bad diet, bad judgment, and unavoidable insults, it could benefit from a little extra help. Antioxidant vitamins such as C, E, and beta-carotene; minerals such as zinc and selenium; B-vitamins that aid alcohol metabolism; and herbs said to “cleanse” the liver such as milk thistle, dandelion root, and schizandra, might help protect liver cells while ridding our body of poisons.
“ There is a lot of experimental work in the laboratory and in animals suggesting the beneficial effect of milk thistle extract,’ Raman Venkataramanan, PhD, FCP, tells WebMD. He is a professor of pharmaceutical sciences and pathology at the University of Pittsburgh…”
Judge Moore did set out his reasons for both ignoring the claim that Body Enhancer works synergistically, and the reality that a large number of people using the product actually do lose weight:
“Given the number, and in some instances (such as Aloe Vera) the complexity, of the ingredients in the successive formulations of the product, there is no basis for concluding that some or all of the ingredients in combination could be relied upon to produce, in the context of the use of the product, an outcome which no individual component could achieve. The contrary possibility of combinations operating within human metabolism to nullify any remote chance of a beneficial outcome is also present. On what is presently known, and that is all the Court can work with, the likelihood of Body Enhancer being suitable for the attainment of any asserted purpose, or to produce any asserted beneficial outcome, is far too remote to be regarded as a reasonable possibility.
“On the defence’s own evidence the asserted assurance of suitability for purpose and of benefit (“will …”) must be false when those in the target market already have within their diet all that is required of the relevant components of Body Enhancer or all the materials that the human body needs to metabolise an ample supply. The proclaimed certainty of outcome would be generally inappropriate even for a proven registered therapeutic product. Here, though therapeutic representations were made, the bases upon which they were made is extremely hypothetical and speculative. But there is nothing hypothetical about the money paid by those purchasing the product on the faith of the representations charged.
“The foregoing does not mean that some of those using Body Enhancer cannot have undergone change in body weight or composition or both. Professors Mann and Swinburn referred to the causes and solutions to obesity as mostly to be found in lifestyle and diet. Dr Cortizo’s evidence was to the same effect. Many of the documentary exhibits before the Court touch on that topic in ways which emphasise the difficulties that many people encounter in doing what they know they need to do to overcome obesity.
“The regime within which it is recommended that Body Enhancer be taken has features which could benefit those seeking weight reduction. No attempt has been made to justify the explanations which the defendant or earlier promoters of Body Enhancer gave for following that regime. But eating nothing for three hours after the last meal of the day, then having but a glass of water before going to sleep, eliminates evening snacking which Professor Mann saw as an obvious source of excessive intake of high energy foods. Avoiding snacking at that time, if it becomes a discipline, is obviously likely to develop into better eating habits at other times of the day.
“The direct benefits for the obese in consuming six to eight glasses of water per day seems to be a controversial topic. But there is an obvious likelihood of indirect benefits in the sense that such water consumption may induce a feeling of fullness leading to reduced consumption of high energy drinks such as those containing substantial quantities of sugar or alcohol, possibly also to a reduction in non-liquid food intake.
“Another feature of the recommended regime is the distinct possibility of it leading to better and more consistent sleep habits, which in turn lead to a greater sense of well being and thus to increased physical activity.
“The likelihood of other confounding factors is obvious. The regular taking of an alleged weight control product expresses a personal focus on obesity which can, even subconsciously, find expression in beneficial changes in lifestyle and diet because it reflects a determination, however temporary, to address a condition the general solutions to which are widely understood.”
Was it a fair trial, or a kangaroo court? Clearly the Gallots feel they’ve been walloped by a rogue marsupial dressed in black flowing robes, and even though sentencing won’t take place until September 1, they’re already planning to appeal. The ComCom, they allege, made sure it got front page coverage in the newspapers to destroy Zenith Corporation. “[National MP] Wayne Mapp tells me the commission hired a big PR company to do their promotion, to promote the judgement,” says Winston.
“It’s developed into something a lot bigger, some big pharmaceutical companies have come in behind the ComCom and there’ve been comments made in the past that these people wanted Zenith, the quote was ‘dead and buried’, not just stop them trading but ‘dead and buried’. We don’t want this company to produce any more products because they’ve had two successful ones. Body Enhancer, goodness, if it goes on, these people could take over the whole weight management market in NZ, it’s that good! It’s been that successful, and we don’t want it because we’ve got our own competitive products.
“The judgement tried to make out that all the findings are on every Body Enhancer formula that’s ever been out there, including what was being sold in June this year, 61 ingredients vs 23, as per the time the charges were originally laid. And the Herald went along with that.”
For the record, the charges relate to product sold in 2000 and 2001.
But the damage to Zenith Corporation and the Body Enhancer brand has been huge. Even though the only study in existence to actually test Body Enhancer indicates 90% of users will lose weight if they follow the programme, and even though the company has thousands of testimonials from satisfied customers, the effect of the engineered media coverage and the vicious personal attacks in the judgement have reduced company turnover to a fraction of what it was in May. Most of the company staff have been laid off, and radio stations are too afraid to advertise the product. The company’s tollfree line, 0508 508 508, now rings only to the sound of re-orders from existing customers, the supply of new customers having been choked off by the advertising block.
For the 2002 financial year, turnover was $2.2 million with a gross trading surplus after production and cost of sales of $495,000 before deduction of company running expenses and salaries for a dozen or so people. Zenith Corporation spent $689,000 on advertising in that year.
In his ruling, Judge Moore spelt out the penalties available to him if Zenith was convicted.
“40. Contraventions of provisions of Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV an offence – (1) Every person who contravenes any of the provisions of Part I (except sections 9, 14(2), and 23, or Part II, or Part III or Part IV of this Act, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction ,
(a) In the case of a person other than body corporate, to a fine not exceeding $30,000; and
(b) In the case of a body corporate, to a fine not exceeding $100,000.
(2) Where a person is convicted, whether in the same or separate proceedings, of 2 or more offences in respect of contraventions of the same provisions of this Act and those contraventions are of the same or a substantially similar nature and occurred at or about the same time, the aggregate amount of any fines imposed on that person in respect of those convictions shall not exceed the amount of the maximum fine that may be imposed in respect of a conviction for a single offence.
Significantly, the Act suggests that where charges arise from essentially the same material and around the same time, the maximum fine cannot exceed $100,000. Despite that, the prosecution are seeking more than $2.5 million in fines.
Additionally, the prosecution want Winston Gallot to personally fund a “corrective” advertising campaign in five of the country’s major daily newspapers and on radio, plus a mailout to tens of thousands of Body Enhancer customers advising them that the company has made false and misleading statements.
If agreed to by the judge, again it is difficult to see the verdict surviving on appeal.
The bottom line, say the Gallots, is that only one study of the Body Enhancer programme exists and it shows weight losses comparable to those achievable on Xenical, if the prosecution evidence on Xenical was correct. Body Enhancer is half the price. Although the prosecution attacked their product’s ingredients individually, they say, the ComCom has been forced to acknowledge in its approach that people are claiming to have lost weight on Body Enhancer, but the ComCom’s explanation is that it must be the instructions for use achieving that and not the formula itself.
But the prosecution, which says Body Enhancer is not fit for the purpose intended, has never put the product through a controlled trial of its own to prove the allegation.
Perhaps the most significant piece of silent witness, however, is that since the negative publicity and the damning court judgement broke, only 60 people have written to Zenith asking for a refund on product purchased between 1999 and today, out of tens of thousands of customers.
Clearly, Body Enhancer customers are not exactly voting with their feet.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Sep 05, A Matter Of Trust

JT comes within a whisker of the clink

Just before Christmas, a former Labour party campaign manager and a publican will go to depositions in a bribery and corruption scandal that is likely to seriously damage the political future of Labour MP John Tamihere. IAN WISHART has new information

The email had come in on our public webmail account anonymously, with outrage: “It is a great story – politics, backroom deals, colourful people, disgusted members of the force and SFO, bucks, theft, you name it. A deal has been done…to protect Tamihere…doesn’t want any more agro before the election…Tolich is taking the rap…A lot of us are pissed off because this is a police matter where there is no politics but is being kept by the SFO where Helen can keep an eye on it…I have stuck my neck out sending this but my colleagues have pushed me to it. Don’t try and trace it as it is from an internet café and don’t bother to reply. This address won’t be used again.”
In the Investigate newsroom, the email glowered from the screen amid hot debate about the merits of dipping into the Tamihere saga again. We’d known since last year that the $195,000 golden handshake issue was a red herring – Tamihere had acted within the law. But Investigate had never taken a close-up look at the other allegations swirling around the outspoken Labour MP. Tamihere himself had flicked the switch on what may yet become his nemesis when in July last year he sent a stinging letter to the Waipareira Trust calling for an independent audit:
“It seems to me on the information to hand that the situation involves incompetence, negligence or corruption, and an independent audit and review from people with some capacity and integrity is long overdue.”
The following day, a group of people including Tamihere and two names you’re about to read more of – Diane Tuari and Mike Tolich – tried to stage a coup on Waipareira’s premises by claiming to have ousted the existing chair and CEO. It was a short-lived coup, but it did provoke an audit which backfired on the Labour MP by potting his 2IC.
So here, for the first time in New Zealand, is the most comprehensive story yet published on the Tamihere affair: a massive investigation into the alleged diversion of nearly $200,000 in pokie machine profits, with nearly $100,000 in alleged bribes; and the details of John Tamihere’s involvement in a scandal and a court case that could sink his political career when it comes to trial next year. Is it “incompetence, negligence or corruption”? Ultimately a court will judge, but here’s a taste of what’s likely to emerge.
Our story begins back in mid-1999, when John Tamihere was about to resign from his position as CEO of the Waipareira Trust in order to campaign for election as the Labour MP for the Hauraki (now Tamaki Makaurau) electorate. Assisting Tamihere to get his affairs in order was one Mike Tolich, son of a former policeman, Tamihere’s Labour election campaign manager and, at the time, Chief Financial Officer at the Waipareira Trust. To add to the cosy nature of their business relationship, Tolich was living with Tamihere’s cousin, Diane Tuari.
In fact, while working as a public servant at WINZ, Tuari had also been working at the Trust, racking up nearly 4,000 kilometres worth of vehicle usage during one period. With Tamihere’s impending departure, and the likelihood of a new broom imposing tougher financial controls, both Tamihere and Tolich talked of a need to tie up some loose ends before he left, loose ends like payments to certain people.
As Tuari tells the story, John Tamihere wanted to pay her a special sum of money “to reflect my ten years’ service” to the Trust, before he left. That sum was $20,000. According to Mike Tolich, Tuari kept “pestering” him for the money “because she and John had a deal”.
According to John Tamihere, he wasn’t “disinclined” to pay Tuari some money but couldn’t recall the $20,000 figure and claims to have been guided by Tolich.
Regardless of whose memory is correct, Tuari was given a cheque for $20,000 by Tolich, not in her own name but made out to cash. Nowhere in Waipareira Trust’s accounts is there any disclosure of that $20,000 payment in Tuari’s name. The cheque requisition order was signed by John Tamihere and Mike Tolich.
Tolich is understood to have later told investigators “I was instructed by John to take care of it…we had a cash flow problem, and some things had to be taken care of.”
In October last year TV3 News broke the story of the Paragon Report, so-named because it was written by a team of private investigators at Paragon Risk concerned at the discovery of $100,000 worth of false invoices, most of them written in the last five days of June 1999. Strangely, in business terms, payment for those invoices was made almost immediately by Waipareira Trust – within one week of them being issued. Normal business practice is 20th of the month following invoice. Especially when, as Tolich has said, the Waipareira Trust was short of cash.
What raised Paragon’s suspicions meanwhile was the discovery that none of the organisations named on the invoices appeared to exist.
“We believe that the eight paid invoices are not genuine,” wrote Paragon. “The inability to readily identify these organisations, the false and/or vague nature of their addresses, and the cash cheque methodology of their payment is cause for concern.”
Additional signs of fraud, said Paragon, were the discovery that all eight invoices:
• “Were all printed on plain A4 paper devoid of any letterhead
• “They all follow an identical page layout
• “They were all printed using the same font style
• “They were all formatted using the same pattern of bold and lowercase type style
• “All 1999 invoices showed the Waipareira address as ‘P.O Box’. Both 1998 invoices showed it as ‘P.O. Box’
• “Seven of the eight showed the date format as ‘June 30 1999’ or ‘June 27 1999’ or ‘December 23 1998’
• “The six 1999 invoices bore the same spelling mistake for the word liaison, mis-spelling it as ‘liason’
• “Three of the 1999 invoices bore the same spelling mistake for accommodation, mis-spelling it as ‘accomodation’
• “Two 1999 invoices bore the same spelling mistake for mechanisms, mis-spelling it as ‘mechanisisms’
• “All invoices bore no GST numbers”
“Despite purporting to be from five different organisations variously located between Northland, Auckland and East Cape, they all appear to have been generated on the same computer, by the same person [and] the cheques were all cashed at either the BNZ in Henderson or New Lynn within a few days of their being issued.”
One of those cheques, it is now known, was cashed by Diane Tuari, Mike Tolich’s partner and Tamihere’s cousin.
The clincher, however, was Paragon’s subsequent discovery of two further invoices, “namely two invoices from Mike Tolich, variously dated ‘July 26 2000’ and ‘April 17 1998’ that depicted an identical invoice layout, format and spelling mistakes to the questioned creditor invoices.”
In other words, here was the Chief Financial Officer at Waipareira, John Tamihere’s right-hand man and Labour Party campaign manager Mike Tolich, caught red-handed writing bogus invoices for huge sums of money at a time when Waipareira was strapped for cash, presenting those invoices to Tamihere for payment authorization and getting cash cheques.
For his part, Tamihere can’t recall seeing those invoices and it was he who asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate, back in November last year.
Paragon Risk’s Phil Roigard warned at the conclusion of his report: “Issues of possible breach of fiduciary duty and/or potential criminal offences may be involved, and with that in mind you may consider that this matter should be more appropriately determined by a statutory authority such as the NZ Police or the Serious Fraud Office.”
For his part, Mike Tolich claims he’d sought approval from Trust chairwoman June Mariu, and for her part Mariu acknowledges giving approval to pay some money to Diane Tuari and two others, Daphne Ropiha and the man Tamihere called “Uncle Paki” – master carver Paki Harrison. What Tolich didn’t tell Mariu however was exactly how much he and Tamihere had decided to pay the three people: $20,000 each for the two women, and $25,000 for “Uncle Paki”. In cash.
“I was not aware of the exact amounts paid [in 1999] to Mr Harrison, Miss Tuari and Ms Ropiha, until November 2004,” Mariu is understood to have told the SFO. Nor was Mariu aware that payment had been generated by way of fake invoices.
Adding to the confusion, Ropiha denies receiving the $20,000.
Investigators asked Tolich why he had made out cash cheques, and why he used bogus invoices to hide the massive cash payments to Tuari and the others.
“Mainly for taxes,” Tolich allegedly replied, explaining that the process was used to “protect” the recipients from possible scrutiny by the IRD.
For his part, John Tamihere denied that assisting anyone to avoid or evade taxes was the motivating factor for the cash cheques and bogus invoices.
But it is here that the story takes a fascinating new turn. It wasn’t just about fake invoices. Investigators would soon uncover mysterious money coming into Waipareira, as well as the transactions going out.
In the wake of the Paragon report’s publication, the Serious Fraud Office interviewed John Tamihere twice: once in November last year, once in January this year. In his statements to the SFO, Tamihere said he hadn’t been aware of the fake invoices until he’d seen them splashed across the TV news. He immediately spoke with Mike Tolich to find out what had happened because – according to Tamihere – he was facing some tough questions from his own boss, Helen Clark.
Tamihere told the SFO Tolich explained he’d created the false invoices to cover a series of payments and was extremely apologetic about it.
“I know where the cash went,” Tolich allegedly replied, which is just as well because no one else, including the SFO, did.
“Just follow the money.” It’s the old adage of investigative work worldwide, whether it’s the Winebox, the Iran-Contra affair, UN Food-for-Oil or the good old Waipareira Trust. Soon after the Serious Fraud Office began digging, they hit paydirt: a series of payments into the Waipareira Trust that seemed to coincide with some of those fake invoices and cash cheques sucking money out.
On June 9, 1999, a thumping great “donation” of $30,000 landed in one of the Waipareira Trust’s bank accounts. It had come as a community grant from an Auckland tavern’s gaming machine trust. By law, a large chunk of the profits from suburban pokie machines is required to be disbursed to community groups who apply for grants. The Department of Internal Affairs routinely audits the numerous gaming trusts to ensure profits go where they’re supposed to. All Waipareira had to do, as a community organization, was ask. And boy, did they receive.
On July 7, 1999, a further $40,000 was donated to the Trust by the same pub gaming trust, bringing the total donation to $70,000 – right at the time Waipareira needed to find nearly $100,000 to make mystery cash payments on a set of fake invoices, authorized for payment by CEO John Tamihere.
But there’s a twist. Of the $70,000 that came in, $35,000 was allegedly paid back to the donor – under the table. According to June Mariu, the idea of applying to the gaming trust for funding had been raised by Tolich during a discussion about Waipareira’s cash flow crisis.
“I can get $40,000, but we have to give $20,000 back,” Tolich allegedly explained.
Mariu, Waipareira’s chairwoman, only recalls the one conversation about a kickback for the $40,000, and is understood to have told the SFO she doesn’t even know whether a kickback was ultimately paid.
According to Tolich, it was. Two of the fake invoices – one for $12,500 and another for $7,500 – were drafted to hide what he called the $20,000 kickback to the publican, which may be why trustees like Mariu or Trust secretary Reg Ratahi denied knowledge of any kickbacks actually being paid.
But, controversially, Mike Tolich initially dropped John Tamihere right in it with the SFO. Investigate understands the SFO asked Tolich whether Tamihere was “aware of the payment, the kickback?”
“Yes, I understand he was.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Yeah, I did. Yeah. He was aware of the process.”
And, from his long connections to rugby league, Tamihere is indeed well aware of the process of paying kickbacks in return for community grant funding. He told the SFO that as the Chairman of Maori Rugby League, “Organisers from a number of areas would come up to me and say ‘we put in an application for this, we got $7,500, and we’re giving $5,000 back’…so this is, was, a widely happening behaviour”.
If true, it suggests the country’s gaming laws are being massively abused to the point where it has become an open secret, and that a Minister of the Crown was aware of this.
However, Tamihere specifically denies being aware at the time of any kickbacks being paid in the case at hand.

According to the SFO, another of those fake invoices was created to cover the $20,000 cash cheque John Tamihere authorised to pay his cousin Diane Tuari. But there’s more. The documents disclose that another of the fake invoices was used to hide a $20,000 cash cheque payment to a private trust run by John Tamihere and Mike Tolich – the Te Tahi Trust.
When Tamihere emerged from questioning at the hands of the SFO last November, one of the first things he did was contact Tolich:
“During this conversation,” Tamihere later told investigators, “Mr Tolich also suggested the $20,000 cash deposit into Te Tahi Trust had come from Waipareira Trust. Mr Tolich told me he had a range of authorities and approvals from the executive committee of the Waipareira Trust to put the money into the Te Tahi Trust account.”
But if that authorization existed, why was the deposit made by way of a cash cheque, drawn against a false invoice to a fake organisation using a bogus address?
“I’ll tell you this for free,” growled one former senior Waipareira official to Investigate, “I never came across any reference to Te Tahi Trust in any of the Waipareira accounts. There was no record of it.”
Interestingly, Tamihere’s statements to the SFO are contradictory. On another occasion he was asked “Did you ask Mr Tolich where the $20,000 came from?”
“I did.”
“And what did he say?”
“He wasn’t prepared to tell me…he said to me, ‘oh, no, I’m presently before the Serious Fraud Office and [my lawyer] has told me to just not say anything at this time and I’m not going to say anything to you, either’.”
Nor was June Mariu, the Trust chairwoman and a Tamihere ally, aware of any donations made by the Waipareira Trust to John Tamihere’s election campaign, although she says she would have supported it if she’d been asked.
But there’s an even deeper legal issue here: Waipareira is officially a ‘charitable’ trust, which means it is forbidden by law to donate for political purposes. Even if chairwoman June Mariu had agreed, she would have broken the law in approving a donation to Tamihere’s election fundraising.
Is that the real reason the invoice was faked – because either Waipareira, or Mike Tolich, or John Tamihere, or all three, knew that such a donation would be illegal? We don’t know.
Tolich maintains he never told Tamihere the donation had come from Waipareira, not wanting to disturb him with the detail. “He’s the visionary, I’m the bloody fixer!”
Officially, Te Tahi Trust was set up to handle donations to John Tamihere’s Labour Party election fundraising. Unofficially, say SFO investigators, “Te Tahi was effectively Tamihere and Tolich’s private piggy bank”.
How piggy?
“Fresh questions have emerged over statements in Parliament by Labour MP John Tamihere after new documents show he received the benefit of thousands of dollars from an account under scrutiny from the Serious Fraud Office,” reported the Herald on Sunday’s David Fisher in June this year.
“Mr Tamihere told Parliament on November 3 that he received no personal benefit from Waipareira Trust transactions being investigated by the SFO. But documents obtained by the Herald on Sunday show one of the payments under investigation by the SFO went into his election fund – Te Tahi Trust – and he or his family got benefits of at least $9,500 from the account.”
Investigate understands Te Tahi’s goal was to raise $50,000 in funds to pay for Tamihere’s election campaign. Tamihere is on record as telling the SFO he was only aware of $25,000 being in the account, which makes – at first blush - one of his subsequent actions difficult to explain: why, if you’re a Labour election candidate desperate to fundraise $50,000, and you have only $25,000 in the bank, would you sign a cheque for $20,000 to donate to a sports club associated with the tavern that generously gave $70,000 to the Waipareira Trust?
What politician simply gives away nearly all the money he desperately needs to pay for his first ever election campaign, only weeks out from the election, no questions asked? Because that’s what Tamihere allegedly told the SFO – he simply signed a cheque and didn’t ask any questions of his fellow trustee, Mike Tolich.
In fact, this was Tamihere’s answer throughout the SFO investigation, that he was a big picture guy who relied on Tolich to attend to the detail. He didn’t know what the cheques were for, may not even have known how much he was paying out. As a politician once tipped as a competent potential Prime Minister, it is perhaps this admission that will be the most politically damaging to Tamihere when full details eventually emerge at trial.
Tamihere’s apparent blind faith was more fully appreciated by SFO investigators, however, when they discovered that just a few days after Te Tahi’s generous $20,000 donation to an amateur sports club was made, a whopping $40,000 suddenly landed in the Te Tahi Trust bank account from the aforementioned pub gaming trust associated with that sports club.
If there’s a political law of reaping what you sow, Tamihere’s harvest had suddenly doubled. Nor did his good fortune end there. Just days after Tamihere had been elected as the Labour MP for the Hauraki seat, the same pub gaming trust dumped a further $20,000 in the Te Tahi Trust account.
Was the $20,000 cheque signed by Tamihere and Tolich an inducement to the pub charity to encourage them to throw some more money Te Tahi’s way? John Tamihere denies knowing of any inducements. Instead, the common denominator in all of this is his right-hand man, Mike Tolich. Tolich, you see, had access to all the different parties in these transactions. Not only had he controlled the finances at Waipareira, he was also a trustee and cheque signatory on the Te Tahi Trust. More significantly, Tolich was also a trustee on the very pub gaming trust that had generously poured money into both Waipareira and Te Tahi.
The pub gaming trust was arguably within its legal rights to donate money to Waipareira and Te Tahi. Both the latter organizations had made the required applications for a community grant. Te Tahi’s applications, incidentally, were signed by none other than Diane Tuari. However, what the SFO is focusing on is money flowing back the other way, like that $20,000 cheque John Tamihere signed out of his precious election campaign fund to donate to the pub’s sporting club.
The SFO found evidence that for some of the donations made by the pub’s gaming trust, there seemed to be a “kickback” of around half the money paid back to interests associated with the tavern.
Why would this be? Why would somebody donate $70,000 and then ask for $35,000 back? Why not simply donate only $35,000 and save yourself the hassle? In general terms, a possible scenario is this one: the pub gaming trust is governed by laws requiring it to make community grants. That money is therefore not available to individuals associated with the pub, because the donations are audited. However, what if the gaming trust came to an unwritten arrangement with a community organization where, instead of offering maybe a $10,000 grant, they would offer a $70,000 grant provided half was “donated” back to private interests associated with the gaming trust’s trustees? The net result is a community organization receiving a $35,000 grant instead of only $10,000, and a bunch of trustees suddenly able to access $35,000 in pokie machine profits that by law they had not been able to touch.
This, in essence, is what the SFO alleges happened.
Mike Tolich claimed to the SFO that the publican running the gaming trust had demanded 50% kickbacks as a prerequisite for granting donations. Even though the SFO could only track three transactions that could remotely be described as kickbacks, they’ve laid charges against the entire $184,000 donated (split between Waipareira and Te Tahi) and assumed that $92,000 has been paid back to the publican, most of it in cash. The publican has been charged, even though a “driftnet fishing expedition” through their bank accounts and financial situation turned up only the $35,000 payments from Waipareira and the $20,000 one from Te Tahi – all of which were banked into a community club which organized charity events and things like sending children on the Spirit of Adventure.
Of the first $20,000, the publican claims to have simply given two tavern staff $10,000 each as a reward for hard work on several community events. “None of that money went near us personally,” says the publican. “We didn’t take a cent.”
Election 99 was the beginning, not the end, of the cosy relationship between the pub gaming trust and Te Tahi Trust. The documents show grants of $45,000 between May and August of 2001, and a further $9,000 in July 2002, just before the general election that year.
But it is a $20,000 donation to Te Tahi in May 2001 that attracted some of the most attention from the SFO. The money arrived on May 7. On May 11, ten thousand dollars was withdrawn in cash from Te Tahi’s National bank account. According to the SFO, this was a cash “kickback” destined for the publican. The money was taken out in the form of 500 twenty dollar notes. The withdrawal slip, signed by Tamihere and Tolich, shows two forms of ID were presented, one was Mike Tolich’s credit card, the other was John Tamihere’s credit card. Both Tolich and Tamihere admitted that it looks as though the Labour MP was present while the alleged “kickback” was being withdrawn in cash from the bank, although Tamihere could not recall it. Tolich is understood to have told the SFO he probably did not tell the MP why they were really withdrawing $10,000 in $20 notes, and Tamihere apparently never asked.
That’s a total of $114,000 that a pub gaming trust gave to Labour candidate John Tamihere and Labour campaign manager Mike Tolich’s Te Tahi Trust. For the record, none of the money allegedly withdrawn back out of Te Tahi in cash – some $37,000 – has been traced to Investigate’s knowledge. The trail goes cold with the person or persons making the cash withdrawals. Tolich claims the money went to the publican, not to himself or Tamihere. The publican denies receiving any cash payments and alleges the SFO should be taking a much harder look at Tolich, particularly as Tolich and Tuari allegedly used some of the kickback cash to go on an Australian holiday.
On March 15 this year the SFO charged Mike Tolich and the unnamed publican with several counts of fraud and using a document for pecuniary advantage, relating to the misappropriation of gaming monies.
Investigate has discovered evidence, however, calling into question the thoroughness of the SFO inquiry. For a start, the SFO knew that one of the first things John Tamihere had done after the Paragon fake invoice story broke was make a beeline straight to a secret rendezvous with the publican.
For an MP who claimed no knowledge of the intrigue that had gone on between Waipareira, the gaming trust and Te Tahi, it seems strange that he would travel to the home of the publican to discuss it.
“Tamihere was really nervous,” the publican told Investigate, “acting like he was dead scared he’d been followed. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stand still. He was so edgy that when he left he took my car keys by mistake, and had to come back for his.”
Also at the same meeting, arriving in a separate car, Mike Tolich. When Tolich was asked by the SFO why he and Tamihere had been to see the publican, Tolich is understood to have said he and the MP went “to warn” the publican that the game was up. He said they discussed the fake invoices, the kickback and the fact that one of the fake addresses was coincidentally close to a property the publican owned. Tolich added that the purpose of the meeting was also to ask the publican to “contribute” even more money to fund Tolich’s legal bills. He was given $2,500.
Despite having been told this by both Tolich and the publican, the Serious Fraud Office chose not to put any questions about this meeting to Labour MP John Tamihere. Nor does it appear that the SFO has interviewed John Tamihere’s successor as Waipareira’s CEO, Ian Mackintosh – a man named in TV3’s Paragon coverage as a potential witness to the aftermath of Tamihere’s reign at Waipareira.
It wouldn’t be the first time the SFO has failed to do proper investigations. The Winebox Inquiry stands silent witness to that, and ironically even Mike Tolich managed to insult the SFO on a similar point:
“This is the second time the SFO’s had a crack at Waipareira,” Tolich is understood to have said, referring to an investigation in mid-2000, “and the first time, I didn’t get asked in for one question. And I find that strange, to be honest.”
Especially considering he was Waipareira’s Chief Financial Officer.
There is also conflicting evidence about how much Tamihere knew. In his initial discussions with the SFO, Mike Tolich confirmed that Tamihere knew about the kickbacks, and the “process”. But in his final interview, it is understood he told them Tamihere did not know. The SFO accused Tolich of covering for the Labour MP, and that the evidence clearly suggested Tamihere was involved, and that he knew.
The stridency of the interviews by SFO investigators Clive Hudson and Willie Harris was not matched by SFO Director David Bradshaw however.
“Mr Tamihere will not be charged,” Bradshaw told the media on March 15. “The evidence in relation to his involvement in the matters that I investigated does not support the laying of charges.”
Additionally, the depositions hearings for these charges will not take place until December, well past the election date.
The publican is fuming.
“Tamihere and Tuari are in this donkey-deep, in my view, but they haven’t been charged. We never demanded kickbacks, and we only received a handful of donations. Tolich is the one who was on all the trusts, and now he’s boasting that he’s cut a deal with the SFO.”
Whether he has cut a deal or not remains to be seen. There is no suggestion from the SFO that he has.
In documents the SFO filed with the police to action the arrests of Tolich and the publican, the SFO specifically states that in his January 26 interview Tolich had “said that neither Mr Tamihere, Ms Tuari or Ms Te Hira were aware of this ‘kickback’ payment.”
Yet in their synopsis of his interviews in November, there is no disclosure from the SFO to the police that Tolich had claimed at that point that Tamihere was aware of the kickbacks.
The SFO told police that they had not been able to discover any records for the Te Tahi Trust, even though more than a hundred thousand dollars had been ploughed into it. There is no record of the trust doing any community work, yet co-trustee John Tamihere was not questioned further by the SFO to our knowledge.
Tamihere may have problems under the Trustee Act, which requires trustees to act prudently with funds under their control. Tamihere’s assertion that he “trusted” Tolich and happily signed blank cheques or facilitated the withdrawal of large sums of cash – without asking questions – could be challenged under the prudence test, let alone the I’m-a-competent-future-prime-minister test.
The former Cabinet Minister even denied ever glancing at the previous butts of blank cheques he’d signed. Weren’t you even curious, the SFO wondered?
“No, I didn’t, because I had a relationship with Mr Tolich over some long period, and I had never, I just never had any need or desire to check up.”
Tamihere told the Douglas White Inquiry ordered by the Prime Minister that the purpose of Te Tahi Trust was to “facilitate and support cultural, social, political and economic development for Maori”, yet in his statement to the Serious Fraud Office he was forced to admit “I do not know if the Te Tahi Trust ran training programmes to assist Maori.”
John Tamihere was a trustee of the Te Tahi Trust. If he didn’t know, who would?
There is also the issue of Tamihere’s financial or legal liability in regard to Te Tahi. If the Trust he set up was involved in criminal offending, a legitimate question to be asked is whether John Tamihere was negligent in his duties as a trustee. If so, does he bear any civil culpability for possible unpaid taxes by the Te Tahi Trust? Tamihere has admitted to the SFO that he assented to the trust being used “as a business tool” by Tolich. The Labour MP also admits knowing that his trust “was going to seek some funding from gaming machine grants”.
Did you file tax returns for the trust, at all, asked the SFO? “No,” replied John Tamihere. So here was one of Labour’s rising stars, setting up a personal trust that collected more than a hundred thousand dollars in donations, using questionable accounting and governance practices, and he knew his organization was not filing tax returns.
And John Tamihere, based on the evidence presented to the White Inquiry and his interviews with the Serious Fraud Office, appears not to have declared in his personal tax return up to $10,000 worth of payments he took from the Te Tahi Trust for “Christmas” and other prima facie personal spending.
Douglas White QC said at para 6.33 of his report that “Tamihere did not file a tax return for the year ended 31 March 2000. He relied on the exemption in s33A of the Tax Administration Act which in general terms relieved salary and wage earners from responsibility for filing a return.”
Yet s33A makes it very clear that a return must be filed if the person received the benefit of any other income. To be fair to Tamihere, however, the SFO was not concentrating on tax liabilities when it spoke to him, so a final determination on whether those Te Tahi payments to Tamihere should have been declared would depend on whether the IRD launches an investigation, and whether Tamihere can show a
legitimate, non-income related purpose for the payments.
Nonetheless, the White Inquiry’s clearance of Tamihere on tax issues has arguably been weakened by this latest revelation.
Nor does another White finding look quite so strong. At para 4.49 of his report, White says on the basis of the evidence supplied to him by Tamihere and Waipareira there was “no evidence of any other payments by the Trust to Mr Tamihere in the period after his resignation as chief executive officer.”
Yet the disclosure that Tamihere’s trust benefited from $20,000 of Waipareira funds, when it was prohibited by law to donate them to his trust and the donation of which was hidden by a false invoice, and which Tamihere may have dipped into for personal use – based on his admissions to the SFO – now cast doubt on that clearance by White and another one at para 5.2 where he finds: “No Trust subsidiary, associate entity or other company in which the Trust had a shareholding made any payment to Mr Tamihere after his resignation as chief executive officer of the Trust in June 1999.”
Likewise, the White report finds only $11,000 was donated to Tamihere’s election campaign for the purposes of his electoral return. However subsequent investigations have shown not just $20,000 coming in from the Waipareira Trust using a false invoice created by Tamihere’s co-trustee and campaign manager, but also massive donations from the pub gaming trust.
Tamihere appears to have clearly known about these donations because he told the SFO that money from the gaming trust was to be spent on “my election of support, and the support of furthering the interests of why I was going into politics.”
There are also questions remaining over the status of John Tamihere’s Ministerial Assets return, although they may be merely technical. The White Inquiry found that a property purchased in August 2001 was owned by Tiriti Corp Consultancies Ltd and CR Trustees Ltd [a professional trustee firm] and a 1/3 share was held by Tamihere’s partner, Awerangi Durie.
According to White, although Tamihere was a director of Tiriti, the company was merely acting as a trustee for the Tamihere Childrens Trust, and John Tamihere had no beneficial interest in the home himself. The technical question however is this: according to Companies Office records, Tiriti Corp Consultancies Ltd was struck off the companies register from August 2001 until it was reinstated in March this year. That raises legal issues about both the status of the house and of the Tamihere Childrens Trust during that period.
The White report makes no reference to Tiriti being a defunct company when it heard evidence on the matter in November 2004. At that time, John Tamihere as a Tiriti director should have known that his company had been struck off.
Documents available on the Companies Office website indicate that John Tamihere filed a string of annual returns for three missing years on the one day, March 24, 2005, nine days after being cleared by the Serious Fraud Office.
As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Mike Tolich visited Tamihere at his new home in Te Atatu, despite a warning from the SFO that talking to Tolich might not be in Tamihere’s best interests.
Tolich, said Tamihere to the SFO in one of his interviews, was “built like a brick s*** house” and tall, at 6’4”. He was “useful” to have around not only for his financial acumen but his imposing physique. Was Tolich the loyal Brutus to Tamihere’s Caesar? Prepared to go the extra mile to ensure Tamihere always had the funding he needed? That’s a matter for next year’s court trial to determine. The question on everyone’s lips, however, is how Tolich will perform under cross-examination on the witness stand: John Tamihere’s loyal lieutenant is currently taking the complete responsibility for what is prima facie a major political fundraising corruption scandal, if proven. Even so, Tolich has forced Tamihere to wear the “I’m With Stupid” T-shirt for now, and next year’s trial will probably sink the political career of one of urban Maoridom’s brightest hopes by painting the MP as incompetent and naïve in the way he undertook his duties as a trustee. Will Tamihere, in the end, be saying, “Et tu, Brutus?”

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Aug 05, When Worlds Collide

A visiting US author gives the sisterhood a slap

State broadcaster National Radio refused to interview her. TVNZ’s Close Up was hostile. Her book The Death of Right and Wrong was a New York Times bestseller. So what is it about the ideas Tammy Bruce is putting forward that so annoys what she calls the ‘liberal elite’? NEILL HUNTER finds out

The poster in a Hamilton book store asks: “Who is Tammy Bruce? Previously high up in the US feminist movement Tammy – herself gay – has now changed sides and exposes the damage to our culture and values caused by radical groups, political correctness and the prevailing social agenda. She also offers a powerful
solution to restore society. ‘She says what most NZ’ers think but are afraid to say’!” lauds the promo. Then there’s the book trailer in The Death of Right and Wrong describing her as: “America’s favorite openly gay, pro choice, pro death penalty, gun-owning, voted-for-Reagan feminist”. Such a busy life description; “it’s exhausting,” she mutters to broadcaster Bob McCoskrie in an interview. She’s also a Democrat who enjoys the freedom to vote for the opposite party. It’s called being an individualist. Do we have those in New Zealand? In the NZ Herald last month a small story appeared about a National Party rising star, and for the uninitiated it read like yet another piece of election year politicking. Chris Finlayson, barrister, talked about the “flawed legislation” – of the Civil Unions Act, but, being National, you could immediately dismiss him as just another right wing political redneck. Probably one of those interfering Christians… That is, until the end paragraph of the story where the journo writes that Finlayson is gay. At the opposite end of the political spectrum, another politician vented his feelings about social engineering and Labour’s sisterhood, which became huge news as the nation’s media exploded over “that” interview with Labour’s John Tamihere. He bared his soul, and a university professor – a political psychologist no less – joined the legions of commentators trying to help NZ’ers understand why he did it. The shrink told us it was Tamihere being egotistical, but what was more interesting was the PM’s response. She sought first to blame “a minor magazine”, then shifted to the “stress” defence before proffering “it wasn’t a real interview”. By the time Tamihere had been relegated to the back benches – because New Zealand has no Siberia – many were still confused about why he spoke, and about his feelings. Tamihere later explained that, amongst other things, as a heterosexual, married father he was allowed to own his feelings on such issues as men having sex with men, or the disparity between women’s and men’s issues funding. But it all finally turned pear-shape when J.T. used that “h” word, holocaust, because there are some other victims who own that word. Tammy Bruce calls it victimhood but says it’s part of a much bigger picture, one controlled by the left, and that is what this story, and her visit, is about.
Feelings and thoughts. There is a piece of legislation being dusted off for an already allergic voting public, called “hate speech”. It will take New Zealanders where they have not gone before, with a new criminal law that will punish us for the way we feel, think and speak – effectively free speech, minus freedom. Verbal attacks, bigotry or speech against any segments of society, whether sexual, cultural or religious, may be seen as inciteful, possibly even as hideous as bullying, maybe more destructive. Apparently our thoughts and speaking about them are reaching such a level of nastiness as to warrant prioritising by parliament. Radio talk-back host, columnist, feminist and Fox News political analyst Tammy Bruce says there’s a bigger picture. And she’s seen it all before, in America.
“I’ve seen when it comes to the bills that are passed, existing laws, the discussion of hate crime legislation and now of course in America it’s not enough to publicly humiliate someone who thinks inco- rrectly…let’s criminalise it,” says the attractive long auburn-haired woman who romanticises her unknown father but denies victimhood – that’s also a left agenda, which we will return to.
And so with that, the 42 year old from California rolled into NZ, a few copies of her books, The New Thought Police and The Death of Right and Wrong tucked under her arm, so sought after that not even this journalist could score copies which was probably good because it compelled searching for information elsewhere.
If you thought Tuesday night was for Lions-battling-Aucks at Eden Park, 1,000 others would say you were wrong because the audience in Hamilton three quarters filled the city’s Founders Theatre when teenagers, the retired, marketing managers, shopkeepers, politicians, Baptists, Mormons, Presbyterians, Anglicans, lawyers, social workers, in never-ending diversity, came to hear the Amercian work the crowd.
Which raises another question. Which group or political organisation really was behind this Califor-nian who has a cat, a dog, a wild raccoon and .38 caliber handgun she’s nicknamed ‘Snuffy’? After all, it’s election year. Some left wing spin doctors would have us believe it was none other than Satan himself as they went frantically into overdrive searching for the messenger’s puppeteers. There were none. Even Leighton Smith, radio’s Mr Talk-Back, acknowledged this was a personal thing. Well partly true. Enter diminutive Hamiltonian Joanne Reeder. Dressed casually in jeans the slim, youthful looking blonde grandmother, mother and wife was coming down with a cold when Investigate found her. She thought it was probably from the stress of going it mostly alone, bringing the American here.
Joanne Reeder lives by a river and directions to their home include how to find the front door. “Go around the left side of the garage” she says, but forgets to mention it’s part of the cedar wood wall, literally, and at first glance there is no distinguishing wall from door. Some might say there’s no distinguishing Joanne Reeder the New Zealander’s position on social engineering from Tammy Bruce the American’s. After all both are women, both fierce upholders of the need to differentiate right from wrong, and neither will settle for less. They exude much more common ground but, like the river below the Reeder front lawn dividing Hamilton’s rural-suburban mix from pure rural, philosophically these two are not exactly joined at the hip. The biggest chasm? One is Christian…the other a lesbian feminist, once militant and so fierce in her own crusade that she lambasted one of America’s darlings, Bill Cosby, not long after his son was murdered. That got her the sack from her radio show after the Irish American confronted the Cosbys’ assertion that their son was the victim of racism. Her position-shift from the left gained momentum but there was no Damascus road experience. Bruce attributes her journey to another racism attack from within her own organization, the powerful National Organization for Women (NOW), over her alleged violence-against-women stand after the OJ Simpson debacle. “Racist” was again hurled her way when she portrayed the case as a male violence issue, instead of buying into the white oppression of blacks angle that Simpson’s defence team were running. Reliable sources tell Investigate there’s more, that Tammy Bruce the pro-abortion lobbyist, was also attacked for going after an abortion specialist doctor whose patients had a nasty habit of dying…on his operating table. NOW told her to lay off the doctor because the bigger picture was abortion rights and the dead mothers were worthy sacrifices, not the doctor. The hypocrisy of the left started to make Bruce question her views on a variety
of issues.
“Hijacked” appears a lot when researching Tammy Bruce because amongst her luggage are phrases new to NZ, like: the “gay elite”, which she says has hijacked homosexuality by introducing civil union and hate speech legislation. Bruce suggests it is responsible for moving liberal politics so far to the left that it has reinvented socialism. Take gay marriage for example: Non-Christian Bruce says that there are gay elite fundelmentalists with agendas to neutralise the Church and thereby ultimately redfine society down to their own level. “Churches would then fall into anti-discrimination laws and not be able to turn away the blessing of homosexual union. If that were to occur it would strike at the core of stability”. She contends that because homosexuals can’t blend in with society, they want society to blend in with them.
Bruce casts daylight on a much darker picture when it comes to agendas. “When you have a government that says it is liberal and progressive and perhaps feministic, legalising prostitution which of course brings in licensing fees that are then paid to the government because it is now legal and then there are taxes involved, you essentially become a de-facto pimp.”
What are Bruce and Reeder’s own agendas: one wants to expose left wing governments and the truth behind the type of legislation they have become known for; the other wants to educate. Reeder is passionate on education, not in the class room but in a wider sense, of being fully informed. “You can’t make change from the top down, it’s got to come from the people, if we want our politicians to lift their standards which I personally do, as a nation we’ve got to demand that but we can’t demand it if we don’t know what we want.” So she formed Liberty Trust, a forum for educating the wider community through public speakers, instead of government spin. “One of the things I struggle with as a New Zealander is that we turn to the government to solve all our problems, whatever is being discussed we’re looking to government to solve it, I’m not comfortable with that.” Initially the woman who became a parent early in life instead of seeking a profession turned to books, and that set her course towards the American. “Over the last few years I’ve put my hands on everything I could read, and two of those books happened to be Tammy’s. Quite literally, what I did was I read her book and I emailed her. I don’t know why I did it, it was just something driving me,” as she recalls receiving a “long but positive” email from Bruce in about June 2004. Neither knew if it would work, but Reeder was surprised at Bruce’s attitude, “if she could come she said she would love to visit New Zealand.”
Then the planning began, albeit unwillingly at first. “I thought if I talked to people then it would make me do something about this” and was surprised by the “average Joe Bloggs” who came to help, a broad spectrum of supporters, some Labour, some Act, those with religious positions, those not – “even an atheist” she adds. For a while however her efforts were solo. “I’ve never done so much cold calling in all my life” then when all seemed plain sailing, disaster struck. Suddenly Bruce announced her withdrawal when her advisers, realising that the driving force behind the trip down under was only one woman, made her stop. “She actually panicked and backed out at a crucial planning stage” Reeder says laughing as she recalls their logic: “I was one woman at the other end of an email – she didn’t know what she was coming to.”
One News, not “one” woman, perhaps may have been something to worry about had Bruce known of the reception about to be meted out to her by state media. Little did TV One realise that, like a Venus flytrap, they were being drawn into Bruce’s ever-expanding anecdotal repertoire of antics by “the leftist media.” Referring to her TV One Close Up interview with Ian Sinclair she recalls the state broadcaster’s welcome which was replayed as a question further into the pre-recorded interview: “who are you to tell us how to vote?”.
It was, says Bruce, an inane question typical of the cultural left trying to protect its monopoly on ideas and public debate.
“People are the same everywhere. I deal in ideas that have no national boundaries, these are universal.”
According to Bruce, to suggest that there can be no bipartisan approach is to say “Christians can’t sit in a room with atheists, that homosexuals have nothing to say to heterosexual Christians, or that Americans would have nothing of value for New Zealanders, New Zealanders have nothing of value for Australians – all of that’s bunk.”
Despite the aforementioned Lions-Blues game at Eden Park, on this Tuesday July night in Hamilton the giant Founders Theatre is almost packed out. “I’d say it was about three quarters full” says Tammy Bruce who should know, she faced the 1,000, including three gay people who put their hands up when asked by Bruce as she worked the crowd during opening moments of her first of two public addresses in New Zealand. Then a smattering of atheists put up their hands, so too one parent with a child, then a politician sitting dead centre front row…and a heckler – but he didn’t last – not due to good security but two women’s voices: Bruce’s – who offered to debate him afterwards – fool that anyone should try; and a lone woman who shouted down the lone heckler with “I’m here to listen to her not you!” Heckler problem solved.
The lights go down and Bruce marches confidently onto centre stage and begins her address joking about things All Black like her and Leighton’s suits. She calls for more light then begins striding continuously backwards and forwards across the wide stage, ignoring the podium, apologizing if her marching irritates.
Much later, oration almost over, she exhorts, stamping her foot for emphasis and for the first time receiving loud vocal audience response, that everyone support their community, especially the local church and to “trust yourself and that even if you’re called a bigot know that you’re not one…ask of every politician that you know what’s best for your children…you will not have them tell you that they know better than you do”.
The brave heckler shouts from the back “who’s paying you to say this?!”
She wants to engage him, “stay here and I’ll talk to you guys, I’m talking about the power of the individual and less government. If you’re afraid of that, think about it and come talk to me, I don’t care about who you vote for…don’t be afraid to change…you’ll find allies with homosexuals, authentic feminists and it will be a revelation to you,” ending to thunderous applause.
Leighton returns informing her that he’s been counting and it’s 73.4 kms that she’s walked backwards and forwards across the stage, tells the audience to watch Bruce on TV, listen to her on …then mumbles into his hand “John Banks on radio…,” to loud laughter, then: “look out for Investigate Magazine” as a lone scribe halts mid-scribble, “with a Tamihere-type interview where the tape recorder will be on the table”. More laughter.
Afterwards a woman comments: “I should totally trust in my own instinct, I’m just going to trust them and have confidence in them.” Aaron, 16, of Huntly, a student who heard about Bruce from a friend, thinks long before replying: “I was very impressed that from all different walks of life we can come together and agree on one point, that we deserve personal freedom and that government shouldn’t have the right to say what is right and wrong over what we believe.”
In Christchurch, two nights later, the performance will be repeated, again to a packed house of hundreds, proof perhaps that the battle of fresh ideas will be fought not in the fusty newsrooms of government-controlled media outlets, but on talk radio and in public halls and meetings. As one commentator has already noted elsewhere, New Zealand’s feminist elite could only muster 500 delegates to its 30th anniversary Womens’ Convention in Wellington last month, despite sponsorship from five government departments, massive media coverage, money from Telecom and an outfit calling itself ‘Lesbian Nation’. Yet triple that number of people turned up to hear Tammy Bruce’s take on the need to return to family values.
Which raises the question: at the end of her tour, who was more in touch with the values of ordinary New Zealanders – Tammy Bruce or TVNZ’s Close Up?
Kiwis can probably figure than one out for themselves.

THE DEATH OF RIGHT AND WRONG
Not everyone agrees with everything TAMMY BRUCE says, but as NEILL HUNTER discovered in this interview, the bestselling author is a provocative merchant of ideas in a land of normally muted ideological debate

INVESTIGATE: Where do you get your energy from?
BRUCE: I believe that with the control that the Left has in the western world culturally – not politically but culturally certainly – that my generation is going to decide what the next 200 years is going to be like. I think our generation is responsible like no generation before. So at 42 I’m very passionate about it.
INVESTIGATE: So that’s what drives you?
BRUCE: Yes. When I went into activism, injustice has always infuriated me. Of course in America why certain people are attracted to the Left, instead of Christianity or the Right, and that kind of social activism, is I was the perfect combination of infuriated by injustice, damaged in my childhood, narcissistic and had been victimised in one shape or another. So I became the perfect foot soldier, but injustice – even within the left - infuriated me. I have to be very careful in my own willingness to compromise and to conform in order to belong and please people. I have to personally make a serious effort as I continue on my own personal journey. Because I’m very attracted to Christianity. And because I am, it concerns me. I want to be able to respect it.
I have to be very careful about why I’m attracted to things so I’ve made a point of making all the work I do independent, I’m answerable to no one, the decisions I make are my own and I completely own what I’m saying.
INVESTIGATE: You’ve said that there is a God, or that you believe in God, but you don’t count yourself as a Christian. Who is the god that you believe in?
BRUCE: Well I believe that Jesus Christ is the man. I think that the structure, ideas of Christianity within the structure, I feel that is right, I trust in that but in the organised religion aspect of man, clearly I represent things and hold beliefs contrary to what the church advocates to being a homosexual. And so I want it both ways. I want my cake and eat it to. I want to be able to believe in God and yet I am made too nervous by the idea of needing to conform or accept things on which I have too many questions. Can’t do it.
INVESTIGATE: Care to make a prediction about Iraq.
BRUCE: It’s what I was saying last night and to some young Christians afterwards. There’s an argument that – and this is round-about but it’ll answer your question, my point is that government isn’t a solution for anybody, for the Christians who are made nervous about moral relativism and the decline of society, these young people were saying that we need a Christian party and what they’ve grown up with is that government has all the power. My point is that if you have little government, human beings naturally will be attracted to the good and the decent. Now in the western world it’s Christianity which belongs – you don’t even need to identify as a Christian, it makes everyone’s lives good, but when it’s done within a natural choice framework where people like how I choose to believe in God and be benefited by Christianity etcetera and be influenced by it.
What I believe is going to happen in Iraq: all human beings are the same. The human condition is the same everywhere. You will not find one father on this planet whether he is in a tent in Yemen who has children, or a man in Russia, or a Frenchman and his family or here in New Zealand, that they all work exclusively to make that child’s life good. It is the same everywhere and what I predict and what the Iraqis clearly responded to early this year, was the idea of controlling their own future. Whether Muslim, Christian or atheist but the desire to be free to be able to trust yourself is the natural and instinctive place for humanity. It is so instinctual, to suppress it requires insane despots. The only thing that can keep it down is genocide and fear and murder. That’s why you see either free countries or you see terrorised ones. Now I believe that the Left, even though it uses a different tactic, with issues of criminalising what people think and say, speech codes and general intimidation is also a way of terrorising people, by keeping them down. But Iraqis, because of the human condition, if protected from the very few who want to terrorise and murder them into submission, if people can be protected from that they will emerge as human beings, desiring faith and a government that does not oppress them and an ability to control and run their own lives – and that also means capitalism, money, freedom that money gives people, freedom that allows them to decide what they want for their children – money is the thing world wide that lifts people out of slavery, emotional slavery, physical slavery and political slavery. I think that the Iraqis – clearly the seat of civilisation, a complex rich people, culturally rich people, are going to be a beacon and already are a beacon for change in the Middle East. You have a woman finally in parliament in Kuwait, you have [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak saying he’ll have free elections – we’ll see, you have the Lebanese throwing the Syrians out after 30 years, my God! You have the Iranian people but you don’t hear about, during their election, tens of thousands of people protesting against the government, no one in Tehran voted, the mad Mullah shipped people up from the boondocks to vote, ballot stuffing – it was a farce. That election was as legitimate as Saddam Hussein’s election. When people would go to vote in Baghdad the ballots were held out to them, it was handed to them, they put it in the box. With the exception of Saudi Arabia – they need to move as well, the entire Middle East has changed and that is not a fluke.
America is not pro-war, and the result has been the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. We waited for World War One, we entered in the last year, in World War Two we waited for London to be bombed for years and did nothing. Can you imagine us doing that now? Let’s say the Chinese went “screw you New Zealand” and started bombing Auckland, do you think America would think “well too bad for them, too bad they won’t let our nuclear ships in”? Of course they wouldn’t. We would be here in one half of a second because we’ve learned that being pacifist means tyrants will prevail, millions of people will die.
I don’t know if we can ever say sorry enough to Europe for sitting back and doing nothing when World War Two started. Americans learned that lesson, 53 million people died. In this age 50 million people have been liberated. It’s like cancer: it only exists if I look, so I look away, the next thing you know you’re flat on your back. You can aggressively treat it or wait until you’re almost dead.
INVESTIGATE: Have you got enough international experience to talk to New Zealanders about their situation?
BRUCE: Sure. The first thing that the leftist media (referring to TV One’s Close Up interview) said was “who are you to tell us how to vote?” Here is what we just talked about in the Middle East and what I firmly believe in. That people are the same everywhere. That I deal in ideas that have no national boundaries, these are universal. Now I’m not here to talk about the nuances between the parties, there may be some but then again politicians are also all the same. If it’s suggested that Christians can’t sit in a room with atheists, that homosexuals have nothing to say to heterosexual Christians, or that Americans would have nothing of value for New Zealanders, New Zealanders have nothing of value for Australians – all of that’s bunk. It’s necessary to divide and conquer within one’s own nation to control the population and it’s also of course the very basic tactic to suggest that one group of people in one nation could never understand another group of people in another nation. I believe the opposite: that while clearly New Zealanders know best for their country, there are some things I have to say which will immediately resonate.
INVESTIGATE: I saw in research “this is why we need Minutemen” and a picture of an alien shooting a ray gun. Please explain.
BRUCE: Well this is why I decided to come here – when I heard that regular people had had enough of the Establishment and decided to do something. There is a project in America called The Minutemen and it’s regular Americans; grandmothers, men, women. Illegal immigration is overwhelming and up to April on the Arizona border there were about half a million people who’d crossed over despite the fact that we have a Border Patrol. We also realised that al Qa’ida is organising in Honduras and that Mexico has acknowledged that there is al Qa’ida and extremist Muslims organising in Mexico. So if you can’t get into America through visas you simply walk in through Arizona. We’re finding Muslim prayer rugs and Korans in the desert of Arizona, and we’re also arresting OTM’s – other-than-Mexicans. Those are Yemenis, Saudis, Iraqis and Afghans. A guy found OTM’s on his property that began shooting at him. There was no support from the border patrol which drives along, patrols then goes away. So the Minutemen set up an internet site saying they were going to set up outposts along the border and sit there, unarmed, not arrest people, hang out and if we see illegals coming over we’re going to call the border patrol. They did it and there was virtually no crossing in April. The Mexican government finally
employed their army along the border as well. So the Minutemen is what I love, grassroots activism. President Fox of Mexico called on President Bush to arrest them, that it was illegal. President Bush has a special relationship with Fox and said ‘we don’t put up with vigilantism’ and Americans got very mad with George W Bush, Fox made proclamations about suing the US.
I use the absurd to point out the absurd.
INVESTIGATE: There are commentators here saying there is a sisterhood element ruling New Zealand at government level. Those commentators will listen to what you’ve said and brought here and say that your views on narcissism, damaged goods, gay elite, are applicable to New Zealand’s political situation. Have you heard enough about New Zealand to make a comment about that?
BRUCE: I would be more comfortable commenting if – this is one of the problems with the Left is that I would have liked to have seen more representatives from that side of the aisle engage me. What the Left tends to do is retreat and ignore. Part of what I say frightens them because they know I know the questions and answers. They know the usual name calling and manipulations don’t work with me. My credentials speak for themselves. I think that anyone who believes themselves to be on the Left or believes themselves to be a feminist or lives a homosexual life openly or in the closet looks at my background and knows that I know who they are. It changes the background of the discussion. The same with the transgender issue which I hear is a bit of an issue here with some legislation. That for me is a misogynistic framework and I know why I think that and I ask questions that other people don’t and can’t ask, because I am a lesbian. As an example: a transgendered man who has become a woman. My question is what in God’s name is your benchmark for knowing what it is to feel like a woman? And only the most misogynistic man would think that “he just knows”, that’s the irony of that situation. There are many people who, because of political correctness, would be uncomfortable and would never suggest that, because they feel that that person might have the moral high ground. Or even in the homosexual community you can be shunned if you challenge someone who is sexually different. I don’t have those burdens. I know on issues where I stand and I’ve seen what the Left has done and I’ve worked with the Left in America and I’ve met international leftists and I know what their agenda is.
But when it comes to New Zealand and what the other side, if there is another side – it seems like it’s Labour when it comes to what’s happened to this country – and when it comes to issues such as legalising prostitution – tells me volumes about the nature of what’s in control of this country and it’s not feminist, it’s not liberal, it’s misogynistic. When you have a government that says it is liberal and progressive – and perhaps feministic – legalising prostitution, which of course brings in licensing fees that are then paid to the government because it is now legal and then there are taxes involved, you essentially become a de-facto pimp. So if you’re going to have a government – and this is the obscenity I reject as a feminist, I don’t want de-facto pimps representing themselves as feminists. It smears feminism, it is misogynistic. With a government that is so burdensome it must have more and more and more money that “gosh of course there’s so much money in pornography and prostitution, gosh if we can legalise prostitution we can get taxes, we can get fees, we can get licence fees, we can get some of that money”.
INVESTIGATE: Proponents of prostitution law are going to say “we did it to protect the safety and the health of those dragged into prostitution.”
BRUCE: What do you think pimps say? That’s the pimp’s role. The pimp says, “I’m going to protect you honey. No one’s going to come and take your territory or beat you up, I’m here to protect you, I’m your god, you’re doing this because that’s fine because that’s your choice and I’m going to make your life better because this is what you need to do.”
The other misogyny of course is the idea that the solution is to facilitate that instead of getting them out. The equivalent would be to say to a battered woman “well you did marry him, you say you don’t want to prosecute, you stay in that marriage so clearly it is your choice, we’ll just try to make it more comfortable for you so that maybe he can beat you up while you’re on vacation. We’ll send you on vacation then we’ll get you a nice house so that when he’s dragged you across the floor you’ll have nice plush carpet.” We don’t do that. We don’t try to make the hell more comfortable, we say we’re going to stop it, we’re going to recognise battered woman syndrome and we’re going to recognise that no woman in her right mind wants to be beaten up; we’re going to make that judgement. We’re going to make that judgement and we’re going to prosecute even if you as a victim don’t want to press charges, we’re going to say that we in this particular instance recognise that you need more help than you say you do, because of commonsense and decency.
How is it that it doesn’t apply to a woman who is on the street selling herself like a piece of meat? We’re going to facilitate it instead of saying our role is that we’re going to be involved in this to get her out of that instead of legitimising it. It’s obscene!
INVESTIGATE: I know of a case here of an intellectually handicapped woman who has been taken into prostitution since the Prostitution Law Reform act came into being, which is another sign of the failure of that law.
BRUCE: It is not just a failure. It is a complete abandonment of decency. Frankly prostitution isn’t a choice. You can tell me prostitution’s a choice when you have a 10 year old looking up at you and saying “Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a whore”. Or if a woman said, “I really have choice, should I be a dental assistant, or a lawyer or an architect or a prostitute? Hmm, which should I be? I’ll choose prostitute.” There is no choice and it is about individuals who are either drug addicted, psychologically hopeless, pulled into it against their will. Those women who are also into pornography, they are the face of the use of, the need for, pornography. They are kept drug addicted because how do you make enough money to maintain that drug addiction, because there is money to be made if you like this. Every now and then you get the light, that’s the exposure that you’re not dealing with liberal progressiveness for feminist, you’re dealing with the anarchic Left who condemn peoples’ lives.
INVESTIGATE: So the type of legislation that you’ve seen here signals the same common denominators that form your views on narcissism, gay elite and left wing control?
BRUCE: Absolutely and what the Left also relies on are groups of individuals in society – again the only way they can keep control of a country is to keep the people down because the natural response of humanity is to reject that kind of destruction of individual humanity. By keeping and legitimising drug addiction, prostitution, things that keep society in some level of chaos, they maintain control as well. It reinforces also the idea that there is no right or wrong in their sense of, “well, I don’t have the moral high ground, maybe they really do.” Things are so contradictory to what people think is normal it reinforces the idea that you don’t know what’s best. It immediately destroys people’s lives but it is part of a general dynamic. This is not feminist theory. It’s leftist theory of dividing and conquering, maintaining some level of cultural anarchy while keeping people unstable enough morally to not know what to do because there are so many mixed messages.
INVESTIGATE: So what’s wrong with civil union?
BRUCE: Your civil union – because it seems here that the church has already been wiped away when it comes to influence. In America it hasn’t happened yet. So when I talk about the American civil union concept it’s different than the civil union concept here. What I support in the American structure is that you can respect marriage and equal rights, but when the goal is not really that, just like any leftist government that says it’s one thing but it’s really another, the goal for the radical gay elite in America is having all the rights – which I want, I want all the rights other Americans have – I do! But I also know I can get that without having to smear other groups in my country. For the gay elite the discussion isn’t just about wanting the same rights, the goal and the core of it really is to have it on exactly the same position because if recognised at the state or federal level the churches would then fall into anti-discrimination laws and would not be able to turn away the blessing of homosexual unions. If that were to occur it would strike at the core of stability especially in the Catholic Church. If government from the Left found a wedge of controlling even what the Catholic Church’s actions are and what they can implement, it is the ultimate destruction of the Church and its autonomy.
INVESTIGATE: So they’ve succeeded in Spain?
BRUCE: Yes exactly. This is where their social experiment is going and New Zealand is one of the experiments. California was one as well. How far can we push people? They saw how far they could move it with the Soviet Union and it collapsed. There have been nuances about how we can change it. The Chinese are implementing those nuances as well. How can we maintain economic control and stability while oppressing a people to such a degree that the individual becomes irrelevant? Can we have it both ways? That’s what the elite want to know and that’s what they’re experimenting with right now.
INVESTIGATE: These agendas that you talk about are they decentralised internationally or are they centralised in any form, government level, or pseudo government or at political level?
BRUCE: One of the centralising factors is the United Nations – absolutely. You have a centralised frame work through Non Government Organisations that are under the banner of UN such as population, birth control conferences sponsored by the UN. Also, of course, the new international gathering of feminists. Women who get together to talk about how much money needs to be given to each country, of throwing money at countries to facilitate issues of birth control and abortion. Those are important issues especially for poor women, feminists recognise. Those conferences are used as internationally funded gatherings of leftists to strategise and co-opt women’s issues, control nations and to get more money to facilitate larger agendas.
INVESTIGATE: Can you give me anecdotal evidence that there’s an international link in what you’re talking about?
BRUCE: Well here’s how the Left operates and how I operated on the Left and how the Left operates to this day is that you have, especially with the internet, while there are not phone calls in the middle of the night, when I was in leadership we had a global feminist conference – we brought in feminists from around the world so we could sit down around the table and talk. It was all kinds of people from all over the world where it was “yes we are a unit”.
INVESTIGATE: How long ago?
BRUCE: Early nineties. So the strategy then was to reinforce leftist policy and theory with feminists. So there of course has been a public effort to unite and gather and to strategise collectively. Those relationships haven’t stopped. And the recognition of the need to activate collectively of course is standard leftist framework through Marx, through today’s international socialist organisation [which Prime Minister Helen Clark remains affiliated to].
It’s recognising the use of existing international bodies which are all leftist. The UN is just a gathering of leftists which is why it’s such a disaster and so corrupt because there’re no ideas there. And use of that to
organise extremist groups and to force those agendas on, particularly, poor nations so it’s about watching it happen and listening to the development of that strategy, international feminist conferences the use of the UN and those conferences but also something much more informal which is information that is passed around internet groups, feminist discussion forums, and things are then looked at through a kind of tacit approval: “Oh, this is what we’re doing”, and it doesn’t require that you go into a meeting about Stalin as you smoke your cigars and think about how can I get my latest makeover. You see a consistency, throughout the world of legislation, of attitude in declarations about what needs to happen and what societies need to do. You’ll see a consistency in that.
INVESTIGATE: In New Zealand we have been considering legislation over smacking to take away the defence of parental discipline in cases of assault on children. In defence of the legislation, in part it stems from a case where a child was brutally assaulted, witnessed, yet no prosecution due to parental defence.
BRUCE: Decent people know the difference, know when a child has been beaten, at the same time there can be some social pressures, where it’s decided if a child should be spanked, that belongs in the social sphere. Civilised society knows when it’s a criminal act – when somebody beats somebody up. That already exists presumably in New Zealand, it’s assault, the same as protection for a woman when a man beats his wife up. We move into a civilised frame work when it’s a family matter. But again every piece of legislation that controls what one can do especially involving their children simply continues the behaviour modification and the brainwashing, “you can’t be trusted” that’s the message over and over and over.
INVESTIGATE: That’s the bigger picture?
BRUCE: That’s the bigger picture. It will involve always the same thing in these restrictive laws, an underlying message, “we know better than you” and if you hear it long enough as a generation you’ll begin to
believe it. That’s why these kinds of discussions we’re having now are so damaging to the Establishment, which is why a major NZ newspaper would say I support torture, why I was called an extremist by your state-owned TV – that in itself should speak volumes about their agenda.
INVESTIGATE: On guns. You’ve said in the past that if Chinese student protesters for example had been armed in Tiananmen Square it wouldn’t have happened. I put to you there’d have been an even bigger massacre.
BRUCE: My point is, China has gun control, and if those students had been armed you would not have had that massacre. What would have happened is you’d have a democracy in China right now. You wouldn’t have, instead, a bullying military regime in China murdering its own people. You had protesters saying enough is enough. As the Berlin wall fell the world began to change saying we want freedom too. The only way Tiananmen was put down was because the military was able to massacre those people. That’s what those regimes rely on. You can’t have them armed because those people will shoot back at you! That is why there is gun control. When you outlaw guns, only the law-abiding respect that. [Editor’s note, as this issue was going to press, Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe ordered citizens to surrender all their guns to police]
INVESTIGATE: But communist east Europe fell without guns?
BRUCE: Part of the reason why, which is also the reason why Pope John Paul made some of his comments about Iraq, is there have been experiences in Eastern Europe where the influences of Christianity have managed to overpower a despotic government because Christianity is still powerful and the message of the Vatican and of Christians could galvanise an entire population. In a nation where Christianity is not important like Iraq and China, you do not have that same universal galvanising power. I was struck by the Pope being against the Iraq War because of his experience in Poland. You could have peaceful people rise up. There is a difference when you’re talking about a non-Christian nation. Eastern Europe had a rich Christian heritage, that’s not the case in China or the Middle East, they don’t think what the Pope thinks, and they’re not moved by a Christian message. The Pope didn’t get that message. Take Romania, Ceaucescu – a horrific, genocidal maniac and the Romanian people with their history of Christianity did the same thing, the military was with them but their common thread was Christianity.
Washington DC is a gun-free zone, you’re not allowed to own a gun there, they’re banned, and it is the murder capital of the United States. What that tells the criminal element is “wow, sitting ducks”.
England confiscated firearms and their crime rate eclipsed New York City. When Castro threw his criminals out of Cuba to Florida crime went up there exponentially. Florida then allowed citizens to carry concealed weapons and crime went down hundreds of percentage points.
INVESTIGATE: How does that fit in with school massacres?
BRUCE: The problem is not based upon owning firearms. There have also been killings by someone driving a truck onto a school yard. If someone means to kill someone they’ll use aeroplanes flying into buildings killing three thousand people. What are we going to do – ban planes?
INVESTIGATE: You served on Arnie’s transition team. Does that mean you’re a fan?
BRUCE: He has become what politicians become. I was a very big fan. He represented an outsider but who was inside enough to get things done. He embodied that. He can’t be bought, he doesn’t care, and he already has a great life. He’s suddenly become a politician because he wants something more, and that’s the presidency. He’s begun to mitigate his comments, he’s begun to compromise, his approval ratings have plunged. Americans wanted an outsider, grassroots person not affected by the system but now he’s decided he wants to be part of the system. Those are a dime a dozen. Californians are not happy about that.
INVESTIGATE: Victimhood. Black civil rights vs. Maori rights. You’ve heard quite a bit about our situation. I’ve heard you say that we’re not entitled to victimhood if the stuff happened before our generation.
BRUCE: It’s not about being entitled to victimhood but in the sense of being paid and receiving compensation, there’s a concept that paying someone today is somehow going to make up for what happened to somebody in several generations already gone. It’s absurd.
INVESTIGATE: Surely you’ve got to do something because where you’ve got a current culture, taking Maori as an example, and I know Allan Duff says “we don’t’ need help” but where you’ve got a generation affected by injustices to a previous generation surely in the interest of fairness you’ve got to do something?
BRUCE: Let me put this to you. I grew up in a lower middle class household with no parental guidance, emotionally abusive, not a lot of opportunities, no real form of education. There’s choice where you say ‘that’s somebody else’s fault and I want you to pay me because I’ve had a bad life because of circumstances, that single woman didn’t have enough money to give me the life I deserve’, or I can say ‘I now have opportunities to make my life better than what my mother’s was, and I’m going to work hard and make the difference’.
All of us have suffered some kind of indignity in our ancestral history. As part Irish, I can point to what the English did to the Irish, genocide and enforced famine, I’ve got family who have passed down the stories, and I can say that genetically that’s made me a victim; or you move on. Am I going to drown in what happened 200 years ago? I could find some linkages but for me that would be a waste of time. Government once again is saying yes it is our fault so we’re going to make it so that I am so helpless, so unable to make a difference that without Daddy or the great white master… what you would do? We did this with the American Indian, at the time not 200 years later: we gave them sovereignty and as a result they’ve stayed isolated, suicide is the highest in America, alcoholism is overwhelming in epidemic proportions. A very few people are getting fabulously rich in casinos, everyone else is in despair and hopelessness.
INVESTIGATE: So it’s not them being a victim of white man’s economics?
BRUCE: I think it’s a combination of things. I think there’s an investment in minorities that is keeping their constituencies down because without their constituencies there would not be leaders; it’s a choice of whether or not you’re going to take advantage of economic opportunities that exist, work within a competitive framework, or move back to the plantation and wait for Daddy to give you more money. People say “well you deserve it, you’ve been harmed so you’re owed that money.”
INVESTIGATE: You’re not denying that people trapped in poverty don’t need help.
BRUCE: I’m a big advocate for people who’ve fallen through the cracks or in trouble just any family deserve in getting up and out. But it’s about giving them way to be able to compete. Not simply giving them an allowance, getting them off the plantation and having the means to live an independent life. If you can only make ends meet by getting that government cheque every week then you’re a slave. If you want to be a slave then just admit it. Quite frankly it’s racist. Just like it’s helping the prostitute by facilitating it. How do you empower people by enslaving them?

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Investigate Aug 05, Hunting al Qa'ida in the Pacific

ON TERROR’S FRONTLINE

You’ve seen the carnage in London. You may not realise that al-Qa’ida has a training camp in the Pacific. And it may come as a bigger shock to learn that NZ SAS troops have been in fierce battles with al-Qa’ida affiliates there. The Pacific branch of Osama bin Laden’s terror network knows where Auckland and Sydney are, and when a terror strike comes, it will probably trace its origins to this camp. Back in March, Investigate sent its Australian correspondent deep into the jungles of the Philippines on special assignment. Last month, we sent MATTHEW THOMPSON and photographer RENAE CARLSON back there after receiving fresh intelligence about al-Qa’ida activity. This is what we found…

The War on Terror is a circle of wars. It has hot zones like the Philippines, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq, all sharing the ex-perience of war, but each with its own logic, reason, and radius of impact.
The war also has cooler areas, cities across the world where sleeper cells wait for contact from their superiors in the mechanics of terror – master bomb-makers and logistics experts.
These areas are battlegrounds of intelligence rather than arms. If the intelligence fails, jetliners ram city buildings, shrapnel sprays through shopping centres and churches, and the logistics men retreat to their sanctuaries.
The jihadist’s great crimes of the past year include scattering train carriages in London and Madrid; transforming a Russian school into an abattoir; demolishing a Hilton hotel in Egypt; and sinking a Philippine passenger ship as it sailed from Manila. Several hundred civilians were deliberately targeted and killed in these attacks alone, and more than one thousand injured. Today nearly three years have passed since the night Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) breathed fire across Bali’s nightlife, burning and blasting more than 200 to death,
including 88 Australians and three Kiwis, and wounding many times that number. Yet there has still been no atrocity on Australian soil, even if one of JI’s bombing crew at Bali, Ali Gufron (a.k.a. Mukhlis), told interviewers the attack was ‘a curse from God that [Australians] be afraid of their own shadow’.
These curses have been strongly encouraged by JI’s allies, al-Qa’ida. A month after the Bali atrocities, bin Laden said ‘we warned Australia before not to join in in Afghanistan, and [against] its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.’ New Zealand, of course, was also involved in both Afghanistan and Timor. The latter campaign at the express instigation of New Zealand’s Green party.
The pain and loss from Bali was overwhelming, but consider the trauma if al-Qa’ida or its regional allies carry out the threat to send ‘cars of death’ into Australia, perhaps to Melbourne’s Lygon Street, Campbell Parade at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, or into the heart of Fremantle. Gone would be the sanctuary, the division between Australia’s relative orderliness and the turmoil of her neighbours. Whether or not the Spirit of Tasmania gets sunk en route to Hobart, a P&O cruise is bombed at sea, or a pair of vans explode at opposite ends of the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, depends to a considerable degree on how tough the Philippine military is on the Australia-hating terrorists who infest their south. Is it safe for the likes of the Bali-bombers to come and go, and to hold courses in bomb-making, or are these people being relentlessly and ruthlessly hunted?
If people want to know who to support in the War on Terror, they should look north to a bunch of ill-equipped, underpaid, malaria-wracked young men in uniform, who cope with violent death, corruption, and political incompetence in a struggle to shut down terror camps and hold their nation together. While Australasian troops are serving a world away in the deserts and alleyways of Iraq, just a few hours flying time from here, Filipino grunts are locked in a hot war with our enemies.
***
Australia’s sworn enemy in the region, JI, is one of the most aggressive and entrenched terrorist organisations in the world, with the U.S. State Department estimating that its membership numbers in the thousands. Like all paramilitary groups, JI depends on experienced cadres to discipline and train recruits. Many of JI’s veterans cut their teeth in the Afghan jihad of the 1980s and later joined armed conflicts in Indonesia and the Philippines in the 1990s. These cadres have much to teach potential terrorists about how to protect themselves against intelligence and military operations, and offer expertise in the delicate arts of bomb manufacturing and detonation.
JI is like an Islamic Ku Klux Klan on speed. They are violent bigots who hate race-mixing and multi- culturalism, even if they will exploit the West’s pluralism to further their aims, and who are fighting to bring large portions of South-East Asia under the sway of their own intolerant brand of Islam – a brand similar to that of their former benefactors, the Taliban.
And while much is made of poverty and lack of educational opportunities as ‘root causes’ of terrorism, many of JI’s luminaries lack these excuses. One of the senior Bali-bombers, Dr Azahari Husin, is a scientific author who studied engineering in the UK and lectured at university in Malaysia, yet still managed to fit in explosives training in Afghanistan and the Philippines.
Experts like Dr Azahari and his accomplice, Dul Matin – believed to have built the larger of Bali’s two bombs – have a habit of becoming known, so to avoid arrest they spend much of their time beyond the reach of the law. Since the mid-1990s, JI’s best and brightest have chosen to kick back in the picturesque mountains, swamps and jungles of the southern Philippines, within large regions controlled by Muslim rebels. There, JI has joined forces with elements of South-East Asia’s toughest guerrilla army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(or MILF), and its most extreme, the head-lopping, bomb-planting, anti-Christian marauders of the Abu Sayyaf Group.
As Investigate revealed last March, members of the Australian Federal Police are in the Philippines, helping local authorities with counter-terrorism measures. Prior to their heavy involvement in Afghanistan, New Zealand SAS troops have been actively engaged in firefights with Abu Sayyaf – New Zealand's own covert war in the Pacific during the 90's. Make no mistake, these al-Qa'ida affiliate groups know where Auckland is. The United States is more heavily involved, running the controversial ‘intel-fusion’ program which sees American military operatives stationed in terrorist hot zones to provide local armed forces with target information gathered via high-tech means such as state-of-the-art communication intercepts. This has caused a backlash from the shrill anti-American lobby in the Philippines, who paint the U.S. as greedy puppet- masters every chance they get. However, there are also concerns within the military about the intelligence’s accuracy. A general spearheading the war in central Mindanao’s terrorist heartland told me that the information is better for ‘storytelling’ than for war, because it is often out of date. He said that relying on the U.S. advice has led to botched raids, needless deaths, and could undermine the chances for peace in Mindanao.
But, in the ever-shifting alliances and deals in the war on terrorism, it turns out that the military is also getting help from the dominant faction of JI’s Philippine patrons, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The MILF is increasingly split between those who are open to a peace deal that will deliver land rights for their tribes, and the extremist commanders who will not abandon what they see as a religious war, and who embrace JI, the Abu Sayyaf, and al-Qa’ida.
This means that in some areas the military is getting tip-offs from the MILF which enable them to launch strikes on terrorist suspects inside rebel-held areas. A pro-peace MILF spokesman even told me that his
organisation gave the police the information they needed in 2003 to trap and kill one of JI’s most formidable bombers, Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi. This is a remarkable betrayal, given that al-Ghozi, an esteemed Afghan veteran, had been very close to the MILF, establishing the JI training camp within their territory in the mountains of Mindanao and conducting joint JI-MILF terrorist attacks.
Yet in other areas the military seems to get nothing from the MILF and sits in idle observance of the current ceasefire, even with strong suspicions about terrorist recruitment and training taking place a stone’s throw from the frontline troops.

THE MOUNTAINS
At a machine gun nest on a high ridge in the malarial mountains, the world divides between the known and the unknown.
Behind lies a beautiful and fertile valley, its lowlands lined by forested peaks as it widens toward the warm waters of the Moro Gulf. Ruins from the valley’s previous inhabitants dot the climb to this outpost. Back down to the left I can see the bombed-out remains of a large reinforced concrete building we hiked through. My hiking companions pointed out the proliferation of doors – most rooms had multiple entries and exits – and as fighting men, they saw meaning in this. The soldiers also showed me tunnels leading back into the mountain. They showed me cramped chambers with barred ventilation holes high on the walls and hooks hanging from the ceiling. Torture, they said. This is what they do to their own. This side of the ridge hosted the Bali bombers of JI when they practised the art of terrorist bombings, and it has since been picked over by the government forces that captured it four years ago.
Now all attention is directed north of the ridge into lands still controlled by thousands of Islamic rebels.
We crouch behind sandbags and gaze ahead into the vast volcanic wilderness of the Mount Kararao region, watching mists and low cloud drift across the jungle.
The reconnaissance company’s young commander, Lieutenant Jeriko Roman P. Sasing, tells me that worrying sounds often echo from the mountains. ‘We hear them playing with their bombs; their terror explosions’, says Sasing, whose few dozen men are charged with guarding this rugged frontier.
Sasing’s men are perched on the border of lands under the control of the MILF.
The Government has been unable to defeat the MILF despite three decades of fighting, so it has offered the rebels a ceasefire while the two sides discuss how much sovereignty the Republic of the Philippines is willing
to cede.
The MILF fields about 12,000 full-time, uniformed fighters armed with automatic rifles, heavy machine- guns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft guns and intimate knowledge of Mindanao’s rugged terrain. It can also call on tens of thousands of irregulars from the region’s farming men. More than a half-million people turned up to a MILF forum in May.
Full-scale fighting with the military breaks out every couple of years, but more often than not the ceasefire (signed in 1997) maintains the conflict as an armed stand-off punctuated by skirmishes which kill a mere dozen or so. About 120,000 people have been killed since the modern Muslim rebellions kicked off in the early 1970s. Having the ceasefire-protected time and space to be ‘playing with their bombs’ has been terrific for the MILF’s civilian-targeting units and their Indonesian friends from JI, who moved their training from Afghanistan to rebel territory in Mindanao in the mid-1990s.
The leaders of another al-Qa’ida affiliate, the Abu Sayyaf Group, hide in MILF areas and have merged their terror operations with JI. Together, Mindanao’s bomb crews have killed hundreds and wounded thousands in Indonesia and the Philippines over the past few years. Including, of course, the 88 Australians and thee New Zealanders at Bali three Octobers ago.
Disturbingly, reports have lately emerged from captured terrorists that the jihadist groups have been training together to strike shipping in the Asia-Pacific region, a threat that should be taken seriously after the Abu Sayyaf’s sinking last year of a passenger ship leaving Manila Bay. The bombing of the Superferry 14 killed an estimated 130 people and stands as the deadliest-ever maritime terrorist attack.
Yet as accomplished as they are, Sasing, who walks everywhere with an M16 slung over his back and whose eyes never stop moving, doesn’t much care for his neighbours. Not only are they noisy, they’re also pushy.
‘We had to withdraw from there’, he says, pointing about 100 metres up the ridge to a thickly-forested summit sporting an abandoned system of trenches and lookouts. ‘It was too dangerous. The enemy was harassing us’, says Sasing, using the military euphemism for being shot at. The MILF know these outposts well; they built them – the trenches, the sleeping huts.
‘Could they be sitting there watching us?’ I ask.
‘Yes, possibly.’
‘Do you patrol forward of here to see what they’re doing?’
‘No, that would be a breach of the ceasefire. Also, they have laid landmines and it is too dangerous’, Sasing says.
Ropes run along the perimeter of the outpost, and at likely jump-in points the soldiers have strung bottles of rum, each empty except for a bullet suspended inside to rattle if the ropes are bumped.
‘Sometimes deer sound them. The men up here hunt deer when they can, because all food and water has to be carried in and it can be very basic. But the enemy know this, and once when a soldier heard a deer call and went forward to hunt it, it was the enemy making the call’, says Sasing, cupping his hand over his mouth and simulating the animal sound. ‘They captured the soldier and cut off both his heads, above and below, then put them together and dumped him in a sack. No one here wants to be taken alive’, he says.
Sasing’s enlisted men receive about NZ$9 per day for their work. If the situation erupts, such as it might if they weren’t ordered to withdraw when harassed, then their combat bonus would be another 20 cents per day. Their equipment is antiquated – this outpost’s main weapon is a World War II machinegun – and many soldiers are sick.
‘I have about 12 men in hospital with malaria’, laments Sasing, as the rains come in. They used to
receive anti-malarial pills, but ‘now there are shortages, so we rely on mosquito repellent’, he says.
I ask how frustrating it is for he and his men, all aged in their twenties, to camp for months and months
on the edge of enemy territory, within which terrorists freely practise their trade, watching each other succumb to malaria.
‘We can only do what we are ordered to. The military is just a tool of politics. You know, on clear nights
we see spotlights from [the MILF’s] Camp Sultan’, says Sasing, pointing across the jungle to a mountain
obscured by clouds.
The enemy are close. The first contingent of guerrillas is one kilometre away – ‘just there’, says Sasing, jabbing a finger down the hill - and another six bases have been identified in the region. The most notorious of their bases is Jabal Quba, where JI moved much of its training after the valley behind us, formerly known as Camp Abu Bakar, fell to the Government in 2001.
About 100 soldiers died on the road into Abu Bakar, yet now Government troops are restrained by the ceasefire, reduced to watching as fresh MILF forces move into the area each month and others leave in a rebel troop rotation.
Sasing leads me back down the ridge, slipping and sliding on trails now turned to mud. ‘It rains every day,’ he says, picking up his thongs and walking barefoot.
Once again we pass the ruined complex of the late founder of the MILF, Salamat Hashim, where an
Islamic crescent moon rises from the broken roof. Soldiers have graffitoed the building with lists of battles and military campaigns; one artist’s work depicts a particularly acrobatic sexual feat.
Sasing is careful about what he says, but other senior military sources report their bitter frustration with the peace process. One senior army officer tells me that the ceasefire even prevents the military from building fences around MILF areas in the hope of hindering guerrilla troop movements and arms shipments, and that they likewise cannot conduct reconnaissance flights over the Mount Kararao region to see what JI, the Abu Sayyaf and their MILF hosts are up to.
These restraints remain despite a backdrop of continuing terrorist attacks. Bombers have hit the CBD of
Manila and locations in two other major cities, Davao and General Santos City, as recently as Valentine’s Day, killing about a dozen and injuring almost 150.
The triple bombing followed the military’s airstrike on suspected JI and ASG leaders in Mindanao’s vast marshlands.
Romero is intimately familiar with Abu Bakar, and he tells me over fried fish and fruits that the threat grows worse the longer the ceasefire continues. The MILF is recruiting and rearming under cover of the peace talks, and weapons shipments have been reported landing on the coast, most likely from Malaysia.
He tells me that there may well be a peace deal struck sometime in the next year, but it will let the MILF keep its weapons and leave large areas under its de facto control, just like the 1996 agreement signed with another Muslim guerrilla army – the Moro National Liberation Front – elements of which continue to attack Government forces.
All of which is ideal for the terrorists and kidnappers working out of MILF areas, he says.
‘There are JI about four or five kilometres from [Government occupied] Abu Bakar. The boundaries are
imaginary, but if we cross, we will be charged with violating the ceasefire … and we will be fired at’, Romero says.
The guerrillas and the terrorists learn much from each other, with JI agents absorbing the skills of insurgency on Mindanao’s frontlines. In turn, members of the MILF’s special operations group ‘are taught by JIs to make IEDs [improvised explosive devices]’, he says.
While the troops sweat it out with malaria, World War II-era guns and 20 cent-per-day combat bo-nuses, the enemy is cashed up. Romero says that the MILF pocket percentages of ransoms from Mindanao’s thriving kidnapping trade; that they and their terrorist allies receive money from international Islamic charities; that they seize ‘revolutionary taxes’ from farming communities; that they have their fingers in the zakat, or Islamic donations given at mosques; that they run illegal logging operations.
The overtly terrorist groups, the Indonesian JI and the Filipino Abu Sayyaf, also receive large payments from foreign backers, all of which makes it easy for the jihadists to pay locals to shut up when the military comes around asking questions.
And without local sources of intelligence, the military has very little to go on indeed. ‘We are facing a face- less JI – they look the same [as Filipinos]; they have learned our dialects – so unless someone tells us, we don’t know what they are doing,’ Romero says. The Government has more than 50,000 troops in Mindanao, yet even so, ‘we have sacrificed some areas’, says Romero, telling me a story later corroborated by Australian and US sources.
He takes my map and points out substantial stret- ches of the Mindanao coast and hinterland where the military has only a token presence. ‘It’s practically a free-zone for them [JI and the Abu Sayyaf], but if we move troops from Abu Bakar, then they will take it over again’, Romero says.
The US is providing satellite imagery, communication intercepts and other ‘technical intelligence’, but as long as local civilians who could potentially supply up to date ‘human intelligence’ are more likely to encounter terrorists and rebels than Government forces, the free-zones will remain, Romero says.
‘They are getting stronger.’

THE SWAMPS
‘If the rain continues water will cover all of this,’ says Lieutenant Rhoel C. Tremedal of the Philippine light infantry, gesturing across the lush fields we glimpse between fruit trees. The scattering of homes our
patrol passes are built on stilts, and their occupants watch blankly as we walk along the riverbank.
Tremedal and his men are stationed on the edge of Mindanao’s vast marshlands, their base a checkpoint on one of the tributaries of the Rio Grande. They have a sandbagged machinegun nest from which to order passing boats to pull in for inspection, but no one is stationed on the other side of the river, nor do any soldiers take to the water for river patrols.
‘We would be too vulnerable to ambush’, says Tremedal, one of the Philippines’ many bright young men who is spending his twenties clutching a gun, sleeping rough, and surrounded by farmers who commonly stash automatic rifles wrapped in greased-rags near their houses and whose sympathies often lie with the Islamic rebellion.
The rains make everything more dangerous in the marshlands, Tremedal says. When the water level rises from rain either in the marshes or in the surrounding mountains, boats can move swiftly in almost any direction, giving the enemy extraordinary mobility. By contrast, Tremedal’s troops will be struggling to secure what they can while their bunkers fill with water.
‘We will make necessary precautions – we will protect any Government facilities in the area’, he says. With roads becoming impassable and the waterways too dangerous because of the known presence in the marshlands of the MILF, JI, the Abu Sayyaf and bandits, ‘we will just move by foot’, says Tremedal, whose handful of men operate in a municipality with a population of about 80,000.
The entire marshlands cover about 500,000 square kilometres and contain about 500,000 people, almost all of them Muslims, who have never been conquered – not during more than 300 years of Spanish colonisation, not in the half-century of U.S. rule, not during the days of the Japanese invasion, and not by their own Government in the post-WWII years of Philippine independence.
Tremedal calls the patrol to a halt when the banana and palm trees thin out and we find ourselves entering a large open plain bordered a few kilo-metres away by thick forest and steep hills. The infantrymen fan out and study the horizon. ‘We should not go any further’, Tremedal says.
While small-group terrorist training and operations continue in the mountains and elsewhere, central Mindanao’s huge swamp is known as the main hideout for JI and the Abu Sayyaf’s top commanders. The coastal ‘free-zone’ on its western flank allows for easy entry and exit; the terrain is excellent for hiding in and is an attacker’s nightmare.
Back in the 6th Infantry Division’s operational base for the region, outside Cotabato City, the general who plans raids and airstrikes on marshland stilt houses suspected to be occupied by terrorists, Brigadier General Horacio T. Lactao, talks me through his difficulties.
‘The ground appears from the air as if it’s a hard surface, but it’s just water lilies. If you step on it, you go under. Even the bombs are not so good – the bombs sink because it’s this high with liquid mud’, says Lactao, holding his hand at his waist. ‘And the water is above a person’s head, so even if a bomb hits 10 metres away it will not damage the structure. The rivers are their mode of movement, and a lot of routes are unknown to us.’
Lactao is one of the Philippine military’s hardened journeymen – one of those officers who have not gone bureaucratic despite decades of active service; who are instead still sweating it out in the shacks and trucks of the hot zone. Lactao asks if I mind if he has a cigarette, then leans in with smoke curling from his mouth while an enlisted man paints small pieces of wood to add to a three-dimensional map of the marshlands. The general ashes, drifts his hand across the diorama, and tells me, ‘this area has been in constant armed conflict since early times. This part of the [Philippine] islands has never been subjugated because of its social structure. It was governed by Muslim warrior kings [called] Datus.’
‘The Spanish, when they conquered one Datu kingdom, they would be surprised that another would rise up. Each of these had their own domain. There’s a natural defence system here. Now that Datuism’s not being practised anymore, there emerged another group – the MNLF, and then the MILF. Then the Abu Sayyaf. Whoever has provided the guns is the one who commands’, Lactao says.
The Government will always be at a disadvantage to militant Islamic groups in central Mindanao, an intensely religious region, Lactao says.
‘Our laws are not consistent with the Koran – which one will they follow? Not ours. The Koran provides them with their standard. When you interview the Abu Sayyaf, they say the Constitution is just provided by man’, he says.
Terrorists such as those who blew the Australians to hell at Bali fit straight into this system, using their
explosives expertise, money and reverence for Allah to win over the large number of Islamic clerics commanding MILF units in the marshlands. Jemmah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf have fused operations in the marshlands and move together, Lactao says.
‘The terrorists contact the MILF’s Ustadz [military commanders who are also clerics], then move to them for protection. The MILF units of the fundamentalist leaders then form the outer ring of security around the terrorists, and because of the ceasefire we must avoid [military] contact with the MILF.’
The military has been cultivating informants in the marshlands, and Lactao says that a picture has emerged of how some of the most wanted men in the world move around. There is a group of about 37 JI explosives and logistics experts who have attached themselves to Khaddafy Janjalani, the Abu Sayyaf leader who has earned the blessing of al-Qa’ida through his ruthlessness, and enjoys a cult of personality throughout the world of jihad. Janjalani and his JI team, sometimes including Bali bomber Dul Matin, are surrounded by an inner security team of up to one hundred Abu Sayyaf fighters from the southwestern islands of Basilan and Sulu. Then that group will be surrounded by another ring of gunmen supplied by MILF commanders religiously disposed towards international jihad.
Janjalani, who has a US$5 million bounty on his head for his multitudinous outrages, always keeps his face covered, sometimes dresses as a fully-covered Muslim woman, and wears a bomb vest so that he can blow himself to atoms if cornered, Lactao tells me. ‘Then we will not have his body and someone else can become Janjalani, because that is the name that brings in large finances from foreign sources. For every bombing that [the Abu Sayyaf] conduct, they will receive US$200,000. In this way they made large amounts of money from the Superferry bombing and the Valentine’s Day bombings.’
Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf have targeted U.S. citizens and interests, and in an attempt to eradicate these groups, the U.S. has stationed military intelligence personnel throughout Mindanao in what is known as ‘intelfusion’. The Americans are not universally welcome, especially with the mayor of Cotabato City, a former MNLF guerrilla named Muslimin Sema. Sema refuses to acknowledge his region has a terrorism problem,
despite multiple arrests, exposed JI safe houses, testimonies from detained militants in the Philippines and Indonesia, and the still-unsolved 2003 car-bombing of the airport.
The U.S. has plans to fund highway construction near Cotabato City, but the project is suspended due to a perceived lack of action on terrorism. Sema is pissed off about this and has plastered the city with signs and banners calling American diplomats ‘agents of Satan’, proclaiming that ‘Arabs are charitable’, and denouncing the U.S. as ‘the world’s number one terrorist’. Sema knows that the US is providing counter-terrorism intelligence assistance, so signs around town also read: ‘Reject the terroristic policies of the U.S. in Mindanao’, and ‘U.S. presence here in Cotabato get out’.
All of which make working in and around this gunned-up frontier town an uneasy experience for a Western journalist. The first assumption of everyone I speak to is that I am American military, and it is hard not to be a little edgy when walking the streets or driving through the city outskirts, the roads hazy from countless barrels of burning coconut husks. Paranoia comes easily when I am told by one of the least drama-prone, most understated intelligence sources I know to ‘stay in your room at night’, and ‘do not overdo your luck.’ Pour another San Miguel and pass the ammunition.
Lactao smiles when I ask about the value of the high-tech intelligence he receives on terrorist positions and movements from the Americans based in central Mindanao. ‘It is only good if it comes in time. If it comes late, it is just good for storytelling. Sometimes they will be sending it way after the people have left. The Americans are learning much from us – some of them don’t have any experience’, he says, tapping out another cigarette to smoke.
The general stares at me. ‘Let me tell you about some recent operations targeting Janjalani and JI, who we know are in constant contact. On January 27 we conducted airstrikes against seven targets [houses] stretching over a kilometre along the river. We believe some were wounded, but not the main personalities. Now they learn their lessons, and the leaders will be sleeping outside in a hammock or sleeping bag or a banca [small boat] 50 to 100 metres away from the structure. They let their men sleep in the house.’
The terrorists struck back a fortnight later with the Valentine’s Day bombings – blasts in Manila and two of Mindanao’s cities, Davao and General Santos City. Twelve dead and almost 150 wounded. Several other devices were discovered before they could be detonated.
Lactao then tells me that as Janjalani and the JIs kept moving through the marsh in April, the military correctly anticipated that the MILF commander who had been protecting the terrorists would sign them over to another guerrilla commander well known as a fundamentalist Islamic cleric. The vow of protection is binding, and ‘if anything happens there will be an investigation within the MILF and within the al-Qa’ida organisation’, Lactao says.
Yet the military also faces heavy politi-cal fallout when it launches a strike or raid and hits the MILF instead of JI or the Abu Sayyaf. ‘It could dis-turb the peace process. We have to be dead sure that we are striking the right place at the right time. If they are in this house, we can only hit this house. The people in the marsh area are very religious; they look at the ASG [Abu Sayyaf Group] as international mujahadeen. If we hit the wrong house and kill innocent civilians, then it helps the enemy’, Lactao says.
The MILF is comprised of semi-autonomous units, with each commander operating like the Datu warlords that gave the Spanish such grief centuries ago. More secular elements currently have the most sway politically, and are using all their power to convince the organisation’s independent-minded commanders to stick to the peace negotiations with the Government. Getting into shootouts with the mainstream of the MILF could set off full-scale war again, of the sort last seen in 2003. ‘We must be 100 per cent sure of our information. It should be very precise because we are constrained by the peace agreements’, Lactao says.
It was in this climate that word came in April that the terrorists were staying on a particular hill inside the marshlands. About 120 special forces in plain clothes were dispatched from Davao in nondescript vehicles to a small town on the edge of the marsh area where they assembled for the assault. There the surprise was lost, however, after a civilian spotter text-messaged the enemy with a warning about Government troops massing. ‘Filipinos are fond of texting’, Lactao says.
Yet, Lactao says that the attack may still have succeeded, but for ‘some errors in the system’. The intelligence provided by the U.S. was out of date, and caused the Philippine airborne and land units to attack one kilometre to the side of the terrorists, starting a firefight with the MILF in violation of the ceasefire.
‘Intelligence must be real-time’, Lactao says.
Three soldiers were hit before they pulled out, including one man shot in the face, and on the other side, several MILF guerrillas were killed and a dozen or so wounded. To calm the situation, the Government flew the dead and wounded rebels to hospital.
The April incident was a lost opportunity to kill or capture scores of South East Asia’s most skilled and ruthless terrorists; men in close contact with al-Qa’ida. Nevertheless, Lactao says that the combination of
informers selling out the jihadists and the sudden violence their information brings is having an effect on his prey: ‘They are getting paranoid and that’s why they are asking for shabu [methamphetamine].’
Yet the US can quite reasonably argue that without the millions of dollars worth of training and equipment it gives the Philippines each year, the country would be taking even more of a hammering from the terrorists.
Until the US ran the Balikatan (‘shoul-der-to-shoulder’) joint military and development exercise across Janja- lani’s home island of Basilan in 2002, the Abu Sayyaf were running rings around the armed forces, sacking Christian towns and conducting mass-hostage takings at schools, hospitals and even Malaysian resorts. (When French and Germans were taken, the European response was worse than useless – funneling a US$25 million ransom through Libya with which the Abu Sayyaf bought more weapons, faster speedboats, and launched a new wave of violence.)
A private security consultant based in Manila told me that the US and Philippines need each other. The Philippines needs the US to keep badgering it about JI, the Abu Sayyaf and al-Qa’ida. The US needs the Philippines to learn how messy life is. One matter the U.S. State Department will not stop pushing is the need for the Philippines to enact counter-terrorism legislation, which would enable security forces to detain suspected foreign terrorists. Lactao says that without that power, the military can only watch as suspected al-Qa’ida operatives roam Mindanao.
‘We monitored a meeting where one of these Middle Eastern men was trying to convince everyone to sign on with the cause. He said that the Muslim community is the next superpower, and he praised the head of al-Qa’ida.’ Yet most suspects can only be detained for six hours, or 72 if the offence is grave, and there are strict limitations on intelligence gathering.
‘We are not allowed to tap anyone’s phones, and we couldn’t detain anyone for interrogation purposes’, he says.
With Mindanao hotly contested ground in the war on terror, the island has more than its fair share of international undesirables, but when suspects have discovered they are under surveillance, they have complained to their embassies, with the military personnel involved castigated, Lactao says.
‘According to our reports, some of these Middle Eastern men are recruiting children as young as twelve to use later’, says Lactao, stubbing out his cigarette and smiling.
Still, a few undesirables are moved on or arrested. Two Middle Eastern men suspected of involvement with al-Qa’ida arrived in the Philippines in March this year – around the time when police seized hundreds of kilograms of explosives at a Manila house, apparently ready for use in the bombing of Easter celebrations. Philippine security officials speculated that al-Qa’ida was sending in specialists to coordinate the terror campaign. A Saudi Arabian national, Abdullah Nassar al-Arifi, was deported soon after arriving at Manila’s airport due to his listing on terrorism databases, while a Palestinian, Fawas Ajjur, was arrested in Mindanao. Ajjur was allegedly identified by Abu Sayyaf prisoners as their former explosives instructor on the blood-soakedisland of Jolo (pronounced HO-lo), in the Sulu archipelago.

THE JUNGLE
‘Don’t misinterpret this as flippant. We are sad because today we have killed people’, says Colonel Orlando E. De Leon of the Philippine Marines. I am in a Philippines Marine base on the island of Jolo, eating raw goat and drinking ice-cold San Miguel beer as an officer croons another karaoke epic of lost love.
‘This is our way of coping with what we do,’ De Leon says.
Today the Marines shot and killed about ten Abu Sayyaf fighters in an attack on a terrorist camp just four kilometres from my military lodgings. The operation began at around 10 o’clock last night when a local informant slipped the Marines a tip about the jungle camp and said that the 30 or so ‘Abus’, as the troops call their enemy, were holding a kidnap victim.
By midnight a group of sixty Marines began to creep into positions around the camp, with everyone in place by dawn, and a ring of reinforcements waited back should the Abu Sayyaf launch a successful counterattack.
The commanding officer, Colonel Juancho Sabban, tells me that they let the terrorists relax. ‘Dawn came, so they thought they were OK. They were boiling water for coffee, which gave them away – smoke. Then we attack’, he says, declining an offer of the microphone: ‘No, my men sing for me.’
The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas returned fire, taking about 45 minutes to shoot themselves out of the trap, dragging the kidnap victim with them but leaving behind several dead, including two commanders apparently involved in the raid on Malaysia.
Relatives of the slain took some of the bodies away to prepare and bury before sunset, in accordance with Muslim custom, which causes some confusion about the number of dead. The unclaimed corpses ranged in age from teenagers to the near-elderly, and the Marines truss them on poles to carry out of the jungle. ‘Their relatives are probably afraid,’ Sabban says.
‘There were blood trails, so we know they suffered wounded’, he adds, signalling one of his privates to replenish the beer. One the Government side, only two men were hit, suffering minor gunshot wounds to the hand and foot.
The Abu Sayyaf have been known to kidnap doctors to treat their wounded, and in one infamous incident stormed a hospital in the Christian town of Basilan, taking away medical staff, some of whom were raped, mutilated and murdered.
Sabban says that they will keep an eye on doctors after this encounter, but it is more likely that the Abu Sayyaf will pack their wounds with herbs according to traditions followed for centuries by the Sulu island people, known as Tausugs. Other military and intelligence sources tell me that the Abu Sayyaf take their wounded to nearby parts of Malaysia, where they share more kinship ties than they do with the bulk of the Philippines.
Jolo is a strange place. Its volcanic peaks, freshwater crater lakes and unspoilt beaches are overwhelmingly beautiful – a traveller’s dream. Even from that icon of war in the tropics, the Huey helicopter with a gunner at each door, the island looks too exquisite and too small to be a battleground.
However, Jolo’s jungles and coconut palm forests are thick with killers and outlaws. An estimated 500 heavily armed Abu Sayyaf fighters roam the island in teams, hiding in camouflaged bunkers or visiting their families after conducting terrorist attacks elsewhere in the archipelago; stowing hostages while waiting for ransoms, and hitting the military with improvised explosive devices and snipings.
Parked near the karaoke hut is a shot-up battered truck, the legacy of a nearby ambush a few days ago which killed three Marines.
Yet the Abu Sayyaf are not the only game in town. There are also about 1200 wayward guerrillas of the Moro National Lib-eration Front who have resumed their rebellion in violation of the MNLF’s 1996 peace treaty with the Government. Then there are the plentiful but less-organised kidnap-for-ransom-groups (KFRGs), and any number of heavily-armed criminals of opportunity. Oh, and then there’s the reported intrusion of al-Qa’ida. All on an island with a population of about 500,000, about one-eighth that of Sydney.
Jolo has been divided into two sectors for security purposes, with the Marines working one half and the army the other. When enemy forces launch large-scale attacks, as happens often enough, these two branches of the armed forces fight together.
The day after the raw goat, I board a Huey helicopter which flies me to Hill 300, which the army is occupying after recent fighting with both the Abu Sayyaf and renegade elements of the MNLF. Chinese tombs of travellers who died here a thousand years ago sit atop the hill. The graves have become a Muslim holy site, and the trees here are covered with fluttering plastic rubbish bags which have been tied to the branches as a nod of religious respect from the locals, who would otherwise just throw their trash on the ground. One of the Abu Sayyaf commanders, an Islamic mystic known as Dr Abu Pula, conducted rituals here before the army captured the hill. His men would also hang about asking pilgrims to pay a fee before they could bring their children close for a blessing.
The officer who assumed command of the offensive after two of his superiors were cut down, Major Feliciano Tabanao, tells me locals are happy to have free entry to the site even if Hill 300 is occupied by Government troops, many of whom are Catholic.
Yet as we listen to the pinging of insects and take in the view down to the stilt houses on the shores and out to the smaller islands of the Sulu Sea, Tabanao tells me that in the last couple of weeks soldiers have been killed and wounded from ambushes and improvised explosive devices.
‘This area is a known lair of the ASG. There are about sixty or seventy of them around here – highly mobile – and we have reports that they are laying landmines. Right now I cannot guarantee your safety’, says Tabanao, who seems very tired. He talks about the dead of this mission – his colleagues and an 11-year-old child caught in the crossfire.
I join a patrol down the inland side of Hill 300. The red dirt sticks in large clumps to my boots, weighing them down. Tabanao tells me that the ever-resourceful Abu Sayyaf ride horses through these areas, moving their supplies much faster than the troops can in many parts.
‘We don’t have horses’, he says.
Eventually we come to an empty village of battered houses built over formi-dable bunkers – large excavated areas covered by a double layer of coconut palm logs. An abandoned schoolhouse still has Arabic lessons chalked on its blackboards, and Tabanao points out a large kite leaning against a wall. ‘They use the kites as signals to warn of our movements,’ he says.
One of the pilots with us says that the kites are also used as a defence against helicopters. During Government attacks, guerrillas send up kites on heavy nylon strings which get tangled in the rotors.
The soldiers are careful to contain any sign of the religious tension many of them must feel serving somewhere like Jolo, but I spot a local word for ‘pig’ written on the schoolhouse door, an obvious slight to Muslim sensibilities.
As we wait back on Hill 300 for the Hueys to return, Tabanao tells me that although the military is making life hard for the Abu Sayyaf on Jolo, the enemy is very skilled and getting more so. The improvised explosive devices that are claiming troops are growing more sophisticated. ‘We have reports of foreigners training locals in IEDs, and reports that a handful [of locals] went to Cotabato for explosives training’, Tabanao says.
Also, while the military does not have control over the seaways, ‘the leaders of ASG can get in and out easily – they come by boat’, he says.
Concern is growing about seaborne attacks by JI and Abu Sayyaf, particularly since a man arrested for allegedly planting Manila’s Valentine’s Day bomb said that the terror groups had earlier sent him to scuba training in preparation for strikes.
The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas of Jolo and Basilan know the water better than most; many of them grew up in the offshore stilt houses where small boats are the only way to get around. The sea is their highway, one general tells me, and with their famous quadruple-outboard motor 1,000 horsepower speedboats, the terrorists can easily travel at about 40 knots.
De Leon of the Marines looks pained when I ask him about this one afternoon at a base of the Marine Battalion landing Team on Jolo’s Quezon Beach, a glorious strip of sand and crystal clear water.
‘They are faster than us. How can we compete? We can only do 15 knots,’ says De Leon, walking us over to a row of very modest little outboards with 60 horsepower engines. ‘The ASG can outrun us on water. They can get away and hide their boats in the mangroves, with leaves on top so we cannot see them. They can cross the ocean at high speed, as they did in their attack on Dos Palmos [a resort on a distant island]. We need good, fast boats for amphibious assaults. It is what we are trained to do’, he says.

DEBRIEF
The Philippines lost about a million people in the World War II. Manila was destroyed. Since then the Filipinos have endured multiple civil wars, natural disasters, dictatorship, massive corruption, widespread violent crime, and a democracy that has failed in the eyes of a growing proportion of the population.
Against that sort of backdrop, Filipinos could be forgiven for being slow to take counter-terrorism as seriously as do many Western countries. Yet slowly the authorities have realised that their calamitous financial state is unlikely to pick up should potential investors feel they run a serious risk of face bombings, sabotage, and kidnapping if they set up shop.
Even substantial portions of the MILF seem to have realised that without peace and security, the people they claim to represent will stay poor and impoverished. Part of the MILF’s realisation is waking up to what bad friends they’ve been keeping.
The rebel’s spokesman, Eid Kabalu, admits that JI has ties to some parts of the MILF, coming clean after years of issuing blunt denials and far-fetched assertions that the Indonesians just hung around the training camps without anybody noticing.
‘Honest-to-goodness, yes, there are some elements within the MILF who were able to establish a link with this group, but now we are trying to address this issue’, says Kabalu, from his home in Cotabato City.
The new consciousness in the MILF’s progressive faction, led by Chairman Al Haj Murad, even extends to wanting in on the anti-JI attacks. The military couldn’t do it properly on their own, Kabalu says. ‘You will notice that [in Lactao’s April assault] instead of hitting their target they hit us, our men on the ground.’
Despite April’s stuff-up, the MILF has since validated the Government’s hit list and is helping work out a battle plan, Kabalu says. What’s more, Kabalu talks openly of his organisation’s hand in betraying one of the world’s most accomplished and well-connected terrorists, Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, who helped establish JI’s training at Camp Abu Bakar after the shift from Afghanistan.
‘There are some MILF elements who co-ordinated with the authorities [and] that is why he was effectively pinned down’, says Kabalu about al-Ghozi’s shooting death a few months after the bomber made fools of the Government by escaping from jail the day of Prime Minister John Howard’s visit to Manila for the signing of a joint memorandum of understanding on terrorism.
The MILF’s assistance is acknowledged by the commander of the armed forces in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, General Alberto Fernando Braganza. ‘There has been information provided by them that [has] triggered our operational activities’, says General Braganza, who is approaching retirement in September and seems a little less fired up than after his instalment last year.
Perhaps frustration is taking its toll. Last November Braganza proudly told me there had been no major terrorist inci-dents for two years (which was true if you squint hard and overlook the 170 combined dead from blasts at Davao and the Super- ferry sinking). Mindanao is a very peaceful place, he told me then. Yet several bombs have struck since November, and now Braganza admits that although the military has neutralised some terrorists,
including 10 to 15 JI members, ‘there have been persistent reports of training activities in the central Mindanao area … [and] it’s expected that they also have their bases in the urban centres as part of their support system.’
Furthermore, the interception of the Palestinian in Mindanao ‘is a clear indication of the involvement of al-Qa’ida here,’ says Braganza, whose recognition of the problem seems to have won respect from U.S. officials more used to a culture of denial.
‘Braganza’s kicking some serious ass’, says a U.S. official who pulled his hair out last year over the Government taking months (during which a national election came and went) to admit that the Superferry 14 was bombed, just as the Abu Sayyaf had detailed in public statements.
Politicians have raised hell over U.S. claims that the Philippine borders are wide open to terrorists, but Braganza says frankly, they don’t have enough boats to secure Mindanao’s borders – which an Australian official described to me as ‘non-existent’. Nor is Braganza pretending that a peace deal with the MILF will solve everything. Some terrorist groups will dissolve, but ‘we expect that there will still be some that will remain, like the Abu Sayyaf Group and the JI network,’ he says.
Braganza advocates a combination of military action with a drive to bring law, development and education to regions where generations have grown up inside a guerrilla war. US and Australian aid projects are greatly
appreciated, he says.
However, the military is just a tool of politics, as the reconnaissance lieutenant said on the mountains above Abu Bakar, and Mindanao’s politics is hard core. Plans for a joint U.S.-Filipino military and development sweep across Jolo, like that which cleaned up Basilan three years ago, were shelved after fierce opposition from local politicians.
Yet, as Braganza says, almost all of Jolo’s mayors live across the Basilan Strait in Zamboanga City, which has a large military presence as the armed forces headquarters for Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago.
‘They have their residences here; their children go to school here; they have properties here’, Braganza says. As many observers see it, plenty of the region’s politicians are doing well out of the situation, so why would they want to change it?
Braganza will be gone in a few months, and his replacement will face all the difficulties of fighting cashed-up and determined enemies while the Philippine economy continues to deteriorate. Local politicians, on the other hand, often stay in power for a decade or more in the Philippines, and are often succeeded by close relatives.
So to get the views of someone who will still be making decisions when Braganza packs up, I visit a mayor – and a mayor who does live in his seat of power. Soud B. Tan is the mayor of the notorious Jolo City, where Philippine security analysts say I am almost certain to be snatched if I don’t move with substantial firepower. ‘You won’t make it three blocks’, one tells me. ‘Men will produce guns and force you into a jeepney, a car, anything. No one will interfere.’ Duly protected, I drop by Tan’s mayoral compound to hear his take on matters.
Of all the many guns I’ve seen in the Philippines, Tan’s bodyguards are packing some of the snazziest – gleaming little room sprayers in tip-top condition. With his guards stationed out the front, in the hallway, and in the office where we talk, Tan sets me straight on the negative impressions people have of his town.
‘I can tell you that Jolo is a peaceful place to live … it’s a very peaceful place. Jolo’s only a little bit congested with people coming in’, says Tan.
Yes, they are coming in, so if anyone feels like helping stop them – for all our sakes – and has a little-used fast boat or two, I know some guys who could really do with them. Anyone?
An imperfect but proactive approach is surely better than doing too little, for the jihadists will exploit any lull in the counter-terrorism campaign. If they are using all their wits and resources just to stay alive, then their potential targets – including us – are safer. If they have the time and space to recruit, train and plan, then disaster is on its way.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 09:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Aug 05, Yes Prime Minister

Has National got the nous to govern?

It is shaping up as one of the closest election battles in two decades – an election that Labour thought it had in the bag. IAN WISHART analyses whether National has what it takes to resume command, and what Labour might do if given another term in office

Murray McCully draws in his breath, glancing out the Koru lounge window at the jet screaming down the runway, and waits for the boarding call announcement to finish reverberating before venturing an answer: “If Labour get a third term, they’re going to see that as their swansong and there’ll be no holding back whatsoever.”
At 52, and an MP since 1987, the former corporate PR strategist is now one of National’s most seasoned operators, and a close advisor to party leader Don Brash. For McCully, this election is a big deal, and not just because McCully can sniff a Cabinet Minister’s salary again for the first time in six years. No, this time National’s will to win is about more than merely returning to power: to listen to McCully and Brash, it’s now about righting some wrongs, about acknowledging the mistakes of the past and treating the public with a new respect. For a long time in politics, there’s been a kind of gentlemen’s agreement about how far radical agendas can be pushed, how far constitutional conventions can be stretched. The reason for this gentlemen’s agreement was simple: without a written constitution, New Zealand relied on the integrity and goodwill of successive administrations to acknowledge that although they had absolute power on paper, they should not exercise absolute power in principle except in the case of a national emergency.
David Lange’s 1984 Labour government changed all that. Having campaigned largely on the anti-nuclear issue and an end to Muldoonism, Lange and Roger Douglas extended their mandate far beyond what the electorate had anticipated. The reforms of the 1980s were breathtaking in their vision and scope and, because of that, they captured the hearts and minds of the media. For Labour, this was crucial. Without favourable media coverage, the government knew it could not achieve its far-reaching reform goals.
By the 1987 election, when McCully finally entered parliament as part of the public backlash against Labour, the Government was embarking on phase two of its major reforms – restructuring the state sector. By 1990, with Lange gone, Labour had chewed through two more Prime Ministers, Palmer and Moore, worn out several finance ministers, mismanaged the BNZ and the Cook Islands tax haven scandals, and outflanked the National Party on the economic right. Although voters in the 1990 election resoundingly threw out a tired Labour Government, with Helen Clark as Deputy Prime Minister, the election was National’s to win only because it was the only other showboat in port, not because people were enamoured of National itself.
July 2005, fifteen years after the election that brought the last National Government to power, the electoral pre-conditions now are eerily similar to those at the end of the eighties: Labour’s once-formidable front bench are looking tired and scandal-plagued, there are strong rumours that Helen Clark’s once impregnable media team have been on the verge of quitting, caucus black sheep John Tamihere has given an insider’s view of the ‘lesbian sisterhood’ agenda dominating the Clark Beehive, and Finance Minister Michael Cullen has delivered a black budget to rival Nordmeyer’s election-killer in the late fifties.
Sitting on a multibillion dollar surplus, Labour offered voters a tax cut equivalent to just $0.67 cents a week - less than the value of a packet of chewing gum - with the added proviso that Labour’s generous offer would not kick in for another three years.
It was, offers McCully, the Mother of all Budget insults, but not the only reason for Labour’s final deflation in the polls:
“There’s no one incident or issue. You tend to see an accumulation of issues and then finally there’s a straw that breaks the camel’s back. Earlier this year we had the 111 saga, the NCEA and so on, Don Brash was saying to some of us ‘Good God, it’s not making any difference in the polls!’. Some of us who’d seen this process before were very confident that if the trend continued that sooner or later there’d be a point where things collapsed.
“I think the Budget was probably the thing that signaled to the public in a profound sort of way that these guys are utterly disdainful of the people they’re supposed to serve. At a time when they’re running $7.5 billion surpluses and when they can allow an expectation of tax cuts to be created, they can then turn around and say ‘well, this is what you’ll get in three years’ time’ – I think to a lot of people that just summed up the whole culture. If you’re looking for a tipping point, that was it, but simply because it sat at the end of a long list of other things that have done considerable damage.”
The beginning of the end for Labour arrived on the morning of Monday April 4, 2005, when Prime Minister Helen Clark hissed to Tamihere in a 6am phone call: “I’m going to be interviewed by Paul Holmes in a few minutes (the PM’s Monday slot on Newstalk ZB is often pre-recorded), what exactly am I supposed to tell him?”
For Clark, the timing could not have been worse. The previous day she’d wrapped up Labour’s pre-election conference in Wellington to adulation and praise from hundreds of party members on the floor, convinced that her lead in the polls was unassailable and that Labour would indeed become ‘the natural party of government’, as president Mike Williams was suggesting.
Yet here, on Monday morning, the headlines did not reflect the success of the party conference and the presidential aura of the Prime Minister, but instead that Tamihere had spilled the beans on serious factional splits within the outwardly unified Labour, and a plot by “frontbums…tossers…and queers” to socially engineer New Zealand.
Labour’s list had just been announced, and Tamihere highlighted the elevation of lesbian and former Labour president Maryan Street to a guaranteed seat in parliament via the list. The left wing, he warned, was gearing up to seriously control Labour after the election.
National leader Don Brash couldn’t believe his good fortune as the Tamihere saga played out, night after night.
“It was certainly helpful to have confirmed from inside the Labour Party caucus what we’d been saying about the Labour Government for a long time. People were a bit inclined to say ‘well National would say that wouldn’t they’ and it was only the party faithful believing us, all of a sudden someone from deep inside Labour says that basically everything the public had suspected about Labour was in fact true.”
Even so, like McCully, Brash recognises that Tamihere was only an entrée, and that Labour’s fall coincides with the public finally beginning to discern a difference between the main parties.
“I think it’s a combination of positives and negatives. Positives about our programme: we’re outlining a policy on the Treaty of Waitangi, on welfare reform, on roading, on education, law and order and so on, which is appealing to the electorate. We’ve also announced policy on racing, agriculture, biosecurity – all of which are appealing to parts of the electorate.
“Tax is still to come, but we’ve made it clear that there is scope for beginning a process of tax reduction on the first of April next year. Clearly that won’t be a massive tax reduction, it can’t be until we get government spending under control, but as we do that we think we can gradually ease the tax burden which hardworking New Zealanders are carrying.
On the negative side, I think people are getting increasingly angry about the government, and that’s partly about a perception that they’re hellbent on a politically-correct social engineering agenda, but it’s partly also a whole series of individual disasters – the 111 emergency call system report, the NCEA scholarship exams, the Immigration Service problems, the Peter Doone affair, the Budget itself disappointed people in a very substantial way, the total muck-up about the Kyoto Protocol which was supposed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to NZ and it’s now clear that it’s going to cost us very substantial amounts of money – potentially more than a billion dollars.
“And then of course we’ve seen the government quite desperately trying to change direction. Michael Cullen suddenly finding half a billion dollars to spend on roads when only six weeks back he was saying he could only provide a further one hundred million and there’s no scope for more and no scope for tax relief – but out of thin air he finds another $500 million.
“Then we saw of course the land access thing. The Government’s been hellbent on giving the public access across private farmland, then all of a sudden they say no, they’re going to defer that for further consultation after the election. We saw it again with the pylons through the Waikato. That decision was supposed to be made pre-election, and all of a sudden they’re saying it won’t be made until after the election. So I think the public is getting cynical about Labour at the same time as they’re finding National’s policies more attractive.
“There are also a whole lot of individually small things which are irritating people, and I heard a journalist the other day saying that for him the tipping point had been Jonathan Hunt sitting in his High Commissioner’s car on Anzac Day during a shower of rain when the rest of the ceremony was going on in the rain. He said that for him, that was the last straw. So I think it’s a combination of positive things about National and negative things about Labour.”
Commentators watching the new political landscape unfolding around them can’t help but be fascinated by the vision of the once-powerful Clark administration as impending road-kill in the headlights of an oncoming centre-right resurgence.
“Clark has also been trying to corner the ‘family’ market,” wrote Colin James in the Herald, “witness the bus shelter posters you paid for as taxpayers telling you your family has never had it so good. Now there are billboards of a flying baby.
“The flying baby is a puzzling ploy, given Clark’s babylessness. Since the ‘mainstream’ has babies, that seems to be singing to multiple-babied Brash’s tune.”
Indeed, if you were looking for evidence that Labour’s strategy team had lost the plot, you wouldn’t have to go far past one of their billboards. Internet bloggers moved rapidly to parody the image of a baby caught up in red tape.
“Labour are SO going to regret that ad campaign,” posted one blogger in early July. “I reckon ‘Red Tape from Cradle to Grave’ would be a little more succinct,” wrote another.
National’s Murray McCully, likewise, is bemused.
“They’re running a slogan, ‘You’re better off with Labour’, but they’re doing that with public money, a taxpayer-funded programme on one hand and then piggy-backing off that with private Labour party advertising on the other, which is a highly questionable activity.
“I think if they get a third term you’re going to get firstly a consolidation of the trend of the last six years which is higher and higher taxes. As an article of faith, they simply believe that the cash they collect in revenues belongs to them, and they feel no sense of embarrassment that this is the fruits of the toil and risk-taking of private individuals and those individuals are being denied the opportunity to invest in growth and greater employment opportunities.
“So you’re going to see a continuation of the current trend – the indexation proposal that Cullen brought down in the Budget, three years before it comes in, small bracket creep for everybody before we get there.
“I think on the treaty stuff you’re going to see a whole lot of settlements completed miraculously just after the election. Under the Seabed Foreshore legislation there are a number of negotiations that are going on directly, Ngati Porou, Tainui and things like that, and I don’t think it’s too much to suggest you’ll see very substantial customary rights acknowledged in agreements that will be pretty much signaled to those groups to maintain their political support before the election but which will only manifest themselves in some kind of public agreement afterwards, and you will see a further trend towards separatism.
“Consolidation of the role of the unions. We’re already seeing differential pay rates in the state sector depending on whether you’re a union member or not, large sums of money are being given directly from the Department of Labour to the trade unions for all sorts of spurious ‘development’ purposes, and some of it of course indirectly finds its way back into the coffers of the Labour Party. You can expect to see a consolidation of that union influence, particularly in the education sector where Mallard runs the portfolio pretty much in conjunction with the two education unions and follows policies pretty much their own.”
And although National can easily be accused of scaremongering with its predictions, they’re not without independent corroboration. John Tamihere, before he was muzzled by the Ninth Floor, told Investigate that Labour’s list would bring a new wave of left wing trade unionists into Parliament.
“When you look at the list, the union movement have got four new members coming in, end of story. And so they’ve done extraordinarily well at reasserting themselves. They don’t deserve to have that level of influence… Just because they controlled yesterday doesn’t mean they should control tomorrow.”
Asked what the unions’ three year plan was, Tamihere was blunt:
“Well, obviously greater influence. I think we f***ed up with our 2004 amendments to the Employment Relations Act. I think it’s very silly, a number of things that we did then, merely to give unions greater organizational capabilities. I don’t think it’ll translate to greater union membership, but having said that it’s another impost and imposition on business… It’s really ugly.”
The Herald’s Colin James senses electoral blood in the air, and the possibility that Helen Clark may be turning into a liability for Labour, if National’s campaign reinforces to the public that Clark is not a mainstream “Us”, but a social-engineering “Them”.
“Labour’s PC second term has given Brash scope to do that. How might Clark retrieve the initiative? By rebuilding her image of down-to-earth competence and acquiring the one-of-us-ness prime ministers have to have.
“That’s now a tall order. Brash, with tax and populism, has got the ‘mainstream’ jump on her.”
Has Labour’s politically-correct second term taken the party, Icarus-like, too close to the fire? Murray McCully thinks so, but warns that a third term Labour government would take PC legislation to a radical new level, knowing it would be the party’s final chance.
“In terms of what you might call the political correctness, I think you’ll just see a continuation of the trend we’ve seen in the last six years where the fringe groups that drive the government’s agenda in this area are going to push through Georgina Beyer’s transgender bill to be passed, and various other pieces of legislation of that sort. They’re just going to get on with doing the things that their constituencies demand because they’ll see a third term as an unexpected bonus and you’ll see what they really think!”
McCully also fears that Labour is preparing to gerrymander massive constitutional changes to New Zealand.
Yeah, that’s on the list, and the manner in which they dealt with the Supreme Court issue gives you a rough indication of how much regard they’ll have for alternative points of view on the way through. So they’ll get through the election and decide that this is their final opportunity to make some fundamental changes without necessarily troubling too much about whether there’s a genuine consensus for it.”
So far, National has been good at articulating what Labour might do, given half a chance. The question on the lips of many voters, conversely, is whether electing the centre right back into power will be a return to the eighties and nineties.
Has National learnt from its mistakes? McCully believes so.
“My own observation, having been around during most of the nineties, is that there are some pretty harsh lessons that the National Government of the nineties should have learnt. As one who was there for most of that period as a Minister, I’d like to think we’d taken those messages on board, particularly from the early part of the 90s.
“The primary one is that in politics, what you can’t sell you can’t have. We saw, both in the late 80s and early 90s, governments trying to do things they thought would be good for people, without turning their minds as to whether they could secure acceptance from the public for some of those policies. I think that did a huge amount of damage to the National party’s standing in 91, when I first came into the ministry – we’d sunk below 20% in the polls.
“I was around at the time of the Mother of all Budgets, and you couldn’t go through that process as a relatively new politician without learning that lesson. I’d like to think that others who were with me at the same time will, if we have the opportunity to form a government, have that lesson sitting very firmly at the top of their minds.
“I think the big lesson is that you’ve got to have a programme that focuses on the things that are really important, and use your political capital really well to achieve those things, and don’t get distracted with things that may not carry too much in the way of payback, particularly if they’re going to absorb a whole lot of energy in the marketing.
“You may have seen Don Brash saying that he’s going to be focused on the priorities that ‘make the boat go faster’ to borrow Sir Peter Blake’s expression. I think the big lesson that we’ve learnt from the early 90s is that we should focus on those things that are going to really matter, and do them well.”
For his part, Don Brash agrees, telling Investigate:
“I’m certainly different. I’m not beholden to any lobby group. I was brought up on the political left, in a Presbyterian manse, with a very strong commitment to concern for the disadvantaged and when I was brought up what I was explicitly taught was that to be concerned for the disadvantaged was to be a Fabian socialist – that was my background and tradition. I’m no less concerned about the disadvantaged now than when I was a Fabian socialist, but I’ve reached the very firm conclusion that socialism does not deliver in the way its supporters believe it does.
“But my concern about education, welfare reform and so on, is primarily about concern for the people who are crushed by the failings in the education system and the current welfare system. Welfare costs the average worker $50 a week to fund, about $14 million a day, and that doesn’t include NZ super, just the major benefits. But in a sense that’s the smaller of the two costs. The other is the human cost of having 300,000 working age adults and their quarter million children dependent on a handout from the taxpayer. Now of course there’ll be some people who will be and should be supported by the taxpayer indefinitely – people who are seriously ill or invalided in some way – but for most of those 300,000 people we should be working to get them off dependence on a state handout as soon as we can, because that saves not only financial costs but also a very large human cost.”
But if a National/NZ First coalition is elected in September, it’ll face an economy left behind by Labour where the tide’s going out. Can the former Reserve Bank Governor steer us towards the good times again, and “make the boat go faster”?
“I think you’re absolutely correct,” says Brash, “the economy has already slowed down quite markedly. If you take GDP growth over the six months to March, we had a 0.3 quarter in December and a 0.6 quarter in March, which is 0.9 for the six months to March and an annualized rate of growth of 1.8, so it’s come off to a very substantial extent from the 4% we’ve had for the last year or two.
“In a sense I am less concerned about a short turn slowdown driven by high exchange rates and various other things, than I am about the longer term trend outlook. And the treasury’s own projections which were included in the budget suggest that they think growth in the next ten years will be markedly slower than growth in the last ten years. Now there are a variety of reasons for that, but if true then the gap in living standards between NZ and Australia will get wider not narrower, and that’s my real worry, not the short term cyclical slowdown that’s already well underway.”
So what’s National’s vision for managing this new economy?
“We have to take steps to increase our growth in income per capita, and that is about having a tax structure which encourages investment, encourages people to get skilled, encourages people to take responsibility, and doesn’t discourage those things. I think it’s about getting infrastructure fixed up, particularly roading and electricity, it means fixing the Resource Management Act, and we’re committed to getting a major amendment of that into the House within three months of becoming government and getting it passed within nine months. It means reducing the compliance costs facing the business sector, particularly small businesses beset with red tape. I have to say that the red tape compliance cost issue is not just a problem in the business sector, it’s a problem in the education sector and the health sector. I talk to people in those sectors all the time who say we’re absolutely burdened down having to do more reports and more reports for Wellington.”
A National administration would surgically remove surplus bureaucracy from the health and education sectors, says Brash, saving taxpayers huge amounts by getting rid of paper-shuffling middle-managers and consultants and leaving more money to be spent on frontline services for the public.
We’ve got 120,000 people waiting for first specialist as-sessment currently, and some 60,000 on the waiting list for surgery, so the public is angry about that, they’re angry about the fact that they’ve got quite restricted choice for subsidized drugs from Pharmac, but they’re also making it pretty clear they don’t want a big restructuring. They feel that Health’s been restructured so many times they’re fed up with it. So we don’t plan to embark upon a major restructuring but we do think there’s too much bureaucracy in the sector and we do think there’s scope for improving productivity and particularly we think there’s more scope to use private hospitals in parallel with public ones.”
With just weeks until the election and the polls ruling out Act as dead and buried bar a Lazarus miracle, Brash is acutely aware that his coalition options are limited. New Zealand First is an obvious potential partner, although Winston may prefer to avoid a formal coalition in favour of keeping any new government honest on an issue by issue basis, and the Maori Party is a potential, although unlikely ally for National.
“I respect Tariana Turia,” admits Brash. “She’s a person who is sincere in what she says, I’ve no doubt at all. But I have to say the differences in policy are pretty substantial. We’re committed to removing references to the principles of the Treaty from legislation because we don’t think they’ll have any meaning. We’re committed to funding on the basis of need, not on the basis of race. We want to remove from the RMA and the Local Government Act special obligations to consult iwi – in other words we want to treat all New Zealanders as equal under the law. And that seems quite a long way from where the Maori Party are.”
And as for Act, Brash says National would actively try to bring some of Act’s best performers under its wing if the minor party fails to cross the five percent threshold and forfeits its seats in Parliament.
“We certainly would want to because some of them have real ability. Without picking out particular individuals there are some very competent members of that party and they’ve made a considerable contribution in Parliament…It would be a pity to lose them from public life.”
If a week in politics is a long time, eight weeks is forever.
“We’re clearly in the race now with a lot of hard work ahead,” says Brash. “Nobody’s getting complacent, nobody’s counting chickens, but it’s certainly possible to contemplate a National Party victory.”

LABOUR’S 3rd TERM AGENDA

PUBLIC ACCESS TO PRIVATELY-OWNED LAND
Issues: The Labour Party wants to introduce legislation giving anyone the right to enter private property for the ostensible purpose of gaining access to waterways. While in theory this looks to be nothing more than formalizing existing informal arrangements between farmers and the community, in practice any move to compel it by law becomes a major encroachment by the State on the rights of any New Zealander to control access to their own property. A person’s home remains their castle only up until the moment that Labour designates it a public thoroughfare. If passed by Labour, such a law could see private land owners liable under OSH rules if a member of the public comes to any harm while traversing their land. It would also make it almost impossible for farmers to prevent people casing their properties for potential home invasion, burglary or stock theft, because the underlying defence available to all members of the public would be a presumption that they were simply en route to the waterway.
Current Status: The Labour Government is kicking for touch, and intends to shelve its proposal until after it has won the election when it will then have power to force it through the House.

THE FART TAX
Issues: Labour wants to be seen as pro-active on the Kyoto Protocol, having committed New Zealand by way of international treaty to a document that contains highly questionable science. While few would disagree that a process of climate change is underway, there is growing evidence it is caused by an increase in the temperature of the sun and natural planetary cycles, rather than human affairs. Nonetheless, having committed NZ to Kyoto Labour has recently been forced to admit it made a billion dollar miscalculation. That means it will have to find hundreds of millions of dollars more to meet our international obligations under the Protocol. It is highly likely that Labour, if re-elected to a final term in office, will force through a raft of new environmental taxes regardless of public opposition, in order to raise money to pay for Kyoto.
Current Status: The Labour Government called off the fart tax in favour of further consultation in the wake of massive protests by farmers that threatened its poll ratings. A re-elected Labour administration with nothing left to lose is unlikely to be so reticent.

PETROL TAX
Issues and current status: As above.

HATE SPEECH LEGISLATION
Issues: Ever since a court ruling that a Christian video about AIDS had been wrongly banned by the film censor, a core group of Labour MPs have been trying to draft laws making it a criminal offense to criticize the beliefs or values of certain groups in the community. A Select Committee hearing recently found submissions overwhelmingly opposed to introducing Hate Speech laws, but nonetheless the idea is gaining political momentum within Labour. The danger of hate speech law is that it restricts the ability of the community to genuinely debate certain issues. The situation is even more serious when protected minority groups then politicize their beliefs, and it then becomes unlawful to criticize their political statements.
Current Status: On the backburner until after the election. No legislation has yet been brought to Parliament.

GEORGINA BEYER’S TRANSGENDER
IDENTITY BILL
Issues: Beyer ostensibly wants to end discrimination on the basis of transsexuality, thereby normalizing the practice. Despite the appeal to the sympathy vote, however, the scientific jury is well and truly out on the merits of transsexual surgery. There is good evidence that people seeking to change genders often have much deeper psychological problems of which gender identity confusion is just one manifestation. In the same way that employers cannot be forced to hire people with serious medical or psychiatric problems, should the same employers be forced to hire people in a state of denial about their own sexual identity? Should the Scouting or Guide movements be compelled to hire transsexual applicants to work with youth?
Current Status: The Labour Government is kicking for touch, and intends to shelve the Bill until after it has won the election when it will then have power to force it through the House.

GAY ADOPTION
Issues: Should a transgender person be permitted to adopt children, for example? Under Beyer’s Bill, once it becomes unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of transsexuality, the Gay Lesbian Bi Transgender (GLBT) community moves one step closer to effectively purchasing children ‘off the shelf’ by way of adoption with Government approval. It is one thing for gay couples to privately conceive children themselves – the child will be living with at least one of its biological parents – but it is an entirely more dangerous ethical issue to approve of GLBT child adoption where none of the parties is the biological parent, and where the child is not given a say as to what kind of ‘family’ the State will choose for it. While GLBT activists claim the “right” to adopt, they do not acknowledge the right of children to be brought up in natural families – i.e., mother and father.
Current Status: The groundwork for gay adoption has already been laid with the Care of Children Bill. It would only require an amendment to that Act once Labour has returned to power for a third term.

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Investigate Jul 05, The Unfortunate Experiment

Whatever happened to New Zealand’s Defence Force?

Retired Skyhawk pilot ROSS EWING takes a spin around Government defence bungles of the past six years, and fires some missiles of his own

If the scuttlebutt heard around Parliament is to be believed, the Government has finally realised that it made a mistake in disbanding the Air Combat Force. It was an unfortunate experiment, which failed, utterly.
Scrubbing the jets was something that grew out of the Labour Party’s “anti-war” roots in the 1970s. Prime Minister Clark was around when the Air Force’s new Skyhawks were paraded in Auckland, towed from their unloading wharf to nearby Whenuapai, and was reportedly amongst a small clique that said words to the effect of, we will live to see the day when those “baby killing” jets are grounded. Well, they did.
But Clark and her government, too busy gloating over the ease of the supposed 2001 anti-war victory, failed to see that their disbanding action had consequences far beyond their wisdom and mere ideological point-scoring.
Disbanding the ACF was an un-mandated decision and one that lost the country substantial credibility around the world and caused alienation – especially among the country’s previous allies like Australia and America. Some said, we alienated the very allies we needed. The action caused a large public outcry at the time, an outcry that has grumbled on since despite ongoing attempts by government-paid spin-doctors to shut down all utterings on defence matters.
Removing the ACF took the heart out of the Air Force and this in turn took the heart out of defence as a whole. New Zealand was consequently left with no “force” at all. The Government had put political ideology ahead of social responsibility and its “gutting” action brought defence, already shamefully run down by the previous government, to its very knees.
As if this wasn’t enough, the Government also made sure that the jet training infrastructure and its overall technical support was also ripped away. Hundreds of Air Force ground technicians were made redundant and many pilots left only to be snapped up by other armed forces around the world.
The Government then squandered large amounts of money on a very expensive and highly questionable mishmash of defence equipment including its now infamous and controversial Army light armoured vehicle (LAVIII) purchase. Subsequent investigations by the Auditor General found that in a number of purchases it had used quite irregular tendering antics and found its procuring mechanisms were far from robust. Defence bought two second hand replacement V.I.P. jetliners, but this was hardly defence equipment; more like long range taxies for politicians and bureaucrats.
The Government had lost touch with the people of New Zealand, especially the young people who left all three services in record numbers. This caused a crisis in experience levels across Defence and the situation was compounded by the fact that potential recruits stopped knocking at the defence door.
The direct cause of these fundamental problems was the demise of the ACF. It is well known to many that an ACF provides a positive interface between the combat component of a defence force and the general public, which, after all, funds it. A recent statement on this, from an overseas country, noted that such operational units “greatly assist the recruiting and retention goals of the military services, enhance esprit de corps among uniformed men and women, as well as demonstrate the professional skills and capabilities of the armed forces to the... public and [the country’s] allies.”
The litany of New Zealand defence disasters and the pitiful run-down state of its three armed services – the Army had several fatalities – went on. It then became known that the Returned Services Association was about to produce a written statement that would disagree with Government policy on defence. The Government realised that both it and Defence were in serious trouble and so it announced a very predictable and politically defusing ploy: It threw some money at it – $4.6 billion over 10 years, it said. But the action and amount were immediately criticised as “smoke and mirrors” and it was pointed out that they did not take full account of existing expenditure, inflation, capital charges, and taxation. It was also said that money wouldn’t fix what was largely a self-caused political problem: No one wanted to stay in, or join, a force when most of it was missing.
It was as if, when it came to power, the Government knew absolutely nothing about the meaning or vital function of a country’s defence or where defence fitted alongside foreign affairs and trade. Or it just didn’t want to know, having its own agenda and believing that defence stood for “peace only”. It was determined to take over the control of defence, and it did. There have been several public reports into this situation including one written by Derek Quigley on the F-16s, and an extensive in-depth report written by Don Hunn who was previously a very high ranking public servant. But the results and recommendations of these have been completely buried by the Government even though the Hunn Report, for example, noted that Labour’s revised defence set-up was “unworkable”.
Compounding the situation and also changing it drastically for New Zealand was a move to have the appointment of the top defence person, namely the Chief of Defence Force (previously the Chief of Defence Staff), appointed by the State Services Commission, instead of by the Minister acting on the recommendation of the uniformed branch of Defence. CDF thus became, effectively, a political appointment, the present incumbent doing nothing to dissuade one from this point of view.
Since coming to power in 1999, history shows that the Government initially, led by its “minister of no defence”, went off on a completely non-defence tangent, but then started to learn the error of its ways. It is starting, at last, to see and learn what the wider ramifications of defence are all about; this learning exercise being at taxpayer expense, of course.
It is even starting to wake up and knuckle down to talks with the Australians and Americans who have been secretly laughing behind New Zealand’s back at its pitiful contribution to “real” defence.
Defence Minister, Mark Burton, has been in talks about “exercises” with his Australian equivalent; while Foreign Affairs Minister, Phil Goff, has reportedly been talking to Americans although one does get the impression that such conversation is light in substance and is largely one-way.
The Defence Force is meanwhile trying to advertise for new recruits, being sure to emphasise the international aspects of such a commitment and to cover up the actual dilapidated state of much of the existing equipment as well as the faded morale.
But neither it, nor the Government, has come to grips with the fundamental concept that young people join a defence force to serve New Zealand and New Zealanders. No one wants to join a defence force – army, navy or air force – in which the primary task is to be aid working in other often distant, dusty or destabilised countries around the world. They know that such a role would be at the cost of leaving New Zealand and New Zealanders completely undefended against any untoward threat. Peacekeeping along with aid to the community back home they rightly see as an altruistic offshoot, in the interests of world peace, but not as an absolute replacement for the primary role. Military people make good peacekeepers, but peacekeepers do not make good military people. Young military aspirants are just not interested in devoting their working life solely to “dish washing”, and who can blame them? Where does the current government expect to find the young people it needs? Through immigration?
Many young people believe that peace does not come without a price and some would say that price is eternal vigilance. They can see that for peace to be maintained it must be enforced by muscle where necessary as it cannot be maintained on its own. Good keen men and women want to be involved in contributing to the defence of their own nation, rather than joining a band of mopper-uppers in some distant land, cleaning up someone else’s country after yet someone else has been there.
Most New Zealanders consider the primary role of any government to be to GUARANTEE the defence of its citizens. It is not to hope for someone else’s “best efforts”. It seems very clear that this government has given over this responsibility to a self-appointed world authority – the UN – one that has far from convinced thinking people around the world that it is a capable, effective and honest world-governing organisation. It has no mandate. It has no teeth. What has stopped the concept of a “united nations” from working? Allied with that, is the question: do New Zealanders want to give up their sovereignty to someone else? What New Zealand assets have our politicians already covertly given away via signed UN Treaties? This is of perplexing concern. Does New Zealand want to see the future of its nation taken over by a world body?
Despite all this, the Government seems to have become transfixed on peacekeeping and peace-building in support of the United Nations, which it sees ultimately as this country’s defence, economic and globalising saviour. One has to ask why has it adopted this stance? Is it for the betterment of New Zealand? Or of its politicians? Whatever, its stance is something that this Government has yet to fully convince potential military recruits, and voters.
The situation is a conundrum.
So what is the answer? A solution will obviously include large amounts of informed public debate. Honest debate will expose the futility of single-minded ideology and will inevitably conclude that, instead of that, our defence is – it must become – a bipartisan matter. The country’s superannuation scheme is bipartisan so why not
Defence? It is, after all, more important.
Such debate will need to include viewing a recently compiled television feature documentary on defence, called New Zealand Defence. It has interviews with about 20 commentators: authors, historians, retired diplomats, broadcasters, scientists, legal philosophers and newspaper editors. It also had several retired servicemen but, interestingly, no politicians or public officials. New Zealand Defence was bought by TVNZ some months ago but the State broadcaster has since sat on it as if trying to keep the opposition from getting hold of it – or the public from seeing it. This antic is despite public criticism that the “TVNZ Charter [has failed] to put more Kiwis on screen”, something this documentary would undoubtedly do. It deserves public airing.
Debate will also need to include wide dissemination and discussion of that extensive RSA report, Statement of Defence, released last month and which the Government is also desperately trying to bury from public scrutiny. 2005 is, after, all Election year and the Government wouldn’t want defence to become an election issue…
Informed public debate is bound to show that New Zealand has become a third rate banana republic and will continue to deteriorate unless there is a promise to revitalise the three services with a full and complementary structure. The Defence Force needs to be dedicated primarily to achieving a balanced defence arrangement for New Zealand – as we used to have – one that would be capable of covering a host of future unknown situations and threats rather than dealing to a “benign strategic environment”. It needs to have an effective air combat force.
It is said that, although Helen Clark now realises the error of her disastrous deed of dismantling defence, and the domino effect it caused, she will – in true political fashion – fail to do a u-turn on this one. This is despite the fact that any political party that says it will definitely reactivate such a force, and all that comes with it, will get more votes in the forthcoming general election.
Ross Ewing is a defence commentator from Christchurch. He was a jet pilot and flying instructor in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and became a war veteran. He later studied medicine, specialising in aviation medicine. Dr Ewing is a writer and author of several books. He is not a member of any political party.

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Investigate Jul 05, The Good Oil

Life in a world with less petrol

Some are calling it the collapse of the Age of Cities. Others are calling it a wacko conspiracy theory. Some say it will be the end of Global Warming. No matter what your view of the Peak Oil debate, there’s no denying the issue is fast coming to dominate international discussion on energy planning, as CLARE SWINNEY discovers.

Auckland City, 2019. The skytower basks in the glow of the sun’s last rays of the day before it slips below the distant and hazy Waitakere Ranges. The motorways though, are almost empty, as they have been for most of the previous 18 months – ever since petrol hit the latest in an ongoing series of highs – $8 per litre. These days, the traffic is mostly buses and trucks, commuters having long ago given up on runs into the CBD each day in preference for telecommuting from their home computers. The extensive revamp of the city’s motorway network, completed in 2013, is now largely a tarmac wasteland; and down in the centre of town the apartment buildings that sprang up at the turn of the millennium are decrepit and leaking wrecks – the last refuge of the homeless and those who couldn’t afford land in the suburbs or outlying districts.
Such a scenario may sound outlandish, and perhaps it is, but according to a growing number of energy analysts we’re in danger of living the dream-turned-nightmare. Oil, you see, is running out. The ubiquitous black gold that permeates our daily lives in everything from shampoo and soap to pharmaceuticals, pens, computers, telephones and cars, is getting harder and costlier to extract from the ground. On this much virtually everyone, even the skeptics, agrees.
What they don’t agree on is when it’ll happen.
“In the next three years,” argues author and researcher James Howard Kunstler in a recent interview with Grist magazine in the US, “we are going to be feeling the pain. Our lives are going to be noticeably beginning to be disrupted. In the next ten years, you will see the beginning of a major collapse of suburbia.”
New Zealand is a country heavily reliant on oil. Our ability as one of the world’s leading agricultural producers hinges on not just fuel oil for transport, but oil by-products as fertilizers.
According to Kunstler, rising fuel costs will force cities to grow their own food literally in household backyards and farms on the back doorstep. Many people, he says, will find their lifestyles change to accommodate a necessary grow-your-own component. Prices for lifestyle blocks and large city sections will soar, while prices of apartments will plummet.
Although Kunstler was speaking to an American audience, there are those in New Zealand, like the Green Party, who hear his warnings. These are strange and confusing times we are living in, even from a Shakespearian perspective. For in one parliamentary corner we have the Green Party telling us that “peak oil” is a Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum giant stomping towards us that we must prepare now for, while, in the other, our governmental masters have been steadfastly retaining a business-as-usual approach.
Even the media cauldron has been bubbling away furiously on the heat of contradictory messages. While TV3’s Campbell Live painted peak oil as a threat to civilisation as we know it, other mainstream sources have been portraying it as much ado about nothing. For instance, The Dominion Post’s feature on the 21st January this year concluded with quotes from a Danish statistics professor, Bjorn Lomborg, who claims, “We have plenty of oil. We will find more when it’s necessary to do so, but we don’t need to now.” Similarly, Newstalk ZB host Leighton Smith insists on air that “there’s plenty of oil” and the impending oil crisis is “a media beat up,” and to top it off, resource management expert Owen McShane wrote in the New Zealand Herald on 15th April, “We should take no notice” of the Green Party warning.
Perhaps the skeptics can be forgiven. After all, back in the 1970s environmentalists were predicting a new Ice Age by 2,000, and there’s currently huge debate over whether global warming is caused by humans, and is therefore reversible, or by the fact that the sun is getting hotter, in which case no amount of carbon taxes will make a blind bit of difference.
Is this matter of peak oil really much ado about nothing; simply the Green Party exaggerating its significance as a ploy to garner election votes and reduce vehicle emissions? Or are these skeptical media sources misinformed?
Nelson-based geologist Alan Hart, who has worked on the frontline of the oil industry for 30 years, believes the rami-fications of this final oil crisis will be very serious indeed and our media has fundamentally failed to alert people to the realities of what lies ahead. Born in Texas in 1951, he graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with advanced degrees in petroleum geology in 1974 and 1979, and has worked for several oil companies, including the 7th largest US petroleum company, ARCO. Since 2002, he has been on the board of directors of Canadian company, TAG Oil, which is concentrating on exploration efforts in New Zealand.
“These journalists and radio hosts are entitled to their opinions and can denigrate spokespersons like myself all they want, but I personally know that peak oil will arrive in two or five or 10 years. From that point on, the world as we know it will be changed unless the global community meets it head on and begins its preparations now.”
The act of taking oil from the ground is called producing it. Since the start of oil production in the nineteenth century, the world has produced about half of its ultimately recoverable oil resource. At the halfway point, the world will achieve what is referred to as its production peak – more oil will be produced in a year near the halfway point than ever before – or thereafter. This is what is referred to as peak oil.
There are varied opinions regarding when peak oil will occur. Dr Colin Campbell, a petro-geologist who is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on predicting oil trends, calculates that it will occur in 2006. Dr Campbell, who was conferred with a PhD from Oxford University and has held prestigious positions within oil companies, is currently the convener and editor of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and a Trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre in London. He told the Guardian in late-April 2005 that about 944 billion barrels of oil have thus far been extracted, some 764 billion remains extractable in known fields or reserves, and a further 142 billion of reserves are classed as ‘yet-to-find’ – that’s the oil geologists expect to be discovered. He said if this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year – with unpredictable and perhaps drastic consequences for the world, (refer http://www.peakoil.net).
Optimists focus on the figures and assume that just because the production peak has arrived doesn’t mean that oil is under imminent threat. But Campbell and James Howard Kunstler argue the petro-optimists are missing the point.
“We don’t have to run out of oil or natural gas to have severe problems,” says Kunstler. “All you have to do is head down the arc of depletion on the downside of world peak production.”
In other words, as production decreases yet demand continues to increase, oil prices become problematic for the world long before the wells actually dry up.
Energy Minister Trevor Mallard has told Investigate the Government stands by its view that peak oil will occur sometime between 2021 and 2067, with “probability highest around 2037.” The source for this view is the Bush administration’s Energy Information Administration.
“I stress that other estimates abound,” concedes Mallard, “and that I’m not claiming that this is the right one, but it’s in our view the best estimate we have to work to for now.”
But critics say Mallard has no choice but to play it cool. The Government is between a rock and a hard place and can not reveal the truth, for, if it did, its economic cards would come tumbling down – the healthy economic outlook would be exposed as a fraud. The man who just purchased a new $65,000 gas-guzzling SUV on hire purchase would think the bottom had dropped out of his world and the young couple who’d just built their dream home an hour’s drive from their work places, where there was no alternative but to drive, would be gutted. It’s far simpler, say petro-pessimists, for the Minister to use smoke and mirrors to provide an illusion of a rosy future, which allow for the continuance of current trends over the coming years, rather than to tell it like it is.
Offers Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons on the day she launched the Green Party energy policy: “The Government should acknowledge that peak oil is closer than they’ve been admitting. Even the International Energy Agency, which was until recently saying 2037, and whose advice the Government takes, is now saying 2013-2037. Pretending there’s nothing to worry about yet is just lulling people into a false sense of security.”
It’s like booking us to go First Class on the Titanic and moving all the furniture towards the end that will sink first.
Like Mallard, National’s leader Don Brash appears reluctant to tackle reality head on either. He said on April Fool’s day that a National-led government would put every dollar of fuel tax into roads. That would mean an extra $2.1 billion over the next six years for roading and at the same time legislation would be changed to make it quicker and easier to build new roads.
But while National may be making political inroads on Labour, and while the economic growth from road-building would normally be a boon, there’s a growing sense in the wider public that wasting tax money on tarmac when oil is running out might not be such a bright idea, despite the frustration of sitting in traffic jams.
It is significant that peak oil is getting much more coverage in the international media than it is in New Zealand’s daily press. But this will change.
Ordinary people are waking up to Peak Oil Theory, thanks largely to word of mouth and the internet. One who ascribes to this view is Waikanae builder Robert Atack. For six years now, this 47-year old has been a modern Jeremiah informing people about the impending oil crisis. He, like some experts in world energy studies, believes it will have a catastrophic impact on humanity, an impact which could be lessened if we start our preparations now.
Atack has plunged $9,000 of his own cash into the issue, printing and distributing leaflets, CDs, DVDs, videos and books, which carry information from experts of Dr Colin Campbell’s ilk, to members of the public and parliament.
“During the last term of government I had 10,000 copies of The Oil Crash And You printed and sent about 5 copies each to all 120 MPs. And I’ve sent a lot of e-mails - and I think probably most of the current government have had something sent to them,” offers Atack.
Not known for social niceties, however, Atack called Trevor Mallard “a gutless public trough feeder” in a mail drop to his home letterbox in 2002, so doesn’t blame the Minister for shouting at him the last time they spoke.
“Trevor Mallard’s been in denial. Any official reply I’ve seen from his office since he became Minister of Energy is just the regurgitated rubbish Pete Hodgson’s secretary sent out, who became Mallard’s when he took over the job of Minister of Energy.”
The cold shoulders from politicians and lack of interest shown by members of the public have at times made his exploits seem like those of Sisyphus, until this past year when the tide turned. Investigate broke the story in New Zealand in February last year. Since then, the Green Party highlighting the peak oil threat, the petrol price jolt and the TV3 Campbell Live show on March 22nd have continued to raise public awareness. The number of hits to Atack’s website, oilcrash.com, after the Campbell Live show soared to 70,915, up from 9,883 the day before, with a further 53,376 hits the following day. The number of people around the country educating the public about peak oil has grown. From a community perspective, Nelson is streets ahead of others says Atack. Although Nelson City Council recently backed away from a proposal to begin an investigation into likely consequences of peak oil for the district, the word about what peak oil will mean for our future has been spreading like wild fire regardless. This has been across all ages, and it’s being helped to ignite by groups of “peak oil aware” youths from four Nelson colleges who have been encouraged to network with other young people.
It’s not only the Green Party that will be talking about peak oil in the lead up to the general election, but also the Maori Party. “They seem to genuinely want to inform people out of concern, which I’ve found is the main motivation for most of us peak-nicks,” says Atack.
If you want evidence that the oil industry really is in dire straits, there is a myriad of signs that can’t be denied. According to oil geologist Hart it is an industry virtually working at full capacity now. It’s being pushed to its limits. He can tell by the number of oil tankers travelling around, the number of seismic vessels gathering seismic data for oil companies, as well as from the number of oilrigs in use.
At present, the world can produce about 84 million barrels of oil a day at the most. Over 82 million barrels per day are being used at present and there’s an increasing demand for more. The world economy grew by 5.1% in 2004 – the fastest in nearly three decades. Among the leaders were China, (with around 1.3 billion inhabitants), expanding at 9.5%, Argentina at 9% and India at 7.3%, (around 1.1 billion people). Projections for the fourth quarter of 2005 indicate that 86 to 87 million barrels of oil a day will be required and this won’t be met. Although the biggest oil companies, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and BP talk about there being “plenty of oil” and being able to produce more, their production figures are actually going down every year.
While the oil industry can function well at the moment, it won’t in the imminent
future. Compounding the oil availability problems is that for the past 20 years the industry has failed to attract enough new personnel. Faced with the choice of studying oil geology or the glamour of IT during the dotcom boom of the nineties, many students chose IT. The grim period of mergers and downsizing in the oil business added to the perception that the oil business was a beast in its death throes. As perhaps it is.
Managing editor of the Oil & Gas International journal, Dev George, writes in the May 2005 issue: ‘It seems as though every major petroleum industry conference these days has at least one session devoted to bemoaning the critical shortage of new blood, the lack of young professionals – engineers and geologists and geoscientists as well as business and industry generalists – entering the industry.’
Hart says this spells doom for the oil business, because the ability to successfully locate and drill for oil is highly dependent upon having an employee base with extensive work experience.
“In 1985, the average age for a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists was 38. The average age last year was 53. This shows that at this critical time when the industry really needs experienced employees, they won’t be there. It is really a dreadful situation we face,” offers Hart despondently.
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has been providing videos and encouraging its 31,000 members to speak in public forums about the possibility of future oil shortages for the past 15 years. Hart began making presentations to various civic and business groups in New Zealand several years ago in an attempt to alert the public to the coming end to cheap oil, but finds it difficult to disseminate the message because the public is chiefly “unbelieving.”
Some people think that “peak oil” is nothing but evidence of a greedy oil industry trying to talk up the oil price. This is not so, says Hart: “Why would the industry manipulate prices so high that they drive away the very customers that are required to keep them in business? The last thing the oil companies want to see is a chaotic global event [peak oil] that destroys their carefully cultivated consumer base. If there was anything the producers - especially OPEC and petroleum companies could do to slow the price juggernaut, believe me they’d be doing it now, not tomorrow.”
At the end of 1999, oil was trading for around US$10 a barrel. Since then it has risen by about 29% per year. Simply extending the trend means that oil will be at about US$100 a barrel in three years and US$160 in five years. While such a rise won’t impact on the lifestyles of the very wealthy, it could those on low incomes who may have no option but to alter their lifestyles.
Hart says it’s the plight of his own four children that motivates him to inform the public about peak oil, because while he can educate them on the impending oil crisis, without the cooperative efforts of the rest of the community and nation, their entire livelihood is threatened by the coming dilemma.
Dr Peter Ballance, formerly Associate Professor of Geology at Auckland University, specialised in sedimentary and oil geology and holds a Doctorate of Science from the University of London. He contends that the threat of peak oil should be taken very seriously. “It’s a physical fact. One which we may reach this year or in 10 year’s time,” he warns.
In regard to whether commentators such as Owen McShane are correct in claiming that there is plenty of oil, Dr Ballance states: “People who say there’s plenty of oil are right in one sense, but in the sense of plenty of the ideal oil, they’re wrong. Much of that remaining oil will be in tar sands, oil shales, deep-sea locations and Arctic locations. All of that’s very expensive and environmentally damaging to extract.”
McShane’s logic is worth following just to illustrate where it falters. The peak oil skeptic writes: “Although the wells are distant, refining is complex and fuel is subject to huge taxes, the petrol powering your car is cheaper a litre than most bottled water – including New Zealand water.”
He’s right, as far as he goes. But if the inference readers are supposed to draw is that oil will stay plentiful because it is cheaper than bottled water, McShane is in for a mathematical shock. Nearly half of the cost of a litre of fuel goes to taxes. But even if you scrapped all petrol taxes, it would be only a momentary reprieve against a rising tide of international oil price rises. Sixty cents a litre might be a big saving while petrol is $1.20 a litre. It won’t be so hot when petrol hits $2 or $3 per litre in the not too distant future. And you can only scrap taxes once.
The cost of oil is not the real issue. The availability of oil is. It is currently cheap because we’re extracting fuel from easy fields whose technical infrastructure was put in place and paid for decades ago. When those fields empty, sooner rather than later, prices will rise.
It is commonly suggested that technological advances will play a role in finding meaningful quantities of more oil. Unfortunately, according to Hart, while technology has and will continue to enhance the oil industry’s ability to locate significant new accumulations of petroleum, it cannot compensate for the huge amounts of cheap oil we are chewing our way through.
“Anyone who believes that technology will “save the day” like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster is not facing up to reality. Technology alone cannot replace the amounts of cheap oil [less than US$10/barrel to produce] we are currently consuming on a global scale. It’s going to take a conservation effort too,” he asserts.
On ACT’s weblog, RodneyHide.com, one blogger summed up the mood of many ACT supporters by suggesting that oil depletion was not a concern because “the market will take care of it and develop new alternatives”. Such wishful thinking, whilst also correct to a point, still ignores the reality that markets rely on plenty of advance warning and new discoveries, not magic wands, and that if another chemical existed that could replace oil as a fuel, or in plastics or any of the other myriad uses for oil, we ought to know about it by now. And we don’t. And on a worst case scenario those “markets” may only have another five years to find the mystery new elixir, test it and produce it.
Yes, solar power can help reduce some of the dependence on oil, but currently we use oil to create solar generation capacity. The power and telephone lines into our homes are manufactured from oil. Computers are dependent on oil. Many pharmaceutical and health products require oil. For the markets to truly “take care of it”, planning has to begin immediately, argue petro-pessimists.
Some still refuse to face the possi-bility of a world with less oil, how-ever, like those who believe Tho-mas Gold’s theory that oil is abi-otic, or non-organic in origin. This theory, which appears to have many followers judging by the profusion of internet pages devoted to it, proposes that oil is being produced within the mantle of the earth, from where it continually moves upward, to provide an unlimited supply. Dr Ballance says that sadly there is no substance to Gold’s theory. “It’s one of the many myths on which people build hopes,” he says. Correspondingly, Hart says the theory of abiotic oil is like clutching for straws, while he’s out gathering the wheat.
Although the oil industry has repeatedly proven that oil is biotic, meaning that it is derived from the degeneration of organic plant and animal remains from which the carbon molecules have been converted to complex hydrocarbon molecules through pressure and time, the Gold theory has retained many believers for a number of reasons.
There are genuine accounts of oil wells refilling, and drilling at levels deeper than 10,000 metres, which some say is evidence that has supported Gold’s theory. It does not however on close inspection. Dr Ballance says the reason the wells have been refilling is not because oil is being magically produced deep within the earth – it is because oil moves through permeable rocks in response to a pressure gradient. It can continue to move after a well has ceased to provide economic quantities of oil. Thus, it’s to be expected that old wells will in some cases, refill with oil, but in no where near the quantities that will make any difference to a world that uses over 82 million barrels a day.
Likewise, the drilling beyond 10,000 metres does not lend support for the abiotic theory either because when hydrocarbons are subjected to the temperatures and pressure that exist below 9,000 metres, they are generally destroyed says Hart.
Former industrial chemist Kevin Moore, who has an Honours degree in chemistry from Auckland University, has studied the abiotic theory and says its proponents are asking us to accept a process that defies the laws of chemistry. “Until the proponents of abiotic oil present a plausible theory, and they’ve
presented none to my knowledge, it’s just junk science.”
The deepest bore to date was drilled by Russians in the Kola Peninsula to 12,262-metres from 1970 to 1994 and cost more than US$250 million. However, it was not drilled in order to search for oil or natural gas, but to study the nature of the earth’s crust. “While there’s no ultra-deep oil except in a couple of unusual fields, there is ultra-deep gas in many places. No matter where people get their information from, they can be assured that petroleum is not generated in the mantle. And if Russia, which passed peak production in the late -1980’s, has all of this deep oil, why isn’t it selling it on the world market?” questions Hart.
In times like ours when relentless changes can leave one feeling that one is trapped on the mouse wheel of consumerism, it’s not surprising that there’s resistance to acknowledge that the substance that we’ve built our lives upon, oil, is not unlimited.
Thus far, the only countries to have made serious preparation for peak oil have been the United States and the United Kingdom who, critics claim, are using the excuse of terrorism to invade countries with large remaining oil reserves to ensure they have access to that oil. Obviously, this is not an option for New Zealand.
According to Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, who’s being tipped as a possible Energy Minister if the Greens can survive on election day and be strong enough to form a coalition with Labour, what we should be doing now is a thorough analysis of each sector of the economy to understand how vulnerable it is to oil prices and shortages and what can be done. For example, can our food be grown closer to where it is eaten? How do we maintain soil fertility without nitrogen based fertilisers – which are made from fossil fuels?
Fitzsimons argues we need to invest now in expensive infrastructure that will be hard to afford when oil is expensive – like rail, wind turbines and solar technologies. We need to stop the import of gas-guzzling vehicles and allow in only the most fuel-efficient. “There’s a lot we could do now to make it easier to cope later, but we need to act. There is no room for either fatalism or complacency.”
At present New Zealand has fewer than half a dozen oil and gas fields being developed, and 12 producing fields which supply only about seven percent of the oil we consume, and this is declining each year. We are competing against the world for a limited amount of liquid energy. As long as oil demand outstrips the industry’s ability to supply oil, the prices will continue to rise. When global oil production does peak, and it soon will, the disparity between demand and supply will continue to grow and the situation will so worsen. It’s not a case of if, but when. Hope and pray all you wish that gigantic new sources of petroleum will be found tomorrow, but if the majority of people working in the petroleum industry are correct, this won’t happen and continuing our gas-guzzling ways is only going to add to an already critical situation.

LETTER ON ATACK’S WEBSITE
23rd March 2005
Hi Robert,
I am glad you have opened up this site. I am 15 years old and after watching Campbell’s new show the other night I was very angry that after everyone else using all the oil and petrol it would be me and people my age that would cop it. My Mum has been looking into either renting some land or buying some land and having it being run on a solar power, and things like that and instead of building permanent housing us and the rest of the group are looking into building mud huts and everything else.
I used to think this was a stupid idea because of course it means that we would have to sell the house, but I am beginning to see the actual situation we have at hand. I think the NZ Energy Minister is not letting the NZ public know that there is a real danger, I mean we have scientists and possibly you telling us that we will see the effects no later than 2006, and then we have the NZ Energy Minister telling us that it will happen in the 2030’s sometime. My mum and I are now making our part and so are most of the supermarkets it is just up to the public now, my Mum and I are now using permanent shopping bags and everything like that. We got a centametre (one of those things that measure power) to lessen our power usage. But still we have the people up in Auckland using their central heating and having everyone else to pay for it. Thank you for listening I know I have been ranting on a bit.
Ross McKinnon
Dunedin

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Investigate Jul 05, On A Wing And A Prayer

Can New Zealand cope with a bird flu pandemic?

Bird flu: It’s on the rise in Asia, and experts agree it’s only a matter of time before it – or another killer flu – shows up in our part of the world. How ready are we? Is any preparation enough? As SHAUN DAVIES discovered, the world is overdue for a flu pandemic, and even the best preparations could leave thousands of New Zealanders dead

For post-war generations unused to death on a global scale, it’s not easy to comprehend the enormity of a disaster like the Spanish Flu. The worst health disaster since the Black Plague, in 1918 and 1919 it killed an estimated 40 million worldwide - more than twice as many people as died in World War One – and infected around twenty per cent of the global population.
Originating in the US, the virus spread to every corner of the globe. In India alone it killed seventeen million, while in Fiji fourteen per cent of the population was wiped out in two weeks. Australia got off comparatively lightly with 12,000 deaths, but there were still massive disruptions to everyday life. Authorities closed cinemas, schools, public transport and churches. One town in the US even banned its citizens from shaking hands.
The Spanish Flu was not the only influenza pandemic of the twentieth century. The Asian Flu of 1957, which started in China and spread to every continent, killed at least one million worldwide. Just 11 years later, in 1968, the Hong Kong flu caused a relatively mild pandemic that killed 750,000 people.
In fact, for at least the past 200 years we’ve averaged an influenza pandemic once every 20 to 30 years. Seeing as it’s more than 30 years since the Hong Kong Flu, experts are worried that the world is overdue. The World Health Organisation’s regional director for the South Pacific, Dr Shigeru Omi, warned this year that ‘the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic’.
The reason for all this alarm is a deadly strain of avian influenza called H5N1. This is the virus that has devastated Asia’s poultry industries. More than 140 million birds have died or been destroyed and the combined losses to GDP in affected nations is estimated at between US$10 billion to US$15 billion so far.
But H5N1 also has a nastily efficient knack of killing humans, and that’s what’s got authorities in a spin. Through unsanitary wet markets, undercooked food and other means, the virus is known to have made the leap from bird to human 89 times since January 2004. In 52 of these cases the infection was fatal – a kill rate of 58 per cent.
At present, H5N1 hasn’t been proven to jump from human to human. But in a process called ‘antigenic shift’, it can exchange genetic information with other influenza viruses, forming completely new strains. If H5N1 came into contact with another virus in just one human host it could potentially gain the ability to move easily from one person to another. And if that happens, a new pandemic on the scale of the Spanish Flu could
be imminent.
Dr Ian Gust is the chairman of the WHO Influenza Collaborating Centre in Melbourne. He would play a vital role in co-ordinating the global response to a pandemic, tracking the progress of the virus, advising the director-general of the WHO and providing governments around the world with up-to-date information.
‘The reason many people are concerned about the current situation is that something very unusual has happened in the bird population,’ he says. ‘We’ve seen almost simultaneously in Asia major outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, killing initially thousands, then millions and now probably tens of millions of birds. It’s become endemic, certainly in ducks, in much of Southeast Asia.’
H5N1 is asymptomatic in ducks - and Professor Gust says this is a big problem. Because people can’t tell which birds are infected and which are healthy, the risk of a viral leap is greatly increased. The more times H5N1 crosses to a human host, the more likely it is to swap proteins with an ordinary influenza virus.
Although there have been no definitive cases of human to human transmission, suspicion centres on a case where a Thai mother died after cradling her sick daughter for hours in her arms. In this case, the mutated strain may have died out with its second victim, but perhaps health authorities won’t be so fortunate on the next occasion.
If the virus did gain the ability to jump from human to human, modern transportation would spread it around the world far more quickly than in 1918. ‘Then it essentially went at the speed of individuals, horses, trains and ships. Now infected individuals are likely to be moved around the world quickly by aeroplane ... so one would guess that the spread is likely to be quite brisk.’
But just how likely is this much-feared mutation or recombination in H5N1? Are we a hair’s breadth away from disaster? Or are the scenarios being played out in the media exaggerated?
‘The answer is we don’t know, other than that the probability is low,’ Dr Gust says. ‘Over the last 15 months you’ve had tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of people living closely beside infected birds, which you would think gives a significantly increased risk of this rare event occurring... This tells you that it is a low-risk phenomenon.’

Even if a worst-case outbreak of avian flu is statistically unlikely, local authorities are on high alert. Australia’s Health Minister Tony Abbott recently said that an H5N1 pandemic could be a ‘worldwide biological version of the Indian Ocean tsunami’, and the Federal Government has dedicated $133.6 million over five years to preparing for a pandemic. And although New Zealand has had a ‘pandemic preparedness plan’ in place since 1999, New Zealand virologist Lance Jennings told National Radio recently that if and when bird flu adapts to humans, it would spread to this country in ‘a matter of hours’.
There’s another factor to this, however, and that is the opportunity for the pandemic to spread before authorities realise the extent of what they’re dealing with. At the height of the SARS scare in 2003, it took weeks before quarantine and screening procedures were in place at New Zealand’s ports and airports. And then, while the Ministry of Health confidently boasted about its preparedness, hospital workers were revealing to the media the shocking state of readiness inside hospitals and medical facilities.
In other words, like an episode from Dad’s Army, the Ministry of Health has a track record of issuing soothing statements to reassure the public while it panics madly behind the scenes.
Of further concern, nowhere in the Ministry of Health’s pandemic action plan, available on its website, is there any reference to screening airports. At best, the MoH only intends to issue “travel advisories”, which means New Zealand could be bombarded with pandemic-carrying air passengers without any attempt to steer them towards medical attention or possible quarantine.
Given that the disease will originate overseas, an oversight in the form of no border control seems hard
to explain.
Over the past year, Australia has amassed the single largest stockpile of antiviral drugs in the world. These ‘neuraminidase inhibitors’ prevent infection in healthy people and cure infected people if administered during the onset of symptoms. They’d be our frontline defence in the event of an outbreak, administered to essential service workers and groups deemed most at risk from the virus.
In New Zealand, health authorities have ordered 800,000 doses of the drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) which they’re hoping will be strong enough to lessen the number of fatalities and the severity of any outbreak.
The Australian government has also entered into contract with pharmaceutical companies CSL and Sanofi Pasteur to supply 50 million doses of any pandemic flu vaccine that became available – enough to protect every Australian citizen. However, it would take up to six months for a vaccine to be produced and distributed in large numbers, and some experts say that by that stage the virus will have already worked its way through
the population.
The director of the communicable diseases branch of NSW Health, Jeremy McAnulty, would help
co-ordinating the health response to an influenza pandemic in New South Wales. He says that the states have been hard at work creating influenza pandemic action plans that complement the national approach.
‘Early on what you’d do is try to identify each case individually, rapidly if possible, and isolate them and then identify their contacts to try and prevent further spreads’, he says. ‘We’d be looking out for cases as they came into the country, you’d be sending out communications to all doctors, and we’d put people in isolation and we’d have certain powers that allow people to be held for certain diseases.’
There would also be attempts to trace the networks of people the infected individual had been in contact with. Double-checks to ensure correct diagnosis would be mandatory, and infected people would be interviewed and counselled. But the strategy would change if the situation became worse.
‘As numbers increase further you use other strategies such as looking after people at home and community caring for people. At some stage, depending on the numbers involved, it would involve cancelling routine
operations in hospitals.’
There could also be closures of football stadiums, cinemas and schools, as well as cancellations of public events. The states would be required to keep essential services running as absenteeism shot through the roof. Hospitals would be overloaded and community centres converted into isolation wards.
‘If it does happen it will be something that our country will not forget in a hurry’, Tony Abbott said at a recent press conference. But he also claimed that Australia is ‘better prepared than probably any other country in the world.’
Professor Peter Curson, director of the Health Studies program at Macquarie University, does not share Abbott’s confidence. He has just completed a paper for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which sharply criticises the government’s pandemic action plan on numerous points.
‘There is no comment anywhere [in the action plan] about how they’d handle fear, panic or public reaction’, Professor Curson says. ‘I’ve spent 25 years looking at public reaction and human behaviour in previous
epidemics in Australia and there’s no doubt that people have an underlying fear of contagion, of infection,
particularly when there’s no specific cure or specific treatment.’
‘Official measures put in place like increased surveillance, quarantine, limited supplies of antivirals, masks, restricted travel and so on will heighten public fear and panic, and that’s not mentioning the role of the media of course, who undoubtedly would play a major role.’
The government has a basic duty to protect Australians from outbreaks of disease, says Professor Curson, pointing out that in the event of a major pandemic there would be nowhere near enough antivirals to protect all Australian citizens. It would be six months before a vaccine became available – leaving a huge proportion of the population unprotected.
‘The priority plan says antivirals will be delivered to high risk groups, and by that they mean the old, the young and the people suffering from chronic illness’, he says. ‘But if you take out the one million health-cum-service workers, there are about two million people aged over 65, there are one million kids aged under two or three, well that won’t leave anything.’
But a spokeswoman for Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor John Horvath, rejects Professor Curson’s criticisms. She says a revised action plan, which will soon be released by the Federal Government, does contain provisions for the handling of public fear and the other matters that Curson raises.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Health also points out that there are limits on the global pro-duction of antivirals, which means the gov-ernment can’t provide protection for every New Zealander, even if it wants to; their website cautions that ‘No vaccine is currently available to protect humans against an H5N1 type infection. WHO is working with vaccine manufactures to look towards producing a vaccine. It takes at least four to six months to produce large quantities of a new vaccine.’
There’s another ethical issue at stake in the bird flu debate – what level of support should Australia provide to its neighbours in the event of a pandemic? On one hand it has the world’s largest stockpile of antivirals; on the other there’s not enough to go around. Would Australia be generous to others, as it was during the Indian Ocean tsunami? Or does Australia give only when there’s no risk to itself?
‘Should a pandemic occur next year or this year, only those countries that have got either a national manufacturer or have a guaranteed supply agreement with one of the existing manufacturers would be able to access vaccine’, says Dr Gust from the WHO. ‘For most countries in the world, vaccines and antivirals are only something they can dream of and they’d have to rely on conventional public health measures.’
The WHO will soon broker a meeting where countries with large stockpiles of antivirals (including Australia, Japan, the US and the UK) will be asked to make their drugs available to stamp out a small outbreak of a novel virus in small village in Cambodia, for instance. New Zealand won’t be among those countries; at the moment, only around 20,000 antiviral doses are physically available here, though the government is negotiating to buy more.
‘My hope is that (these countries would) make a tremendous effort to put out that spot fire, to prevent it becoming a bush fire that spreads widely, so there would be a major attempt to quench the infection using international stockpiles’, Professor Gust says.
‘Clearly Australia is a key participant in that discussion and has an opportunity to take a lead in that area. I can’t foreshadow what the government’s view would be, but I hope they would be generous.’
Whether H5N1 is the culprit in the next global outbreak of influenza remains to be seen. But experts agree that it’s only a matter of time before the world faces a new pandemic. If the outbreak is severe enough, no amount of preparation would be enough to prevent a disaster - and that’s a frightening thought.
SARS killed just 770 people. But it did an estimated $15 billion worth of damage to the economies of Southeast Asia. In a worst-case scenario, H5N1 would cause tens of millions of deaths. What damage would that do to the global economy? Could we ever be ready for the devastating effects of a pandemic?
‘We’ll never be able to sit back and say, ‘Well, we’ve done it now, let’s bring it on’,’ says NSW Health’s Jeremy McAnulty. ‘Unfortunately it will never go away and our preparation will always be there, and if a pandemic hits then we’ll have to start preparing for the next one. It’s an ongoing process.’
But Professor Gust from the WHO believes that it’s too early to start panicking. He says that to have a doomsday scenario, the virus ‘has to escape and retain its existing virulence’ – a fairly unlikely prospect.
‘In North Vietnam the virus has already become less pathogenic for birds and less pathogenic for humans,’ he says. ‘A mutation or a recombination that enabled the virus to spread could equally, easily, result in a virus which spread rapidly but had relatively low pathogenicity.’
‘The scenarios that you keep seeing painted in the newspaper are absolutely worst case scenarios. And as we know from history, the most probable scenario is rarely the worst case scenario.’

While the world waits for the next flu crisis, JENI PAYNE meets an Australian on the frontlines of another age-old epidemic
On a visit to the US to see her host families and life-long friends she made as a high school exchange student, Jenny heard about the massive worldwide scheme known as PolioPlus. ‘Then when I became a member back in Aus-tralia, I decided that’s what I wanted to get involved in.’
India gave Jenny her first taste of work as a volunteer and she returned three times to help immunize its population. Then followed holidays spent working with communities in Ethiopia, Botswana and this year, Pakistan.
‘Two drops on the tongue is all it takes. A child can be protected against polio for as little as sixty cents worth of vaccine.’
In 1985, Rotary International launched the PolioPlus program to protect children worldwide from the cruel and fatal consequences of polio. Since that time, Rotary’s efforts and those of partner agencies, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and governments around the world, have achieved a 99% reduction in the number of polio cases worldwide.
From the launch of the global initiative in 1988, to the eradication target of 2005, Rotary’s Centenary Year, five million people, mainly in the developing world, who would otherwise have been paralyzed, will be walking because they have been immunized against polio. More than 500,000 cases of polio are now prevented each year.
But complacency is the enemy. According to the UN, the number of polio cases has been reduced from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to just under 700 reported cases at the end of in 2003 – a greater than 99% reduction. At the same time, Indonesia has just suffered its first polio outbreak in ten years, and UN officials suggest that worldwide eradication this year may in fact not be possible.
Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. It spreads rapidly by unsafe water and hand-to-mouth contact, especially in overcrowded conditions where sanitation is poor and faecal contamination prevalent. Houseflies also contribute, by transferring viruses from faeces to food. Toddlers not yet toilet-trained transmit polio readily even in hygienic environments. Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs.
One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.
The tragedy is, polio mainly affects children under five years of age and there is no cure, it can only be prevented. Polio vaccine, given multiple times, can protect a child for life.
‘Polio is generally caused by poor sanitation, so kids in underdeveloped countries are most as risk’, says Horton, adding that currently, the coalition against polio is facing a crucial time in the program.
In 2004, there was a cessation in the immunization program in Nigeria, due to political circumstances. It led to a blow-out in numbers locally and threatened to spread to neighbouring Sudan.
‘Polio is passed on so easily. Only 1% will catch it, but the rest are carriers.’
It was this exposure to the poignant plight of third world children that inspired Jenny to save all year for working holidays as part of Polio Plus. ‘It’s lucky I have a supportive boss! I never want to see children suffering. In India I saw children with flaccid legs. Sometimes it’s too much. It’s an awesome, terrible reminder of the disease. No child deserves to live like that. If we can do something to help, why wouldn’t we?’
As part of a so-called ‘STOP team’, consisting of 36 people from 22 countries, including medical professionals and Rotary volunteers, Jenny makes a difference in countries that are desperately in need, most recently Pakistan.
‘Pakistan has never broken transmission. There were 103 cases in 2003 and now there are 46. There’s a new government now and it’s supporting the initiative, working very hard with immunisation campaigns every six weeks.’

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Jul 05, Highway Robbery

How traffic cops hijacked the police force

On an ordinary Auckland night, is it true that there are more police traffic patrols on the roads hunting motorists than there are dedicated to crime and emergency response? As IAN WISHART reports, the answer appears to be yes.

The pain and anguish in the mother’s voice was palpable. “My thirteen year old daughter has been raped by older men, and the cops don’t give a damn!” She was right. And it was shocking. And it’s the second such story to have come to this magazine’s attention in as many weeks. And it’s a story that probably repeats itself in numerous households every month: 13 year old daughter of a solo mum falls in with a bad crowd, starts to go through her teenage rebellious phase and puberty, runs away from home in protest at restrictions, ends up sleeping with men in their late teens and early 20s, gets beaten up, given drugs, returns home with her life in wreckage, wanting to kill herself. Mother calls police, complains of statutory rape of a minor, supplying of narcotics and assault – is told by police, “sorry, nothing we can do”.
Later, the same girl, still underage, will end up in the arms of an older man again, and be beaten so viciously that bones are broken. And still, Auckland police refuse to act.
Has New Zealand’s law enforcement regime really come to this, to the point where children cannot be protected from predatory men simply because the police are either underresourced, overstretched or – in a fit of postmodern social liberalism – perhaps police have become so used to the sexualisation of teenage girls that they see 13 year olds as women capable of making up their own minds about sex?
Apparently it may be a combination of all three.
For years now, debate has raged over whether the police have become too revenue-focused, and not tough enough on crime in the community. And for just as many years, police bosses and their minister, George Hawkins, have denied it. Now, however, Investigate has obtained some information that casts the issue in a disturbing new light.
Under the Official Information Act, the magazine asked police bosses in Auckland, Counties-Manukau, and Rodney/North Shore/Waitakere districts how many police vehicles were on the regions roads at three specific times of the day: 1400 hrs, 1630hrs and 2000hrs. What we were seeking was a snapshot of how many cars were on traffic/road policing duties, and how many were rostered as crime patrols for the same period.
On Thursday February 10 this year, at 2pm across the whole Auckland region, there were 78 police cars and speed camera vans whose sole purpose was road traffic policing and nothing else. By 4.30pm that figure had dropped to 47 police vehicles, as some of the speed camera units started packing it in for the day. By 8pm that evening, there were still 52 cars on the road – the increase a result of alcohol checkpoint patrols coming on duty.
Remember, these figures don’t include the general duties police who are still required to make at least one, and as many as three, traffic policing “contacts” per hour of road travel.
For the record, Monday or Tuesday evenings, and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, are the times in the Auckland region that you are least likely to encounter a police traffic unit in your travels. Even so, at those times there were still a minimum 32 traffic patrol units across the region, solely rostered to road duties.
So the next question we asked police was a no-brainer: At those same times, in that same week, how many police cars/staff were on the road rostered to general duties/CIB, I-cars etc? In hindsight, we made a grave mistake leaving “etc” in the ques-tion. Judging by the answer that followed, police bosses including anything with wheels in their calculations, including their grandmothers’ shopping trundlers.
On that same Thursday, February 10, at 2pm, a seemingly massive 148 police cars containing 252 police officers were on the roads chasing criminals, rather than motorists. By 4.30pm, that had dropped to 117 cars and 194 staff, while on Thursday night in Auckland there were 102 police cars patrolling for criminals and 162 police officers inside them.
Thursday, unlike traffic, wasn’t the busiest day, however. Wednesday February 9 had seen 173 police crime cars on the road at 2pm, 114 units by 4.30pm and 101 units on the road at 8pm.
Yet on Friday and Saturday nights, said to be the busiest nights of the week in terms of crime, only 93 and 84 police crime patrols were on duty across the Auckland region. In fact, if you want to commit a crime, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights are the best times of the week to pick because the number of “official” police crime patrols is lower then than at any other time, while the number of traffic patrols is highest.
However, here’s where the story gets interesting. Investigate had been advised three years ago by a police senior sergeant that at times in central Auckland city, the number of cars available to respond immediately to a late afternoon bank robbery might be as low as only two or three. “In fact,” he added, “if an offender picked their time carefully, we might not actually have a car within ten minutes of a CBD crime scene”.
So naturally, when we received official figures suggesting up to 173 police cars on patrol in Auckland at any one time, dedicated to crime and general duties, we ran it past senior police officers in the region.
“That is just not true!” exclaimed one. “It just isn’t true. If you’re trying to suggest to me that the communications centre can lay hands on 173 cars and 300 staff, already on the road, you’re making it up! To get that level of staff in the count, they’d need to include our receptionist and the tea ladies.”
“I’ll tell you now,” confirmed another, “that across the three Auckland police districts, I would expect there to be around 30 cars available for priority one callouts – around ten per district. And that can fluctuate depending on how busy we get. Sometimes we just don’t have any cars available. But if the brass are giving you figures to say we have 173 cars available – that’s a joke.”
Another to burst out laughing when he heard the figures was Police Association boss Greg O’Connor.
“Nothing like it. Nowhere near it. It’s disappointing when this kind of stuff is released because the boys on the front line know it’s not real.”
“They’re simply running interference for the Government,” growls MP Ron Mark down the phone. It’s a subject the high profile NZ First politician has taken a keen interest in over recent years.
In June, 2003, Investigate published “Rescuing 111”, where we reported, “Leaked documents suggest the collapse of the police emergency communications system is imminent, and public lives may already be at risk.”
The article noted that the 111 system – and indeed the entire police communications system – was badly run, with patrols facing rioting mobs sometimes waiting up to ten minutes before they could even get clear radio space to call for back-up. Not only that, but our report warned that callers to the emergency lines were increasingly getting the runaround, and that sooner or later a member of the public would die as a result of failings in the police communications system.
With the death of Iraena Asher last year, that grim prediction came true, a point that Police Minister George Hawkins was forced to remember when facing a parliamentary question in May this year:
“Does the Prime Minister seriously expect the country to accept this Minister as being competent,” asked NZ First’s Ron Mark, “when he ignored the advice given to him on 29 September 2002 by a communications officer as to the problems with the emergency 111 system; when he ignored the advice given to him by his own Commissioner of Police, dated 21 November 2002, highlighting the problems of the 111 system, in Auckland in particular; when he failed to take on board the very serious article published in Investigate in June 2003, and which cautioned that there would be a death; when he failed to approve the recommendations in the police bid for May 2003; and when he told this House that traffic officers were not sitting on the side of the road with their radios turned off, and we now know they were?”
To which Justice Minister Phil Goff, standing in for the hapless Hawkins, responded: “I will answer two of those questions. Firstly, the member is not quoting accurately from the first communication he talked about. That communication – he can table it if he likes – does not deal with communications staff; it deals with general staff. Secondly, it was not ignored. It was passed on to the Commissioner of Police, because it was an operational matter. Thirdly, this Minister, unlike Winston Peters when he was Deputy Prime Minister, has delivered an increase in the Budget for police each and every year that he has been Minister. I refer Ron Mark to 1997, when the Budget cut the appropriations on Budget night for the police. Winston Peters cut the police Budget. George Hawkins has seen it increase each and every year for 5 years.”
Pointedly, the only question Goff avoided was the one about Investigate’s June 2003 prediction. Little wonder – here’s what Hawkins told the magazine back then when we put it directly to the minister that the communications system was dangerously close to collapse:
“There are no known issues that require attention…police are not aware of any major issues involving the communications centres.
“Police are confident in the knowledge that the Comcens (com centres), which are a mission critical function of policing, are working efficiently, effectively and producing the required outcomes.
“Police have deployed sufficient resources to these areas to achieve the required outcomes.”
Within the public service chain of command when reporting to their ministers, it is likely that Police Commissioner Rob Robinson was aware of the answer that his department provided to Hawkins for Investigate, and that he endorsed it. It is surprising that Robinson has been allowed to remain in his position despite the release of the Corboy report in May that pilloried the police communications system, just as Investigate had predicted two years earlier.
Instead of spending money to urgently fix the police infrastructure, George Hawkins was reported in this magazine as saying that of the many ways Government could spend money on police, “the most satisfying is investing in police property”, as he cut the ribbon on a shiny new building somewhere.
Indeed, say his critics, the Hawk fiddled while the police emergency response system burned.
This is, of course, the same Hawk who perched motionless during the leaky homes crisis when he had the housing portfolio. Presumably he didn’t use the same builders to construct the new police stations.
This time, though, Ron Mark is gunning for Hawkins and the Labour Government for allowing law and order to fall into almost as bad a state of disrepair as a house built by the armed services from dodgy timber on the entrance to private land in a training exercise.
What the figures released to Investigate show, officially, is roughly a two to one ratio of general duties cars to road traffic policing units. But if you trust the comments of senior police officers in a position to know, and there are only around thirty patrol cars chasing crime in the entire 1.1 million metropolis of greater Auckland, and 78 traffic units, the positions are reversed. If what police officers are telling Investigate is correct, the real figure is at least a 50/50 split between crime and traffic, and sometimes running at two traffic revenue units for every genuine police car on the road.
Anecdotal proof of this can be found in a story that broke in July 2003. On a Wednesday night, a group of youths in a stolen white Lexus Altezza took it for a joyride up Auckland’s busy Ponsonby Road – on the footpath. Pedestrians and outside café diners leapt for their lives as the vehicle ploughed up the pavement then sped off up the street. A security guard tailed the stolen car in his own vehicle, giving the police communications centre a running commentary on what was happening. Incredibly, the Lexus, reaching speeds of up to 175km/h, whizzed past a police alcohol checkpoint on the motorway where eight patrol cars were stationed, almost colliding with a magazine editor driving home from a talk radio shift, weaving in and out of traffic dangerously.
Even more incredibly, despite being given a live commentary from the pursuing security guard, police control did not alert the eight patrol cars at the booze bus, nor did even one of the officers there lift a finger to catch the menace.
According to official reports, there were 18 crime patrol cars “logged on” the system at that time, but none of them could be diverted from other jobs to chase the stolen car. Eighteen patrol cars. And somewhere between 50 and seventy patrols on road traffic duties, none of which could be dispatched for this blatantly criminal dangerous driving.
But it got even better. The stolen Lexus sped to a service station and robbed it, deliberately knocking over a forecourt attendant as they made their escape.
Only then, only after the car thieves turned dangerous drivers turned desperadoes robbed a service station, did police manage to show up, with two patrol cars. By which time, the offenders had gone.
The security guard had spent 25 minutes on the phone to police. At no time during that 25 minutes did one single patrol car become available in New Zealand’s biggest city, even though more than half a dozen remained parked on the side of the motorway watching as the robbers sped past.
Investigate’s queries at the time as to why the booze bus patrol cars didn’t give chase were met with the response, “Police are financially contracted to spend a certain number of hours on dedicated LTSA duties like checkpoints, and we cannot break those contracts.”
Police Association president Greg O’Connor, speaking to the media at the time, acknowledged the difficulties as well.
“The reality of it is there is road policing that is ... organised somewhat differently to the reactive policing ... It’s the reactive policing which generally is where the shortages show up.”
Although the magazine offered its own eyewitness evidence of the chase to police, no police officer ever called back to follow up.
Earlier this year National’s Tony Ryall asked written questions in parliament about the allocation of resources in one district. Ron Mark says the answers were illuminating:
“The answers to those written questions are crystal clear: at least 50% of the police resources available on a given day in the Tauranga/Bay of Plenty District, at least 50% of those resources were dedicated to traffic.
“That frontline traffic officers make up 50% of the total police deployment in a day, is ludicrous, quite ludicrous, especially when you consider that the other 50% doesn’t just include crime patrol cars, but also police sitting at their desks in supervisory roles. When I talk about total police deployment we’re not just talking about GD (general duties) officers, we’re talking about all the support staff behind that, who are lumped into the other 50%, so the number of traffic cars would far outweigh the number of general duties patrol cars on those figures.
“These figures that Investigate has been given are a continuance, I believe, of senior officers in the police force seeking to deceive and mislead the public. To suggest to me that two days after Waitangi, at 2pm, there are 318 staff and 161 vehicles available is absolute crap, and I don’t believe it. On that same day, every one of those 318 officers supposedly dedicated to general duties are also being required to complete a certain number of road traffic policing hours. “
According to Mark, the price of getting frontline police to issue hundreds of thousands of traffic infringement notices is a huge drop in the ability to get a police officer to respond to any criminal matter that doesn’t involve an immediate risk to life.
“It’s a massive backload on the taxpayer and the public who buy insurance, because when burglaries are not investigated they don’t get solved and premiums go through the roof. What does it mean? It means that detectives, rather than continuing their investigations on files that are open, are being pulled off those cases to go and do eight hours worth of traffic checkpoint duty issuing seatbelt infringements, as has happened and as is continuing to happen, despite the lies I’m told. It means that detectives, instead of investigating allegations of sexual assault, investigating those burglaries, investigating those stolen cars, tracking down the heavy recidivist criminal, is being diverted to traffic and public confidence goes down.
“People who should be hunting down, locating and busting meth labs and organized crime simply don’t have the resources, the time or the priority allocated to them to do that.
“The information I have tells me that if the priority was back on drug squads – which we don’t have any more – instead of traffic duty, if the priority was ‘forget the bloody traffic, your job is to smash organized crime’, then we would start to see some headway in that area. We’re not. We’re not even treading water. We’re sinking. Our communities are not safe, our children are not safe. And all for what? We’re chasing bloody traffic tickets.”
It is the failing of the 111 system, and more significantly the failure to get police on the ground to respond to emergencies, that is driving an increasing growth in armed neighbourhood support groups, particularly in rural and semi-rural areas.
“We had some riff-raff steal some gear out of the shed the other night,” one farmer just north of Auckland told Investigate, “and a few years ago a woman down the road was held at gunpoint in her home for hours in a nasty home invasion.” The nearest police station is 15 to 20 minutes away, and that’s if it’s manned, so around here our neighbourhood support group is armed. We can be at someone’s home in around two minutes, and we’ll sort it out.”
The Bentley case in the Bay of Plenty last year highlighted the problem. Maggie Bentley spent an hour hidden in bushes on her farm with a cordless phone while masked intruders beat her husband almost beyond recognition and fired a shotgun in the house. Although Maggie had dialed 111 from Te Puke, the call diverted to the Auckland control centre. It took police more than an hour to arrive at the Te Puke scene – a situation the police minister described as “textbook” – and during that time Maggie Bentley was prevented from phoning neighbours for help by the 111 call-taker locking her phone line.
In our June 2003 article in Investigate, an internal police memorandum leaked to the magazine criticized the practice of linking police radio channels to other cities, warn-ing “It is only a matter of when, not if, an officer is injured because he cannot get on the radio for help or backup.”
Another police officer was quoted as saying at the time, “the reason cops are standing off a bit is because we’re not getting any backup, they can’t get on the radio.”
In the Bentley case, it was a crime victim who got hurt, because of delays in getting Auckland police to mobilize patrols to the Bay of Plenty scene. Even so, the Bentley case highlights a bigger problem for the NZ Police – an inability to deal urgently with armed confrontations. Because of budget restrictions, there’s a shortage of body armour for frontline officers, and many officers have chosen to import state of the art body armour from the US rather than wait for Police Minister George Hawkins to push it up the priority list. Nonetheless, a lack of resource means the police tactical response to armed standoffs like the Bentley case or Aramoana is to set up a safe assembly point (safe for police) and wait. In the US, by contrast, heavily-armed and armoured SWAT teams are more likely to move quickly into a situation.
Deciding how to tackle a gunman is always difficult for police. In an incident outlined in Zero Alpha, the official history of the police armed offenders squad, police were called to an eviction in Christchurch where an unstable tenant in a board-ing house had obtained a shotgun. Although the landlady escaped to raise the alarm, another elderly boarding house tenant was in a room on the same floor as the gunman.
This extract from Zero Alpha shows what happened.
Section 1.3 decided to carry out an “unannounced forced entry”, as the available cover for staff was inadequate should the offender attempt to leave the flat, and the other occupant on the floor could not be removed.
Sergeant McEntee (O/C 1.3 Section) and Constable Ashton, took up positions on one side of the doorway, and Constables Foster and Barlass, the other. Dogs Lamb, remained in the vicinity of the stairs behind Foster and Barlass.
As the flat’s door was securely shut, entry could not be immediately gained. Constable Ashton forced the door with a sledgehammer and when partially open, looked into the room.
Tim Ashton : “I looked around into the bedroom. It was in darkness due to the time of day, I think it was about 8 am on a winter’s morning, a southerly day in Christchurch, grey and overcast, and the windows were pulled. The curtains were closed and it was on the southerly side of the house. It was quite dark.
I saw a shadow lying on the couch. I couldn’t see if he was holding anything and I just peeped around the left hand side of the door so as not to expose myself too far. There was no eye contact because it was dark and I could just make out something lying down. I couldn’t even make out what it was.
Almost immediately there was a loud flash and a bang and I felt like someone had smacked me in the hands or punched me in the face.
There wasn’t actually any immediate pain, just more, “What the hell happened” sort of thing in polite language.
My immediate reaction was to try and pull the trigger in the direction of the person lying down, even though at that stage I still couldn’t see a firearm, but I was obviously aware I had been shot.
I tried to pull the trigger and remember thinking, “The f-ing thing doesn’t work” and then I looked at my hands and, well to me at that stage, they looked like a couple of squashed tomatoes and the skin was split open and bleeding and I thought, “Oh s..., my hands don’t work”.
In training we were told to switch hands to the other hand and I looked at my other hand and that was stuffed as well.
So I slid down the wall and then there was a loud boom and there was a hole appeared in the hallway and at that stage I thought, “This is not a good day, my hands don’t work, I can’t defend myself, I can’t shoot my gun and he’s going to come out here and shoot me”.
I wasn’t actually in a huge panic, I just thought, “Oh s...”.
It’s a strange feeling, it’s like not being brave or anything, it’s just a sort of dull acceptance of what is going to happen.
And then a lot of the boys yelled out, “Throw some gas, throw some gas” or “Fire a shot”. I think it was “Throw gas” and I yelled out, “I can’t, my hands are f...ed”.
And then some gas went in and unbeknown to me the shot gun pellets had knocked out the eye piece of my gas mask and consequently the gas mask was useless ‘cause it then filled up with gas.
At that stage I couldn’t breathe and I was in a little bit of pain. So I got up and thought, “S... I’ve got to get out of here somehow” so I walked down the hallway, smashed my way through an adjacent door and went over to the window and stuck my head out the window and yelled at one of the guys, “Get me a f...ing ladder”.
He looked up and said, “We don’t have one”.
This conversation seemed a bit inane at the time but he jogged off somewhere and then one of the guys came up and said, “Come on”. I went downstairs. I was still standing at that stage. I obviously had to go out through the gas and everything and what happened was, then I got gassed again, just to add another icing on the cake and I staggered outside and I fell over in the street because I was gassed, not because of the injury to my hand.
This whole procedure probably took about - from the time of being shot, perhaps five minutes, if it was that long. It is difficult to gauge in respect of time if you are ever involved in anything like that.
It’s all perfectly crystal clear in your mind and it’s one of those events you can recall with true clarity or your version of it anyway. Other people will probably see it differently.
Once outside I was assisted into the ambulance and I received shotgun pellets in the teeth, there is still a pellet inside my head which the Neurosurgeon, Dr McFarlane, a true gentleman of a man who dealt with me, told me that the injuries were such that if the pellet had penetrated any further in the brain, I could have been killed and obviously that didn’t happen or I wouldn’t be making this recording now.
So the injuries to my hand were extensive and the thumb and forefinger will never work properly again. The surgeon Dr Sally Langley, another true professional, did her best to patch up the damage.”
Had police been able to access better body armour and better technology, would that outcome have been different? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
In Parliament last month, United Future’s Marc Alexander summed up the views of many with a question to Prime Minister Helen Clark on the devastating findings of the Corboy review of the 111 system.
“Has the scathing review of the national management structures of the police 111 system, which are credited in the report as being “essentially defunct with low staffing levels, woeful and inadequate training, self-defeating, inefficient, and risky” changed the Prime Minister’s mind about the level of confidence she has in the Minister and in the Commissioner of Police; if not, what would?”
Receiving an answer in the negative, Alexander followed up:
“Can the Prime Minister explain why the Government has chosen to advance all her intrusive, busybody, social engineering policies while core State responsibilities, such as the safety and security concerns of the public – concerns long recognised by anyone who had even a marginal interest in law and order issues – have been all but marginalised, as is clearly outlined by the damning review of the police 111 system?”
To which Justice Minister Phil Goff, standing in for Clark, responded: “Of course, the whole emphasis has been on the safety and security of the public. That is why we have 1,000 additional members of the police force and why we have $200 million a year extra being spent. That is an indication of the commitment of this Government to better policing and to the safety and security of the public.”
Except, based on the figures Investigate has seen, nearly all the growth in the police force is in the roadside tax division, rather than the crime-fighting side.
Although the Government is now earmarking $45 million to fix the 111 system, the serious questions about the traffic/crime balance within the police go unanswered. For Ron Mark, the solution is simple: “It is New Zealand First policy to de-merge traffic and police. We would put traffic patrols back under the control of the LTSA, and fund the police force to concentrate on crime and emergencies.”
Whether Mark gets that chance will depend on how strongly voters feel about their safety, and whether the public continue to have confidence in Labour’s policing priorities.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Jul 05, Sex Crime

Is the Ministry guilty

The good ship “Safe Sex” is about to hit an iceberg. IAN WISHART goes head to head with the Ministry of Health’s Chief Advisor on Population Health, Dr DOUG LUSH, in our punchiest interview, ever

INVESTIGATE: It would appear that the public health campaigns that have been going on have ignored the scientific data now pouring in that condoms will not protect against most STIs, and that the huge rise in STIs may be directly related to the promotion of condoms as a safe sex tool, when in fact they’re not safe.
LUSH: I think that’s wrong, that condoms are a very important part of protecting people from sexually transmitted diseases and have a growing importance in the prevention of STIs and HIV. I haven’t seen the particular studies you refer to, however I do know there are problems in some studies in that the reported use and continued use of condoms cannot be verified or validated that these people are using them properly or consistently, and this can lead to the spread, so there are a lot of methodological problems.
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, let’s spread that the other way though, flip that coin, and you will never be able to prove condoms are effective. If you’re going to say condoms are effective ‘if they’re used correctly’ how on earth would you know?
LUSH: Have you heard of the Cochrane Collaboration? They did a very vigorous
assessment of all the research in an area and they very strongly support the reduction of HIV incidence from condoms. Now HIV is somewhat different from other sexually transmitted infections but the work that’s done on HIV shows that condoms are very useful in protecting people from transmission.
INVESTIGATE: I’m not going to disagree with you on HIV, I think all the medical studies are showing exactly what you’re saying. What I will say to you is that it’s the only sexually transmitted disease that condoms will protect you against. And I will tell you that categorically.
LUSH: Well I would say that that isn’t the case. We know that gonorrhea can be protected also by the use of condoms, and there’s good evidence of that. Other STIs like herpes, where it depends on where the herpes lesions are, there’s variable protection from condoms. But syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia – there’s good protection from condoms and I’m very comfortable with the approach we’ve used in New Zealand, “No Rubba No Hubba Hubba”. We know that teenagers are sexually active and this is a way that they can protect themselves from STIs. It’s not a foolproof way but it certainly does reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases.
INVESTIGATE: What sort of level of protection would you expect a condom to give against chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis?
LUSH: If they’re used consistently and regularly, then a very good rate of protection.
INVESTIGATE: How would you define that, percentage wise, allowing for the fact that three percent of condoms will result in pregnancy, so that’s the ultimate sort of failure rate.
LUSH: I know studies have shown the failure rate is between two and eighteen percent in condom use. The physical characteristics of the condom suggest that we know the agents that cause STIs don’t pass through the condom, so if a condom is used correctly there won’t be any transmission.
INVESTIGATE: How would you feel if I told you the scientific evidence over the past five years is showing that, for example, that there may only be a reduction in chlamydia rates of 26% against those who don’t use condoms at all. Those who are consistently and always using condoms according to the WHO’s meta-analysis are still likely to suffer a 74% rate of infection. Would that surprise you?
LUSH: That would, and I’d be interested in looking at their methodology as to how they validated this.
INVESTIGATE: This was a study of 917 sex workers in Peru, published in the Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. But even in the best studies the WHO’s meta-analysis has pulled together, the chlamydia reduction rate is only 40%, so you’re still talking worse odds than Russian Roulette.
LUSH: A 40% reduction is a useful reduction and I would see that as a worst case scenario [not the best case].
INVESTIGATE: It’s useful in the sense of looking at the overall population demographic, it’s not so useful if little Johnny or Mary goes out, reading the posters saying condoms are “safe sex”, and that’s the basic message. Up to 25% of young people in some Northland towns have chlamydia, so that’s pretty good odds of catching it over time.
LUSH: It is a population approach, but it also is personal protection. And it is valid advice for someone who is sexually active that they should use a condom. The frequency of activity that prostitutes are involved in is very different from adolescents in NZ, as far as frequency of sexual contact. Although there may be some who are very sexually promiscuous, this isn’t the norm and you can’t really apply those studies to the type of protection you’re going to get from condoms.
INVESTIGATE: I’ll take you through some of these studies because they are fascinating, and they’re the only evidence that the medical world actually has. A study of 380 American girls aged 14 to 18, revealed that 30% of the girls who didn’t use condoms had caught a sexually transmitted disease by the end of six months, and 17.8% of girls who always used condoms also had caught STDs at the end of that period.
LUSH: This is reported condom use, and we see a very dramatic decrease.
INVESTIGATE: Well you do, and you don’t. At a population level you see a decrease in the percentage, but at a personal level you’ve got a bunch of kids out there who are putting condoms on because the health authorities are telling them “safe sex – wear a condom”, and the truth is they’re not being told that “in actual fact you’ve still got a very high risk you’re going to catch something”.
LUSH: Our message to the youth of NZ, or sexually active people, is that if you want to avoid sexually transmitted infections, then the sure way is not to have sex. However...
INVESTIGATE: Where do you say that?!
LUSH: ... accepting the reality that young people do have sex and they want to protect themselves, using a condom is the best way.
INVESTIGATE: Well, are you telling young people though? Because I’ve looked across the Hubba site and I’ll be frank – that site is grossly inaccurate. Even on the Q&A section, “Are condoms safe?”, the site arrogantly is suggesting – it lists the STIs “Chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, genital warts” etc – and says “people say these things can get through, but they can’t, it’s safe”. That’s what they’re saying, and it’s a crock! There are something like 40 studies that the World Health Organisation has cited in its Bulletin, which ironically the Ministry of Health referred
me to.
LUSH: Looking at the site, we have a question “Why aren’t you promoting abstinence?” which is a question we are often asked. And I’ll read out the response: “The campaign is about supporting choices made by teens, whether that is to have sex or wait. Those who are sexually active need protection to
reduce the risk of STIs. Unfortunately many young people don’t plan their first sexual
experience, and this campaign aims to help young people think realistically and be ready to protect themselves.”
INVESTIGATE: OK, if this campaign is about making young people think realistically, where is the evidence on your website that you are telling them there is still, for example, an 80% chance they’re going to get syphilis?
LUSH: There isn’t an 80% chance of getting syphilis from a single sexual encounter.
INVESTIGATE: Well how many kids are having single encounters and how do we know? This gets back to my question at the start which we don’t have an answer to: You do query, and rightly so, that we don’t know how well people are using the condoms, or whether they’re really using them or whether they’re just saying so to please the researcher. But the flip side of that coin is that the health authorities are making the point that a condom properly used will prevent this. But you’ve got no scientific evidence to back that up either, for exactly the same reason –
because you can’t get a control group that you can actually prove are doing it right.
LUSH: Fortunately we know the way a condom works. It is a direct barrier between the semen and the vagina.
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, it’s great for preventing pregnancy, but according to the studies it’s no good at protecting against most STIs.
LUSH: Problems occur both with the
validity of reporting and the behavioural
aspects. It is hard to conduct because the intimate nature of the activity you’re investigating means you can’t actually watch what’s happening, so you just have to assume people are telling the truth.
INVESTIGATE: Exactly! But Doug, here’s my point...
LUSH: The point of our campaign is that we go into a great lot of detail about the need for people to know how to use condoms properly, and even to practice using condoms, so for young men we would advise them to practice by themselves using condoms, so that when it comes to their first sexual experience they know how to do them, so its important not just to use them but to know how to use them.
INVESTIGATE: I’m going to come back to this question time and time again: how do you know that using a condom the way the Health Ministry recommends will actually achieve the result? I’ll tell you why you don’t know – there isn’t one scientific study in the world that shows it, because there is no control group that you can monitor 24/7 to see whether they’re doing it correctly or not. There has not been a study like that, therefore you cannot make the claim that “if you do it right it will protect you”. You have no scientific
basis for making that claim!
LUSH: We have extremely strong support for HIV from these meta-analyses that were done.
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, but as you’ve
acknowledged, and I agree, HIV is contained within the semen, effectively, and is therefore trapped by the condom as part of the condom’s design to prevent pregnancy. These other diseases are not constructed in such ways, and according to the WHO, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association,
according to the British Medical Journal, and so on and so on and so on, these diseases are getting through.
Yeah, sure, you can sit there and say “well, we don’t know how well they’re using the condoms or whether they’re really reporting them”, but the flip side of the coin is, you have no proof that using a condom correctly is going to work anyway, because that scientific study hasn’t been done either.
LUSH: The studies that you’ve told me about that you say discredit the value of condoms still have significant differences between those who’re using condoms and those who don’t. So on that evidence alone it would be worthwhile to suggest using condoms and promoting condom usage.
INVESTIGATE: Well, let’s take it through a little bit. I’ll start with the World Health Organisation Bulletin of June 2004. Quote: “No published prospective study has found protection against genital human papilloma virus (ie, cervical cancer, warts, HPV) infection”.
LUSH: Does it say that?
INVESTIGATE: It does say that.
LUSH: Is that what it reports?
INVESTIGATE: I will read you the exact quote: “No published prospective study has found protection against genital human papilloma virus HPV infection”.
LUSH: And this is in?
INVESTIGATE: This is WHO’s Bulletin June 04. It’s in the abstract. I’ve got a couple of others here. AIDS Journal 2001, a study of 17,264 adults in the town of Rakai, Uganda, over four years measured STD infection rates. Consistent condom use resulted in only a 29% reduction in syphilis infections as against the general population, and a 50% reduction in chlamydia and gonorrhea.
The Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 2002, a meta-analysis of 20 studies found, quote: “found no evidence that condoms were effective against genital HPV infection, warts or cervical cancer.” Again, that contrasts
directly with what’s on the Hubba site.
LUSH: And the Hubba site is saying? I can’t see the part where you say we mention the wart virus. I’m looking here and it says “condoms do work, used correctly and consistently”. And they’re the key points.
INVESTIGATE: Definition of STIs: “Chlamydia, genital warts, herpes or gonorrhea”. Then you’ve got a question, “How can I protect myself against STIs?”. Answer, “Use condoms. Correctly used, and used every time you have sex, condoms are the most effective protection against most STIs including HIV/AIDS”. So you do mention genital warts in there.
LUSH: Well I do agree with that statement, that condoms are the most effective method of protection we know of. There aren’t any other effective ways of doing this.
INVESTIGATE: I’m not suggesting that the Health Ministry simply throws up its hands in horror and says “OK, no sex”, albeit that there are those who say it’s a good idea. I appreciate that you’re not going to get that message through to teenagers, but certainly fluffing around and ignoring the reality that condoms won’t protect – I mean, let’s get real! Condoms will not protect people against STIs. Parents out there are thinking the sex education methods are working. You’ve got the front page stories in the papers that are nothing but inaccurate propaganda. It’s literally
interwoven with all your publicity and has been for a long time. Is it not time that we admitted the Emperor has no clothes, and began investigating a different strategy for young people, because there’s nothing on your website to suggest there’s a risk at all?
LUSH: I think it [the website] implies that you need to be experienced and consistent in your use.
INVESTIGATE: I’ll take you to another one. American Journal of Epidemiology 2003, a study of 444 female university students in the States found that “consistently using condoms with a new partner is not associated with significant protection against HPV”.
LUSH: Yes, but that’s not an area that we dwell on in the publicity, we’re mainly talk about chlamydia.
INVESTIGATE: If you have got a partner who may have slept around, may have a disease, really, don’t rely on a condom at all. Insist on a screening check because there is a very real chance that even if you use a condom, you’re going to catch it. You’re not saying that, but that’s what you need to say.
Is it time to say, “Condoms don’t work
except for pregnancy or HIV. Don’t rely on them for any other protection”. Isn’t that a better way of giving kids the right choices to make?
LUSH: No I don’t believe so at all!
INVESTIGATE: Why?
LUSH: Because condoms are effective.
INVESTIGATE: Against what!? With
respect, what are they effective against?
LUSH: Syphilis.
INVESTIGATE: No they’re not. The best study that the WHO meta-analysis found shows a reduction of 29% in syphilis rates, still a 71% chance of contracting syphilis, so you can throw that one out the window.
LUSH: But again, the methodology in a lot of these is...
INVESTIGATE: You still have no scientific evidence to make the claim that a condom, correctly used, will protect you, because as you point out no one has done the 24/7, hidden camera, monitored installation of people having sex. So you can’t make that comment hand on heart, and your comment about the studies possibly not reflecting proper condom use is irrelevant, because if you don’t know that condoms actually work – even in ideal conditions – then how can you criticize these studies? That’s just fobbing it off.
LUSH: I will be a bit repetitive here. We do know that the viruses and bacteria that cause STIs do not pass through.
INVESTIGATE: You know from a lab test ...
LUSH: We know that if that physical barrier is in place these infections won’t be passed from person to person. We know from the best studies which have been undertaken in people with HIV that there is an 80% reduction. So we know that condoms will also work for other sexually transmitted infections.
INVESTIGATE: Such as?
LUSH: We have some modest results from the literature, but the methodological problems with reporting and the competence in using condoms means we need to interpret these results carefully.
INVESTIGATE: Doug, you’re not listening to me, with respect. You’re repeating the same thing.
LUSH: I told you I’d repeat the same thing. That’s my line and that’s where we’re at with this.
INVESTIGATE: But you cannot make this claim. You can’t. You have no proof that a correctly-used condom, in the wild, will protect you. The results you have about viruses and bacteria not passing through the latex are lab tests in ideal conditions. But a human body is not an ideal condition. And you don’t know, and I don’t know, where in fact the bacteria from some of these things actually are on the person, or how easily transferable they are. That may be why the condoms are failing – not because people aren’t using them correctly but just because condoms will not actually work in that situation. And you can’t point to a piece of research that shows I’m wrong on that.
LUSH: I’m not underestimating the complexity in the technique, but there are technical aspects to this.
INVESTIGATE: You don’t have one single scientific study about using a condom correctly.
LUSH: We have extremely good studies.
INVESTIGATE: Name one. I have a suspicion after reading the WHO Bulletin that one has never been done.
LUSH: I’ll refer you to the Cochrane Collaboration on condom use, which shows an 80% reduction in HIV incidence.
INVESTIGATE: But I agree with you on that. We’ve talked about HIV. You’re not tackling the central issue. Before you can get up and slag off these studies by saying people may be misreporting their condom use, you have to be able to prove the claim that the Ministry of Health repeatedly makes, that a correctly used condom will protect you. Where’s the proof?
LUSH: A lot of it comes through inference, and a lot of it comes through studies that do show a reduction in transmission.
INVESTIGATE: What studies? The ones I’m showing you are not showing a significant reduction in transmission. You’ve still got, at best, a one in two chance of catching something. That’s worse odds than Russian Roulette, significantly worse odds.
LUSH: We’ll stick with the Cochrane Collaboration and the results for HIV where there has been attention to the methodology. I’d venture to say the methodology on the other ones is problematic.
INVESTIGATE: Obviously we’re going to be at loggerheads on this one. Is there any plan, on the basis of what I’ve revealed to you, to review the way the “safe sex” message is publicized in New Zealand, do you accept that the current publicity is flawed?
LUSH: No, I don’t.
INVESTIGATE: Do you accept that it could be potentially flawed?
LUSH: I acknowledge that we need to watch what is in the literature and that abstinence is the most risk averse – for the most risk averse, abstinence is something that people might want to consider.
INVESTIGATE: What about on your websites and in all your literature, why are you not incorporating the studies that have been around for five years now – and these are the only studies you’ve got to work with because they’re the only studies in the world – that are revealing significant – up to a 100% chance – risks of catching STIs regardless of using a condom. Why is this not on your website, why are teenagers not being told in school, and will you rectify that?
LUSH: Teenagers. The aim is to protect teenagers who are having their first, or infrequent, sexual encounters. We know that the people they’re having sex with may well have an STI. There isn’t good information on the protection per single episode, but we believe it would give a good level of protection for each single episode, and combined with
reporting and treatment of STIs, this is a useful way to protect individuals and the population by reducing rates.
INVESTIGATE: Well I’ve quoted you two studies following teenagers over six months, and even those who consistently used condoms, and in some cases almost exactly the same number of condom-users caught sexually transmitted diseases as those who didn’t use condoms. So we’re going to be saying the “No Rubba, No Hubba” camapign is an absolute fraud. If you guys don’t put this information in there, how can anyone trust what the Ministry of Health says?
LUSH: I don’t have anything to reply to that, except to say that I’m certainly comfortable with Hubba.
INVESTIGATE: But how can you be comfortable with it, in the face of 40-odd studies quoted by the WHO? How can you look at those studies and tell me that there’s nothing you have to do to Hubba and everything on your website is OK, when I’ve just proven scientifically that it’s a crock.?
LUSH: I don’t think you have proven that.
INVESTIGATE: We’ve had this discussion. You have no studies to back up your claim. You can make the claim for HIV and that’s all you can make it for.
LUSH: You’ve raised a number of studies that show a low level of protection or no protection. There are problems, as we know, in the methodology of doing this. We know that what we see in HIV is generalisable. We know the physical characteristics of the condom.
INVESTIGATE: But that relates to pregnancy and semen. It doesn’t relate to herpes or HPV, or syphilis, chlamydia and so forth. Those are different organisms. You are trying to extrapolate something which is specific to condom design – i.e., stopping semen from going through, and you’re trying to extrapolate that out to venereal disease generally and you can’t, there’s not one study in the world that shows this.
LUSH: Still, on herpes, I did mention that herpes can occur when condoms are used.
INVESTIGATE: The studies show that at best there will be a 40% reduction in herpes infection rates if a condom is always and consistently used.
LUSH: That’s a spectacular result.
INVESTIGATE: It’s a spectacular result at a population level ...
LUSH: ... and at an individual level as well.
INVESTIGATE: Not if the individual hasn’t been told. It’s only spectacular if the individual knows before slapping a condom on that there’s still a 60% chance they’ll catch herpes if they sleep with someone who’s affected over a period of time. And you’re not telling them that.
LUSH: You shouldn’t have sexual activity if you have lesions.
INVESTIGATE: But there’s nothing on your website, nothing, that gives people any advice of the risks. I’ll turn this around. You guys are going after the makers of vitamin supplements, for heaven’s sake, and dietary supplements, and saying that because there is a slight risk that somebody may be misled that these things should all be tightly regulated, and here you are promoting the biggest load of old codswallop I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t stack up against the scientific evidence. You’re not prepared to make changes to your website or the way you do it. You are holding onto irrelevant studies to try and justify your position – if the Ministry was in private practice it’d be sued!
LUSH: I have no response to that.
INVESTIGATE: No, and with respect I’m not trying to get at you. But in general terms the Ministry of Health would be down on a private operator like a ton of bricks, as they are, and here’s the MoH refusing, refusing to tell young people the real truth about condoms and the risks. Nowhere on your website or your material is that point raised, and you’re saying “we’re not going to change it”, and I’m saying to you the best scientific evidence in the world says what you’re saying is a crock. You’ve got no response to that apart from an HIV study that’s irrelevant, and I think you guys are on dangerous ground. That’s my personal opinion.
LUSH: Yep, I’m hearing you.
INVESTIGATE: So I’ll ask the question again: Are you prepared to start giving much more information about the failures of condoms based on the scientific evidence to date, so that people can make informed decisions for themselves? You say abstinence doesn’t work, but if people knew that every time they had sex there was a real 50% chance of their penis dropping off, do you think the abstinence rates would actually grow? I think they would. So abstinence can’t be taken in isolation. Abstinence is relevant to the amount of information and risk that is out there.
For the past 20 years we’ve been sold a safe sex message that says if you use a condom you’re protected.
LUSH: I don’t believe we’ve said that. We’ve said that if people are going to make a choice to be sexually active, then they can get a level of protection by using condoms. We’ve never said this is absolute, but we believe it is good protection they can get with consistent and proper use.
INVESTIGATE: Yeah, but your definition of good protection at the start of this interview was between two and 18% failure [a 98% - 82% protection], now there’s not one study in the world that shows you’ll get that level of protection from a condom with these diseases at all. Best case scenario, 50% protection, worst case zero protection.
LUSH: I’m talking about the condom failure rate. That is thought to be the way transmission can occur.
INVESTIGATE: Yes, but what I’m saying to you is that real tests in the real world are showing the transmission rate is much higher. There is a very good chance that our current sexual disease explosion is directly a result of the safe sex campaign, because people are not being told the full story about the risks and failures. And it seems you’re not even aware of the failures in the Ministry.
I find it staggering. I don’t know how many kids have got a disease now that’s making them potentially infertile, and certainly giving them health issues, because we haven’t faced up to this. And how many women die of cervical cancer, because of this?
LUSH: The Ministry is quite clear on screening policy for cervical cancer.
INVESTIGATE: Yes, but screening is after the fact. You’re not giving people a choice before they endanger themselves. In fact the material on the Hubba site says condoms will protect you from genital warts. Your information is grossly inaccurate and possibly dangerous.
LUSH: I don’t believe that any of the
information is dangerous. I do agree with you that abstinence is something that needs to be considered and that is an option that young people may wish to explore. However there are sexually active people and the best way of protecting themselves is condoms. We’re confident of that and we’ve had an expert group who have advised us on this.
INVESTIGATE: Well you’d better be going back to those experts and ask “why didn’t you tell us this?”. There is no study in the world that is giving people the confidence that you believe exists. And I can’t believe that an NZ taxpayer-funded Ministry of Health, with the responsibilities that the Ministry has for public safety, can justify the stand that it is currently taking as if the iceberg is not in front of you. It’s there all right.
LUSH: The iceberg is what?
INVESTIGATE: The iceberg is the cold hard reality that condoms don’t work, and we’ve got a generation of kids now who’ve caught STDs because they believed the lie.
LUSH: I think the kids who’ve caught the STDs are ones who haven’t used condoms or haven’t used them in a way that’s allowed them to protect themselves.
INVESTIGATE: Well, the international studies are showing that up to 100% of those using condoms correctly are still catching STDs. So again, you have no scientific basis for your anecdotal claim.
LUSH: That points to the problems they have in using them and using them consistently.
INVESTIGATE: And again, name me one scientific study that supports what you are claiming.
LUSH: I’ll take you back to the Cochrane study on HIV.
INVESTIGATE: But you’ve got the WHO meta-analysis in front of you. It’s telling you something you don’t want to hear, and so you’re ignoring it.
LUSH: We’re going over the same territory now. We think condoms provide good protection from sexually transmitted diseases.
INVESTIGATE: How good is “good”?
LUSH: This is a difficult thing. Looking at what’s happened in HIV, we’d say an 80% reduction in risk.
INVESTIGATE: So you’d say there’s only a 20% risk when they use a condom with someone else who’s infected, of catching it, and that’s despite every single study I’ve taken you through today?
LUSH: I would have thought [the protection] was bigger than that. Obviously evidence in this area is difficult to come by.
INVESTIGATE: Doug Lush, Ministry of Health, appreciate your time.

FOOTNOTE
As this issue was going to press, Doug Lush sent a letter to Investigate to further clarify the Ministry’s position. He urged the magazine to take cognizance of the fact that despite the bleak data in the studies, the World Health Organisation was still urging countries not to give up on condoms because they are effective at cutting population rates of STDs. The WHO also noted that more studies are needed on the subject.
With respect to the WHO, we disagree. While one medical study could be treated as a rogue result, the medical journals are publishing study after study reaching the same conclusion. No study is showing any result backing up the fairy story that “a condom, properly used” will prevent STDs. While Investigate accepts that condoms certainly have a role in preventing HIV, and possibly other diseases at a population level, our major issue is one of informed consent. Currently, there are no warnings in sex education publicity material that reflect the grave failings in regard to condoms and STDs. It is only appropriate for condoms to continue being promoted if, and only if, the public is given the real facts about the disease transmission rates through condoms. If the public is not given the information from the dozens of medical studies published so far, then the Ministry is effectively conducting a new Unfortunate Experiment, only this time it affects hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, their health, their fertility and possibly even their lives.
As we said in the interview, people may change their sexual behaviours if they believe there is a real risk to themselves, despite the use of a condom. Of course, others won’t change. But that should be the public’s choice, based on their right to know, not secret information hidden away because the Ministry of Health and Family Planning Association don’t want to upset their own publicity schemes.
This is a national disgrace, and the Ministry of Health’s continued denial of the only hard evidence in the world is an absolute scandal.
Ian Wishart, Editor

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Investigate Jul 05, Where The Rubba Meets The Road

Is safe sex really safe?

In America, it’s ‘no glove, no love’. In parts of Australia, the message is, ‘safe sex, no regrets’. And here in New Zealand, the rule is, ‘no rubba, no hubba’. So with all the money being spent pushing the message that condoms are a cure-all, why are many sexually transmitted diseases on the rise? As JAMES MORROW in Sydney and IAN WISHART in Auckland discover in an Australasian exclusive, the safe sex ad campaigns may actually be causing the massive increase in venereal disease

Here’s an interesting but little-known fact about condoms that may just win you a meat tray down at the pub Thursday night: the use of condoms dates back at least as far as ancient Rome and Egypt. Not only that, but archaeologists have discovered early cave paintings that seem to suggest (appropriately enough) that pre-historic Frenchmen may have discovered the things thousands of years before the New York Times ran the first-ever print ad for ‘Dr. Power’s French Preventatives’.
Looking for more condom trivia? Before the latex condom was invented, condoms were made by hand-dipping molds into rubber cement (hence the slang term). But in 1919 an inventor in Ohio by the name of Frederick Killian figured out that latex was a much better material for the purpose, and by the mid-1930s, at the height of the Depression, American manufacturers were producing 1.5 million condoms a day.
Oh, and here’s one more interesting thing about condoms: contrary to popular belief, they are not hugely effective in preventing an incredible variety of sexually transmitted diseases – from HPV, or human papilloma virus, which is linked to more than 90 per cent of cases of cervical cancer and also cause infertility, to herpes.
How can this be? Since the mid-1980s and the discovery that AIDS could be prevented by condoms, ‘French letters’, ‘rubbers’, and ‘raincoats’ have stopped being something that people whispered and tittered about and instead become deadly serious business. Around the world public health authorities, looking for a way to keep AIDS from spreading out of control, have promoted condoms in earnest for nearly two decades now with a variety of advertising campaigns.
But all is not happy and healthy in New Zealand’s bedrooms. While the number of AIDS cases is low, new HIV cases are on the rise, and the rates of many other infections are climbing as well. And while none are necessarily the death sentence that an HIV infection represents, they have potentially huge consequences,
including cancer and infertility. Public health experts have seen a tremendous increase in cases of diseases like chlamydia and syphilis; in the Australian state of Victoria, the situation is so bad that Chief Health Officer was compelled this past March to issue a formal Health Alert to general practitioners telling them to watch out for the sudden uptick in syphilis cases. That sort of warning is not an everyday occurrence: the last time the Chief Health Officer issued such a bulletin was in 2003, warning doctors to be on the lookout for SARS.
But if you think the Victorian warning is bad, Auckland’s chlamydia epidemic is three times worse than Australia’s, and in the far north as many as 25% of young people have the disease. Overall, the upper North Island’s chlamydia rate is six times higher than the Australian average.
There are many factors behind the rise in various STDs, but one has gone all but unreported in a culture where, officially at least, condom use has taken on an almost sacramental nature: studies conducted over the past few years show that, far from being the be-all and end-all in sexual protection, condoms offer practically zero effective protection from most STDs apart from HIV, ironically.
In other words, when the emperor has no clothes on, a condom is of limited, if any, use in protecting him from a host of diseases.
Back in 2001, the United States’ National Institutes of Health published a series of findings that were shocking, both because they completely overturned long-held conventional wisdom on a very important topic, and also because they received virtually no media coverage. Indeed, the Washington Post at the time reported that ‘some health officials considered keeping the report private’, adding that ‘some family planning advocates said they feared that the new report would be used to put pressure on the FDA to change condom labels to reflect the conclusions.’
As one commentator puts it, ‘It’s like hearing that Grandma died and immediately asking if Grandma will be making brownies for the funeral. The reality of the loss just hasn’t sunk in yet.’
Among other things, the study found that when one partner is infected with herpes, using condoms cut the risk of transmission by only about forty percent. In other words, despite the condom, there’s still a 60% risk of passing on the herpes virus.
Meanwhile, with regard to human papilloma virus, by far the number one cause of cervical cancer, ‘the Panel concluded that there was no epidemiological evidence that condom use reduced the risk of … infection’.
In non-medical speak, there’s no evidence at all that condoms can prevent the spread of infection.
Follow-up studies in the past five years have only confirmed the worst fears of researchers – in the case of syphilis, for example, even consistent use of a condom will only give you 29% protection against the venereal disease – you still have a 71% chance of catching the pox, even with a condom.
And this doesn’t even begin to take into account the misuse, or irregular use, of condoms: according to just one study of Australian high school students, 68 percent of those surveyed who said they were sexually
active admitted that they don’t use condoms every time they have sex, despite the fact that virtually every kid in the state’s schools is given lessons in how to use the things. And even among adults, condom usage can be irregular, or start too late in an encounter, to prevent the spread of many infections.
‘The term “safe sex” needs to be examined in detail’, says Dr. Caroline Harvey, Medical Director for Family Planning Queensland. ‘We give people many mixed messages depending on whether we are talking about preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections or HIV. In my dealings with clients, I’ve found that when they ask about safe sex, you need to talk to them and pull apart what they’re talking about.’
‘Viral infections like herpes and HPV do spread from skin-to-skin contact’, she adds, something that many people who come into her office are unaware of. According to Harvey, depending on what the client is looking to prevent, the options may be very different – something that doesn’t always come through in media campaigns such as the NZ Ministry of Health’s ‘No Rubba, No Hubba-hubba’ effort.
In fact, the Ministry of Health website for ‘Hubba’ is so inaccurate there are sufficient grounds to shut it down. After identifying a range of sexually transmitted infections, including “chlamydia, genital warts, herpes, or gonorrhoea”, the website’s FAQ section then asks:
Q: How can I protect myself against STIs?
A: Use condoms. Correctly used and used every time you have sex, condoms are the most effective protection against most STIs, including HIV/AIDs.”
Now here’s what the most recent scientific studies* have shown about condom effectiveness for a number of the diseases listed on the Hubba site:
Chlamydia: still a 60% chance of catching it even if a condom is correctly used every time
Gonorrhea: still a 60% chance of catching it even if a condom is correctly used every time
Herpes: still a 60% chance of catching it even if a condom is correctly used every time
Genital warts: no published study has found condoms can protect against this at all
Either New Zealand Ministry of Health officials and Health Minister Annette King are woefully ignorant of the failings of new scientific data over the past five years, or the Ministry is delib-erately ignoring the facts, knowing that hundreds of thousands of school students have been misled about safe sex over that time, leading to now-record levels of sexually transmitted diseases in young people, at a cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers and the community.
The Hubba website doesn’t care that its “information” for young people is dangerously incorrect, judging from its arrogant Q&A on condom ‘safety’:
Q: Are condoms safe?
A: Condoms do protect you. Some people say it isn’t worth using condoms because they have holes big enough for viruses to get through, but that’s not true. Bacteria and viruses…cannot pass through an undamaged condom.”
Tell that to the international medical journals and research teams.
For the Hubba website to claim that condoms are “the most effective protection” against sexually transmitted diseases is incredible, especially if the 50% failure rate in condoms is not being disclosed to young people.
Nor is New Zealand’s influential Family Planning Association in the clear on this one. The Association’s resource kits blatantly state: “Condoms are known to greatly reduce the risk of catching other STIs such as chlamydia and gonorrhoea.”
In the course of researching the article, the revelations stunned many on the magazine’s staff and in the wider community as we gathered interviews.
“I can’t believe it,” one woman told us. “There are women who go through their pregnancies terrified
because they have a one in 600 risk of having a deformed child, and we’re talking here about a one in two risk of contracting serious and in some cases incurable sexual diseases even if we use a condom. Why on earth hasn’t anyone told us this before?”
While it is conceded that condoms can reduce your risk of catching an STD by around half, a one in two chance is still worse odds than a round of Russian Roulette, and hardly equates to “safe sex”. And if teenagers are not being told the grim full story in their school sex education classes, thanks to a Ministry of Health cover-up or botch-up, is it possible that kids have increased their sexual activity in the mistaken belief that a condom will somehow protect them?
Is that the real reason for the massive increase in STDs?
Instead of telling teenagers the cold hard truth, they’ve been lulled into such a false sense of security that they’ve tripled or even quadrupled their “bonk-rate” over the past 20 years of “safe sex” campaigns, making the (at best) 50% effectiveness of condoms useless in practical terms. If you’re having four times more sex because you think condoms make it safe, in real terms you’ve actually doubled your risk of catching an STD.
And you won’t read that in the “No Rubba, No Hubba” material.
Naturally, we asked New Zealand’s Ministry of Health to justify the outrageously inaccurate data in the Hubba campaign.
“I’ve referred your question to one of our senior policy analysts,” said Hubba director Sally Hughes, “and they tell me that the Ministry of Health is satisfied that condoms are effective. We rely on the World Health Organisation’s Bulletin of June 2004 which includes a study of condom effectiveness.”
Again, naturally, Investigate checked up. Although the WHO Bulletin is bullish in its language and socially liberal in its conclusions, the Bulletin nonetheless concedes that every medical research study since 2001
has found condoms have only limited efficacy against venereal diseases.
“A meta-analysis of 20 studies found no evidence that condoms were effective against genital HPV (warts or cervical cancer) infection.”
So strike one against condoms in the very report New Zealand’s Ministry of Health is using to justify its
fatally-flawed “safe sex” message. If just one New Zealand woman contracts cervical cancer because she relied on the ‘No Rubba’ campaign, does that make the Ministry of Health criminally negligent?
But there’s more.
The WHO document also discloses that a study of teenagers in the US revealed that STD rates were virtually the same between those who always used condoms (a minority) and those who either used condoms intermittently or not at all.
Twenty one percent of those who always used condoms had caught STDs, compared with 23% of the “sometimes or never group”.
“So why are you continuing to push this condoms = safe sex message,” we asked a senior Ministry of Health official, “when clearly it’s the biggest load of old codswallop that’s ever been perpetrated in a PR campaign?”
“Well,” pondered the official after a moment, “perhaps the studies didn’t properly monitor whether people really did use condoms all the time.”
“Well, this is the WHO Bulletin that your own Hubba team referred me to…” we responded.
The WHO document also acknowledged and quoted the same studies we quoted earlier, showing (at best) a 40% reduction in the chances of a herpes or chlamydia infection.
Yet despite confirming that condoms are less safe than a six shooter revolver with one bullet loaded, the WHO seems to regard any reduction in STD risk as a good reason to keep promoting condom use.
‘Condoms are useful’, maintains Anna McNulty, Director of the Sydney Sexual Heath Centre, when asked about diseases that spread despite the use of condoms. McNulty adds that the increase in the rates of infection various sexual diseases – chlamydia rates have trebled in her state alone in the last five years according to one estimate – could come from a variety of factors including, she claims, the lack of access to health care among young people.
The problem, says McNulty, is that ‘people use them some of the time but not all of the time’, and admits that while a great way to prevent things like AIDS and unintended pregnancies, in terms of preventing herpes and the genital warts that can lead to cervical cancer, ‘they are not as effective.’
An added challenge is that fact that many diseases such as chlamydia can be asymptomatic, especially in men. ‘It can be silent for a long time, but it can cause significant damage’, says Dr. Harvey.
Despite this, many public health bodies are delivering a mixed message. While, for example, South Australia’s Health Department’s web site frankly states that ‘condoms will give you some protection from most sexually transmitted infections, but some, like herpes, crabs and genital warts, can spread through skin-to-skin contact’, it is a message that often gets lost when it is boiled down to a catchy slogan – such as ‘Safe Sex, No Regrets’, the message currently being pushed in an NSW Health ad campaign, or the aforementioned ‘No Rubba,
No Hubba’.
Featuring a variety of television and print ads, the ‘Safe Sex, No Regrets’ campaign shows groups of healthy, happy, good-looking young people – straight and gay and of various ethnicities – in different social circumstances. The copy on the print ads says things like, ‘Tonight I’m picking up chlamydia’ or some other disease, with the name of the disease crossed out and the word ‘condoms’ printed underneath it, the implication being that condoms are all one needs to have what the tag-line calls, ‘no regrets’. In one ad specifically targeting Aboriginals, readers are told that ‘sexually transmitted infections … can affect anybody who has unsafe sex.’
Which is absolutely true, but again fails to mention that condoms are not foolproof against disease – and that ‘no regrets’ is a pretty broad statement that implies something close to 100 per cent reliability. Yet very little is ever 100 per cent when health and medicine are involved (and in the sense that condoms are used to prevent the spread of disease, they have a medical component), and if the maker of any other device with as many caveats as condoms have attached to them ever tried to advertise in a similar way, they would be shut down by the authorities sooner than the casual couples featured in NSW Health’s campaign could wake up the following morning with a splitting headache and serious misgivings.
But while the campaign does not tell the whole truth about condoms, McNulty says that ‘you have to keep the message simple, and the “Safe Sex, No Regrets” campaign did a good job as it targeted both young heterosexuals and gay men.’ She concedes, though, that even with 100% condom usage, people are not fully protected against skin-to-skin infections.
So what to do about all this? In Australia, national strategy on sexually transmitted diseases is due to be released in July, and according to McNulty, it will definitely have an emphasis on chlamydia and the sudden spike in infection rates, and will push for increases in screening. Easy tests now exist to detect the infection, and treatment is normally a simple antibiotic treatment. But the campaign will also continue to emphasize ‘safe sex’ – perpetuating the lie.
“Take the example of NSW’s ‘Safe Sex, No Regrets’ campaign,” Investigate put to Hubba director Sally Hughes. “That campaign features a poster on chlamydia.”
“I’ve seen it, yes,” she confirmed.
“Which, based on the scientific evidence now pouring in, is totally and utterly untrue!”
And yet the Hubba website makes pretty much the same claims online about using condoms to prevent chlamydia.
There is another aspect to consider. A generation ago, couples were getting married in their early 20s, entering stable relationships and generally avoiding promiscuity. As a result, STD rates were much lower in the seventies and eighties. But today, most people are not settling into long term relationships until their late 20s or early 30s. They now have multiple sexual partners before marriage, and a corresponding huge rise in sexual disease rates. By the time many women now get around to having children, age and their exposure to STDs have played havoc with their fertility. Just another price that Generation-X will have to pay for the safe-sex myth the liberal Baby Boom generation lumbered them with.
The problem is that sex is a much more compli-cated thing than people of all stripes care to acknowledge, which is why diluting informa-tion about condoms to a happy, easily-digest-ible slogan that inspires false confidence is an irresponsible position for public health authorities to take. Yet that is exactly what campaigns such as ‘Safe Sex, No Regrets’ and ‘No Rubba, No Hubba’ do by telling young people that using a condom is as simple a way to have a good time while preventing misery down the road as, say, advising them to only drink bottled water when they’re backpacking up some gorgeous Third World coastline.
The danger of “safe sex”, or “safer sex” as a slogan is that it cons people into thinking there is either no risk, or minimal risk. Yet a 71% chance of catching syphilis through a condom is hardly “safe” or even “safer”.
Yet the resistance to telling the truth about condoms is so thick you can cut it with a knife.
“What do you want us to do?” growled one sexual health campaigner spoken to by Investigate’s Sydney
office, “preach abstinence?”
It is as if the sex education lobby is so wedded to pushing the “free sex, no consequences” message that they regard the scientific facts as a mere inconvenience, and have no intention of changing their advertising campaigns.
Case in point? As this article was about to go to press, TV1’s award-winning Close Up programme ran as lead story some Ministry of Health propaganda about a new survey that “…shows a lack of awareness among
the young about the need to use condoms to prevent sexually transmitted infections,” presenter Susan
Wood intoned.
“What researchers say is noticeable in the survey is the way teenagers seem to think they’re invulnerable when it comes to sexually transmitted infection. According to the stats, 74% of students agreed that it was likely young people their age would get some kind of sexually transmitted infection. But only 23% thought that it could happen to them. When students did use condoms the reasons were more likely to be a fear of pregnancy than of sexually transmitted diseases. That comes at a time when STDs nationally are showing an alarming increase. The latest national figures from the sexual health clinics show that chlamydia rates are up 28% and gonorrhea is up 44%.
“With the survey showing a cavalier attitude to condom use amongst teenagers, the concern is that sexually transmitted diseases will only continue to increase, despite the message: if you don’t use a Rubba there’ll be no hubba hubba.”
That message, as we’re now revealing, is a complete fraud. Nonetheless, both the NZ Herald and the Christchurch Press ran the propaganda as the front page lead story the next day.
In another fascinating aside, a study in the British Medical Journal measured the effectiveness of a condom promotion strategy, much like the Hubba and No Regrets campaigns, but targeted at gay men. The survey found that while the condom promotion resulted in fewer cases of unprotected sex, inexplicably the rate of sexually-transmitted diseases “significantly increased”.
Perhaps, conned into thinking condoms were “safe”, the men indulged in more sex and thus increased their overall risk of infection.
While it may not be as sexy a message, so to speak, health authorities should instead work to tell people of all ages in the community that despite their best efforts, behaviours – especially risky ones – can have consequences. The campaign wouldn’t have to be prudish or paranoia-inducing, either, but simply give people the facts: condoms are great for certain things, but there are still high risks involved with having sex with people whose history and health status you’re not sure of. No one would dream of running an ad implying that wearing a helmet was all one needed to stay safe when riding a motorbike; there are plenty of other factors involved that keep one safe on the road, and people are well aware of this. The same sort of truth needs to be told about condoms.

WHAT THE STUDIES SAY
WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION BULLETIN, June 04: “No published prospective study has found protection against genital human papillomavirus (cervical cancer/warts/HPV) infection”
JOURNAL OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, 2003; 30: 273-9: A study of 917 female sex workers in Lima, Peru, were re-examined monthly for STDs. Those women who consistently used condoms still had a chlamydia infection rate of 74% compared to the infection rate of women who didn’t use condoms
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, 2003; 93: 901-2: A study of 380 American girls aged 14 to 18 over six months revealed that 30% of the girls who did not use condoms had caught a sexually transmitted disease by the end of six months, as had 17.8% of the girls who always used condoms
AIDS, 2001; 15: 2171-9: A study of 17,264 adults in the town of Rakai, Uganda, over four years, measured STD infection rates in the population and the effectiveness of condoms. Only 4.4% (760 people) had always used condoms. Of those people, consistent condom use only resulted in a 29% reduction in syphilis infections, and a 50% reduction in chlamydia and gonorrhea. The prevalence of the STDs trichomoniasis and vaginosis “were not reduced”. Even with HIV, the disease the condoms are most effective at preventing, the infection rate was still 37% of the rate of those who didn’t use condoms
JOURNAL OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, 2002; 29: 725-35: A meta-analysis of 20 studies “found no evidence that condoms were effective against genital HPV infection”, warts or cervical cancer
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, 2003; 157: 218-26: A study of 444 female university students found “that consistently using condoms with a new partner was not associated with significant protection against HPV”
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, 2004; 159: 242-51: A study of 4314 participants who visited STD clinics found consistent use of condoms still resulted in an infection rate of 82% compared against those who didn’t use condoms
JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, 1999; 180: 1624-31: A study followed the progress of 484 adolescents at four STD clinics over six months, and found 21% of those who always used condoms had caught a sexually transmitted disease, compared with 23% of those who sometimes or never used a condom (a 91% risk of infection, group vs group)
JOURNAL OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, 1995; 22: 15-21: A study of 598 people attending an STD clinic in Baltimore found infection rates were almost the same, regardless of whether a condom was always used or not

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2006

Investigate May 05, GUN DEBATE

In favour of firearms

The prosecution and acquittal of a Northland farmer for shooting at intruders on his property has re-opened the debate about the basic rights of all citizens to defend themselves and their property. PETER LINTON, the Libertarianz spokesman on firearms, recently interviewed visiting Canadian gun expert Gary Mauser on the merits of gun control

INVESTIGATE: What got you interested in guns, gun control and hunting.
MAUSER: Well there are two things – first of all I turned 40 and went back to pick up the rifle that my dad had given me as a 21 year old. I had refused to pick it up at that point – I was a student at Berkeley and I’d been in the anti-war protests and all the standard student stuff for the 1960s. At the time, I had rejected it pretty smugly. But when I turned 40, I figured I should go back and pick it up, just to reach out to my father. I didn’t know anything about guns – so I went back, picked it up and then I had to ask him, “what is it? Why should you give me a rifle, what is this kind of rifle, and how do rifles work, anyway?”
As he began explaining, I could see that one of the things he really missed as a father, since I was such a snotty college kid, was being a teacher to me and having a son who would look up to him so he could teach him things. I could see that this was something I had forgotten; fathers like to teach their children. Anyway I had to figure out what the rifle was. So I took it home and I started to clean it and take it apart, then I couldn’t get it back together again. I asked one of my students to help me. Yeah, I learned the basic mechanics, and then I learned what it was and who had used it historically. That got me interested in military history and got me into marksmanship. Once I got this rifle, I was motivated to ask how do you use it? That was the beginning. I just started getting more and more interested.
INVESTIGATE: So what was the rifle? Was it a Garand?
MAUSER: It was a World War II German K98 – the standard German battle rifle for World War II – it’s a Mauser. That’s why my dad thought it was important. It was a link with history, and it was an education for me. I knew nothing about guns, I’d never owned guns, never shot guns – I knew nothing. This gift came from outer space. I didn’t know why he wanted to give me this thing. At the same time as I picked up this rifle I was at a turning point in my career. I’m a social psychologist and I research propaganda essentially. For most of the first 20 years of my research career I studied election campaigning. For example, how do politicians position themselves in order to get themselves elected? What should they say, what should they claim? This is called political marketing or electioneering.
INVESTIGATE: Are they pretty heavy with propaganda?
MAUSER: Propaganda – I know it’s sort of an insulting word but it means how do you talk to people in order to get what you want? How do you use language, not to search for truth, but to get people to believe what you want them to believe? Yeah – that’s propaganda.So my first interest in gun control was to consider it as just one more issue that the government uses to keep in power. There’s a political science question: Where does government policy come from? How much of government policy is invented for the benefit of elites, and then sold like a product to the citizens by convincing them that this is a good thing because now its been decided for them? Alternatively, how much does government policy bubble up from the bottom, that is to say, do the people lead the government to do what the citizens want to have done? Given that democracy is about popular control, this is an important political science question.
INVESTIGATE: But given the fact that modern gun control is based on two key components – one is the British gun laws of 1920, which was a response to the scare of Bolshevism or Communism as we now know it, and the other is, and a lot of countries have adopted this, most gun control that we know today is either entirely or a part of Hitler’s Nazi Germany’s gun laws. Why should it be promoted as a good thing?
MAUSER: The notion of gun control – as many people, it’s not just me, have said – is more about control than about guns. Essentially it’s a social control mechanism that the government uses to control the people that are under it. One of the funny notions of government is that people trust the government to look out for their interests and the government trusts the people not to overthrow it. In political science, there’s big discussion about how is it that governments earn legitimacy, earn the people’s trust and respect and how do they violate it? So in some countries the trust is very large, as in many of the British Commonwealth countries, particularly the ones that we’re most familiar with – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It’s a historical relationship that comes from hundreds of years of tradition and that tends to be a Tory approach, where the nobility or the higher and better sections of society look out for their peasants and the peasants accept this and even welcome it. This is particularly effective when there is opportunity for social mobility so that the harder working peasants can aspire to being better off and to winning greater respect. That is not meant to be insulting – this is a very stable and trusting social arrangement. It can be broken however. There are traditions as you suggested in the fear of Bolshevism and later on labour unrest – in Canada the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted
Police) were used to put down what we would now call legitimate strikes. You might think of it as reasonable to put down rebellion like Louis Riel. Although even that rebellion is a classic situation of a rupture between the respect of the people and the government so it remains a legitimate question whether it should have been put down, or whether the government should have said something like, “oh well, maybe we can compromise”. These are very complicated questions.How much trust has failed or is intended to fail – one never knows.
INVESTIGATE: Given the relationship you described between the nobility, the ruling class, or as we call it today the establishment; and the peasants or what colloquially is known now as a Joe Public, over the last 50 years we’ve seen that relationship breached on numerous occasions and today we now have tremendous government interference in our lives. We have horrendous amounts of taxation, which is forcibly taken from us and we have very little say in how that is used or what purpose it is used for. Is it fair to say that cosy relationship of the ruling class, the establishment looking after Joe Public is coming to an end and we’re now seeing an establishment that says they know better than anyone else and to Joe Public – “you just shut your mouth, pay your taxes, don’t trouble us and you will be OK”.
MAUSER: I think that’s overstated and wrong in at least one sense. The relationship between the ruling class and the peasants has been transformed into something different now that Labour is the ruling class. We have socialists who have supplanted the old landed aristocracy that conquered the country a thousand years ago. We have a welfare state that is run for the benefit of the peasants because the unions claim to represent the peasants – we have a parallel kind of structure of legitimacy – unionisation as the new aristocracy now consists of socialists rather than the landed aristocracy or the mercantile class. An even more radical argument is supplanting the traditional government by old landed aristocracy – the new argument is Public Health. Here, the people who control us are not the labour unions, nor the landed aristocracy, but it is our doctors, who see us all as patients. They know what is good for our health, and since their goal is to help us, we should comply to their dictates. We have democratic arguments. “We had a vote – you lost – you should comply.” Medical arguments – “I am the doctor – I know best – you follow my rules.” And we have the landed aristocracy social class notions of “I’m better than you – you follow what I say”. Those are all different types of ways of justifying elitist structures and the common person doesn’t have much say. But each of these arguments has ways of getting the peasants to buy into it. For example, the Labour argument is one that they’re taking care of us, providing for our welfare and livelihood, and so practically it becomes “the peasants are quite happy, thank you”.
INVESTIGATE: They may be happy but now we’re seeing that the beneficiaries and bludgers, in terms of people who do not work in private enterprise, create no wealth whatsoever – they actually add no money – they are starting to outnumber the productive and the productive are becoming rather irate about this. How long can this continue?
MAUSER: That’s a good question – no one ever knows – many people would have not predicted that the English colonies on the East Coast of the United States would have rebelled. There were many people – Whigs and Tories alike in England – who thought this was a mistake. There were many Americans, who then of course called themselves Englishmen, who thought this was a mistake to rebel. That is not – and in hindsight it seems obvious that the American Colonies would have rebelled but it’s not at all historically necessary. One could have imagined that not to have happened, so when conditions and leadership is right, societies can rebel and there can be revolutions.But revolutions are bloody – there are horrible things that happen. The alternative way to think about it is a balance between the kind of the elitist structures that I’ve talked about and the democratic, more egalitarian structures that coexist in many ways. So in a mixed society, with socialists, capitalists, elitists, egalitarians, some people begin thinking, how do you push forces and increase the individualist responsibility – and, how do you work it so that there is more emphasis on egalitarian structures than elitist structures. There’s a huge argument about how to do that and I think the extremes put some bookends on the very issue – that’s normal – but we’re in the middle of a funny mix of
all this.
INVESTIGATE: Now with the paper you’ve presented at the Australian and New Zealand society of criminologists (ANZSOC), can you tell me the essence of that paper?
MAUSER: The basic idea of the paper is quite simple. I wanted to see if the Canadian effort to register firearms was effective in improving public safety; did it meet reasonable standards of fiscal accountability. So it’s basically a managerially-oriented paper. The government of Canada, before they decided on registration, consulted widely and ignored the advice of many people. Some of those people that they consulted with were representatives of the New Zealand government and New Zealand Police who said – this was in the early 90’s – that New Zealand had tried registration and given it up. New Zealand argued that licensing was a sufficient control mechanism, that registration was very difficult to do with a low error rate, it was very expensive, and, most importantly, it was only of limited use – that you really wouldn’t get much, if you did achieve a low error rate. The New Zealand government recommended that Canada not adopt firearm registration. Canada ignored that advice, and threw themselves at attempting to register firearms. My research shows that the New Zealanders were right – Canada has botched registration pretty badly.
INVESTIGATE: Now you mentioned the New Zealand Police recommending against registration. At the 1980 firearms symposium here, Inspector Cook stated that the New Zealand Police wanted to drop registration because it had a 40% error rate and had never solved a crime for them and that was universal worldwide.
MAUSER: And he’s right!!
INVESTIGATE: OK – and that’s the case with Canada?
MAUSER: There’s been several times in which the Canadian government or the police have admitted firearm registration has never solved a crime. They say it is useful marginally now and then but they have never been able to give a clear example where it has been critical in solving a crime. The error rate is now a cabinet secret but prior to this, a few years ago, they’ve done checks in the error rate, depending on the sample – it’s between 50% and 90%.
INVESTIGATE: Sorry – the error rate is?
MAUSER: The error rate is that 50 to 90% of the records that were checked had errors.
INVESTIGATE: That makes the whole exercise of registration a fiasco.
MAUSER: That’s true. Even though they had a virtually unlimited budget, they found they can’t do everything they’d like. Their argument is “We will accept gun owners who have guns to be licensed without giving them a criminal check. We will accept guns described as the owner describes them,” and so on without any checks. They just key the data in – it’s clear you can get a lot of mistakes that way. And this costs $2 billion.
INVESTIGATE: Now of that $2 billion I’ve seen in the Edmonton Journal and in other parts of the media that the original cost of the Canadian Gun Registry was $2 million and it’s now exceeded $2 billion?
MAUSER: The government hasn’t conceded it – no. The fiscal costs of the Canadian Gun Registry are hidden from public scrutiny as cabinet secrets.
INVESTIGATE: Because it’s so embarrassing?
MAUSER: I believe so, but only they know their reasons for doing things. The best argument that I can imagine for why they’re hiding it is that there are some politically sensitive deals they’ve made that in buying support. They probably have made offers to the Quebec government or to the chiefs of police that they don’t want people to know about. And the worst argument is that it is corrupt – that they have just booted off with a couple of hundred thousand here and a couple of hundred thousand there and they don’t want to admit it for those reasons. That’s the worst possible explanation.
INVESTIGATE: Now with registration – here in New Zealand there have been four occasions when the New Zealand police have used the gun registry to steal the private property of New Zealanders or as they call it “confiscation”. Do you see the move of the Canadian government to register people’s private property – in this case guns – as being a precursor to disarming them and making them defenceless in accordance with the UN’s agenda?
MAUSER: I don’t think the government knows itself precisely what its long-term objective is. Everything I can uncover suggests that it is a short-term partisan effort. The Justice Minister who proposed thought that it would help him run for Prime Minister; the Prime Minister at the time thought it would help him win votes in urban constituencies; particularly from the feminists whose support he needed – he thought this would attract support from them. So it’s a variety of very short-term kinds of motives. I think they’re just as happy having a dysfunctional system as a functional system.
INVESTIGATE: But let’s say if they did continue and disarm Canadians, do you think Canadians would fight back like the Australian shooting community has – where in Australia it’s immensely difficult to own firearms and consequently a very high quality black market has been developed where local engineers regularly manufacture arms to meet the sporting needs of people in Australia. Could you see that kind of scenario happening in Canada?
MAUSER: I don’t know Australia so I can’t talk about Australia.But certainly Canada – my estimates are something like half of all gun owners have complied and gotten licences, and roughly half or slightly more than half of all guns are registered. It’s hard to know those kinds of numbers. Just prior to registration being launched the government of Canada estimated that there were seven million gun owners; but once they launched it, they then said there were 2.2 million – so I can’t imagine how it went from one third of all the households in the country, with one or two people in these households being gun owners, down to 5% – 10% of the population is amazing. Their estimates changed enormously. Some sort of drop is reasonable. Since these estimates were made there’s been very little recruitment and gun owners are getting older. People are selling and exporting guns, and so I’m sure there’s a shrinkage. But I don’t think it has dropped quite that much. My estimates are that there are something around four million gun owners and there may be as little as three million, or there may be more. But part of it is – what’s a gun owner? If you live in a rural household and there’s a gun in the house, you live in a household and there’s a refrigerator in the house – this is common property. So the male and the female and the husband and the wife are co-owners of the refrigerator and co-owners of the gun. Is that one or two gun owners in the household?
And the other notion that I think is a bit confusing is – you can talk about black market and grey market. There’s a huge pool of criminal guns in Australia and New Zealand, and certainly Canada, that are used by criminals – shared amongst them and most of them have never been in this registration system. This is the black market. Guns are bought and sold and bartered by criminals in order to commit crimes.
The grey market is where you have an otherwise solid citizen, like a judge or a professor or a workman or an electrician, who has a gun that he got from his aunt or his uncle or deceased grandfather but just never quite bothered registering it. A lot of citizens feel that a lot of laws are not particularly reasonable. They feel that it is acceptable to not follow rules that they think are stupid. Some of these violations can get people in serious trouble, and some of them we all just blow off as ‘normal.’ For example, I never met a person who didn’t break the speed limit at one time in their life.
INVESTIGATE: That is interesting the type of people you mentioned there, because I have had a mid-level police officer, not a constable, an actual officer who owned an M16, or the civilian equivalent, a Colt AR15 semi-automatic rifle – and you need a very special licence to own that here and you have to be a very special person to get that licence. Now what he actually said and this is a serving police officer – that there is no way he would ever register that rifle. He doesn’t care what kind of licence you need to get – he’s not getting it and he’s not registering his gun.
MAUSER: There’s a lot of people who feel similarly in Canada about similar rules. A couple of estimates – the RCMP thinks there are twice as many handguns in the hands of normal non-criminal Canadians than are actually registered. And the estimates of handguns in criminal hands is separate and distinct. This is what I was calling the grey market. When Kim Campbell passed her bill in 1991 registering semi-automatic military style rifles in Canada, I did a quick Vancouver-area count, I called up gun stores and found out how many they had imported, and then I called up the RCMP and found out how many were registered. I estimated that 9% of this number were registered. Then I found out after I’d done that the RCMP had a done a separate but somewhat similar analysis and found it 12%. And that’s pretty standard – so I’m sure there are lots of laws that people basically ignore cause they don’t think they are acceptable to them?
INVESTIGATE: Those figures you’ve just mentioned – we’ve got similar parallels here. I was talking with Inspector Joe Green who’s head of firearms here and he was saying at a seminar that around 70,000 military style automatics were imported here – maybe 100,000 – they don’t quite know – and they have registered 3,000 of them. So they didn’t get very many guns.
MAUSER: And the question we were talking about is do people conform to laws that they don’t like, but people don’t conform to a lot of laws – the question of social interest is “so what?”. What problems will this pose? Are these unregistered firearms more dangerous or less dangerous than registered firearms and again it goes back to intent – it goes back to the nature of the person. If these are just kept in the attic or walled up or hidden in the basement, there’s a chance of accidents, there’s a chance of somebody running amok – but is this a large social problem, a trivial social problem, or no problem at all? It’s something that we need to check on. I don’t think it’s a big problem.
INVESTIGATE: The answer would be that it isn’t a problem at all and it’s not worth wasting time or money on.
MAUSER: Prior to the current gun legislation in the 1990’s – by that I mean both the bills – I talked to RCMP and they would say that once a week in their detachment, a community police station, somebody would bring in an unregistered handgun saying “my uncle died, my grandfather died, my father died and I found this in the attic, what is it?” And it would be unregistered – once a week, so if you multiply that by the number of detachments in the country, the number of weeks – that’s a hell of a lot of unregistered guns.
INVESTIGATE: You mentioned that a lot of people routinely break laws for instance like the speed limit or laws that are of little consequence. That was first written by Plato in “The Republic” when he wrote “that it’s only a corrupt man who obeys corrupt law”. Based on that rationale, people aren’t going to obey corrupt law.
MAUSER: It needn’t be corrupt. Go back to a much simpler principle – not basically different – just a little bit softer – in 1829 when Sir Robert Peel introduced the British Bobbies, he had some basic principles of effective policing. And England at that point had deep strong experience with the British public’s unwillingness to accept laws they thought were ridiculous. The British Indian Tea Company had a price for tea and it was illegal to import any other tea by any other company, but smugglers brought in all sorts of tea and sold it at a half or a third price. It was illegal to buy this tea but the British didn’t seem to listen. Just on policing grounds it is incredibly difficult to get people to follow laws they don’t want to follow. This is marijuana or tea or gun ownership – basically if people don’t want it, it ain’t going to happen.
INVESTIGATE: We talked previously about why people own arms and that if you only own it for sport and hunting, as soon as that’s banned, you have no legitimate reason for owning arms. But historically, I understand that the right to own arms comes from the English Bill of Rights and also it goes further back to the Magna Carta. Given that there’s no law in the world that requires police to protect or defend private individuals & their property, surely there’s a very strong case for the continued ownership of arms – not just for sport – and for self-defence – but also for protection of the greater community.
MAUSER: I would agree with that and I would think that in most of the British Commonwealth countries, it is or should be accommodated in those relationships between the public and the police and the government. People as a moral right have the right to defend themselves against a violent attack, and to have the moral right in theory but not in practice is a hollow right. So letting people have the means to defend themselves would be a logical corollary and then unless your laws are not just for the rich who have the wherewithal for lawyers, this must not necessarily lead into a five year $50,000 legal battle before your name is cleared. So it’s much like criminologists have argued that women don’t report rape because the process after they report is worse than the process before. The courts are dragging them through embarrassing stuff, it costs them tons of money, and if that’s what it means to defend your life against an attacker, that is not much of a right.
The real problem is a practical problem – how do you build trust in the citizenry by the government? To what extent does the government trust the average person to have dangerous powers in his or her grasp? For example if citizens of all these countries can have sex with whoever they want, they can have bank credit with whoever they want, they can really – right now we have a lot of power at our fingertips
that the government is nervous about. But people can do some evil stuff because of their freedom. How much evil will the government tolerate before it cracks down on things? What is politically correct, what is acceptable? And certainly one of the downsides of freedom, although libertarians don’t like to talk about it very much is that more freedom means more badness. You give everybody freedom – some of those turkeys are going to misuse it. But I think freedom is important regardless.
INVESTIGATE: Well as a libertarian myself, I have to say you are sounding like a libertarian. One of the defining things about libertarians is they promote freedom of individuals to pursue the things they want to do on the proviso that they do not initiate force or fraud against someone else. Now if you are foolish enough to do that in a free society those people may very well have the means to prevent you from initiating force or fraud.
MAUSER: And that is the essential lever for a hell of a lot of restriction on freedom and there are 600 kinds of libertarians as well as lots of other kinds of philosophies of government, who worry about that balance between freedom and restriction of freedom. That is the heart of the problem and the source of many a good argument.It’s a legitimate, fruitful question where can you restrict and where should you give freedom instead, because human beings are capable of and do bad things. So if you give people freedom, you’re going to have some bad things happen. One of the reasons there is so much crime in the United States is simply they are the freest people on the planet. Despite that, I think freedom is well worth the risk. I think giving people more freedom is an excellent choice, but we still have to decide where we restrict. If the New Zealand government or the Canadian government, in trying to restrict, steps over my boundary and other people’s boundaries, then it’s a political debate where we then must have a policy debate within the country to see we can find a reasonable place for restrictions. And as a small democracy New Zealanders have to go along with this in their behaviour, but you don’t have to accept the limitations the policy or argument impose upon you; indeed you shouldn’t – you should keep arguing and keep politically active.

DISCLAIMER
No comments made in this interview should be taken as incitement to own firearms without first obtaining a firearms licence & the required endorsements.It is STRONGLY recommended that anyone interested in firearms obtain a Firearms Licence from the NZ Police as well as the necessary endorsements.
It is further recommended that people join a club that is active in the type of firearm ownership they are interested, in to learn more about this subject.
For further information on the ANZSOC conference and Gary Mauser, please visit: www.vuw.ac.nz/anzsoc/callforproposals/#streams www.sfu.ca/~mauser/
www.libertarianz.org.nz

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Investigate May 05, NOWHERE TO HIDE

The battle for privacy

Biometric passports. A worldwide database tracking one billion people. Cameras on every street, tracking every move. Opinions that must be registered to be published – if they are legal at all. Is this a vision of some fictional Orwellian hell, or the world just around the corner? JAMES ROBERTSON and JAMES MORROW look at the growing tension between webloggers, privacy activists, and ordinary citizens and the world’s governments in the post-9/11 era

The story read like it could have come from China, or Iran, or any number of totalitarian states: an indi-vidual’s testimony to a government inquiry breaks open a massive scandal involving the ruling party, alle-gations of corruption, and as much as $100 million dollars in false payments – all tied in to an effort to undermine a separatist group seeking their own state. Thanks to an official order, though, the testimony is secret, even though (or perhaps because) it has the power to bring down the national government. Despite everyone in the highest circles of the capital city knowing the story, the press can only barely allude to it, under pain of prosecution.
But that doesn’t mean the information doesn’t make it out to the wider world. In a neighbouring country, a few individuals with their own weblogs, or blogs, throw the damning information out onto the Internet, allowing anyone with a computer and a web browser to find out the whole story. Anyone, that is, except those in the place where it is happening: in the country where the scandal is taking place, individuals are not allowed to post any of the information on their own sites, or even link to a site in another country that details the charges. ‘Anyone who takes that information and diffuses it is liable to be charged with contempt of court’, warned a government official. ‘Anybody who reproduces it is at risk.’
Amazingly, the scandal – and the subsequent threat to crack down on anyone disseminating crucial information about it – took place in Canada, a country that likes to think of itself as one of the most liberal, tolerant, and enlightened nations on the planet. An interesting story on its own, the tale highlights the growing tension between individual citizens and their governments as technology allows each side to keep ever-closer tabs on one another. Even in free and democratic states like New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Great Britain, technology is radically changing the way government relates to people and vice versa. What political philosophers call the ‘night watchman state’ – in which the government’s roles, as Harvard’s Robert Nozick once defined it, are ‘limited to the functions of protecting all its citizens against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of contracts, and so on’ – is a thing of the past. Instead, politicians on both the left and right are using technology, the threat of terrorism, and a natural desire to increase their own power to slowly but surely turn liberal democracies into ‘panopticon’, or ‘all-seeing’, states with the sort of surveillance powers the old Soviet Union and her satellites could have only dreamed of.

ARE YOUR PAPERS IN ORDER?
Already, anyone wishing to travel to the United States will soon require a passport embedded with biometric and RFID (radio frequency identification) tags which are not just expensive and intrusive, but also open up a huge Pandora’s box of privacy issues. For one thing, the RFID tags will contain a wealth of unencrypted data and will be readable by anyone within range with the proper scanning equipment, creating a huge new opportunity in the growing identity theft market. Business and tourism groups in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe are all asking Washington to back off from the new requirement, but so far the response from the U.S. State Department has been, ‘our country, our rules’. Which might be fair enough were there not plans to, by 2015, make the new biometrically-encoded, radio-tagged passports standard around the world and create a global database of one billion travelers, their movements, and their personal details.
Ironically, while these measures are all being enlisted in the fight against the very real threat of international terrorism, the data in the new passports will actually create a boon for identity thieves and their customers, including terrorists, drug smugglers and the like. Furthermore, at a practical level, much of the technology that the US is leading the international push for is actually quite unreliable. Some 39 international human rights groups from NZ, Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America have all signed a letter protesting the technology, noting that ‘even the most reliable uses of this technology – one-to-one verification using recent photographs – have been shown in US government tests to be highly unreliable, returning a false non-match [where technology doesn’t recognise people with a valid photo] rate of five per cent and a false match rate of one per cent’.
More worryingly, they point out that while free coun-tries may use this technology to keep an eye out for bad guys, more repressive regimes could also use it for their own evil purposes, such as cracking down on dissidents. ‘We hope that the choices of biometrics have been driven primarily by logistical and commercial concerns and were not intended to facilitate the conversion of travel systems into a global infrastructure of surveillance’, the letter concludes. ‘But we are deeply concerned that this may become their unintended consequence.’
And indeed an ‘infrastructure of surveillance’ is what is cropping up, slowly but surely, even in free countries. Be it the near-fanatical push by the United Kingdom’s Home Office for national identity cards that may wind up including DNA fingerprints of every citizen or hidden cameras, often with face-recognition technologies linked to police stations everywhere from American suburbs to (as is now being proposed) Sydney’s King’s Cross, government agencies are using everything from the threat of terrorism to the fight against day-to-day street crime to use technology to be everywhere and see everything.
Which is one reason why the current tensions – not just in Canada – between webloggers and their governments represent the thin edge of what could be a very large wedge. Exposing the old canard that ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about’, cases in Canada and elsewhere are showing that when it comes to technology, governments are increasingly worried about the power of technology to keep an eye on them, and would rather keep it in their own hands.

CANADA’S WAR ON WEBLOGS
In a bygone era of print media supremacy Canada’s ban would have gone unchallenged; indeed, the Canadian daily the Vancouver Sun made its reluctance to defy government orders clear in an editorial, writing, ‘It’s a shame [we] can’t publish anything that’s going on in the…inquiry. When the publication ban is taken off we can all talk freely about what’s going on in our country. Until then our collective lips are sealed’.
But weblogs are changing all that. Already a thorn in the side of totalitarian states like Iran, China, and Burma, where dis-sidents use the internet as a way of challenging the government’s media monopoly, bloggers in the democratic world are about to learn that an unfortunate consequence of their growing influence is greater attention from governments, as regulators worldwide begin to consider the possibility of reigning in a medium that had previously been a forum for unbridled free expression. The problem for bloggers is the fine line they tread between fulfilling the role of legitimate journalists and, as their detractors term them, pyjama-clad partisans.
This group of supposed dilettantes, many of whom lack any traditional journalistic qualifications, are beginning to challenge the establishment media for its reach of influence. Readers have embraced the openly partisan format of blogs, the most popular of which can boast daily readerships comparable to the national newspapers and lay claim to having broken some of the biggest stories of the past year.
There are no barriers to internet publication, however, and anyone with a computer and the inclination to do so can establish their own blog free of charge within minutes. Blogs are also free from any external editing which allows their author’s to diarise, write political commentary and deliver a mix of observations, criticisms or updates on a limitless array of subjects without paying attention to concerns about political correctness, bias or even readability.
Governments are pointing to this lack of professionalism across the internet as justification for not giving bloggers and online publishers the same freedoms as members of the traditional press. While print journalists and contributors to the mainstream media are protected by legal precedent that enshrines their free political communication, the law has been slow to respond to the explosion of online political content, giving legislators a chance to fill the void and place clear limits on their freedom of expression.
Leading the Australian push is Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz, Special Minister of State and newly appointed head of the Australian Government Information Management Office, who says he is giving ‘very active consideration’ to introducing reforms that would make bloggers and online publishers subject to the provisions of the Australian Electoral Act.
The legislation, expected to be introduced after the coalition takes control of the Senate on July 1st, would place bloggers in the same category as political advertisers, requiring them to include the name and address of the person authorising their website content and making publishers of unauthorised political material subject to fines as large as $5,000.
Of particular concern to most bloggers is the broad definition of what constitutes political or ‘elec-toral’ material as it is defined by Australian Elec-toral Law. Section 4(1) of the Electoral Act says that electoral material may include ‘any […] reference to, or comment on: the election; the Government; the Opposition; a political party or candidate; or any issue submitted to, or otherwise before, the electors in connection with the election’.
The issues that fall under the definition and be subject regulation include the performance of the government, taxation levels – even gay marriage.
An Australian Electoral Commission official, who declined to be named, told Investigate that the application of such a wide ranging definition to online content would be ‘difficult, broad…and potentially dangerous’.
Also problematic is the interpretation of what constitutes an advertisement under Australian electoral law. Defined as being any form of publication or notice that contains ‘electoral matter’ the act could potentially to any expression of political opinion, regardless of whether the author has any links to a political party.
The traditional media are exempt from the regulations and the law no longer places restrictions on those who write letters to the editor or callers to talkback radio; creating a legal situation where opinion expressed within the pages of a newspaper is considered legitimate free expression but self-published material on the internet is subject to regulation.
Senator Andrew Bartlett, deputy leader of the Australian Democrats, has a rare vantage point on the issue, as both a sitting member of the Senate that is expected to approve the legislation when it is introduced and as a blogger himself.
Bartlett, who uses his blog to communicate with his electorate directly, suggests that bloggers should be afforded the same freedoms and protections as journalists, noting that he often looks to blogs for analysis in preference to the traditional media, ‘The problem with the political coverage in the mainstream media is that it lacks substantial coverage of policy…they’ve tried to turn parliament into a soap opera.’
Bartlett warned that any legislation is likely to have ‘unforseen consequences,’ impacting on ordinary, private citizens while politicians and public figures will have few qualms about making their identities known.
These restrictions will have a significant impact on the way in which people use the internet as a publishing medium; the government will effectively make anonymous political or social commentary illegal.
The announcement has sparked outrage amongst bloggers, many of whom publish their thoughts under pseudonyms and almost all of whom would feel uncomfortable about making their personal
details freely available over the internet. For Ruth Brown, a 19-year-old university student who came to prominence last year by blogging under the name John Howard, a typical entry will include a satirical recount of the day in the life of the Prime Minister: ‘Just got back from APEC. This year it was in this place called Chilly which is in this country called South America, except it’s nothing like Real America, ‘cause it’s full of poor foreign people. Like Centrelink.’
Brown fears that any regulation will stifle political satire, which she describes as being an ‘essential part of any democracy’. Claiming she will refuse to abide by any regulations that force her to reveal personal details, Brown says, ‘I just won’t do it, it’d take the fun out of the entire concept. All this law will do is make more people host their websites overseas’.
But overseas options for bloggers are fast running out, with similar legislation being mooted the world over in an emerging alliance between legislators and the media establishment – all of whom seek to limit the reach of blogging, which is becoming a serious rival for the mainstream media.
In the United States bloggers are facing a challenge from the Federal Election Commission, which is considering a similar set of regulations to those being proposed in Australia. The proposal, supported by traditional media outlets like National Public Radio and the American Prospect, is an extension of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and is billed as a response to ‘the increased use of the internet by federal candidates, political committees, and others to communicate with the general public to influence federal elections’.
Early indications show that lawmakers could treat political speech like campaign contributions by measuring and limiting, in dollar terms, the amount bloggers contribute to campaigns by writing about them: ‘We’re talking about any decision by an individual to link [to a candidate], set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet,’ said Republican FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith.
A 44-page draft released by the FEC early last month indicated that all websites that display political content would be immediately regulated by default upon approval of the legislation. The proposal sparked uproar from civil libertarians who have forced the FEC to reconsider their position, but bloggers are still nervously awaiting the Commission’s final decision on online content regulation in July. The Australian government is said to be keeping a close eye on proceedings.
The problem for citizens in a democracy, wrote the American essayist A.J. Liebling is that, ‘freedom of the press is only guaranteed by those who own one’. Blogging, at least for now, has changed that; acting as a countervailing force against the media’s ability to set the political agenda and placing the power in the hands of citizens again.
Most disconcerting of all, then, is not the immediate impact of the global move to regulate the internet but the fact that governments want to move against a forum that encourages free expression at all. Considering that much of the resistance to the growing influence of the government on individual lives is coming from bloggers, the fact that the charge is being led by the world’s leading democracies is particularly worrisome.

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Investigate May 05, FACE OFF

Unhappy with your looks? Forget a nosejob, go get a whole new face. It sounds far-fetched, but face transplants are soon set to leave the realm of fantasy and become reality. Along with human cloning and stem cell research, it’s one of the most ethically tricky medical procedures to come down the pike in decades but, hey, you can’t stop progress. How are doctors responding to the ethical challenges? Will face transplants be the new botox? Are embryos the only place to get stem cells? JAMES MORROW sorts through the medical facts and Hollywood hype and looks to see if medical technology is
GOING TOO FAR?

When cricketer David Hookes died last year after being bashed to death outside a Melbourne hotel, it was a tragedy – but one with some degree of a silver lining. While Hookesy, at 48, died too young, his senseless death was ultimately not for nothing: the former batsman and radio commentator had signed up as an organ donor, and as a result, as many as ten other Australians were given the gift of life. And it didn’t stop there. According to Australians Donate chairperson Marcia Coleman, the publicity surrounding Hookes’ death and the subsequent formation of the David Hookes Foundation to promote organ donation caused a 21 per cent spike in the number of registered organ donors. In a country where nearly 1,700 people at any given time are on years-long waiting lists for vital organs, Hookes’ death took on a new meaning.
But even if most people feel good about organ donation as it currently stands, new frontiers of medicine are being explored in America and Europe that are pushing the limits of both technology and ethics. Right at the top of the list would have to be the controversial exploration of face transplantation – an idea first introduced to the general public via the 1997 John Woo shoot-‘em-up Face/Off.
While doctors and scientists around the world have been pursuing this holy grail of plastic surgery for years, at the moment the Americans are leading in the race to be the first to perform a full facial transplant. Doctors at both the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Louisville say they are working hard to figure out the nuts and bolts of the procedure and are seeking the right candidates for the procedure. In Cleveland, doctors have been experimenting with face-to-face transplants on rats, while in Louisville, researchers have been perfecting their techniques on dead humans.
‘When plastic surgeons talk about the face and doing a face transplant, what they are talking about is using a freshly-harvested flap of skin and underlying fat from a donor who recently died – usually in an accident, but possibly from a pathological condition, and attaching it to someone else’, explains Dr. Alf Lewis, Vice President of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, when asked to explain the mechanics of the procedure.
‘The procedure itself would involve taking this skin and underlying fat and possibly a little bit of muscle, and then reattaching it under microvascular conditions [similar to the sort of microsurgery that is used to re-attach, say, fingers severed in an accident] through the microscope to the major blood vessels of the recipient joined to the donor.
‘This is all technically possible in the present state of play’, adds Lewis, who notes that ‘there is no doubt that it could all be done any sophisticated medical community, of which Australia is an example, and the microsurgery and plastic surgery involved is already being practiced here every day of the week.’
But who would the recipient of the face look like? Themselves, the donor, or some combination of the two? And, perhaps more importantly, could they handle looking in the mirror every day and seeing…someone else?
While to the casual observer, a rat is a rat is a rat, the Louisville team in the United States which has been practising on rodents be-lieves that a facial recipient would wind up looking like some sort of combination of their old self and their new face. Dr. Lewis agrees, and notes that muscle tone, which is a key component in how any face looks, ‘would be dependent on the muscle being attached to the fat.’
‘The facial muscles are quite unique in that they originate from bone but insert not back into bone, like in limbs, but into skin in the face. That means that if you put this new donor skin and fat over the muscles which would be exposed after you remove the scar or growth or whatever, it will attach by scar-tissue adhesion and produce some element of movement,’ says Lewis.
‘It wouldn’t be as good or strong or subtle as normal, but there would be some return of movement.’
As to how the recipient of a new face, no matter what they looked like before, might cope with their new look, earlier procedures involving transplanting other parts of the body suggest it’s not as (relatively) simple as replacing a heart or liver. In fact, at least one person whom a procedure was supposed to help was eventually been forced to say, ‘thanks but no thanks, this has all gone too far’. The world’s first hand transplant, performed on New Zealander Clint Hallam in Lyons, France, in 1998, was famously a disaster. Hallam had a dodgy criminal background (he lost his hand in a circular saw accident in a Christchurch prison while serving a two-year stretch for fraud) and went on to profit from the surgery by making paid appearances to show off his new hand, often one step ahead of the law. What’s worse, he also had terrible trouble coping with the regime of anti-rejection drugs he was required to take.
Ultimately, Hallam successfully campaigned to have the new hand removed, saying that he felt ‘mentally detached’ from the limb.
If it all sounds sort of ghoulish, well, that’s because it sort of is. Especially because faces are, by definition, incredibly personal things, it is only natural for people to worry about the implications of moving them from person to person – even if the recipient is badly scarred or otherwise deformed.
‘The face is such a powerful identifier of a person that once you start talking about transplanting a face, you are talking about transplanting an identity’, says Dr. Greg Pike, who serves as acting director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in Adelaide.
‘In purely surgical terms, all you’re talking about is a situation where you have a damaged faced here, a new spare face there, and simply swapping them. This is a purely material way of looking at the situation without considering the consequences that might go with the element of the new identity that the individual is receving, which is tied up in the meaning of the life that was. These things can’t be ignored.’
This is where what Pike calls ‘the “yuk” factor’ comes in. To go around with some form of the identity of someone else, and to have to think about what that person might have done or been, is potentially very disturbing. Doctors and ethicists agree that if a face transplant is ever performed, the recipient will need to receive extensive in-depth psychological counseling to cope with the mental side of things just as he or she will need anti-rejection drugs to deal with the physical consequences.
‘Whilst sometimes the yuk factor can be problematic if taken alone, it can also act as a sort of primal warning system’ that can set off ethical alarm bells and tell doctors and researchers to tread carefully about a new procedure, he says.
‘The average Joe on the street has a pretty good view of right and wrong, even if they haven’t necessarily thought it out to the point where they know why. Ultimately, an ethicist isn’t that different; all an ethicist does is unpack those views.’
Dr. Lewis agrees, saying that there really are profound ethical and psychological concerns with a procedure like this, for both donor and recipient – factors which all but guarantee such a procedure would only be used in the most extreme cases, and certainly never for run-of-the-mill vanity cosmetic surgery. For one thing, the side effects of anti-rejection drugs used in such a procedure would potentially be very serious; for another, unlike a hand transplant, there’s no undoing a new face.
‘I suppose you could argue the recipient would become accustomed to not looking like their original self, and they would have to have a lot of psychological counseling and education to cope with the fact that they would never look like themselves’, says Lewis.
‘We know from our cosmetic surgery experiences on the face and nose and other parts of the body that patients often have deep psychological concerns about their appearance. And I think that the psychology of this is a profound topic that needs to be discussed very carefully.’
More challenging, adds Lewis, is the problem of finding anyone who would even be willing to donate such a personal part of themselves, noting that ‘it’s a big ask to get someone to sign their face away on their drivers’ license, and a big ask to ask the relatives of an 18-year-old girl who just died in an accident about something like that.’
Concludes Lewis, ‘The face, it really is you. It’s how you’re identified. They don’t put a photo of your backside on your driver’s license, they put your face. That is you to you and the rest of humanity.’
But if face transplants are still the stuff of rats and research labs, re-search into other controversial therapies such as cloning and stem cells derivatives have both the potential to change many more lives, while at the same time raising even hairier ethical concerns. Researchers in several countries are currently exploring the idea of what is technically known as somatic cell nuclear transfer technology, which involves taking the nucleus from one cell and implanting it in an egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. Currently banned in Australia, this is the technique that was behind Dolly the Sheep – the world’s first cloned mammal.
What is still legal in Australia, however, is stem cell research – a technically complicated and often ethically messy arena where public perception is manipulated not so much by the ‘yuk’ factor as the celebrity factor. If stars like John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, however unwittingly, introduced the notion of face transplants to the wider world, it is the tougher cases of celebrities like Christopher Reeve which are being used – and sometimes abused – to push for more work with stem cells, specifically embryonic ones.
To start off, stem cells are special kinds of cells that exist in very particular circumstances and which have the potential, theoretically, to turn into just about anything – a liver, a kidney, bone tissue. They are often tough to come by, and for some time one of the most popular places has been from frozen embryos that were created by fertility clinics and no longer needed. Their use opens up a minefield of debate not just about when a human life is worth respecting, but also whether these forms of stem cells are all they’re cracked up to be. And until very recently these embryonic stem cells have long been considered
superior to adult stem cells, which can be derived from a variety of other sources.
‘Typically when embryos are harvested for stem cells, we’re talking about blastocytes that are five to six days old, and consist of a couple of hundred cells’, explains Greg Pike. Pike opposes embryonic stem cell research and believes that the debate over the size of an embryo or the number of cells that make it up fundamentally misses the moral point.
‘I recall a senator during the debate over stem cells saying, “well, it’s just a few cells and it’s smaller than a full-stop, so what’s all the fuss about?”, and I felt like saying back, “you’re just a clump of cells, too, only you’re trillions of them.” Stephen Hawking’s universe was once that tiny; how do you put a value on that?’
For ethicists like Pike, ‘the significance of the early embryo is that we’re talking about a new member of the human fam-ily’ – a stance he readily admits puts him at the opposite end of the spectrum from people like Peter Singer, an ex-pat Australian who is now a professor of bioethics at Princeton University in the United States. Singer, who is as much a professional avant-garde controversialist as he is an ethicist, believes that ‘just because [embryos] are biological members of the species Homo Sapiens doesn’t give them the right to live’, a position he happily takes to its horrifying logical extremes.
(Among other things, Singer believes that each life is valuable in terms of its rationality and consciousness, and argues that for that reason the life of an adult chimp is more valuable than that of a human infant. Of course, Singer also argued in an infamous essay entitled ‘Heavy Petting’ that the taboo against bestiality should be done away with.)
But between these two extremes stands a lot of misin-formation, much of it perpetuated by a media that is more interested in anything-is-possible whiz-bang technology on the one hand and compassion (particularly for celebrities) on the other. When people started talking about a paralyzed Christopher Reeve being able to walk again thanks to embryonic stem cell research, the barn door was swung wide open for just about any piece of well-intentioned misinformation to run free.
‘I think part of the problem with embryonic stem cell research is that there has been a lot of publicity around celebrities pushing stem cells for research and suggesting the definite promise of therapeutic outcomes’, says Dr. Adrienne Torda, a senior lecturer in medical ethics at the University of New South Wales.
‘But the nature of research is that it is open-ended. You can’t promise definite outcomes, and there are many hurdles in developing a therapy that often take decades to resolve.’
Pike has similar concerns as Torda, and worries that feel-good celebrity involvement in ethical and scientific issues can stifle
debate. ‘I for one found it very difficult to talk about stem cells when Christopher Reeve and the idea that stem cells can make Superman walk again was being pushed by the media’, he recalls. ‘Anyone who had anything different to say felt like that had to keep their mouths shut.’
There are other ways to get stem cells – for example, from the blood in umbilical cords of newborn babies, which is often donated by parents, as well as from hair, bone, and other body tissues. Research involving these adult stem cells does not have any of the same ethical quandaries surrounding it as that which revolves around embryonic stem cells or human cloning (after all, no new human life is created or destroyed, no matter how small). Even better, after years of being thought of as second-rate, at the moment these cells also are showing the most promise in the lab.
Researchers in Israel, for example, are currently working on a treat-ment that borrows stem cells from a patient’s own bone mar-row to produce a chemical that could restore muscle movement to Parkinson’s Disease patients; human trials are slated to begin next year. In Britain, meanwhile, work is being done that could see the end of dentures as adult stem cells are being used to grow new human teeth.
Closer to home, researchers at Griffith University in Queensland recently discovered that adult stem cells taken from the nose had just as much potential to be grown into any other type of human tissue as the far more controversial embryonic ones. ‘Our experiments have shown that adult stem cells isolated from the olfactory mucosa have the ability to develop into many different cell types if they are given the right chemical or cellular environment’, Prof. Alan Mackay-Sim told The Australian recently, further shaking the conventional wisdom that only embryonic cells are useful for research.
In speaking to Australian doctors and ethicists, one thing that comes through is a
desire to break bioethics out of the ivory tower and into the wider community – even if it means letting other countries take the lead in some areas of research – so that the public is comfortable with and informed about where researchers are heading. ‘We don’t say yes to everything we can do, and we are way behind many other nations that are doing these things. We need to engage many more people in the discussion and figure out how people feel’, notes Adrienne Torda. ‘Legislation has to be constantly moving, and the more you educate people, the better you can make decisions about moving those legislative boundaries’.
While this sort of approach may be frustrating for those who see medical technology as just another high-tech space race, it is also the safest route ethically – and when one is dealing with human lives, no matter the size, doctors cannot be too careful in observing Hippocrates’ ancient edict: First do no harm. And, as recent Australian discoveries in adult stem cells have shown, sometimes the safe route is also the more successful one.

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Investigate May 05, HELEN BACK

Even if she wins, she loses

She’s been called a Teflon dame, a Prime Minister to whom nothing sticks. But as Helen Clark girds her loins for this coming election, she’s attempting a feat that no Labour leader has ever succeeded: a third term in power. And, significantly, this time she’s carrying six years’ worth of baggage that – while it may have slid off her back – is now a growing puddle of sludge around Labour’s knees.
Can Clark wade through it to victory later this year? IAN WISHART analyses the past and what it spells out for the future.

Imagine this scenario. Your party is three weeks out from a general election. You are already one week into the political fight of your life, pounding the hustings drumming up support for your policies, yet the latest polls have just come out and show a horrific slide from 44% support two months ago to just 35% support today. And as we just noted, election day is now only three weeks away.
Sound like the crisis facing National leader Don Brash? Perhaps it does, but the star of this particular story is none other than Helen Clark, in the lead-up to the 1999 election.
It was a make or break campaign for Clark. Having staged an “Et tu, Brutus?” type coup against Mike Moore six years earlier, this was the moment in time that should have been Clark’s. New Zealand had endured nine years of National Government rule, surely the country was ready for a change. Yet the polls showed support for Labour and its Opposition Leader plummeting.
It wasn’t as if Clark wasn’t aware of the karmic hounds snapping at her own heels. She’d been persistently dogged by rumours of a leadership challenge from Phil Goff on Labour’s right wing.
That Labour turned its fortunes around and won the 1999 election is now a matter of public record, but it shows how a week can be a long time in politics, and an election campaign is an eternity.
So where is Labour in 2005, what are the issues and scandals it has to overcome, and can Helen Clark’s leadership survive regardless of whether she wins or loses this year?

THE LEADERSHIP

Despite Clark’s strong popularity now, it hasn’t always been the case. For much of her political career she languished towards the margin of error as preferred Prime Minister, and as her official biographers have noted her success owes more to her support networks within Labour’s machine than any personal charisma. Strip the Prime Minister of executive assistant Heather Simpson and media maestro Mike Munro, and Starship Clark’s defence shield would start to falter.
Just seven months into her Prime Ministership, Helen Clark had to put out a fire started by Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton in a newspaper interview. Labour was again slumping in the polls and there was speculation of an early leadership challenge from Phil Goff who, like John Tamihere, is part of Labour’s right wing.
Although Anderton later adopted the Tamihere defence, saying he was only speaking to the paper “hypothetically” (vehemently denied by the paper, incidentally), it forced Clark and Goff to appear publicly together for several days as a show of solidarity.
Tamihere’s interview with Investigate, where he revealed a support bloc in caucus of up to 25 MPs who might support him in a future leadership battle with Clark, may reflect over-optimism in regard to his own support, but is probably reflective of the bigger divide between Labour’s left and right.
Like John Howard in Australia, Helen Clark’s leadership is now on the ropes regardless of whether she wins or loses this year. If she loses, a challenge is inevitable, and if she wins a third term for Labour, a challenge is also inevitable from a reinvigorated right, and probably early rather than later. The logic for this is simple. Most of Labour’s social engineering goals have now been achieved. Labour MPs know that to win a fourth term they’ll have to offer something fresh to voters, and they’ll want to bed the new team in long before any election. A Goff/Shane Jones ticket? It’s now a strong possibility, particularly if something new emerges in the near future further tarnishing the Prime Minister’s honesty in the eyes of voters.

INTEGRITY

Clark made integrity an election issue in 1999, and Labour’s ferocious attacks on National in its final eighteen months are testimony to Labour’s willingness to exploit any personal failing in its rivals.
Yet right from the time of the 1999 campaign, National could never fully return the favour. Helen Clark, for example, was found to have breached broadcasting standards by making statements in her campaign-opening broadcast that were “untruthful and inaccurate”, and left viewers with a “false impression”, according to TVNZ’s Complaints Committee.
At the heart of it were two examples of state house tenants used by Helen Clark, where the Complaints Committee found Clark had failed to disclose how much money the tenants were receiving in other benefit entitlements, thus leaving viewers thinking the tenants only had $40 or $50 left after paying rent instead of the $185 they actually had left.
“Helen Clark used taxpayer-funded broadcasting time to mislead voters,” complained National’s Roger Sowry at the time.
Clark, in what became a trademark of her ninth floor “Machine”, refused to comment and left it to MP Pete Hodgson to take the rap, when he was forced to admit that “a strict reading of the advertisement would show it to be incorrect”.
There was no political fallout for Labour, despite National’s win on points.
Then, of course, there was “Paintergate”.
“It really was a shocker,” remarked the Herald’s John Roughan. “As my wife remarked after reading the story, it’s not as if she simply put her name on somebody else’s painting, she actually commissioned it.
“This was no momentary lapse of judgement; it was a deliberate, patterned response to a request for personal work.
“When a second bogus Helen Clark [piece] turned up this week, the Prime Minister admitted she had probably done it half a dozen times.”
When police finally completed their inquiries, despite stonewalling from politicians and their staff involved, they’d found enough evidence to criminally prosecute the Prime Minister of New Zealand for fraud, but chose not to do so.
This despite the fact that the Prime Minister’s staff had bought back the forged artwork and destroyed it before police could get to it.
Although polls at the time showed many New Zealanders were prepared to forgive TAFKAC (the artist formerly known as Clark), how would the past three years have transpired if justice had taken its course?
For one thing, if a conviction had been entered against Clark, her political career would have been over. The publicity of a prosecution could have also threatened Labour’s re-election hopes in 2002.
Would the legalizing of prostitution and Civil Unions have been able to proceed if Clark had fallen?

THE DOONE AFFAIR

An interesting sidebar to the Paintergate affair was thrown up only a week or so back with the news that former Police Commissioner Peter Doone is planning to sue Helen Clark for defamation.
If Doone had remained in the job as Police Commissioner, would he have looked the other way on the Prime Minister’s alleged career as an art forger and fraudster?
The man who replaced Doone in the top job, Rob Robinson, only achieved his unscheduled promotion because, it is now alleged, the Prime Minister had leaked a false statement about Doone to the news media, resulting in Doone’s resignation.
Full details of what happened are yet to emerge, but so far the story goes like this: Doone and his partner Robyn were pulled over by a rookie cop in Wellington on election night because Robyn was driving without her headlights on. Apparently it is a matter of routine to breath test drivers in such circumstances, but this didn’t happen. Someone within the police organization leaked details to the media, and for some mysterious and as yet unexplained reason the Prime Minister was a secret source for the Sunday Star-Times newspaper when they wanted to verify that Police Commissioner Doone had allegedly told the young constable “That won’t be necessary” when he wanted to breath test the driver.
Just how the Prime Minister would know what Doone had said when she was 650 kilometres away in Auckland basking in her election victory at the time, was not explained. But Helen Clark reportedly secretly spoke to the newspaper five times before they were brave enough to run the story that cleared the way for Rob Robinson to take over as the new Police Commissioner.
The newspaper has now admitted in court that the comment it attributed to Doone, and verified as true by the Prime Minister, was false – Doone never said it.
Which raises a number of integrity questions: why was the Prime Minister commenting on the case at all? Why did she tell the newspaper something that now turns out to be false? Did she know that she was repeating a falsehood?
This affair, too, promises to be messy for Labour. Although Doone signed an agreement not to sue the Government or its servants as part of his resignation package, he could not have known that the Prime Minister had been engaged in some media manipulation against him. While Crown lawyers will try to argue that the Prime Minister was a “servant” going about her duty in terms of the severance deal, constitutionally they will be hard pressed to show that secretly leaking information to the media (as opposed to giving a news conference) is part of the PM’s official duty.

THE SOCIAL ENGINEERING

It was gay Labour MP Tim Barnett who urged his supporters to make hay while the sun shone in the Beehive. “We won’t have a Queer-friendly government forever,” he told them, although he later feigned deep offence at John Tamihere’s colloquial description of him as “Queer”. Barnett and team subsequently hammered through some of the most wide-ranging social engineering legislation New Zealand has ever seen, in what will come to be regarded by historians as the biggest legacy of the Clark administration.
It has been a dangerous gamble for Labour. There are now thousands more prostitutes, some as young as 12, selling their bodies for as little as five dollars a time to buy drugs, so they can numb their minds to the soul-destroying rape-me-for-cash cycle they’ve become caught up in.
Barnett remarked that he’d like to see chains of brothels up and down New Zealand, a view that illustrates the developing rift between the gay and feminist wings within Labour.
While Helen Clark straddles both camps, it won’t take much of a swing in Labour’s caucus – perhaps more photos of child prostitutes on cold street corners - to leave the Rainbow wing and its free-sex ambitions more isolated. Hamilton East MP Dianne Yates, for example, is a staunch feminist who joined with Sandra Coney and social conservative groups to lobby strongly against the prostitution reforms, because they were so degrading to women and children.
If Labour wins its third term this year it will introduce legislation to free up the adoption of children by gay men, but that could be the last flutter in terms of the party’s social engineering. There is simply little else left that hasn’t already been altered.

THE MAORI PARTY

With virtually every major poll predicting a very strong showing for the Maori Party in this year’s election, the possibility of Labour losing up to seven seats in Parliament is suddenly a real nightmare under active consideration in the Beehive. Despite the rhetoric, it is likely the Maori Party could forge a working alliance with National on the common ground of respect for property rights and respect for the justice system. After all, if Labour had not pre-empted a minor court case, the foreshore and seabed snake would probably never have risen up to bite it.

GOOD ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT OR JUST GOOD LUCK?

As this issue of Investigate went to press, news broke of a massive fall in business confidence. Regardless of whether businesses have good reason to be gloomy, the danger for Labour is that “feelings” can very quickly become real, self-fulfilling, prophecies, in the same way that political polls can.
Labour has enjoyed a dream run since 1999, one minor recession coinciding with its own fall in the polls mid-2000, but otherwise New Zealand has coasted along nicely on the back of booming US and Australian economies.
Now that the heat is going out of those, however, New Zealand is likewise going off the boil.
Labour has made much of its own skill in economic governance but, as critics have pointed out, a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board outperformed New York’s best fund managers a few years ago.
The real test for Labour and Finance Minister Michael Cullen comes in his budget later this month. Will Labour panic in the face of international market pressures, or can Labour genuinely navigate the country through a sea of international recession?
The proof will be in the election date. If Labour cuts and runs for an early poll, voters can take it as read that the party has no confidence in its own ability to manage an economic recession and wants to get re-elected before anyone realises. On the other hand, if Labour holds out until the end of September, regardless of the economic bad news, it sends a signal of confidence and business as usual.
It promises to be a fascinating election.

THE JT INTERVIEW
What really happened

It should be, by now, fish and chip paper. But Investigate’s controversial interview with Labour’s John Tamihere has reset the political clocks in Wellington and made newsrooms around the country debate how they cover political news.
Did we set out to dig a hole for JT? Emphatically no. When an opportunity arose close to deadline before Easter to find a new cover story, the magazine’s editorial team threw around some ideas for a replacement feature. JT had just been cleared by the SFO, was outspoken and we felt he would appeal to Investigate’s readership.
So we rang up, asking if he would give us an interview for our April issue.
“Of course I will,” he laughed down the phone. “It’s election year, I’m a politician. When do you want to do it?”
We set a time and date for the interview at Soljans Vineyard Café on the Wednesday before Easter.
I greeted Tamihere carrying an SLR digital camera; the digital voice recorder; and a couple of back issues of Investigate.
“I’m already familiar with your propaganda,” Tamihere joked as we entered the restaurant.
As we sat, Tamihere put the magazines on the table to his right, and I picked up the digital recorder, in full view of John, turned it on, checked the red light was on, and placed it on top of the magazines. The recording we obtained clearly begins while we were sitting at the table, not before Tamihere arrived.
An analysis of the sound excerpts available on the internet shows there is no rustling, which would be expected if the recorder were hidden in a pocket, nor is the sound muffled. While the recording is plagued by background noise from the café and nearby State Highway 16 traffic, the voices of interviewer and interviewee can clearly be heard.
At the end of the interview, the recording released to the Sunday Star-Times and other media (and now on the Investigate website) clearly ends with the words “Let’s go get some photographs,” as Tamihere and I can be heard rising from the table.
So what went wrong? Why two apparently different versions of events?
From Investigate’s point of view, Tamihere knew he was being interviewed because that’s what we’d asked him for, and what he’d agreed to.
Did he know it was being recorded? He should have. The recorder was right under his nose for 70 minutes with a red light on and the words “Voice Recording” scrolling continuously across the screen the whole time.
Nearly a week after he’d given us the interview, Tamihere launched an attack on TV3 News under parliamentary privilege. It has now been confirmed that he was spoken to by Helen Clark after that attack, and it was then that he told “the Boss” that he’d spoken to Investigate. However, it appears Tamihere promised Clark that it was only an “off the record” discussion and would not be published.
The following Sunday, just as the magazine was going on sale in the shops, I picked up the spare cellphone that I’d used the day of the interview and which was in my glovebox. When I turned it on, it transpired Tamihere had left a voicemail message a few days earlier suggesting he “might have been a bit frank” and asking me to call him. I did, but by then it was too late.
The rest is history.
Should we have published it? Turn the question around a little. If the interview subject had been Don Brash or even George Bush, would the Labour supporters who’ve been so critical of Investigate instead have been singing our praises?
The reality is we’re a news magazine, and well-known to be a hard-hitting one at that. John Tamihere is a lawyer, a former cabinet minister and experienced politician touted as a potential leader. He’s not a debutante.
The public are better informed about the inner workings of Government today than they were two months ago.
We did our job. – Ian Wishart

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Investigate May 05, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

Read the PDF version here

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Investigate May 05, COURT IN THE ACT

Where the rubber of criminal justice hits the road
To most of us they’re an occasional headline on the nightly news, an excuse for a television crew to descend like buzzards on someone’s tragic story then take wing in search of the next victim. But to those on the endless cycle of crime, punishment and reoffending, this is their life. CLARE SWINNEY is inside the Whangarei Court for a day

It’s just after 10am inside the Whangarei Courthouse on a mild, sunny April morning. Maori families, interspersed with a smattering of Pakeha, line the seats in the main foyer. Most are dressed casually and while some look dazed and rumpled, others smile and laugh, seeming relaxed, as if they are accustomed to the place.
Sitting in the middle of this flotsam and jetsam is a smartly-dressed Maori volunteer community worker in her 60’s. Sophie Tito’s eyebrows raise ever-so-gently at a journalist’s line of questioning, an ever-so-slight twinkle in her eyes as she explains why she’s been coming here for over 30 years to give support to people awaiting hearings.
“I see the concerns, the upset of the parents. I try and comfort the people and give them guidance. A lot of the young ones don’t have anyone to support them,” she says. A person might be on the wrong side of the law, but it’s customary for the Maori community to let the offender know that he or she is still loved by the whanau and the wider community.
Currently, about half of the adult prison population is Maori, although they only comprise about 14% of the New Zealand population. Similarly, since the early-1990s, around half of police apprehensions of children and young people are Maori.
Sophie is here today at the request of a grey-haired matriarch whose son is going before a judge. She was also here a fortnight ago. “They never settle it. It’s a minor, fiddly thing to do with his neighbours, to do with intimidation, a dispute. This case has been going on for nearly two years and has been stressful on the family,” she laments.
Two Black Power members standing a few feet behind Sophie catch her eye and she asks what their family names are. The younger, whose body language is like Schwarzenegger’s, answers “Waetford.” Thirty-four-year old Charles Waetford, or “Choc” to his mates, is about to go before Judge Morris, and has removed his patch as a sign of respect. He normally keeps it on in the courthouse, so too his friends, who as a rule, thumb their noses at the ‘NO PATCHES IN COURT BUILDING’ signs, and meet with virtually non-existent resistance from the Court. The same Court security worker who told this journalist to delete photographs taken in court had earlier smiled to Waetford and said, “I’m not harassing you to take your patch off today.”
Facing a charge of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, a very serious offence, Waetford’s chosen to act for himself, as his lawyer won’t do what he wants. Either way it won’t make any difference, as the case probably won’t proceed because the Crown’s only witness won’t attend the hearing. The police prosecutor, Ken Andrews, says she’s been “spooked.” If she does appear, Waetford claims he doesn’t care. He says in his bass gravelly voice: “I’ve got no problems with going to prison. It’s part of my life. I take my medicine like a man. That’s how it is. That’s why people come to me, because they know I’m honourable. I don’t take nobody with me.” He’s been in and out of prisons since he was old enough to hear the clang of metal doors being locked behind him.
Waetford began offending shortly after his family moved from the country town of Maungaturoto to a rough, poor district in Whangarei called Otangarei – where he currently lives. His first brush with the law was for vandalising a stockyard at age ten, and his crimes escalated in spite of his parents’ persistent demands for him to behave. Like 75% or so of New Zealand prison inmates, he quit school without gaining any educational qualifications. He left in the 4th Form and began committing burglary with older boys at only 14, opting to join the Black Power when he saw two of its members being treated like “royalty” at a party. “I wanted to be treated with respect like that,” he says.
Like Sophie, he regularly attends Court in order to offer support, in particular to first time offenders, but his priorities differ. “They’re not criminals - nowhere near my league. I want to point them in the right direction. Some don’t know what they’re doing or what’s happening. A lot of justice isn’t served because of that. A lot of people plead guilty when they shouldn’t of,” he says.
In her book The Journey to Prison, Celia Lashlie proposes that New Zealanders need to admit “the degree to which skin colour and money play a part in determining who gets to go to prison in this country.” Pakeha for instance are far more likely to be fined for offending while Maori are more likely to be given a prison sentence.
According to Waetford if you don’t have money you are handicapped not only in the courtroom, but also in the prison system. He says if one employs a lawyer on legal aid, the service won’t be as good and one won’t be given the same respect as if one had paid the lawyer money from one’s pocket. And if behind bars, whether innocent or guilty of serious charges, around $25,000-30,000 will get one the best lawyer to appear in the High Court who knows the judge and bingo, you’re freed.
“I’m not saying it’s a pay-off system, the judge isn’t being bribed, but justice is for sale. It’s happened to me. And my mate paid 55 grand for his lawyer - he walked free,” he says. Obviously, being a member of a wealthy criminal fraternity has its benefits, but it’s not all beer and skittles.
All of Waetford’s gang mates from the early days, who were a year or two older, are no longer with us. They ‘fell off the waka’ so to speak. They slipped up. Reading between the lines it was apparent that they had been dealt to mortally. “We’ve got rules to live by too. If you don’t live by the rules…We don’t have many, but they are very important,” he says.
In contrast to the Once Were Warriors stereotype about gang members, his dad wasn’t a Jake the Mus type. Waetford was raised in a loving home, devoid of violence. The only thing about being an outlaw that bothers him is that it hurts his parents. His emotions are sealed off to the many others he’s harmed in one way or another along the way.
He made it apparent that the Black Power is exploiting a criminal element in society that shouldn’t be there and has been able to carve out a niche for itself for a number of reasons, one being that its black market legal system is more effective than the police in dealing with some crimes. He said some of his offending is associated with “helping people who have problems they can’t go to the police with.” These “problems” have recently included someone’s 15-year old daughter being given free methamphetamine by a middle-aged, European man; somebody having their dope and drug money pinched and so on. “People come to us when this justice system can’t be used. There are a lot of abused, young people out there who aren’t getting sorted out [protected] by the Court, they’re getting sorted out [protected] by the Black Power,” he offers. For instance, a woman whose ex-partner beat up her daughter couldn’t realistically ask for police assistance, because the abuser said he’d inform the police of her drug taking - consequently she went to the gang.
He solves “problems” using round-the-table negotiation, threats or muscle, and takes pride in it.
“I don’t think I do anything wrong …well I do, but my value system is different to yours,” he says, adding that he has no inclination to reform and intends to stay with the Black Power for the rest of his life. Although the need to appear staunch is a constant weight on his shoulders, he loves the money and the lifestyle it provides.

Over in Courtroom Two, Sam Paikea (not real name) is called in before the judge – he’s a middle-aged Maori, who has been charged with altering his time sheets. The hearing is put off for another date. Then Joseph Penny (not real name) is called. His hair is like a bird’s nest and he’s casually dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a baseball cap. He’s up for burglary, but his defence is that he was in the toilet while the two others accused committed the crime. It’s not the first time he’s been here. He’s convicted, fined and ordered to pay court costs.
Then Waetford is called and takes the stand. As the Crown’s witness has failed to appear, again, the trial can’t proceed today and is put off until a later date. The judge advises him that he’s not to contact the witness, nor ask anyone to contact her on his behalf. He and his heavily-tattooed friend leave the court, proven once again immune, and demonstrate that there is one law for them and another for everyone else.
On the other side of the building in the High Court, 25-year old Paul Heke, (not real name) another repeat offender, is escorted in by a security guard for sentencing. Heke has unevenly-cropped black hair, a large spider’s web tattooed on his right elbow and unearthly-looking pallid skin as a result of 5 months behind bars. This young man left school at only 12 years of age, has 18 convictions and a history of drug-related offending, which includes 4 convictions for drug dealing and one for theft of drugs.
His parents, his auntie and his two young children wait at the back of the court, where he turns his head repeatedly to smile, and communicates his grief in the process.
Heke fell into the methamphetamine trap and was apprehended with 192 pseudoephedrine tablets as well as utensils that are used in its production. The police estimated that the tablets could have been used to manufacture between $4,500 to $7,200 worth of methamphetamine.
The judge, who called it “a rotten, horrible drug,” and “a scourge,” said he was worried about Heke’s likely future behaviour, because his track record indicated he wasn’t likely to reform.
Heke’s lawyer said in his defence that his then partner was a methamphetamine addict and he had acquired the pseudoephedrine tablets to exchange for cooked methamphetamine for her to use. He wasn’t going to manufacture it she said. His partner and he had since split up and now she was living with her parents in Kaitaia. His family was caring for the two children, who were taken from her by Child, Youth and Family. Also, his lawyer said that his auntie would look after him and give him a job when he was released and he would then be given the opportunity to bond with his children, which he hadn’t yet done. She also claimed that given the changes within the whanau structure, the chance of Heke re-offending was low. Not surprisingly, nobody looked convinced, least of all the judge, who ruled that Heke would serve a prison term of a further 7.5 months on top of the 5 he’d already served.
Judges try where they can to give people programs that have some rehabilitation component. In this case he ruled that the release conditions would include drug and alcohol counselling, relationship counselling, as well as a period of community service. Heke looking dazed but grateful, turned to his children and parents again to smile, before being escorted to the van and driven back to prison. It was a tragedy to witness.

Back in Courtroom Two, spritely 48-year old criminal lawyer Kelly Johnson, quickly paces round the floor to one of his clients: a bulky middle-aged Maori man in a black coat with a shaven head. Johnson discusses his legal strategy with him after having carefully assessed the police evidence against him. The case is standard fare for the District Court, and of the variety he’s been handling for more than a decade.
He says that while many people mistakenly believe that the role of a criminal lawyer is to “get people off,” their job is to give people access to the law. This might not mean that they get off, but it might mean that they have a defence.
“People who aren’t dealing with the law, don’t always appreciate that it’s all about evidence. We focus on evidence and legal issues and help our clients to focus on those too and try and cut through the extraneous material, so that we can advise them where we think they stand and give them access to exercise their rights,” he says.
Johnson, who graduated from Auckland University, deals with cases that carry a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment related to cannabis, domestic violence, burglary, drink driving and assaults. He is also an actor of considerable ability - he played ‘Spook’ in the film Spooked, based on Ian Wishart’s Paradise Conspiracy, and ‘Blondini’ in Goodbye Pork Pie.
“People who come into the Court are often in an emotional state and confused. They ask me, “Why am I here? What’s going to happen? Why are they doing this?” Basic questions,” he offers. Most criminal clients are legally aided – in other words the State pays for their legal expenses. As lawyers’ reputations are based on what they achieve, it doesn’t make any difference if they are paid via legal aid or otherwise. You don’t get better results just because you’ve paid your lawyer privately he says.
A significant proportion of Johnson’s clients are recidivist offenders and he and other lawyers see the same parade of faces year in year out. “The same families keep coming to the Court. When I’ve spoken to Probation Officers they say they’ve sometimes dealt with the grandparents of young offenders and the parents. So it’s a cyclic thing,” he offers.
It’s a career option for some it seems as 86% of those released from jail, re-offend within 5 years. Frequently offenders have a low standard of education, are inarticulate, lack good personal hygiene and abuse alcohol and marijuana; the latter being particularly prevalent amongst the younger ones. “It’s a shame they don’t realise they could feel good about themselves without having to get blotto,” Johnson offers. Poor self-esteem is a problem common amongst offenders. “They don’t seem to appreciate that they’re capable of much better for themselves. If only they could see it! It’s partly their youth and immaturity that doesn’t let them see it. Often you’ll get people who want to be accepted by somebody or a group – maybe they’ve been rejected or unloved by their families, so they redirect their need to be accepted by becoming involved with the wrong crowd,” he asserts.
According to Johnson, the saddest aspect of the lawyers’ job is dealing with people under the care of the Mental Health authorities, some of whom are homeless and regularly come before the court for “niggly, public nuisance charges” because they are unwell, but not so unwell that hospitalisation is necessary. The judges’ sentences often reflect an awareness of their mental health status, but not always.
Overall Johnson believes offenders are treated fairly. “Our system isn't perfect, but it tries to be fair and it’s the best one we have. The State charges somebody with a crime and in order to make sure that person has a fair trial or as fair as possible, the State then pays for that person to have a lawyer. It seems that our system does its best to give the alleged offender as much access to the law as it can,” he asserts.
While harsher penalties for crimes were introduced with the Sentencing Act 2002 they won’t solve anything in Johnson’s opinion. “It doesn’t get to the heart of the problem, which are a variety of social factors. I think jail fulfils two of the aims of sentencing, which is punishment, and to a much lesser degree deterrence, but I don’t think longer sentences make much difference in the end. I think that longer sentences are to placate the public and to win votes for politicians. Jail is expensive, but it’s cheaper in the short term than trying to solve society’s social problems.”
The Ministry of Justice predicts that the number of prisoners will increase from about 6865 in 2004-05 to around 7880 in 2009-10 and like a revolving human conveyer belt, of those released, the criminal justice system will return into jail more than 25% within the first year and 35% within two years. Ironically, while politicians blame variables such as poverty, lack of jobs or government policies for the high rate of re-offending, they have provided permission for people to commit crimes by telling them they’re not responsible for the way they behave. If people were instilled with decent values to base their behaviour on in the first place, they probably wouldn’t feature in the crime statistics. But then, it isn’t PC to put the blame where it actually belongs.
In the Whangarei Courthouse, they’re packing up the files at the end of the session, and the last of the prison vans leaves the cells with its collection of remand prisoners and the newly condemned. But as Kelly Johnson, Sophie Tito and Charles Waetford know, it’ll be Groundhog Day again tomorrow.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate April 05, THE FAMINE CONSPIRACY

Is there a biotech industry plan to control world food supply?

So you thought the GM food battle had been fought and sorted? Think again. CLARE SWINNEY reports on so-called Terminator-genes that make crops sterile, and could leave the biotech industry in full control of the world’s food supplies

Picture yourself in sub-Saharan Africa, a hot dry breeze whipping up eddies of dust from the infertile ground. Around you, your children and family; starving and thirsty, because this year you couldn’t afford to buy the corn seed you needed from Monsanto or Syngenta. Where once you’d have saved the seeds of your own corn or wheat crop to re-sow next year, now the natural lines have been contaminated by the sterile GM varieties and your own crops have become sterile too.
Now imagine, on a world scale, what happens if Terminator technology spreads and becomes dominant? There are a lot of ifs, such as whether human-engineered biotech varieties would be stronger or weaker than the natural ones, but is it a risk the world really wants to take?
Only a few years ago, Genetic Engineering (GE) was part of the media’s main oxygen supply. The Royal Commission’s report on GE, the attack on GE-potato crops at a Crop & Food Research facility at Lincoln, the Prime Minister calling TV3s John Campbell a “little creep” when he confronted her without warning with details from Nicky Hagar’s book – Seeds of Distrust, the throngs on GE-free marches, the lifting of the moratorium on the commercial release of GE in October 2003 - all these stories were treated as momentous.
Today GE issues no longer ride the crest of the media wave, but are submerged, out of public sight and mind, with even significant stories being ignored as if GE is old news. So much so that you probably didn’t even know that a Private Members Bill to reinstate the moratorium on the commercial release of GE in New Zealand, was voted down in Parliament on March the 16th, 2005. Despite support from New Zealand First, The Maori Party, The Green Party and the government’s own coalition partner - The Progressives, the vote was met with complete silence by the media at the time, ensuring that the public was none the wiser.
And there are other stories you’ve not been told about. Worldwide there has been an informal moratorium, (not an outright ban), on the use of seed-sterilisation techniques, which are officially referred to as Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS). One of the most contentious aspects of this is referred to as Terminator technology or “suicide seeds,” designed specifically to become barren after the first generation. The intention of this informal moratorium was to give the global community time to come to terms with the scientific and ethical issues associated with GURTS, before further work was pursued. It was instigated in 1998 following international outrage after the public learnt about a patent for “suicide seeds”.
The public condemnation prompted the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to impose an informal moratorium on GURTS’ further development.
So what is Terminator? “Suicide seeds” are a type of GURTS that are technically very difficult to produce and their commercial use is likely to be a number of years away. But Terminator-seed technology, while still
experimental, has not been regarded well by the international community for scientific, commercial, ethical and moral reasons. Some regard it as the outcome of a long process of companies seizing control over living things, which began when biological heredity started to become a commodity.
If allowed to be released commercially, many people believe the cost of the technology will impact heavily on farmers, as Terminator uses genetic engineering techniques to program a plant’s DNA to kill its own embryos, thus forming sterile seed. The plant-to-seed-to-plant-to-seed cycle of life is broken, preventing a farmer from saving the harvested seed to grow next season. This will force the farmer to return to the seed companies each year to purchase new seed, that could be encumbered with heavy GE-seed technology-licensing fees.
This is of particular concern for struggling Third World farmers, who traditionally save seeds to plant the following season, but who are viewed as prime targets for the Terminator concept by GE-seed companies.
One of the foremost authorities in the field of seed sterilisation technology is retired Professor of Biology at Indiana University in the US, Dr Martha Crouch. A former genetic engineer, she helped develop Terminator sterile seed technology, but became so appalled with the ethical implications of her work, that she shut her lab door on it.
‘How the Terminator terminates: An explanation for the non-scientist of a remarkable patent for killing second generation seeds of crop plants, was written in 1998 by Dr Crouch about the first patent granted for a Terminator, and although somewhat dated, is still regarded as an excellent reference and available on the Internet.
In the document, Dr Crouch details her concerns about Terminator seeds. She believed they may be unsafe to eat by humans and other species, and suggested they may be allergenic because of the toxic component used to kill the embryo. She also questions whether their nutritional value would be equivalent to that of non-GE seeds, an issue raised about other GE crops also. Furthermore she states that although the patent application was proposed as a method to prevent contamination from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), the technique was not likely to function well for such a purpose and would probably be hazardous to the environment.
This first Terminator patent application, titled ‘Control of Plant Gene Expression,’ was filed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in partnership with a U.S.-based cotton seed company, Delta & Pine Land Company in 1995, and the patent granted in 1998. Since then, Terminator patents have been granted to Syngenta, BASF, DuPont, Monsanto and the research foundations of Cornell and Purdue amongst others.
In regard to the viability of these patents, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies at Auckland University, Dr Robert Mann points out that the existence of these doesn’t mean that any one of the inventions will function as proposed.
“The Terminator patent does not entail any evidence that such a seed exists or could exist. Patents are granted without regard to whether the invention would work. Unless the application describes a blatant violation of scientific law, such as a perpetual motion machine, a patent may be issued for what the examiner is convinced will not work,” he asserts. While this may be so, it has not stopped corporations from pouring millions and millions of dollars into trying to achieve a commercially viable product.
So what does this business about seed sterilisation technology have to do with New Zealand? This year, at a United Nations CBD meeting held in Bangkok from February the 7th to the 11th, the Canadian government was found to be making a bid to overturn the informal moratorium on GURTS and observers at the conference reported that the attempt had been backed by the New Zealand and Australian governments. In stark contrast, many African and Asian governments called for Terminator to be banned and the European Union has been supportive of the existing moratorium. As a result of last-minute negotiations the informal moratorium on this technology is set to continue, at least until the issue is revisited by another CBD advisory body in March 2006.
We questioned the Minister for the Environment, Marian Hobbs, on New Zealand’s position on this technology, a position which is regarded by many as an attack on farmers in the developing world, who traditionally save seed, and as an attack on the integrity of the food supply, and on the natural cycle of life and the environment. We put it to her that the majority of countries clearly back an informal moratorium while the complex social and ethical issues are discussed, before proceeding with the terminator-style projects and asked her if whether New Zealand accepted there was an informal moratorium at all? In her reply the Minister side-stepped the question:
“The decision reached in 2000 by the fifth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, recommended that, until there was enough scientific data, countries should be encouraged not to approve GURTS. This constitutes a recommendation to Parties, and not a formal moratorium.”
However, the Minister showed her standpoint more clearly in a press release dated 10th February 2005. She states: “New Zealand has no firm view on the merits of new organisms involving seed sterilisation technology, but supports their case-by-case assessment rather than a blanket ban.”
Consumer rights advocate and spokesperson for GE Free NZ in food and the environment, Jon Carapiet says that in opting for this “case-by-case” stance, the Minister is breaking ranks with the international community.
“She’s refusing to state a clear stand on this most contentious issue - patented Terminator seed technology. This was not designed to offer environmental benefits of restricting spread of GMOs, which some argue other GURTS may bring. Terminator is to control the patent on the seeds and prevent farmers from saving seed. It’s an ethical, human rights, food security, social justice and sustainability issue, not just a scientific one, which Marian Hobbs is pretending it to be,” he says.
Carapiet believes that instead of taking the case-by-case approach, the Minister should be choosing “voluntarily” to put a hold on GURTS while the discussions continue internationally on the pros and cons of Terminator technology.
According to a member of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics (PSRG), 63-year old Dr Robert Anderson, who holds a combined honours degree in physics and chemistry, and a PhD in science education, GURTS technology is still very experimental and the mantra that government ministers echo worldwide, that we use a “case-by-case” approach, is disingenuous.
“As I mention in my book, The Final Pollution, the “case-by-case” claim is misleading. Geneticist Dr Mae-Wan Ho said in her review of the British GE Science Review, that it is deeply flawed. It “side-steps fundamental criticisms of GE technology and fails to take the full range of scientific evidence into account. It is riddled with misrepresentations, half-truths and worse.”
Dr Anderson, who wrote Exploding the Myth of Genetic Engineering, and is in the process of obtaining a publisher for The Final Pollution, deems these comments made by The Institute of Science in Society to summarise the situation employed by the New Zealand regulatory system perfectly:
“The ‘case by case’ approach advocated is based on the unsupported assumption that there is nothing wrong with GE technology in general. The most that is being investigated is whether any particular crop presents specific hazards. At no point are the important and fundamental issues addressed, thus the public assume all is well, no thanks to the complicit corporate press. Worse, each application that is approved serves as a precedent for approving later ones and, in the end, it will be claimed that the entire technology has been properly investigated and approved, when in fact it has never been investigated at all.”
“To be pushing something that almost the whole world agrees is wrong to proceed with under current scientific knowledge and circumstances is shocking in my opinion,” grumbles Carapiet. “The case of Percy Schmeiser alone is a good reason to make a stand against it. It is a wake-up call to civil society,” he says. (see: www.percyschmeiser.com).
Although the case of farmer Percy Schmeiser versus Monsanto is not concerned with Terminator technology per se, it does offer a chilling insight into what happens when a company patents seeds and what could happen if Terminator seeds became commercially available. It was billed as a classic David-and-Goliath confrontation between an aged Canadian farmer and a corporate giant. Schmeiser had proudly grown his own strains of canola for over forty years using traditional farming techniques, but was accused by Monsanto of using their patented genetically-modified canola, Roundup Ready (RR) canola, on his 1,400 acre farm, without paying a fee for it.
Schmeiser says in the late-1990’s he found canola in a ditch by one of his fields and sprayed it with herbicide but, to his surprise, it failed to die. He realised his farm was contaminated with Monsanto’s RR canola and did a field test on three acres of his canola crop, discovering 60% of the canola plants sprayed with Roundup survived in clumps. It’s estimated that 40% of the canola grown in Canada is Monsanto’s RR canola. It was already being used by five of his neighbours, who were paying a licensing fee of US$15 an acre for it and they, like others using it, had entered into an agreement with the seed sellers to buy it year-after-year and to only use the proprietary chemicals sold by Monsanto.
Monsanto, which had investigators doing field tests in the area, accused Schmeiser of stealing its seeds. Schmeiser said he hadn’t - that the seeds arrived somehow without his knowledge - yet Monsanto sued him for illegally using its patented GE canola.
For seven years now and at great personal expense in court costs and stress, Schmeiser, who says he’s been fighting for the fundamental right of the farmer to save seed and use it year-after-year, has maintained that the RR canola pollen must have blown onto his field, or seed fallen from passing trucks.
In a decision that shocked farmers, Judge MacKay made it clear that it didn’t matter how the seed got on his land - Schmeiser was guilty. He stated: “Yet the source of the Roundup resistant canola...is really not significant for the resolution of the issue of infringement…”
Outrageous as it was, it also didn’t matter that Schmeiser didn’t benefit whatsoever from the RR seed. In order to derive any economic benefit from growing it, he’d have to sell it as seed, or spray Roundup, and he’d done neither. None of these points are disputed. No one, including Monsanto argued that Schmeiser actually benefited or even intended to benefit from growing a crop contaminated with GE plants, but these details were of no consequence. He was found guilty, and fined US$15/acre x 1030 acres, plus the value of his crop US$105,000, plus US$25,000 for punitive and exemplary damages. And to add insult to injury, he lost the improved genetics resulting from his lifelong practice of saving his own seed to produce his own tailor-made variety of canola, as his own crop was confiscated.
Offers Dr Anderson: “We’ve a full-length documentary of Percy, together with all the other poor devils that Monsanto has screwed to the wall. As the US president of the Corn Growers so aptly put it when he came over to see us: ‘We’ve been screwed.’ They certainly have!”
According to the editor of The GE Sellout, Jonathon Eisen, who is due to launch a magazine titled Uncensored, the reach of the multinationals such as Monsanto, has become so pervasive that they would have little trouble corrupting individual politicians, cultures, international agencies, NGOs and traditionally independent judicial systems in their quest for greater and greater power. The state does their bidding and their enforcing, through its politicians, and thus via its laws, police and court systems.
“There is now virtually nothing left of a system that at least once made a token effort to separate corporate influence from how and what we think,” warns Eisen.
While it’s transparently clear Schmeiser is a victim, the Royal Commission report had no sympathy for him, nor concern about the destructive effect Monsanto’s [and other GE-seed companies] policies have on traditional farming. It states: “Anti-genetic modification campaigners mentioned his case as exemplifying the perceived evils of GM crops. In the event the Canadian court held that Mr Schmeiser had knowingly used genetically modified seeds without authority, thus infringing Monsanto’s patent,” (p.147). Such economy with the facts, in a document used by our government for formulating decisions, will by its very nature have an insidious influence.
A case in point: in discussion with the New Zealand First spokesperson for Agriculture, Brian Donnelly, Investigate used the Schmeiser saga as a reason not to pursue Terminator technology. His rebuttal was that the Royal Commission report had found that Schmeiser was guilty.
Hon Marian Hobbs says she too has been reliant on the Royal Commission to formulate her understanding of the issues. She admits: “The Royal Commission has been the major effect on my thinking of how a government manages any risks,” but then dodged answering a question on whether she would support a ban on GURTS like Terminator seeds, which are designed solely to stop farmers saving seeds and protect patents. “I am unwilling to offer a position on such a hypothetical and speculative scenario. This technology is new,” she offers. She was also asked to comment on Terminator techniques from a humanitarian perspective, but remained silent on this critical issue.
Says Carapiet: “Terminator technology and the ethical issues are not new as Marian says - they’ve been around for at least 6 years and Marian’s refusal to be drawn on the ethical issues betrays the government’s strategy of separating scientific debate from ethical issues. They lack a moral or ethical foundation for their decision-making, which is the nub of the problem!”
Investigate asked the Minister to address the ethical and moral issues related to Terminator, but she avoided doing so repeatedly, electing instead to echo corporation spin on “What the farmers can do with even more GE.” For instance, she believes it should be remembered that there is potential for seed sterilisation to offer benefits for agriculture, including small farmer holders, and management of indigenous plant communities. She says: “Controlled use of some forms of GURTS technology could reduce unwanted breeding between GM commercial crop varieties and closely-related indigenous or wild relatives as the hybrids formed through cross-pollination would be sterile. Other forms of GURTS could provide the ability for plants to express certain agricultural characteristics in particular ways, or at particular times that best suit the environment or the farmer’s needs.”
In light of the prevailing domination of our culture by the corporation, and the fact that New Zealand is investing hugely in biotechnology, it is not surprising that the Minister repeatedly avoids the ethical implications of the Terminator technology says Dr Anderson. “It’s diabolically unethical and reflects, to a large degree, the corporate mind-set: to control the world’s food supply and the world’s farmers,” he remarks.
Investigate persisted with the Minister using a scenario that is quite feasible on the basis of a report in Nature, (22 March 2005) - Swiss company Syngenta distributed GE corn that didn’t have regulatory approval for more than four years ‘by mistake.’ We asked Hobbs: “What would happen if a Third World farmer buys seeds, not knowing the seeds are Terminator, saves them for the next year and plants his crops – and nothing grows?” And she began her reply: “Again you have presented a hypothetical and speculative scenario.”
As Carapiet points out - all GE research is “speculative,” but that doesn’t mean that the Minister can ignore the implications of it from an ethical perspective.
Perhaps to reassure the public, the Minister asserted that Terminator technology is years away from commercial application and the issue will be discussed at future international meetings. “At this point, it can be anticipated that sound commercial controls such as appropriate provision of consumer information will apply to such goods,” she says. Her arguments infuriate Carapiet, who is on the verge of a meltdown, over what he sees as sidestepping and misleading comments. “This makes my blood boil. It’s such nonsense, as we already have a system where over 20 GE foods can be imported and sold - and don’t have to be labelled in cafes, restaurants, takeaways etcetera and are inadequately labelled on shelves in supermarkets. She has zero credibility on this and why on earth should the public have confidence she will do any better in future?”
It has been suggested that Marian Hobbs’ refusal to support the informal global moratorium is driven by the knowledge that related work is already under way here. New Zealand currently has experiments on at least one form of GURTS, which is of a different type to those aimed at protecting GE-crop patents. In a field trial in Rotorua, the so-called “Barnase system,” is being tested in GE pine trees to establish how it might kill reproductive cells. While the Minister said she doesn’t believe this breaches the informal moratorium on GURTS, she intimated otherwise in this statement: “I would stress again that decisions on whether to allow controlled research into genetic restriction technologies to be carried out are currently up to individual countries and their domestic legislation. In New Zealand, ERMA controls the use of GMOs under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996.”
Responds Carapiet: “New Zealand has allowed at least one trial in the form of the GE trees – which shows that our system does not stop potentially unethical experiments going on. It’s been left up to ERMA at the local level and they appear to care not a jot for the international de facto moratorium, which the Minister seems to recognise as being in place.”
According to Dr Mann, the Minister should be told to condemn the concept of the Terminator, “New Zealand showed the world a good example in excluding nuclear reactors; let us not only ban GMOs except in strict containment, but also show the world again some moral leadership. The pollen from a
‘Terminator’ tree could well be harmful in a variety of ways including actively crossing with wild or cultivated relatives to produce fertile progeny of unknown harmfulness, or novel pathogens.
The prospects for damage are so many, varied, and dismaying that no Minister for the Environment should condone the notion of field-testing such a rotten idea.”
A study into the effect of GE crops on the environment, the largest in the world thus far, will undoubtedly make it harder for the Minister to justify their use. Recently published in Nature (22 March 2005), the UK investigation showed that GE crops would seriously exacerbate the decline of farmland wildlife,
especially plants and birds, as there were fewer seeds, bees and butterflies found in the GE fields owing to the chemicals used.
So far, New Zealand has been free of GE catastrophes such as those that have occurred elsewhere. Even so, we have experienced the GE salmon and Communication Trumps debacle, Corngate, and the mess caused by the Tamarillo aka the ‘Tam Scam’ trials, which has not been cleared up. Virtually all GE crops have problems that clearly demonstrate the truth, which scientists worldwide have claimed from the beginning, that GE is a seriously flawed technology. Carapiet, and others, argue that the unfortunate outcome of the mainstream
media not covering incredibly important GE issues such as the New Zealand government’s support for Terminator technology, is that the government is not being held to account. GE, they say, is dangerous and untested technology, which is being implemented virtually instantaneously worldwide. Genetic engineering biotechnology is beginning to affect every aspect of our lives - and it has vast scope for doing so, if our government allows it to.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate April 05, Tax Reform

THE DEATH OF TAXES

As pressure builds on the Clark Government to cut taxes, IAN WISHART reports on moves in the United States that go one giant leap further, and which may yet impact on New Zealanders: the possible abolition of income tax

There is nothing as certain, so the old joke goes, as death and taxes. But by the end of this decade, it could be income tax itself lying dead and buried in the graveyard of bright ideas that outlived their use-by dates. If it seems like a bold, even ludicrous, idea, that may be more reflective of the way we’ve been conditioned to think about income tax than the merits of the prediction.
At the heart of it all lies a “rolling thunder”-style tax revolt that’s been quietly sweeping across America since the 1990s. In places as diverse as local community halls, Washington, D.C. thinktanks, and plush resort hotels in offshore tropical tax havens, people have been quietly gathering to discuss ways of removing America’s cumbersome Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from their lives. Many of those meetings were instigated by so-called tax rebels who argued that the US Tax Code was invalid, and that people had a constitutional right, backed up by old Supreme Court judgments, not to pay the federal income tax.
Significantly, these tax rebels also took their arguments to Australians and New Zealanders in the late 1990s with a series of offshore “tax seminars” held in exotic locations like Vanuatu and Fiji. While the legal niceties of the Australasian tax codes were different to those in the US, the principles were the same and a tax revolt briefly flowered here in New Zealand as a result. But in America it actually took root.
Whether the arguments were right or wrong turns out to be immaterial, because as of 2005 the tax revolt has placed so much pressure on the US tax system that it’s cracking at the seams.
Just a few short weeks ago, President George W. Bush put the abolition of income tax firmly on his domestic agenda this term, with a special advisory panel due to report its recommendations by July 31st. And, later in March, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan added his voice to what is now a cacophony of calls for income tax to go, saying that individuals should be taxed on what they consume rather than what they earn.
You heard it right.
It is an issue that has barely touched the radar of most media in Australia or New Zealand, but the implications for our region if the United States abolishes income tax are huge. And both the NZ and Australian governments know it.
Investigate understands Australian Treasurer Peter Costello and his officials are keeping a close eye on developments in the US because – just like the old Vietnam War red peril theory – if one domino falls then other Western democracies may have no choice but to follow suit.
Here in New Zealand, Opposition Leader Don Brash, a former central banker, is also “watching with considerable interest”.
“Although we have a much more rational and clean tax system than the US does, the Labour government has been complicating our system over the past few years by adding higher marginal rates.
“If the United States were to abolish income tax in favour of some kind of direct expenditure tax, then I would think that is certainly something that countries like New Zealand and Australia would have to take a serious look at.”
Most people probably cannot remember a time when income tax was not part of their lives, yet income tax is actually a very modern invention. While kings had the power to levy special taxes on ordinary citizens to pay the bills during times of war, income taxes were not permitted – and in fact had been expressly outlawed from the time of the Magna Carta. Contrary to popular belief, taxes on commoners were extremely uncommon throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Britain was the first major nation to impose an income tax, between 1799 and 1816, to fund the Napoleonic Wars with France. The US Government imposed a special income tax in 1864 to fund the Civil War effort, but under the US Constitution the tax had to be repealed in 1872.
Having seen the benefits of a national tax on citizens, however, the governments of both Britain and America realised they could do so much more if they could find a way to permanently collect income taxes. In 1874, just two years after the US tax was repealed after the Civil War, Britain introduced sweeping legislation, including a partial repeal of aspects of the Magna Carta, and gave itself the power to impose a permanent income tax.
New Zealand and Australia followed soon after. News headlines from the time dis-close considerable public disquiet about the idea, and warnings it would be “the thin end of the wedge”. But in pioneer lands like Australia and New Zealand where roads and infrastructure needed building, the income tax pill was largely swallowed whole by the public. Still, there were many who felt the tax burden, at one and a half pennies in the pound (a tax rate of about 0.75% in today’s terms), was onerous. Just what those first Australians would make of today’s 48 per cent tax rates is unclear (New Zealand’s top rate hit as much as 66% in the 1980s), but history
appears to have borne out the warnings that giving a government the power to levy income taxes – even at 0.75% – was indeed the thin end of the wedge.
Not to be outdone by the Mother Country and the Antipodes, US officials reintroduced a federal income tax in 1894, but it was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. So in 1913, amid much lobbying from merchant bankers who saw the chance to make lots of money, the US reintroduced income tax by way of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It is this document that lies at the heart of the US tax revolt after revelations in the past ten years that the Sixteenth appears never to have been properly ratified by the required number of state governments. Therefore, argue the protestors, income tax remains illegal under the US Constitution.
Either way, the protests over the past five years have seen hundreds of thousands – some commentators say it is into the millions – of American individuals and small businesses refusing to file their tax returns, and tying the IRS up in red tape and court challenges every step of the way. Adding insult to injury for the IRS, it has lost some cases in front of unsympathetic juries – fueling the perception that income tax might indeed be “voluntary” in the US.
In August 2001, Investigate was the first media organization in the southern hemisphere to report that the recently-elected President Bush was taking on board the protests and considering abolishing the federal income tax:
“The growing rebellion against income tax that’s sweeping New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Canada has just taken a major step towards achieving its goal: US President George Bush has confirmed he is considering the complete abolition of income tax in the United States.
“In a front page story in The New York Times on July 16, Bush’s chief economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey confirmed that the White House has adopted a Ground Zero approach to tax reform, and that all issues, including the scrapping of income and company tax altogether, are “in the discussion stage.”
“ ‘The facts are that one needs a broad consensus before moving on fundamental tax reform,’ Lindsey said. ‘The process of building that consensus takes time. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start the process’.
“If the White House does push ahead with ditching the century-old income tax, the newspaper reports a likely replacement is either a flat sales tax of between 20 and 30 percent, or an Australasian-style GST. “Pressure’s been building in the United States for nearly a decade for the US Government to come clean on the constitutional status of the income tax. Lawyers, congress researchers and even former Internal Revenue Service agents are now saying the income tax is illegal - that its introduction in 1913 was not properly ratified by the states of the Union, and that ordinary Americans cannot be forced to pay it.
“The White House has also been sandwiched in a pincer movement between competing groups of tax rebels. One of them, the FairTax organisation,
has congressional, bipartisan support and its cause is being championed by Congressman John Linder (R-Georgia) and Congressman Collin Peterson, (D-Minnesota).
“The two men, with a number of other politicians behind them, have introduced legislation to Congress clearing the way for the abolition of income tax in favour of the so-called FairTax.”
That was August 2001. A month later, the attacks on the World Trade Center took Bush’s attention away from domestic issues and agendas like the FairTax. But the Linder/Peterson proposal to totally reform America’s, and possibly the West’s, taxation system didn’t disappear.
Over the past four years, largely through an email blitz fired out from their website fairtax.org, the Con-gressmen have marshaled the support of more than half a million Americans and a large number of current and former politicians and business leaders. And, fresh from introducing democracy to the Middle East, George W. Bush now has the chance for a domestic legacy as well: becoming known to future historians as the President who killed income tax.
Bush can’t stand for re-election in 2008, so this term he’s largely unfettered by political considerations. And Bush has shown he’s a man who likes to pursue big visions.
Which is why the FairTax may return to centrestage this year.
In the form now being proposed in the US Congress, the FairTax would see the federal income tax abolished, the IRS disestablished, and the introduction of a 23% flat-rate sales tax imposed at the final point of sale to end users. Nothing particularly new in the idea of a sales tax, you might say. And critics of sales taxes are usually quick to suggest they are unfair to the low paid, because people on low incomes spend most if not all of their income on the necessities of life and have no way of avoiding a sales tax, while the wealthy can save their money or invest it and not be taxed. It’s a simplistic argument at the best of times – the low paid haven’t generally been able to avoid income tax either – but in the case of the FairTax the argument fails at an even more basic level.
Recognising the need to ease the burden on the poor, the FairTax provides for regular tax rebates to every single household in America, so that a family of four on the poverty line, with a household income of just US$23,000 a year, will effectively pay zero tax. Under that $23,000 threshold, the tax system actually works in reverse, so that families under the poverty line will not only get all their tax back, they’ll get as much as 23% more of their income back on top of that. In real terms, say the FairTax proponents, for a family of four on a household income of US$45,000, the effective tax rate will be only 11.5%, and at $90,000 it is still only 17.2%, rising to 20% by the time you’re earning $180,000.
President Bush has instructed a nine-member panel of experts to conduct a series of public hearings on the idea of abolishing income tax, and they’re due to report back to the White House this coming July.
At one of the hearings in March, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan threw his not-inconsiderable influence behind the idea of scrapping income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax. “As you know, many economists believe that a consumption tax would be best from the perspective of promoting economic growth – particularly if one were designing a tax system from scratch,” argues Greenspan, “because a consumption tax is likely to encourage saving and capital formation.”
A recent OECD report noted Australasian marginal income tax rates are among the highest in the world. If America does indeed get rid of income tax less than a hundred years after it was introduced, it will undermine the philosophical foundations of income tax in other western democracies like Australia and New Zealand, where it has crept from 0.75 cents in the dollar when it was introduced to 39 cents in the dollar today. Not only are the US, Australian and New Zealand tax codes huge and unwieldy – running to thousands of pages and requiring teams of Queens Counsel to interpret – the wastage in the collection system is also massive.
Most tax money taken from private citizens gets eaten by the large government bureaucracies set up to administer the system. In the US, the people behind the FairTax are quietly confident their proposal will get the green light from the White House, though it will still have to get through a string of congressional and senate committees and public hearings.
“Can you imagine,” writes one advocate, “what Joe Public will think when he wakes up one morning, five years from now, opens his paycheck and finds the government has taken nothing in tax? Suddenly, Joe is in charge of his own financial destiny.”
For people who, like National’s Don Brash, will be watching how this plays out in the next few months, it won’t be too hard to do the math: simply punch your gross annual salary into a calculator, divide it by 52, and that’s how much take home cash you’d get every week. How much tax you’d pay would be determined entirely by how much you bought that week.
Is this kind of tax reform possible in New Zealand? Maybe. Just ask the people who questioned the possibility of democracy in the Middle East.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate April 05, THE CASE FOR ADOPTION

FAMILY SECRET

Nearly 120,000 women terminate their pregnancies every year in New Zealand and Australia. Thousands of others, desperate for a child of their own, undergo IVF and other painful and expensive fertility treatments. And, just to make things more interesting, somewhere around 20,000 kids are sitting in foster homes right this moment, many of them craving a permanent, loving family to truly call their own. In between these stark realities stands adoption: an issue that, despite recent publicity surrounding it, most people leave in the “too hard” basket. JAMES MORROW sorts out the myths from realities and looks at why the adoption option deserves a second look

The first thing many strangers say when they meet Christine* and her five-year-old daughter is, “she looks just like you”. Indeed, mother and daughter do share the same skin tone and chiseled European features. The only thing they don’t share is DNA: Christine had ovarian cancer when she was 19, had both ovaries removed, and although grateful to be alive was left unable to have children of her own. And so, like a small number of couples, Christine and her husband went down the long, sometimes expensive, and often frustrating path of adopting a baby.
As highlighted by the surprise reunion earlier this year between Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott and the son his girlfriend gave up for adoption when he was 19 – albeit later found not to be his – adoption was once a routine practice. But for a variety of reasons – increased access to abortion, more government assistance for single mothers, political concerns, and a loss of stigma around single motherhood among them – adoption has slowly but surely gone out of favour.
In fact, there are now more babies adopted from overseas in New Zealand than actual NZ-born children placed as adoptive children in local homes. In 2002-03, the latest years for which figures are available, just 83 NZ-born children were adopted to non-relatives, down from around 3,500 thirty years ago.
By way of comparison, in 2002-03, nearly 600 foreign-born children were adopted by New Zealanders.
Keith Griffith, author of two books on adoption in New Zealand, believes changing social factors including the introductionof the DPB and a massive increase in abortions, are among some of the causes of the huge drop in adoptions.
Yet despite the much-discussed fertility crisis – our 1.75 child-per-woman rate is hardly enough to keep the population steady – on the one hand and the vast number of children living in foster or “out-of-home” care on the other, adoption continues to remain on the sidelines of the family planning agenda.
Part of the reason for this is the time, effort and money involved in adopting a child – though, to be sure, many fertility treatments can also take years and run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Rules, procedures and costs vary from case to case depending on complexity and arrangements, but legal fees running to the thousands can be involved, while the cost of overseas adoptions is likely to run to $20,000 to $40,000 or more, especially once plane tickets, accommodation, and other travel-related expenses are factored in. And money is no guarantee of getting a child, either: even qualified parents have been known to wait five, six, seven years or more before being allowed to take home a new member of their family, though two to three years seems the norm. “Adoptions are made so very carefully,” says Jane West, a spokesperson for Anglicare Adoption Services in Sydney.
Beyond being able to afford the cost (fees are waived for special-needs adoptions, says West), typically couples need to be between the ages of 21 and 45, have been married for three years (though some agencies accept de facto partners and singles) and be citizens. Much of the expense comes from the training, background and reference checks and medical screens which are all performed. Once these steps are completed, the lucky couple is then put in a pool of applicants with no guarantee that they will ever be chosen.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, West points out that when a child is placed for adoption, his or her birth mother is given extensive counseling (as is the father, if he can be located) – a far cry from the bad old days when young mothers had to give up their children literally without so much as a second look. Birth mothers are given a selection of profiles of potential adoptive families to choose from, and have final say over with whom their child is placed.
“We had never really had any plans to adopt when we got married,” says Christine, who says that she had been thinking about the idea for a while when, one night, she turned to her husband in bed and said, “what do you think about adopting a child?” To her surprise, he thought that was a great idea, and before they knew it they were taking the first steps into the maze of adoption.
When they started the process in 1998, they had planned to go to Romania to find a child because they were under the belief, subtly encouraged by social workers, that there were simply no children available to adopt locally. And Christine and her husband were fine with that idea; as she says, “we figured that we’d be doing the right thing by giving a baby who needed one a home, the baby would be happy, we’d be happy and, well, everyone would be happy!”
But the more they researched it and found out that it was actually possible, the more they became convinced that they wanted to adopt a child born in this country – though Christine admits that initially she was scared off by the whole process of “open adoption”, which allows for contact between the birth mother and her offspring. (Indeed, the ongoing rights and feelings of the birth mother are one reason why Christine’s family has asked for anonymity).
“At first, I have to admit, it was really difficult from my perspective. It was like the changing of the guard: one family is accepting this new responsibility, and seeing the woman who gave birth to your child is probably the most difficult part of the whole adoption process,” she says.
In fact, when Christine and her husband initially filed their applications, they said that they were not keen on having contact with the birth family, though they were encouraged when a social worker told them that, paradoxically, “the families who say they want the least contact often turn out to be the best candidates for open adoption”.
Even though it was initially difficult (her daughter sees her birth mother twice a year: once around her birthday, and once around Christmastime), Christine says it has actually been a blessing in disguise. “For my daughter, I think she’ll benefit from the contact,” she says. “And I know from my circle of friends who adopted from overseas that we are lucky to have this contact. In the beginning, yeah, it was extra stress, but now five years down the track I think it’s fantastic.” One feature Christine is especially keen on is the fact that her daughter has a real sense of where she comes from: “She knows her story, she knows everything, but it doesn’t really come up much. It’s just how it is. For the most part it’s been really positive.”
While Christine’s story has had a happy ending, she and others who have been intimately involved with adoption are concerned that, with so many children in need, far too many are being shuttled back and forth from foster homes to unsuitable and abusive family situations and back again – hurting their abilities to form trusting bonds with anyone, and creating thousands upon thousands of adults who will, in all likelihood, have repeated run-ins with the law or simply become wards of the state. A recent study by Australia’s CREATE Foundation, an advocacy group for children in state care, confirms that that is just what is happening, with those in foster care reporting that they are missing school, are victims of bullying, have trouble making and keeping friends, and are subject to everything from decreased educational aspirations to emotional instability and violence.
The head of the NSW Adoptive Parents Association, who, like Christine, has concerns for her privacy and that of her adoptive child’s birth mother and thus asks that her last name not be used, is a woman called Sonia. She recalls going to an Adelaide conference on adoption in 2004. Sitting in the audience amongst a thousand other delegates, she heard that there were many children in various state foster care systems who had gone through eleven or more placements in the space of just a few years – numbers confirmed by CREATE. According to Sonia, there is a golden opportunity here to connect at least some of these children up with parents wishing to adopt, and she believes the government ought to set some sort of time limit – even just a loose one – stating that after a certain amount of time in foster care, a child should be eligible to go into the adoption pool.
“Surely adopting would be more appropriate than long-term fostering,” she says. “We have learned from the stolen generation, and we’ve learned from the days when we forced adoption on girls when there wasn’t any other option, but since we don’t have that social structure anymore where women are forced into doing something they don’t want to do, why can’t we do something about it?,” she asks. “If a child has to spend, say, a year in foster care while some issues are sorted out, that’s one thing. But if we see that a child is going back and forth from foster home to birth parent and then back out again to some other foster home, there has to be a point at which we say, enough is enough?”
Having children is one of the most emotional and important issues to face New Zealanders, both as indi-viduals and as a nation. Without enough young peo-ple who have been raised up to be solid, productive citizens, fifty years from now the country will find itself in the same position as contemporary Western Europe.
There, an aging population which is incapable of replacing itself has been forced to make what now looks like a devil’s bargain with various increasingly hostile immigrant groups in order to keep their leaky welfare state economies afloat. While this sort of situation is unlikely to occur here – for one thing, New Zealand is generally a lot better at assimilating new migrants – the fact remains, we’re not raising enough kids to keep our economy growing at the sort of clip that has, until recently, been standard operating procedure.
So where does adoption fit in? Certainly, it takes a very special sort of person to decide to go through filling out the forms, sitting through the interviews, and writing the cheques that go along with becoming an adoptive parent. And, on the other hand, it also takes a very special kind of person to recognize that, under their particular circumstances, their child might be better off being placed with another family. All anecdotal indicators suggest that there are large numbers of parents who would consider adopting children if they thought that the process was easier and that there were more NZ-born kids who not only needed permanent homes, but were eligible for them as well. (Christine recalls that in a moment of candour, a social worker – who was later happily proved wrong – told her “there are no healthy babies out there for adoption”, an attitude which surely causes plenty of prospective parents to chuck in the towel before they even begin).
It’s a comment echoed by author Keith Griffith, who says prospective parents now think there’s no point going on a waiting list because their chances are so slim.
There are many things that need to happen before adoption is thought of as more than just a pricey and rare special offering on the menu of reproductive choices. Part of this could include a look at allowing private adoptions, a process that has worked successfully for years in the United States to put couples in touch with women who want to adopt out a child.
Furthermore, too, cultural attitudes must shift, and concerns about repeating the mistakes of the past must eventually subside if they get in the way of doing good in the future. The number of terminations and children in foster care on the one hand and, on the other, the number of couples going through difficult infertility treatments shows that there are lots of parents who want children but can’t have them – and vice versa – in New Zealand.
For the record, of the thousands of kiwi kids in foster care during 2003, only two were adopted by their foster families.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate April 05, WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD MEN GONE?

Delayed parenthood

It’s a Catch-22 situation. Women are delaying pregnancy until they’ve established careers, and then finding fertility is a big problem for thirty-somethings. And men are running scared of committment, still living at home in their 20s or even 30s. DANIEL DONAHOO reports on why men are increasingly shying away from parenthood, and women are increasingly holding out for a hero who’s harder to find...

My colleague shook his head when he heard the news. “Bloody good decision,” he said. “I should have had kids younger.” At 47, he was the father of a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, and was feeling the strain. He told me on more than one occasion that he’d be 63 when his youngest child turned 21. It wasn’t a prospect he was embracing.
I was 23, full of energy and ready to tackle fatherhood head-on.
For both men and women, there are many benefits in having children at a young age. Women are healthy and more fertile. The likelihood of complications in pregnant women over 35 increases dramatically. Men have more strength and energy, and are not yet set in their childless ways. And both genders carry less of the cynicism that the years seem to pile on.
Despite all this, men are helping stall the baby-making process. The average age for first-time dads across the Tasman is 32.5 years: an all-time high. These days, if you are dad in your early 20s, you are on
the fringe.
Recent projections suggest we will continue to put off having children. Consequently, fewer couples will end up with kids. The Australian Institute of Family Studies estimates that in 2016, more couples will be without children than with. A similar trend has emerged in New Zealand as well. The birth rate has definitely boarded the down escalator, and the implications could be pronounced.
While the statistics strike out, men of all ages are discovering that becoming a dad is an ambition that is never too early, or late, to pursue. Young dads might be an endangered species, but they would do well to hear the messages from older men who are finding more in fatherhood than they thought was there.
A friend of mine who became a dad at 42 is disappointed he left his run so late. He and his partner won’t be having another child. He now works part-time and shares the care of his daughter, which he says is “the bloody toughest and most rewarding gig” he has ever had. He can understand now why he grew up around so many large Catholic families. “Creating your own family is a feat greater than anything,” he says.
Men these days are often busy establishing careers and embracing singledom. But, for some, stumbling upon fatherhood has made life more fulfilling and shatt-ered all pre-conceptions that having responsibility for a child is something to fear.
I committed to a relationship and having a baby after only knowing my wife for five months. In a society where many men turn and run I decided to stand my ground. By not shirking the responsibility my libido had thrust upon me I suddenly found myself more employable, more capable and tackling responsibilities that the constant delay of singledom had denied me.
Consequently, my life took on new meaning and much greater emotional and financial responsibility. My partner and I turned our $10,000 combined debt, amassed before children, into an eight-acre asset by the time my first son was six months.
Some regard the popularity of delaying fatherhood as a major factor in the decrease of couples with kids. It is an issue documented by Leslie Cannold in her new book, What, No Baby?, which points the finger at men and asks them to consider whether their lack of commitment to equal relationships and shared responsibility is fair on our society.
Cannold wrote recently, “In particular, my research makes clear that while the vast majority of women want to become mothers, their freedom to choose to have children at any particular point is limited by a range of social circumstances and attitudes.”
One of those circumstances appears to be all those things young men believe they ‘should’ do before having kids.
“I want my son to get an education, travel and enjoy himself before he gets married,” one mother told me.
Here, the implication appears to be that marriage and having a family is not an
enjoyable experience. Or at least, not as enjoyable as travelling the world.
The fact is that an increasing number of young men are putting off fatherhood. It isn’t surprising when you measure the images of parenting against pop-culture images of the party-hard, single life. The women who adorn Ralph and FHM don’t ask men to settle down.
But some young men are proving that having children young is not the burden it is made out to be. They are choosing responsibility over partying.
As part of my recent research for a forthcoming book, I have been interviewing young dads about their experience of fatherhood. They unanimously agree that it is hard work. But they are living the cliché that the more work you put in, the more rewards follow. They are building upon their own childhood experiences and finding new ways to make family relationships work in the 21st century.
One of those men, Lifon Henderson, has spent his working life as an entertainer, but as a 26-year-old father of two boys he has returned to study to pursue a new career. His wife Barbara Sparks is also studying part-time. They both balance study, work and raising their children in a juggling act that beats anything Lifon does in his clown shows.
They told me they are looking to be qualified and established in new careers by the time their boys go to school. Having children for them was a grounding experience that brought direction into their lives.
Our society assumes study is something we should do before children. But many stay-at-home mums and dads are making the most of new developments in distance-education, thanks to the Internet and off-campus learning.
Julian and Anna Hetyey are a young professional couple in their mid-20s who are looking forward to the birth of their first child in just a couple of months. They see this as the first step in a move to reject the hectic work culture that currently dominates their lives.
Julian is adjusting his working arrangements as a lawyer to have a better work-life balance, while Anna will stop practicing podiatry and stay at home for the first few years of their child’s life.
Instead of cementing careers and paying off much of their mortgage before they have children, Julian and Anna have decided that having children will bring their lives a perspective it is currently lacking. They are interested in being part of a community first and foremost, instead of a workplace.
As for me, at 27, a big night out is usually a visit to my mum and dad’s. They take care of the kids and my wife and I can kick back and relax. Having children young has meant that my parents are considered young grandparents. Very few of their friends are grandparents.
It is a joy to watch my sons roll around on the floor with my dad, or play in the park with mum when they take the dog for a walk. Yet men who are delaying fatherhood are also delaying their parents’ grandparenthood. The longer it is delayed, the greater the risk to developing those inter-generational relationships.
Interestingly, the delay of parenthood isn’t for the lack of wanting children. A recent study of over 3,000 fertile Australians is proving that more people want children than we assume, and they want more than one child. According to a recent Australian Institute of Family Studies report, “It’s Not For Lack of Wanting Kids”, a large majority of us aged 20-39 want two or three children.
In the survey men come out looking like they have great family intentions. Those who we would expect to be holding tightly onto their freedom are interested in parenthood. Over 60 percent of single men aged 20-29 ‘definitely want children’, while only 20 percent rule out ever having children. Almost 90 percent of married-but-childless men between 20-39 years indicate they definitely want kids.
So if we want kids, what’s the hold-up?
Men appear to have so many pre-set goals and objectives. There is little imagination or flexibility about the many ways a life can be lived. Many of us are stuck on a set of mantras promoted by marketers and the media: “I want to be secure in my career”; “I want to provide my children with economic security”; “I want to have at least half of my mortgage paid off”.
I never had a five-year plan. But my younger brother does, and so do many of his drinking buddies. And, despite wanting to have children one day, kids never seem to be factored into these five-year plans. If children are not in the plan, what does happen if one comes along? Many young men may be denying themselves a happiness they haven’t considered by boxing themselves into a life that is a series of dot points where family and kids don’t figure.
There is a modern-world life-checklist young men complete before they move on to the next goal: finish school, check. Go to uni, check. Experiment with drugs, check. Travel overseas, check. Establish a career, check. Find a partner, check. Buy a house, check. Achieve financial security, check...Have children?
But what if one of those items doesn’t materialise? What if you get stalled for a while in finding the right career, or the right person to love?
The statistics suggest this is what is happening. The result is that while men may aspire to have children, they are less likely to. And if they do, they are unlikely to have as many children as they want.
Still, many men are out there challenging the checklist, taking the less-travelled path and becoming dads. These fathers may not stop the birth-rate decline, but they are demonstrating that there are options out there. And that having kids isn’t the end of the world.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate April 05, THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY?

The mafia comes to Morrinsville

They are thoroughbreds. Racehorses at their prime. Beaten to death with fenceposts. Then there’s the half-breed Doberman guard-dog, so savagely attacked that it’s lost its edge. And don’t overlook the Blue Magic. NEILL HUNTER breaks open a story of John Grisham proportions

Before their world became hell, Jonathan McRae and Dayle Pike were going places. They ran a small successful thor-oughbred horse-training farmlet and McRae, the licensed public trainer, had a reputation as a good operator. Someone who knew his horses.
Horses. It’s all McRae has been doing for most of his 33-year working life. Tenacious, hospitable, tough, gracious, quick to laugh – just like his woman-of-many-contrasts partner Dayle – they both exude complete adoration for their charges, the bloodstock horses.
But now their dream stands hobbled. Somebody has been trying to shut down the couple and their business. Mystery tormentors torturing their animals. Prized thoroughbreds assailed by attackers so heartless that they maim one horse to the point of death and another is put down due to “ailments from suspicious cause”. The toll since then: a further 18 animals tortured. The allegations fly thick and fast: Horse traps, druggings, poisons, home invasions, telephone-tapping, computer-hacking, strange visits, strange vehicles, horses let out of paddocks by day and by night, gates tipped upside down, horses painted, shaved, cut. It’s a story that goes on and on like the never-ending roads on the plains east of Morrinsville; all precisely documented, photographed from 2003 to 2005.
With such a cloud of darkness hanging over them, even McRae’s reputation as a skilled trainer was not enough to stop loyal clients leaving and taking their livestock with them.
By last winter, the attacks had reached such frenetic levels that Jonathan McRae spent most nights in an old Lazyboy armchair at the main stable in chill temperatures of four degrees or lower, trying to repel invaders. Now, he and Pike are down to just one loyal client. Scrounging for any work he can get, McRae does occasional shoeing jobs and, in the quiet moments, wonders why he has become a victim of the most calculated raids and brutality to animals – a crime story as bizarre as any seen by this journalist – comparable perhaps to vendettas in the Northland drug scene of the eighties.
Not far from the tiny farm they now share is the scene of what was once New Zealand’s worst air crash. An NAC airliner, an old DC3, lumbered out of the clouds and straight into the Kaimai ranges. It was decades ago but, just up the lonely rural lane leading to McRae and Pike’s home, two propeller blades from the ill-fated passenger aircraft still stand in silent vigil – a reminder to anyone who bothers to stop of the tragedy that occurred there. Search and rescue volunteers took an age to find the remains of that National Airways Corporation airliner, scouring deep valleys and impregnable misty and rain-soaked bush before discovering the broken Dakota wedged in a dense bushy ravine. McRae and Pike liken themselves to those searchers long ago: they, too, will never give up, never stop searching until they find those responsible for wrecking everything they cherish.
Motives? We don’t know…yet. There are theories: for example, while working for a large ‘corporate’ horse trainer in 2003 before she met McRae, Dayle Pike finds that her own horse stabled on her employer’s Waikato property has been internally examined and – she believes – given the drug Blue Magic, the doping agent that’s been the subject of a criminal investigation and caused the suicide of two prominent horse industry members in 2004. Pike’s big issue here?: she never sanctioned the veterinary-administered work and her horse was not part of the bloodstock operation at that stud farm. In short, it appears her own steed had been accidentally caught up in something much bigger. Not realising how big, Pike’s first reaction when she mistakenly receives the vet’s bill for the “work” is to go looking for answers. She loses her dream job. That’s one possible motive for everything that’s happened since, perhaps small in the chain of circumstantial evidence in this weird case under investigation by police, but abandoned by others.
Enter Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF). They don’t want to know, after McRae turns to them for help. MAF staff interviewed (two) say they will not rule out poisoning of the animals, are certain it’s not disease(s) and believe it’s not an owner-related animal welfare matter.
So we dig a little deeper with them. Isn’t it true, we ask, that when you tried to investigate, a prominent racing industry executive warned you off with the words “it’s paranoia, nothing to it”?
“I won’t confirm or deny that that happened,” one of the men from MAF responds after a moment.
So why hasn’t anything been done? Why haven’t the police and SPCA and MAF, or even the racing industry itself, been all over this like a plague, looking for the culprits? McRae suspects it’s because the can of worms would make the current Blue Magic investigation look tame by comparison. Everybody is running scared.
“I had a vet come and see one of my horses last year after an attack with a length of wood,” mutters McRae. “He told me, ‘it is multiple haematoma upon haematoma from repetitive beatings’, and then obviously realised what he’d said and started backing away saying, ‘I don’t want to know…I don’t want to know’.”
McRae and Pike say vets they went to gradually closed ranks and virtually none will now respond to call-outs despite financial assurances and the fact that bills have always been paid.
And so we return to the winter of 2004 and a cold, dark farm building near cross-roads on the plains south of Hauraki. Forty-four year old McRae, typical of the man passionate about his craft and the survival of his business, is spending every night (for four months) in his main stable shivering in the icy temperatures, trying to guard clients’ horses, the yearlings and the weanlings – those no longer relying on their mothers.
Slumped drowsily in an old armchair positioned well inside the stable door, his head mostly covered by a black balaclava, McRae barely registers the time pip on his watch as it clicks over to 1am on this particular June night. Nearby, in the lounge of their farmhouse, 47-year-old Pike has drifted off in the lounge.
“I was too scared to sleep in the bedroom so I slept in the lounge with another baseball bat, high powered slug-gun and a cellphone…and a packet of slugs but I knew I’d never get to use them anyway because I knew I was only going to get one shot,” she laughs nervously.
On the dusty, dry concrete floor of the stable, close to McRae’s feet, lies a steel baseball bat; black, menacing, the tool of thugs not of horsemen. An expensive hand-held night vision and audio scope with long-range listening device graces the table beside him, its earphone wires draping from his head like a technician in a warship command centre, rather than a stable, as he dozes, head wobbling in that twilight zone between dozing and genuine sleep.
Suddenly, McRae’s entire body jerks, and he’s bolt upright, listening. Sometimes, he recounts to Investigate later, he would hear sounds but decide they were only his imagination: “I’d hear voices and I’d move then I wouldn’t hear them again.” But on this night there is an unmistakable and distinctive metallic rasping sound of old hasp and staple bolts squeaking against steel from across the open ground between McRae’s resting place and another stable.
“There are two stable boxes,” he explains to Investigate, reliving it. “I was in the main stable box with my Lazyboy armchair, and Nelson (his dog – half-Doberman, quarter-German Shepherd, quarter-lab) was asleep in a little bed covered in blankets.”
The sound blows away the sleepiness and bone-numbing cold as he carefully puts aside his electronic helper and wraps gloved hands around black steel. The veteran horseman slips silently into the darkness, Nelson alongside as they creep beyond the walls of the stable towards the other old wooden “box,” negotiating farm obstacles, wooden yards and an old overhanging tree effortlessly, like a blind man embracing blackness.
Then, he hesitates. On other occasions, before taking up his barnyard vigils, he’s seen torch beams in the dead of night, seeking out the electronic camera monitors installed by a friend. Tonight, McRae contemplates calling that friend, Peter Doughty. It feels like Doughty is the only loyal client remaining and he knows the tough, clean-cut solid dairy farmer just up the road will come instantly, “any time of night he told us to ring him,” but McRae decides there’s no time and, besides, desperation overrules.
Whether it’s the cold muddling his mind or the craving to blindly smash out and engage battle with a faceless enemy, he doesn’t know; but he’s had enough of chasing fleeting glimpses of movement, torch beams and sounds in the night. Putting it bluntly, McRae by this stage desperately wants the tonic of physical confrontation, even at risk of life and limb.
“I wanted it alright (physical fight), I still do,” he says, hiding his rage behind an endearing smile.
On this particular night, it is not to be. Where there was sound a moment ago, now there is just bitter silence. Where there was movement, there’s now only an eerie stillness, another fruitless night beneath the dark ranges barely silhouetted against a starry sky. Another unrewarding search.
Nelson returns and stands watching his master examine old half-drawn door bolts. Big and black, with a Doberman’s head, the mongrel has borne the brunt of many an attack himself.
“He’ll be right with me then he’s off, he doesn’t bark when he’s with me, he’ll stick with me, he’s shy by himself because of the beatings,” says McRae.
The victim of countless beatings, Nelson has failed to stop the intruders who as recently as this issue was going to press continued their invasions of the little farmlet 45 minutes from Hamilton, 10 from Te Aroha. That latest event - the sudden distinct rattling of a door latch at 9.30pm at the modest, white Stucco-clad, immaculately house-kept home where McRae and Pike doze with lights out, in front of their lounge TV.
The Doberman, almost recovered from the attacks, bolts for an opening - a missing glass pane in floor-to-ceiling windows next to the locked back door, then disappears. McRae follows, dashing through the lounge across the dining room along the back entrance-way and – without bothering to unlock the door – almost mimicking his dog, dives headlong across the floor, skidding on his belly through the same opening and out into the warm late-summer night.
“The dog shot off one way and I raced across to the road, but we found nothin’.”
Retreating along seemingly well-rehearsed escape routes, the phantom prowler leaves no sign this time, but in the past there have been - exhibits now held by police.
“Bizarre” is the common word used to describe these events when Investigate begins some door-knocking and head-crunching it its own. Another favourite word is “omnipresent”, almost as if it’s a haunting - that from a general duties constable in Te Aroha. The stocky policeman says that so much has taken place, over so long, and without any sighting of an intruder, that it defies belief. But he has no reason to disbelieve, and neither has a detective at another station.
“So’ve you written it off?” Journalistic question in cop jargon learned long ago, to the young fresh-faced detective sitting across the brand new desk in a brand new police station.
“No. There’s too much evidence. We are treating it seriously,” he replies, but points out he has to give priorities to broken skulls, drug raids and a murder. Then, during a long, relaxed conversation, the Waikato cop sits back and shares things in confidence, not in breach of privacy or law, but privy to an investigation.
Technically, it is a police investigation into offences under the Animal Welfare Act for which the police are warranted to carry out arrests, as well as offences relating to unlawful entry and breaches of anything else that may be applicable. The evidence? Enquiries, interviews, forensics, photographs, vets’ examinations – some of the evidence is still under evaluation. Some evidence is strong, other strands – not so strong.
Neither police nor Investigate have any reason to disbe-lieve, especially considering the strange encounter at our first interview of McRae and Pike. Arriving at their home in late February we were surprised. Nei-ther Pike nor McRae seem eccentric or irrational – despite the first impressions conveyed by the material sent to Investigate and in our first telephone discussion. The interview takes all day and by the end of it we are left under no illusion that something sinister is happening at the place where chooks roam free, bristly green hedges separate paddocks and ducks swim peacefully in a nearby crystal stream until disturbed during reconnoitre. But the interview is exhausting.
“I need a break,” sighs the scribe, “let’s take a walk,” and as we wander along a garden path leading to the first horse paddock Dayle Pike shouts an alarm “where’s Monaco?!” Monaco is a jointly-owned five-year-old thoroughbred gelding belonging to Pike, McRae and a client. Confusion reigns, running, frantic body language, shouting, gestures, reactions too animated, too spontaneous for contrivance as shock sets in that their thoroughbred horse – previously secure in a small paddock with a gate latched by two new leather straps – has escaped. Or has it been let out by audacious daylight intruders?
McRae examines the gate collar closely: “it’s been undone,” while Pike runs then walks, desperately searching, and a journalist unhelpfully runs for a camera. Minutes later McRae shouts from beyond a hedge at the end of a race, “he’s over here!” In another paddock behind a closed gate is the missing horse. Is this imagination running rampant; stress; post-traumatised farmers losing track of themselves?
“I put him in the paddock, when you arrived, that’s what I was doing when you were waiting at the gate,” says Pike. Following scene reconstruction of events, the horse experts and journalist conclude there is no way a horse could push open a belted gate which snags and buries itself into dirt unless lifted heavily, wander off along a meandering race, open another gate into another paddock, close gates behind it then stand aimlessly alone in the middle of that paddock. If it could escape the first paddock it would simply have wandered over to its nearby mates.
“He would’ve met up with his friends, not in another paddock somewhere else. They’re herd animals,” Pike explains later. She says of similar incidents: “We were making sure the horses couldn’t escape because on several occasions Tudor Court got out of her paddock and greeted us at the road gate. She’s been let out because the catches are spring loaded. It was quite scary. It’s happened countless times during the day. We found wires cut, horses let out and gates off hinges – one we found at 10 o’clock in the morning.” Pike, now like a horse with its nose in front, charges, animated, “once we found Judy, a two-year-old filly locked in Pine Tree Palace (a paddock named after its lone tree). She was looking bewildered, like what am I doing here. She’d been in another paddock with another horse the night before. No gates were open.”
Was all this a set-up for journalistic impression? Or is it evidence? It seems every time we contact them there’s something new, like the black paint mysteriously sprayed on horses’ hooves, the spray can neatly returned to its exact position inside their laundry; but some might say it all drifts away like smoke from a paddock rubbish fire.
Then again, there’s the electronic bugging and telecommunication surveillance. That seems too much. So the next interview becomes interrogative and planned. The objective? Solicit confession of fraud – tax or insurance – an ulterior motive, human error, imagination. Although the magazine employs a raft of techniques learned long ago, both McRae and Pike survive, emerging unmoved, plausible and credible. Then they add that they want to continue, they don’t care what it takes to get those responsible.
These are not people sophisticated in the skills of inves-tigation or interview and some offer opinion that they are perhaps naive when it comes to security and self-preservation. But what they do not lack is transparency. They have signed comprehensive privacy act authorisations and court forms allowing Investigate to check everything, from credit-worthiness to criminal history – and engage expert consultants of the lineage who do not come cheap. “Do it,” says Pike after long discussion. She is prepared to use her savings to try turning this investigation from the inactive to proactive and they don’t care what others may think of their claims that they, too, have been spooked.
Hard on the heals of watching the latest New Zealand movie Spooked, it seems ironic to then embark on investigating and writing about … spooks. So when one of this country’s leading forensic experts explains example after example, scenario after scenario illustrating commercial espionage and dirty tricks are still alive and very well in New Zealand, it all seems too much. After all, the consultant may be the very spook we’re looking for, or perhaps implicated because that’s the irrational mindset of mistrust that tosses this story around like a rider on an untrained horse.
In 2005 when McRae and Pike discovered their scanner and printer malfunctioning, experts confirmed the probability of bugging. McRae called a friend, who we’ll name Jim, owner of a small computer solutions business, to remedy a seemingly innocent problem. Eventually Jim found a spy bug had penetrated one of the best firewalls available, and was transmitting information from McRae’s computer back to an unidentified source. It was also monitoring everything printed and emailed. Jim delved deeper, and when interviewed at his quiet home amongst immaculate gardens and manicured lawns, he calmly recounts his journey through a matrix of cyberspace voids so unique he sought help from another friend, once a professional hacker with a big reputation. Now reformed, married with children and gainfully employed by a large reputable computer software company, the friend agreed to use past ill-gotten skills to plunge deeper and seek out those hiding
behind the electronic masks; visible but so far unidentifiable. Then the friend panicked.
Jim says he received an edgy and skittish call a few nights later from his now-clean-hacker chum saying he was pulling out, he’d found things scary beyond the curtain which frightened even his cavalier-beat-the-challenge mentality; he had too much to lose, family to consider and his job.
“He declined to elaborate,” says Jim, who would not allow us to speak confidentially to his friend.
So Jim repaired, ‘cleaned’ and boosted the cyber-defences of McRae’s computer. But then to his astonishment the spy bug returned with an encore that left them both dumbfounded. Before McRae’s very eyes the bug began systematically deleting every trace of every intrusion registered on his antivirus/firewall programme. That, after a naive call to McRae about evidence on the computer. He manages to take a blurry, illegible photograph of the screen before all trace is lost.
“That’s not unheard of,” says our expert consultant later, “after insertion it scrubs up behind itself,” he explains mimicking someone scrubbing their back, leaving no trace of what has been done.
Is there a link between computer phantoms vanishing like a black dog racing into the night after fading intruders, and animal torturers? We shall see, but in the meantime we close this chapter of an ongoing investigation with one more twist. Returning to their home on a day in March 2005, McRae and Pike found Nelson limping heavily from yet another attack. At the time of compiling this report they are searching for the tell-tale hallmarks – spooked horses, horses with syringe marks, dead chooks, to name a few, of yet another invasion but this time things have changed. Investigate spent part of the previous week and several evenings visiting around a dozen nearby houses. Now, for the first time that locals can remember, a farm neighbourhood-watch plan is in place with offers of night patrols. A milk tanker driver will shine his spot light over the property during his watch. Registration checks are in progress as we write and a band of angry farmers on the plains are alert. A police direct cell phone line has been re-activated and McRae is hoping that the next thing to go bump in the night will connect with the end of a black, steel baseball bat.
The bigger mystery – whether these events are indeed connected to criminal activities in the racing industry in the Waikato like Blue Magic – remains like a giant elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. Yet.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate April 05, THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

Former Cabinet Minister John Tamihere’s most candid interview, ever

John Tamihere is fighting for his political survival, both in and outside Parliament. Now, in a make or break interview with IAN WISHART, Tamihere spills the beans on what he really thinks of the Labour Government, the power struggles inside it, and where it is taking New Zealand

INVESTIGATE: John Tamihere, you’ve been cleared by the SFO of any wrongdoing, you’ve got a fight on your hands for your electorate seat this year, and I see Labour Party President Mike Williams suggesting a mid-to-late September election…
TAMIHERE: I reckon it is going to be earlier. Just in case a number of economic issues start to deteriorate, with the hedge contracts coming off and the dollar holding, and commodity prices having an adverse impact as a number of other producers start to get over either drought and/or Mad Cow disease and so on and so forth, and start to access markets where we’re there in a vacuum, as opposed to competition.
Also, we’ll set the agenda from May 19th because of the budget. This is what I’d do if I was up on the ninth floor. I’d wait until May the 19th, set the agenda, get everyone talking about the budget and then we go - we go straight after that. Use the budget as the discussion document for an election in early July. The budget is going to be business friendly, or it was when I was working on it. It has to be.
INVESTIGATE: Labour has managed, in the past 20-odd years, to capture Liberal economic theory while retaining a socially liberal outlook. How did they do it?
TAMIHERE: We’re lucky in a number of regards. One is that there’s no huge economic debate anymore over socialism, or communism versus capitalism. That’s gone. Capitalism has won, and the argument now is about best practice, best structure, best systems, and it’s nowhere near as exciting for the masses.
There are two other things that must follow. Labour is now business-savvy. We never had that before because you had unionists who begat our party who believed all bosses were bad bosses. That chasm has now gone, because SME’s [small-to-medium enterprises] produced 86% of all new jobs in the past five years, nearly a quarter of a million, and that will increase. Because more people are becoming business-savvy. Not all businessmen are bad. The biggest sweatshops we’ve got are hospitals, run by the government and funded by the government. And so the caterers and the cleaners are actually government funded, and they’re jumping up and down at their own government.
Award rates are a joke because they bear no resemblance to the capacity of the business sector to achieve it, and that’s why those general wage rounds are anathema to reasonable economics. I mean, you get a number of people jumping up and down seeking a five percent general wage order – get a life!
INVESTIGATE: What sort of power do the unions still have with the Labour party?
TAMIHERE: Well they just increased it after the List! (laughs). Having said that, you know, they come in all ‘ra ra ra’, and the next minute, you know, it’s welcome to the real world, when they’re
exposed to a whole bunch of competing advice and information that they’ve never had before because it’s always been the union line before. Unions. I can’t stand them.
I had a big pow-wow with some of them. You go into town, have a meeting with them. Won’t name any names but they were all sitting there, and I said to them, ‘All of you sitting over there were all on good jobs, and you all sold us out under Rogernomics in the eighties’. Now I actually think a lot of things happened under Rogernomics in retrospect which were extraordinarily good, but when you’re suffering you take a more vested interest. These guys were all running around in their bloody Falcons and they were on $55,000 those years, which was bloody good money. And what did they do? Nothing! Now some of them are politicians.
One dude says to me, ‘Look, I’ve got fifty paid organizers in our union, in this region, that can lock up against you, if I wanted them to’.
I said, ‘Oh, right, where are you from?’
He says, ‘You know where I’m from, I live in Panmure’.
I said, ‘No, where were you from before you got to Panmure?’
He says, ‘Oh, I come from England’
‘Is that right,’ I said. ‘How long have you been in the union movement?’
‘Since the day I arrived here, 22 years ago’.
‘How long have you had a job in the union movement, how long has it been since you’ve been out amongst the real workers?’
‘I’ve been a paid union representative for 19 years.’
‘Well you wouldn’t know a f...ing thing about a proper job, mate, so stick your f...ing organizers up your date, I don’t need them.’
It’s always about threats and intimidation, and ‘we’ve got big balls, what have you got?’
INVESTIGATE: What do you take out of the Labour’s new List?
TAMIHERE: Two things. One, there was a precedent forming that the parliamentary wing would number off first, and that precedent was busted. Secondly, when you look at the List, the union movement have got four new members coming in, end of story. And so they’ve done extraordinarily well at reasserting themselves. They don’t deserve to have that level of influence. I’m going to lead a charge against that, very shortly, because the party has to be updated to reflect where our society and communities are, as opposed to where they were.
If we continue to be driven by historical liabilities and ideological overhangs, that’s an anchor and a weight that pulls you right down. If you really think about innovation and initiative, you can’t be bound by a range of standards and rules that are only applicable because certain people have dragged their way to the top of it. Just because they controlled yesterday doesn’t mean they should control tomorrow.
INVESTIGATE: Looking ahead three to six years, what do you think the unions are aiming for in the Labour Party.
TAMIHERE: Well, obviously greater influence. I think we f...ed up with our 2004 amendments to the Employment Relations Act. I think it’s very silly, a number of things that we did then, merely to give unions greater organizational capabilities. I don’t think it’ll translate to greater union membership, but having said that it’s another impost and imposition on business. It’s really ugly. Because as business downsizes and subcontracts, if it was me I wouldn’t have anyone in the union. The ‘union’ was our company, our whanau. Guys that actually make small businesses work, as you’ve correctly indicated, they’re not bad employers otherwise they screw their own business. The other thing is a lot of small businesses in NZ are familial, either direct family or references from mates.
INVESTIGATE: The union movement is angling for more of its old heyday, but in your opinion that’ll backfire if the activists achieve that?
TAMIHERE: Yes. Mark Gosche never delivered for them, so they’re bringing in Maryann Street, and she’s a very capable person. I’ll tell you this: Burton was actually meant to be the Speaker but as soon as Street came in and got a high place on the northern regional list, that was it.
You see, these people think in timeframes of ten to 15 years, it’s only bastards like me that struggle through the current term. So when you’re positioning for high places, they’re thinking that far ahead.
The Labour hierarchy purposely lost the election in 1993. They could have won in 1993. Mike Moore came within one seat. But the party pulled all their energy out of Auckland. He was up here at two o’clock in the morning, the leader of a major party, nailing in hoardings in Greenlane. Him and Clayton Cosgrove, hammering away, because no one else would help them.
But yeah, they purposely planned to lose. ‘That era’s gone, we’re new, and we’re coming. He’s gone, Helen’s it’.
INVESTIGATE: This goes back to the great conspiracy theory. Most people like you and I can’t get our heads around the idea that someone can sit in a darkened room and figure out where they want to be in fifteen years. Where do they get the time to do that?
TAMIHERE: They don’t have families. They’ve got nothing but the ability to plot. I’ve gotta take my kid to soccer on Saturday, they don’t. So they just go and have a parlez vous francais somewhere and a latte, whereas we don’t get to plot, we’re just trying to get our kids to synchronise their left and right feet. They don’t even think about that.
I’ve got a fifteen year old whose testosterone’s jumping and he’s scrapping around at school. Now they don’t have that, and because they don’t have that they’re just totally focused. You’ve also got a fully paid organization called the union movement, who can co-opt fully paid coordinators. These people just never sleep.
INVESTIGATE: How dangerous is it to be in the Labour Party?
TAMIHERE: If you’re a free and independent spirit, very dangerous. Like, if there was a popularity poll for me, I can assure you that there’s more ministerial klingons voting on the old PC against you, and yet I’m on the same team! They sit there, typing away, muttering, ‘come on SFO, let’s nail this bastard!’
In this outfit it’s all ‘rosy’ on the outside, not the inside. When I used to make a contribution in cabinet, on the cabinet papers, I’d go, ‘Hang on’, and she’d go, ‘you want to be difficult again, do you?’
I’d say ‘it’s not about being difficult, it’s just that a number of these amendments are pointless. You’re just scoring brownie points off the other side when you’ve already beaten them. I don’t think you need to do that. I think you can lighten up on some of these points and still achieve what this mob over here want, the Blues Brothers over here, Maharey and his mates.’ Thankfully, my advice was accepted on a number of occasions. There’s independent thinkers in there. Clayton Cosgrove’s a good thinker, but very angry at the moment because he’s frustrated. Damien O’Connor’s a good thinker. Maharey, you can spend two hours with Maharey and walk away none the wiser but you’ve got three screeds of paper full of notes. So there’s operators like him who are very smarmy, very clever, but no substance. It’s all about status.
INVESTIGATE: What do you make of the ‘machine’ that exists on the ninth floor at the moment?
TAMIHERE: Oh yeah, there’s definitely a ‘machine’ all right. It’s formidable. It’s got apparatus and activists in everything from the PPTA all the way through. It’s actually even built a counterweight to the Roundtable – Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Its intelligence-gathering capabilities are second to none.
INVESTIGATE: How good is the media, or are they totally useless and sycophantic?
TAMIHERE: They’re utterly and totally useless. And sycophantic. You know and I know there’s no investigative journalism done in that bloody gallery. In an information age, we’ve got more ignorant people out there than there’s ever been.
INVESTIGATE: Labour’s enjoying the benefit of that, but surely there’s got to be a day of reckoning..
TAMIHERE: Not when the journalists know they’ve got to deal with this government for another three years, and the same goes for business. Right now there are people writing cheques out in the corporate sector who wouldn’t bloody cross the road to pee on us if we were on fire, for the same reason: at the end of the day it’s business. They’ve got to deal with this party.
And the other mob aren’t helping themselves much. Even if they wanted to, they’ve got no one who can articulate it.
INVESTIGATE: What about John Key?
TAMIHERE: Oh no, he’s going to be very good. I’ve got the greatest regard for John. One more term, he’s a formidable character. He’s the one who scares the s..t out of me the most out of the whole bunch. He’s talented, affable, good sense of humour. Bastard came from a state house! I could go to bed comfortable at night, knowing that he was in charge – fair dinkum, not a problem. Couple of the others over there, forget it.
I think Bill English will make a comeback after the election, but give John Key one more term to get blooded in the House. He’s an extraordinary talent but I think he needs one more term. If I was to pick National’s dream team it would be Key and Rich – Rich for the South.
INVESTIGATE: So would it be fair to say you’re in Labour because there was no credible opposition place to be?
TAMIHERE: I’m in Labour because Tau Henare and ‘moderate’ NZ First abused the Maori vote. And the only way to get it into mainstream was to do this. It was like the Prodigal Son, you know, you’ve had some fun and debauchery over there, look what happened, now come home. I’d be a very wealthy man by now if I’d stayed down the road at the Waipareira Trust, but for all the wrong reasons.
INVESTIGATE: The media got stuck into you and ignored some obvious facts, such as the Trust’s liability to pay the tax…
TAMIHERE: Well, they wanted me. The ninth floor wanted me. Heather Simpson – Helen’s assistant – wanted me in the tent as damaged goods. Too tough to lose completely. She’s dangerous, a very dangerous woman.
INVESTIGATE: How much longer can the current machine dominate?
TAMIHERE: The current machine wants to become, in all ways, the natural party of government, and just have us vote different coalition partners on the fringes. Has kiwi culture changed that much? I don’t know.
INVESTIGATE: So if Labour becomes the natural party of government, and the opposition remains weak, presumably that opens up the possibility of factionalisation within Labour as an alternative way of keeping things in check?
TAMIHERE: Not a problem. I tried to set one up, we called it the ‘Mods’, for moderates, from the class of 99. I’ll tell you who screwed it up, through his naked ambition: Cunliffe.
The boss sent emissaries out, let it be known it would be detrimental to the party and detrimental to our career prospects.
The problem the Tories have is there are no great litmus issues left, because the economic debate’s won, so that leaves social policy, education, housing. There’s no big circuit breaker.
INVESTIGATE: Even on moral issues?
TAMIHERE: I tell you what, if I was on the other side mate I’d have cut the bloody Labour party to pieces over moral issues! There’s a huge pendulum swing against what my leadership stands for.
INVESTIGATE: What is the most powerful network in the Labour executive?
TAMIHERE: The Labour Party Wimmins Division. Whether it’s bagging cops that strangle protestors they should be beating the proverbial out of, or – it’s about an anti-men agenda, that’s what I reckon. It’s about men’s values, men’s communication standards, men’s conduct.
I spoke to the boards and principals association in Wellington, and I showed them a picture of two girls with their fists clenched, standing on top of two young male students. The object of the exercise was to prove that once again the female students had romped home academically against all the boys. If the positions in the photo were reversed, all hell would break loose.
Where else in the world do Amazons rule?
In our constitutional base you could kill the Prime Minister – sure, there’s a deputy prime minister – but in the interregnum the second in charge is the Speaker. The Governor-General. If those three die you go to the Chief Justice, another woman.
I don’t mind women being promoted, but just because they are women shouldn’t be the issue. They’ve won that war. It’s just like the Maori – the Maori have won, why don’t they just get on with the bloody job. I think it becomes more grasping.
INVESTIGATE: Speaking of constitutions, looking back instead of looking forward, is there room for a new written constitution, ideally not penned by the ninth floor, to set the country on a new track?
TAMIHERE: I think you’ve just hit the nail on the circuit-breaker of the next decade: that’s going to be the defining moment in politics this decade. This is who we are, this is what we are, this is what we stand for. We’ve arrived. Somebody just now needs to put that in a manifesto, put it on the public agenda. Whoever does that will ride that wave.
INVESTIGATE: It’ll take a while to bring the public up to speed on the issue first.
TAMIHERE: That’s the problem with the press. There’s this bulls**t that there’s such a thing as the Crown that exists in the NZ constitution. It does not. It’s a myth. It’s run by prime ministerial dictate, fullstop.
INVESTIGATE: Will Labour win this election?
TAMIHERE: It’ll win it. Who it does business with to maintain it…she’s too savvy, mate. It’s too clever. You’ve got Cullen – we wouldn’t survive without Cullen – he can cut a deal on a piece of legislation, he can change a single word in a piece of legislation without those other bastards [coalition partners] knowing about it, and it melts down everything they wanted but they still think they got their clause in. The pressure, they bring pressure to bear on individuals.
INVESTIGATE: How intense does the pressure get?
TAMIHERE: Close to fisticuffs!
INVESTIGATE: Very un-PC!
TAMIHERE: I always kick the officials out when I know it’s going to get a bit tetchy, because you know they’ll blab all over the place. So I say ‘hang on mate, I want to talk political now, get them out’. And Cullen goes, ‘oh no, no, he’s ok’ or ‘she’s ok’. And I say ‘It might be for you, but not for me. I’m uncomfortable’.
What you do is you always use the wimmins’ language: ‘I’m feeling unsafe!’ And the women, as soon as they hear that, they’re instantly with me. ‘I’m feeling unsafe in here’. [chuckles]
INVESTIGATE: Where do you see yourself being, three years from now?
TAMIHERE: Well, as long as I’m doing the business and championing the right debate. The issue you’ve raised about where we’ve arrived, and whoever identifies that and encapsulates that, but more importantly is able to bring the masses with them, will set a new benchmark for New Zealand nationhood.
Because it is there. The sense of belonging is for everyone and the Maori don’t have a mortgage on that.
INVESTIGATE: You can get trapped, as you’ve made the point, looking back instead of forward, and letting bitterness over the past poison your future. They don’t grow as people or move on.
TAMIHERE: I hear Maori talking about how they were burnt out of the Orakei marae in 1951 and so on. Big deal. What are we doing about it? Well, we’ve fixed it, actually. So what are you going to tell your children? It’s part of their history. It’s not baggage and it’s not an anchor. It’s part of their folklore.
INVESTIGATE: What’s Helen like?
TAMIHERE: A very complex person, a very, very complex person. And she’s been made complex by the range of sector groups she’s been made to engage with and occasionally confront. But she’s no good with emotions. She goes to pieces. She’ll fold on the emotional side and walk away or not turn up. She knows it’s going to get emotional and it upsets her.
We’ve never had a great relationship. I said to her, ‘look, I don’t give a f..k about the unions. You’ve got enough of those. My job is to bloody talk to kiwi males who are feeling out in the cold over the whole thing and also to stand up against some of the PC bulls..t.
And that’s why I said to Chris Carter, ‘I’m standing against that bloody civil union bill mate, because you’ve already had enough! I voted for one piece of social engineering and now you’re f..king coming back for another! Those two queers never got it right. I said you can have one, Civil Unions or Prostitution, make up your mind. And so I gave in on Prostitution. And then he comes up to me and harangues me, because he wants to be the first get married on April 1, the tosser, and he says to me ‘but you’re a minority John, you understand’, and I was thinking about it over the morning tea after cabinet, and I went up to him after and said ‘look, if you threaten me again - you’re looking at the face that’ll run hard against you on civil unions.’
I’ve got a right to think that sex with another male is unhealthy and violating. I’ve got a right to think that.
INVESTIGATE: Why are these policies so popular on the ninth floor?
TAMIHERE: Because Helen has been brutalized by people who have called her lesbian, no children and all the rest of it. Her key advisor Heather Simpson is a butch, and a lot of her support systems are, Maryann Street and so on, and she’s very comfortable in that world and comfortable with it. I’m not.
And so that’s why it’s got strong legs. And when you go down through that building [the Beehive] it is infiltrated with it, in key policy and decision making processes and the upper echelons of the ministries, and it skews things, it is an unhealthy weighting, because even if you give a policy directive they’ll skew the policy underneath you.
You wake up and think, ‘am I wrong thinking this way?’
But that’s when they’ve got you. They’re trying to make men think and act like them, but I’m not one of them. In my view this is a circuit breaker because you can actually rally numbers. That group of women has only one worldview, and men have to organize themselves to deal with that, and start winning the debates. Men can actually reassert a position. It’s about social conduct and performance. It’s about good father role models. It is about societal mores that will achieve that, not the police.
INVESTIGATE: You’ve often been tipped as potential leadership material for the party, but is there a Labour Party you could be leader of?
TAMIHERE: That’s a difficult question to answer in light of a number of internal environmental issues in the way. I could be a real pain in the ass to them on this one. Is that enough leverage to say ‘yes’? I don’t know.
Out of 51 in the caucus, 10 would back me to the hilt, another 15 say they would, but who knows? But that’s a solid block in any caucus.
What I’d do is promote Maharey immediately, make him wear all the bulls..t that’ll come out. He deserves it, him and his mob. Because we’ll be in power ten to fifteen years. I couldn’t possibly sit there and defend a number of things they’ve done, and we’re yet to see the full fruits of that.
INVESTIGATE: And some of the chickens coming home to roost would be?
TAMIHERE: The number of do-gooders who are paid extremely well in government. We’ve got 180,000 fewer unemployed, but a bigger bureaucracy than when we did! What the hell is going on here?
We’ve got a range of poor incentives. We say to people ‘you stay in a state house at 25% gross’, and we’re teaching them to be crooks. There might be four income earners in there – we’ll never know it.
And instead of trading up and moving on, we’re encouraging them to stay in there. One third of kiwi families don’t have a male in them. That’s not good. But we got a document printed – cost me $50,000 to get a document telling me what you and I already know – that tells us all the young males need and are desperately craving for is a male role model who’ll acknowledge them, acknowledge where they’re at and be supportive of them, which is what a normal father does. And if the father’s not there we’ve got to find a male role model somewhere else. And we can’t get them in primary schools, because we’re all ‘molestors’, all ‘rapists’, or ‘potentially’ we’re going to do it. So we’ve got to shift that attitude and provide scholarships to encourage men back into the education system.
Men’s problems are traditionally dealt with by the criminal justice system. Women, on the other hand, get a bloody Cartwright Inquiry and get millions of dollars thrown at their breasts and cervixes. Men get nothing. You need a debate that we can tackle unfair and stupid policy with.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Mar 05, POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

The life of a storm-chaser

If Geoff Mackley were a cat, he’d be well and truly encroaching on his quota of lives. But as the world’s ultimate storm-chaser, Mackley the human is little short of a survival miracle…the kind of guy you’d stand next to in an electrical storm. CLARE SWINNEY caught up with the New Zealander whose natural disaster photos have spawned a new breed of reality media

He carries a video camera, a digital still camera, a satellite phone and a flame-proof suit. He has been pursued by Army helicopters; almost blasted off a mountaintop; and dangled over gaping chasms. Little wonder, perhaps, that they call Geoff Mackley ‘Rambocam’. It began as a childhood hobby of taking photos of natural phenomena and developed into an extraordinary career with a worldwide reputation of going where others fear to tread. The New Zealand-based photographer, cameraman and reporter, Geoff Mackley, carts his cameras and satellite phone virtually anywhere where a tsunami has struck, where a cyclone is perilously hovering, where a volcano is erupting and he’ll often be the first one there. His priceless pictures, which appear in science books, newspapers, on TV and in magazines, have come to define how people throughout the world perceive
natural disasters.
Not surprisingly, the activities of this intrepid photographer have been the focus of a mass of media attention. The Discovery Channel featured a series about him named Dangerman and he’s appeared in about 17 other TV shows and been interviewed hundreds of times in the last 12-months for newspapers and questioned at length for his soon to be released autobiography.
While making it clear he could never even conceive of tiring of his work, which is now all-consuming, he confesses to being pig-sick of being interviewed.
When we first contacted him on the 11th of February, he’d arrived home in Ellerslie, Auckland, half-an-hour earlier from Rarotonga, where he’d been taking photographs of damage to waterfront buildings caused by a 14-metre storm surge driven by Cyclone Meena. He suggests I call back that evening to enable him to have time to update his website, www.geoffmackley.com, amongst other things. Yet, in the manner of the eternal newshound, when I contact him at 8pm, he says he’s unavailable, as he is monitoring emergency channels for TV3, and intends to maintain this vigil over most of Saturday and Sunday.
“Try Valentine’s Day, 10am,” he offers.
But the 14th, at 10am, proves similarly fruitless; two menacing-looking cyclones, Olaf and Nancy, are brewing in the South Pacific region and Mackley is furiously poring over weather reports, trying to decide if he should go to Samoa, where one of the fierce storm’s is predicted to hit. Later in the day, I finally hit journalistic paydirt, nailing the elusive Mackley to the end of a landline, albeit that the interview becomes punctuated by the crackle of police scanners and emergency vehicle sirens in the background. You can’t, it seems, keep Mackley down.
Mackley, 41, was born and raised in Christchurch; his mother a high school librarian and his father employed by a customs broker. It was his dad who first kindled Mackley’s interest in photographing natural phenomena.
“Dad used to take me and my two younger brothers, Richard and Steven on trips to take pictures of freak conditions, such as snowstorms and flooding. We were brought up with an interest in nature. I started doing what I’m doing because I’m interested in nature and it evolved to what’s happening now. I never really expected that to happen. I never thought for a moment I’d be doing this,” he ruminates.
He completed the 7th form, and then in the late 1980’s attended the University of Canterbury to study psychology, because it was “very interesting,” then dropped out after one-and-a-half years of the
degree course, because he didn’t think it was going to be a meal ticket. Mackley had other ideas. Armed with predictions of bad weather, he would pack photographic gear into an old Land Rover and go to where a flood was anticipated, shooting it as it happened.
“Nobody was doing that then, as far as the media goes. It still amazes me that to a large extent the media don’t even do that now. You’d think that if a news event is about to happen, go there before
it starts!”
In spite of a lack of formal training in photography and broadcasting (or arguably perhaps because of it), Mackley began working for the TV3 news team in 1990, just after the new network’s establishment. He took pictures of natural disasters around the country for the 6pm news and has been working for TV3 since.
In September 1995 he got his first big international break. Majestic Mount Ruapehu was predicted to erupt again and he was waiting patiently nearby with his camera equipment. When the grey ash shot into the troposphere, his career as it is today was launched. Mackley’s pictures began appearing on TV news shows, in newspapers and in magazines throughout the world. The words “meal ticket” began flashing in his mind, and pretty soon Mackley was taking pictures of volcanos erupting overseas and selling them to a wide range of media. His humble intention in 1995 was to generate sufficient income in order to recover the cost of the trip and be able to go on another trip and then another…
Mackley is coy about how much he makes a year now. He says he doesn’t want to boast.
“Two hundred thousand?” we press.
“It’s a bit more than that,” he defers, – which in translation means it’s notably more. Almost as an apology for this bounty, Mackley seems keen to impress that he works very hard for what he earns. He evidently does. He seems completely focused. There’s no room in his life for marriage or children. He allocates much of his time off work to maintaining a high level of fitness. His 178-centimetre tall, 76-kilogram muscular form is probably in far better shape than bodies half his age. “I feel the same I did when I was 20. I exercise everyday. If I go for a run, it’ll be for about 3 hours. I spend a lot of time running in the bush, I work out, do weights and martial arts,” he asserts. As his broadcast camera alone weighs 7 kilograms and climbing mountainous terrain at any time is a possibility, being unwaveringly fit is an essential part of his life.
“I’m also careful to eat well. I don’t eat crap. If you put bad fuel in a car it doesn’t work properly. Well the body’s the same. It’s common sense,” says Mackley.
Currently about 90 percent of his time at work is spent monitoring what’s going on around New Zealand and the rest of the world. He uses the Internet and radio for this. “That’s the key thing - that it’s 90 percent gathering information and 10 percent going out and after something,” he maintains.
Naturally, he’s amassed an extensive knowledge of the world’s weather patterns and now knows what’s likely to happen where and at any given time of the year. He says there’s no busiest time of year. It is invariably busy, as Mother Nature has different seasons around the world. The cyclone season is from November to April. Tornado season is in May and June. August through to November is typhoon and hurricane season in the US and volcanoes may erupt at any time.
He says the Internet has been an invaluable source for information about weather and volcanic activity, enabling his career to flourish. He asserts: “The Internet is the beginning and end of everything! Because the Internet is completely free of boundaries. It’s instant. I wouldn’t have been able to do what I’m doing now, 10 years ago.”
The meteorology services worldwide put data on the Internet for everybody to see instantaneously. In addition, there’s an aviation website that provides updates immediately a volcano begins to erupt which Mackley watches “constantly,” so if a crater blows, he’ll be one of the first people to know about it. One can find links to his sources on his website.
The total cost of his equipment is in the vicinity of $100,000. He said that although it’s expensive, he expects it to last for years. He uses a satellite phone at disaster scenes, which is a necessary requirement in regions lacking a functioning infrastructure. This is used to transmit photos to a few news services, but as he’s charged $16 per minute, it is uneconomical to send shots around like confetti. Consequently, he prefers to put high-resolution versions of photographs on his website for newspapers and magazines to download - although this mode of dissemination comes at a cost too.
He says that although the majority of media outlets publishing his work remunerate him without having to be prompted, there’s invariably a percentage which don’t. “It’s a pain in the arse really, because when you’re trying to sell still photos, many outfits will avoid paying for them if possible. You’ve always got to track down whether or not they’ve used it or not. Half the time they won’t bother to tell you and it’s not worth chasing up 20 or 30 newspapers just for $100 or whatever,” he complains.
An assortment of his best images can be viewed on his website. He uses a Nikon F90 digital camera for his still photos and says a good photo, as any news editor will tell you, has to tell a story in one shot, ideally with people in it or an object to give it scale.
He believes an image can be a wonderfully powerful tool to help people in need of aid. And one of the best moments of his 20-year career was being able to bring aid to the small island of Tikopia following the strongest cyclone ever in the South Pacific, a cyclone which thrashed villages with 350 kilometre per hour winds, completely
destroying everything. His was an extraordinary story.
Cyclone Zoe, as it was named, hit Tikopia, which is one of the Solomon Islands, in late December 2002, bringing gigantic waves with it. “I’m not an expert, but I can see from a satellite map when an island is being hammered and it’d be common sense to go and see what’s happened to these people, [about 1,200], who no one has heard from for 4 or 5 days,” he says. But the airforce and military, in both New Zealand and Australia, did nothing. So he decided to fly to Tikopia in a Cessna and discovered an island completely wrecked. Mackley, who was freelancing, photographed the devastation from the air, only because it was impossible to land. This story was on the news that night, and broadcast all around the world. He reported that the place looked as if it had been hit by an atomic bomb. He says matter-of-factly: “I suspect if I hadn’t gone there and brought it to everyone’s attention, it’s quite possible nothing would’ve been done. The New Zealand Airforce claimed that it was impossible to get there and then I got there in a Cessna.”
The day after his first report, someone from a French newspaper contacted him and asked him to get on the island anyway he could, at their cost. Accordingly, he chartered a helicopter from Vanuatu. He filled it with packets of noodles and arrived on Tikopia to be the first outsider there since the cyclone hit and 4-5 days ahead of any official rescue mission. “I thought it was extraordinary, because I wasn’t doing anything that I considered to be that out of the ordinary. I just went to the airport and asked ‘Who owns that Cessna? Is it possible to fly to Tikopia?’…‘Yes’…‘So let’s do it.’ And it was the same with the helicopter,” he asserts.
Fortunately, there were no casualties, as the Tikopians were accustomed to cyclones and were sheltering in caves in their highlands.
Indeed, the camera is a very powerful tool when used correctly. Bringing images of chaos and destruction to the world is the direct cause of aid arriving — a prime example the aftermath of the tsunami. Mackley believes the amount of aid donated is directly related to the TV coverage — the two being very closely linked. “I don’t feel so bad filming misery and destruction if I know it’s going to bring some good. There are a number of Pacific Islands that are not that well off and they know full well who I am and they welcome me when a cyclone’s coming - because they know that film of the event getting on the news greatly enhances their prospects of getting aid,” he offers, seeming grateful to be of help.
Unfortunately however, Mackley has found that providing im-ages of destruction can be a two-edged sword. While he regards the camera as a means to elicit donations, sadly, time and time again, he witnesses huge damage being inflicted upon Pacific Island nations by grossly unbalanced news stories. The media, he accuses, ham up the bad part of an event, with little apparent thought of the consequences. He has seen all facets of the media exaggerate the devastation caused by storms; and resultant negative publicity has dissuaded hordes of tourists from journeying there.
“People believe what they see on the news – and they shouldn’t. A cyclone hits a small Pacific Island, [for instance Tonga]. It is highly reliant upon tourism and although the residents clean up the damage in a few days, because a few selective shots of flattened buildings are shown in the news, making it look as if everywhere is decimated and no mention is made that it was all cleaned up in a few days – because that’s a boring story, I’ve seen huge economic damage being caused for 6 to 8 months,” he says, sounding annoyed. “Sure, there were a few damaged buildings, but that’s not indicative of what the whole country looks like. Often that’s how the media portray it. If there’s widespread destruction, I’m certainly going to say that, but if there isn’t, I don’t,” he says.
In addition, he said that the amount of misreporting about the Tikopian disaster was “incredible.” For the first 4-5 days, all the information that emanated from the island came only from Mackley. He was guarded about what he said, because he didn’t know if anyone had been killed or not. Thus, he reported that the damage was very bad and it would be amazing if there weren’t many casualties. Then to his shock, he heard stories from outfits such as CNN and the BBC about thousands of people being killed and the island being hit by tornadoes and tsunamis – events that in fact had not occurred. He contends: “It beggars belief where they get those things from in the first place, considering no one else was giving them information except me! So you can see why one would be cynical about the media.”
Although he rarely writes news stories that accompany his images, he’s occasionally a target for caustic reactions to them. “I’ve had people from airlines phone me and say: ‘Your story just cost us millions of dollars worth of business because hundreds of people cancelled their airfares minutes after your story went on,’” he offers.
The title ‘Dangerman,’ for the 2004 TV series made for the Discovery Channel about his activities was a misnomer. His work is perfectly safe he says. “I’m no closer than anyone else who drives a car, to danger. When people drive down any two-lane stretch of rural road, they’re passing within half-a-metre of every other car, going at 80-100 kilometres an hour. I don’t have car-size rocks landing that close to me at volcanoes, ever! Yet people take it for granted that driving is not a risk, when in fact, it is. It’s more of a risk than what I do,” he offers, adding than when he climbs a volcano he’s in complete control of how close he gets “to the action” – unless of course the action gets close to him.
He has had close calls however, one in Mexico during a hurricane. “A building fell. I was underneath the balcony of the building and all the debris – about 50 tonnes of concrete – cascaded down about a metre away from me,” he says. Luckily, he was uninjured.
Another reminder of his mortality occurred in Indonesia. His taxi driver got lost en route to the railway station, so he missed the train he intended to catch, which subse-quently collided head on with another train, which was then ploughed into by another train. He’d be dead had it not been for the taxi driver’s incompetence. Indeed, transport he says is his biggest risk, because every time he’s on a train, a bus or in a car, there’s a potential for serious injury, which is out of his control.
Injuries have not yet put him hospital. “In this job, you’re either alive or dead!”
The name Mackley wanted to use for the Dangerman show was his nickname, Rambocam, but as copyright laws protect ‘Rambo’, it was not an option. So how did he acquire the wonderful nickname Rambocam? This is another interesting story, demonstrating the extraordinary lengths Geoff Mackley will go to “get the shot”. It was in the mid-1990s, down at Waiouru on army land. The Department of Conservation was supposed to round the wild horses of Kaimanawa up and attempt to sell them, before killing the remainer. However, Mackley had become privy to information that a number of horses had already been killed and dumped in a big pit on army land, with no effort having been made to sell them.
“Of course, the army personnel wouldn’t let us in there. Several reporters and newspaper cameramen found out the location of this pit, and we decided we were going to storm in on army land and get pictures of the dead horses, come what may.”
He had a 4-wheel drive vehicle, while the others had cars. The cars became stuck in the mud, by which time the army was chasing them in the helicopter. Consequently, everyone piled into Mackley’s all-terrain vehicle and he pressed on the accelerator in hot pursuit of the horse pit. Meanwhile, the army landed the helicopter on the road in front of them in an attempt to stall their progress, but ineffectually so.
“It was like a scene from a Die Hard movie.”
Later, Mackley’s vehicle became stuck in the ground, so all the reporters and cameramen piled out and began running up the hill, towards the pit.
Because it was a steep hill, the army couldn’t land the helicopter and so hovered above, yelling for the group to stop – but this was falling on deaf ears, as this media mob knew the army didn’t have authority over them. The army then landed the chopper at the base of the hill and some personnel got out and ran up the hill, only to get back in the helicopter again. “It was really quite comical. And then, in the end, another helicopter appeared with the police in it, and we did listen to them. We knew that while the Army didn’t have any authority over us, the police did. So we left, but nothing happened to us. The police thought it was quite amusing that a group of reporters had managed to evade the army for 3 or 4 hours,” says Mackley, chuckling.
From this point on, cameramen and reporters from TV3 and TVNZ called him “Rambocam” and the name stuck.
One of the best facets of being Mackley is that everyday is a new day.
“I don’t have the day-to-day pressures that everyone else has – just sitting in a traffic jam and doing the same boring job for years and they are sitting in the same traffic jam and haven’t really moved forward or achieved anything, and know full well what they’re doing tomorrow or the day after,” he says. In contrast, Geoff Mackley doesn’t know what he’s going to be doing from one day to the next. He could be on the other side of the world the next day, facing a volcano that’s erupting or standing in a region devastated by a tsunami. He doesn’t know, and that’s part of why he regards his life as so exceptional. On his website is the phrase: ‘Life is an incredible adventure or it’s nothing at all.’ He really believes it. “I live for each day. I intend to be doing this for as long as I can. I probably won’t be able to climb volcanoes forever, but I can certainly fly to the other side of the world, get in a rental car and drive to a hurricane, until I’m…who knows…there are people running marathons in their 80’s,” he says.
He has a reputation as one of the top photographers of natural disasters in the world – if not the top. Yet as the sirens on the police scanner in the background grow in their intensity, you can almost see Mackley beginning to twitch down the end of the phone. Always, there’s another story just around the corner, another mountain to climb. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Mar 05, THE GLADIATORS

Why boy racers exist...
Horrific road smashes involving young drivers are increasingly dominating news coverage on both sides of the Tasman. In New Zealand, we’ve introduced ‘boy racer’ laws and extensive restrictions on young drivers, prompting calls for similar tough measures in Australia. But as PAUL HAM explains, the real cause of the problem may actually be the feminization of society

The nannyish, knee-jerk campaign by the New South Wales government and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph to introduce new laws for P-plate drivers to stop them killing themselves is not only a bleak manifestation of the infantile element in modern Australian political thought, but a sad symptom of a society that fails to grasp the fact that laws will not stop young men from doing blindingly stupid, terrifyingly dangerous, or amazingly heroic things.
The problem is – as the sad case of Emile Dousset and other young drivers’ shows – laws cannot stop the intrinsic anarchy of youth. The experience of history, which we seem to be in the process of rapidly forgetting, teaches that adults need to channel the male instincts, rather than throttle them with laws, if we are to have any hope of generating something worthwhile from our sons.
Strict schooling, parental discipline and national service were once the traditional conduits for controlling the errant young male. None is likely to return. The relentless surge of progressive education, which has destroyed a generation of young people’s minds, marches on. The reintroduction of national service is clearly unlikely – it would be electoral suicide, and too expensive. And there is barely a flicker of life in the old family punishment regime – crushed by the anti-spanking campaign and other lobbies that criminalize or socially stigmatise any form of effective parental child discipline. So politicians have spotted a vote winning opportunity: we’ll do the job of the parents.
Encouraged by the supine complicity – or, in the weird case of the Daily Telegraph, a cheerleading press – the Australian political class has seen fit to barge into our homes and tell our children how to behave without ever asking us.
“If parents can’t control their kids, we’ll have to do it for them,” runs the thinking; cue the busy bodies in government, who are parking their tanks on the parental patch with bossy impunity.
And yet the politician who demands parental as well as political power is a tiny symptom of a profound delusion in the western body politic: Governments actually think they can play mum or dad in outlawing the oldest, most creative and destructive urge in the human species, namely, a young man’s propensity to
behave recklessly.
In this process, parents have become the mere finger-wagging appendages of a society that increasingly relies on the crudest form of dissuasion: the law.
The punishment of our kiddies is being appropriated by state legislators who cynically applaud the introduction of laws to control youth because they suppose them to be “voter friendly”. Hence the proposed shiny new proposals for curbs on P-Plate drivers, which go hand-in hand with our mania for age limits, anti-spanking laws, anti-drinking laws, anti-smoking laws, bicycle helmet laws, and prohibitions of all kinds of behaviours perceived to be dangerous.
In this light the tragic case of Emile Dousset is instructive. His father Graeme is, by all accounts, a responsible, decent man who made it very clear to his son that the Nissan Skyline R34 GTR parked in
the garage – a machine powered by a 2.6-litre, six-cylinder engine with a top speed of 251km/h – was off limits. Graeme repeatedly warned Emile that the car was not to be driven; he tried to educate his son about the dangers of speeding, and the importance of responsible driving.
Emile listened, but disobeyed his father, and set aside his dad’s reasoned appeal to good sense – the flight of any ordinary young man’s desire for a thrill. One night, last November, while his father was overseas, Emile took the vehicle out for a spin in the town of Wyoming, NSW, where a 50km/h limit applies. The P-plater drove first to a service station and picked up two passengers, Carl Homer, 33, and Natasha Schyf, Homer’s pregnant 15-year old girlfriend. Both were impressed by the gleaming vehicle, and curious to see how young Emile would handle it.
At this point it is worth interceding to remark on the manner in which virtually every commentator chose to ignore the really disturbing story here: in impregnating a child, the 33-year old Homer was manifestly guilty at the very least of carnal knowledge – and possibly child abuse – a more insidious force in society than reckless driving. Few saw fit to remark on this rather unfortunate fact; one report nauseously praised the girl’s courage in rising to the challenge of pregnancy at so young an age. (Even as the Telegraph was studiously ignoring the
details of Homer and Schyf’s relationship, it still managed to run – with a straight face – a story about a 37-year-old man accused of bedding a 15-year-old girl he met online. The headline? “Jailed for preying
on girl.”)
But back to Emile. Perhaps in an effort to impress his passengers, he sped to a residential street popular amongst rev-heads. He then accelerated to somewhere between 180 and 200 km/h, struck a dip in the road, went airborne for 40m, and smashed into a telegraph pole. Stunned residents emerged from their homes to find the dead bodies of Emile and Carl flung on the nature strip; trapped in the split car was Natasha, who died with her unborn baby (whom she’d named William).
Emile has become another tragic statistic in the supposed “epidemic” of P-plate road victims. His case fed the portrayal of male youth of today as, at the very least, disobedient and reckless.
At worst, if the government and the media are correct, a spawn of half-formed, testosterone-fuelled yahoos are at this very moment rampaging across our fair land, smashing up their dads’ cars and their lives in brazen high-speed rallies; drinking themselves legless; or drugging themselves to the hilt.
That impression is plain wrong, of course; in the midst of the media hysteria over the epidemic of teen driver deaths came news that, rather than spiking skywards, fatal accidents involving P-plate drivers have fallen to their lowest levels in history, falling 30 percent from 1992 to 2002. And it’s not just young drivers who are getting safer: NSW closed 2004 with the lowest number of road fatalities overall since 1949, with a total of 522 deaths. To put these numbers it in context, NSW Health estimates that roughly a dozen times that figure die in the state every year due to smoking.
But the NSW government is not put off, and is instead trying to legislate against stupidity. For
example, young people must now stay on their P-plates three times longer now than their parents were: they progress from L plates to red beginners’ P plates to a P2 licence (green P plate) before they get their full licence – a three-year process, involving several tough hazard perception tests. No wonder P-plate drivers are in the spotlight for road accidents. If that regime doesn’t work, what will?
But the government wants to extend the regime, and Roads Minister Carl Scully has drawn up a paper of options to reduce P-plate driver fatalities: they include a proposed ban on fast or dangerous cars and raising the age limit for licence-holders. To be fair, even as he pursued this course, he recognized an
insurmountable problem: only by banning cars will crashes be avoided, said a helpless Scully spokesman last November.
Never mind that this doomed experiment will be ignored: no self-respecting young larrikin will care much about a distant government bureaucrat droning on about the “P-Plate driver menace”; a curb on young drivers may even encourage speedsters onto the roads.
In earlier times, fathers were proud of the motive, if not the occasionally disastrous consequences, behind any healthy young son’s desire to show-off, or embrace dangerous situations. It is a biological inevitability. That is why young men volunteer for war: they, unlike women or older men, have an idea of themselves as bullet-proof. In a word, many young men reckon they’re unbreakable.
But this fact seems beyond the realm of comprehension of the legions of precious counselors, bossy journalists, government busy-bodies and tut-tutting feminists who are wheeled out with weary inevitability to
bemoan the “youth of today” and their predilection to do very dangerous things every time a young person is killed or hurt.
If Lord Byron had lived today, no doubt swimming the Hellespont by “Club-footed Persons” would have been banned soon after he drowned. Sadly for the cosy modern world of health inspectors and safety first, the dashing young man who defies order and authority to express his peculiarly male urge to be the fastest or the strongest or a hero will always be with us – if in a suppressed or warped form.
That’s because we live in an age in which the female is in the ascendant, and manhood is seen as something awkward, smelly, yobbish or plain embarrassing. The male virtues of courage, mateship, loyalty and do-or-die heroism are either dead, or dying, stamped out by a fusillade of laws, restrictions, codes and feminist-driven contempt. Indeed, this blokish larrikinism is regularly portrayed as a kind of mental illness and something to be ashamed of; the “male” in us is not quite “human”, rather something abnormal, even bestial. Men are inured to being presented as the buffoon or the idiot in endless films and TV shows; they seem to have swallowed the nonsense that they’re less intelligent than women.
Melbourne psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg reckons young males “do not have the neurological wiring that gives girls pause to think,” as he told journalist Kate Legge in the Australian recently. Having accepted this as a self-evident truth, Legge added: “This biological handicap is exacerbated by a lethal mixture of sloppy parenting and unprecedented commercial and peer pressure”.
It is worth weighing the meaning behind this extraordinary statement: young men are no longer merely stupid or loutish; they are actually biologically inferior to girls. “New research” or “experts” say so.
But surely a biological handicap must be qualified in terms of its effect on human behaviour? If the male “biological handicap” only results in rev-heads crashing their cars, or picking fights, then perhaps it is a handicap; if, however the male “handicap” produces young men willing to sacrifice their lives for their country at a time of war; or rush in fearlessly to save the life of someone in danger; or embark on daunting expeditions of discovery, then surely it is a gift?
Today’s society denies young men that accolade. They are simply mentally-challenged louts. One wonders how the nation would respond if we were invaded (as we nearly were in 1942) – perhaps we’d introduce a new law banning war?
Setting aside the absurd claim that the “commercial and peer pressure” on boys of today is “unprecedented” (e.g., how does one calculate this new precedent?), Carr-Gregg’s fundamental concern is that parents seem surprised when their boys misbehave: “I sit in my office gobsmacked at tales not out of place at a Roman orgy,” he observes. “Parents don’t seem to have a clue. One couple allowed their teenage son free range
at home while they went to Noosa. He had a party. The housewas trashed and the parents were astonished. These are intelligent professional people.”
Yet Carr-Gregg contradicts this admirable portrait of the modern young man’s party-organising abilities by claiming that today’s generation of boys “is the most vulnerable…we have ever seen”. On the one hand the little darlings are holding Roman orgies, the next they’re the vulnerable victims of a conspiracy of bad parenting, bad schools and ferocious marketing that “short-circuit”, in Legge’s phrase, a boy’s path to manhood.
In response, Carr-Gregg and legions of other psychologists, most of the media, and even feminist-mums are pressing for a return to more authoritarian styles of parenting and schooling. (Though, tellingly, they draw the line at anything possibly effective – like corporal punishment. They want carrots without sticks; they plead for the imposition of discipline without any disciplining force.)
But their plea, however welcome, is a little late. One groans wearily at this belated recognition of the failure of thirty years of progressive “liberal” education, whose seeds lay in the barren soil of the 1960s baby boomer era. It is now awfully clear that a child will not find his or her “inner creativity” without some instruction in the method of expressing it: i.e. lessons in grammar, ordered thinking, reason, logic, the rules of syntax etc.
Another fascinating reversal for these New Authoritarians is that they now acknowledge “gender difference”. “Risk-taking behaviour is unquestionably a gender issue on Australian roads,” writes Kate Legge, for example. “Young men have been found to score significantly higher than females when tested for impulsiveness and sensation-seeking,” she adds.
And research by Peter Palamara of the University of Western Australia’s Injury Research Centre has found that young men are more likely to engage in risky driving when carrying a same-aged, same gender passenger. In other words, young men like showing off to their mates…what an extraordinary thing.
This identification of “gender difference” is an intriguing break with the past: throughout the 1970s, feminists were telling us that there is no such thing as gender difference. Men and women were the same, at least psychologically. (No wonder so many women burnt their bras in that wretched era, the high watermark of idiocy, during which the greatest insight of feminism was that “manhood” was a cultural phenomenon imposed on children; a little girl would naturally choose Ken over Barbie if only she was given the chance. Any parent knew – and knows – this to be utter rubbish.)
One consolation from the wreckage of the past – and of poor young Emile - is that at least many people are talking a similar language. Many people seem to have noticed that men and women are, er, different; and most people seem to agree that the progressive education and parenting models of the last 20-30 years have failed to produce well-adjusted young men. This seems an auspicious place to begin finding ways to channel male recklessness, aggression and risk-taking into something constructive.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Investigate Mar 05, ZULU KILO DOWN

The mystery of Joe Lourie’s last flight

They make the news but fade away. Topdressing aircraft that crash in remote countryside. But behind every crash is a story, and behind the crash of ZK-LTF is a story that could shed light on many other similar tragedies. NEILL HUNTER has this exclusive investigation

The topdresser dipped silently into the gully ahead and the group of teenage surfies craned their heads searching for it, some balancing on fence posts along the ridge. Suddenly the plane burst into view and roared over our heads like a great flying beast, its proximity not just palpable, but so real it felt like we were almost wearing the machine. The scene was a remote Northland beach an hour’s walk from the road because the Volkswagens couldn’t handle the mud; the agricultural aviator had no such restrictions as he performed aerial tricks, some especially for us, displaying mesmerising skills.
That was back in the 1960s, but those first visions of a topdresser in action remain indelibly etched in my memory. And the culture surrounding the industry hasn’t changed much either over the four decades hence. The sky jockeys at the reins of these aerial workhorses pepper their speech with jargon like “strap on the aeroplane and take it for a ride”, “turn the plane inside-out”, “inverted”, “critical speed”, “stall”, “situ-ational awareness”. They’re held in such esteem that some call them “Super Pilots”. But it’s a moniker that’s swiftly passing its use-by date, because everywhere you look, from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to the New Zealand Agricultural Aviation Association (NZAAA) and elsewhere, there is one controversial word buzzing the airfields: “fatigue”. And that’s what this story is about, the tale of a pilot, his loader driver, two grieving families and the plane with no name. The crash of ZK-LTF. Although it happened back in 2003, the rumours surrounding the last flight of ZK-LTF continue to swirl at Toko, the tiny farming community on the highway to what some call “the lost world”, that magnificent New Zealand hinterland between Taranaki’s Stratford and Waikato’s Taumaranui. On a soft summer evening, the appearance of a national magazine asking questions in their midst at the small village pub renews debate and rekindles memories.
ZK-LTF, you see, was a mongrel. Not in quality, in make. Once it was a fixed wing topdresser, resembling a Fletcher. But officially it was an FU24-950 born into civil aviation existence in 1973, lived 5332 flight hours and died peacefully when it was put into storage in 1990. This was ZK-LTF in Fletcher guise.
But the plane was, amazingly, resurrected in 1999, extensively rebuilt, and re-registered in March 2000 as a “Falcon”. Farmers knew ZK-LTF. Says one: “it was a Fletcher plane, Cresco wings and Falcon motor – 650 HP.” To experts, it was a Cresco main plane, Lycoming LTP-101-700A-1A turboprop with characteristics of a Cresco with an FU24 hopper capable of disgorging 979kg of fertiliser. Some readers will want to know these things, others will simply need to know it was a topdresser, fixed wing.
When ZK-LTF crashed in Taranaki killing pilot Joe Lourie and his loader driver passenger Richard McRae there were those in the farming community who thought it was the old plane, the one which had two near misses, “flame-outs” they said, which nearly killed Joe Lourie’s brother, they said. A jinxed aircraft, perhaps.
Then another farmer, who had remained silent at the pub back in 2003, spoke up telling his friends it was the “new” plane. The Falcon. He knew this because he and his son found the wreckage that night, and the bodies, nearly two years ago:
At about 6.15pm, on 4 April 2003, Barry Baldock sat on a motorbike near his woolshed about to put the sheep away for the night on an evening fine and clear, when he heard the sound of the plane he knew so well. “I knew what plane it was. I thought, ‘that’s Joe’”. The engine of the Falcon was distinctive and smooth: “itwas humming,” he says of the Wanganui Aero Works’ Stratford operation topdresser piloted by his son’s good friend Joe Lourie. It was a sound he had heard earlier that day as well as on preceding weeks. He looked up as it roared into view, climbed steeply above the high green ridge, banked away from the tanned farmer, reverse-turned – in pilot jargon – and disappeared. The tall lean man in his sixties sat on his bike and watched briefly then thought to himself, “c’mon Joe, time to knock off.”
For a brief moment he watched the plane as it emerged again, lunging back up the wide open valley from whence it had come, towards the razorback ridges of high, green, steep jagged hills in the distance, into a narrow pass. The shattered horizon is cut by peaks and pinnacles, like broken glass, except near the Strathmore saddle where the serrated green line breaks form, becoming one long, high, straight, towering wall of land, and the valley begins to close.
Barry Baldock reckons he was the last to see ZK-LTF and says he might have heard the crash were it not for the sound of his bike starting as the plane disappeared. There were sheep to tend in these twilight moments, and no time to stand around daydreaming.
“I thought, ‘that’s Joe.’ Started the motorbike up. Probably the time of the crash was as the motorbike was turning over.”
Engine noises drowning the sound of a distant impact; no explosion, no fire.
At around 10.45 pm, when the All Blacks were playing on TV that night, the telephone rang in the modest Baldock farm house and the lifetime farmer told the caller, Allan Beck, local helicopter pilot and veteran search and rescue operator, that he knew the location of the plane they were searching for.
“If it’s gone down I know exactly where it is. I thought if it was the last flight before he went home…but he’d obviously gone through, turned around and made another approach. I started the motor bike up as I saw him disappear back down over the hill and rode off to put sheep away. Otherwise I would have heard it.”
Later, Search and Rescue headquarters in Wellington were so impressed they asked Beck: “how did you find it so fast”.
It was simple. He asked the farmers.
Although the plane wasn’t operating on Baldock’s farm – that had been scheduled for the following week – Allan Beck had a gut feeling he should call Barry Baldock. With his son and a son in-law, Baldock drove up to the Strathmore Saddle, five kms north east of Douglas in the Forgotten World, and he told the others to be alert for the smell of fumes. Then it came, wafting through their car like an invisible cloud, even before they stopped at the place where Baldock reckoned would be the nearest point in the road to the crash scene: the stench of aviation fuel permeating the still night air.
In the end it was not only the fuel smell, but a flight of others on the wing, which alerted the pilot’s friend to the wreckage of ZK-LTF. Says Barry Baldock: “A couple of ducks flew out of a little swamp and frightened him (his son). He had a torch on his head, spun around and his torch shone on a white thing on the side of the hill. He said ‘here it is up here Dad’,” and the search was over. All seemed very peaceful.
“Joe was still in the belts, up off the ground, very peaceful, not really a mark on him. Richard was lying about 20 metres away. I was glad there was no fire. Joe especially looked very peaceful.”
Richard, Wayne Baldock said to his father, “just looked like he was asleep.”
That was April 2003. On 13 October 2004, New Plymouth Coroner Roger Mori signed off his “Findings Of Coroner Under The Coroners Act 1988”, the official title given to his inquest into the deaths of a topdressing pilot and his loader driver passenger. It was supposed to be the final act of a three part process, of yet another investigation into yet another topdressing accident: (1) a police investigation (2) an aircraft accident investigation by the CAA and (3) an inquest, based upon those investigations, by the coroner. There were failures in all three, some small others substantial, but essentially the process failed to provide the families of those lost in the crash with that state of mind popularly known as “closure”.
For the mother of one of those lost in the wreckage of ZK-LTF, Ann Macrae (her surname is spelt differently to her son’s), closure would have been achieved if the inquest had included a full assessment of work pressure and fatigue, involving the pilot and loader driver, leading up to the time of the crash.
As she sits in her home at Sanson, calmly and clinically describing the failures of those charged with handling the investigation, it seems ironic that near her plain, neat home, is an Air Force base named Ohakea. The place where fighter jets once flew. Now this mother is taking up a fight for a lost son, once an Air Force mechanic, but she refuses to be drawn into arguments of blame.
“It would have been wrong to blame Joe Lourie for crashing the plane.” She says it goes beyond that. “Richard and Joe were right at the bottom of the chain.” The woman who loves to write, and grow huge healthy pot plants, says the investigations failed to examine the issues of work place health and safety.
So Investigate left Ann Macrae behind, and followed our own flight path to examine her assertions. Everywhere, even two years after the event, we found emotions still raw. But farm-ers and others opened their doors, offered opinions, shed tears, retrieved memories.
At the end of a blistering Manawatu summer day, where temperatures had soared as high as 42 in the shade, faces listen intently and fingers draw lines and shapes in the condensation on their beer glasses as the discussion of the crash and its aftermath swoops and dives with a life of its own.
A journalist’s mind, meanwhile, settles on a topdressing veteran describing his craft.
As Richmond Harding recalls it, crashing his father’s Tiger Moth in the 50’s while spreading grass seed left no time for fear because he was too busy.
“About 20 seconds” is all you have to find a place to land after running out of fuel, he tells me. At 66 he is still young enough to fly topdressers, so too his elder brother at 68, but it’s difficult to extract from the sun-drenched aviator the thoughts of a pilot about to crash. He walked away unscathed but wrote off his father’s plane, and
remembers the aftermath. “I hitched a ride back to Waiouru. Me father growled at me,” he chuckles.
“Why didn’t you bring back the Tiger Moth,” his father had asked, in an aviation variation of a teenager crashing dad’s car.
“I wrote it off.”
It’s a lighter moment, while interviewing the man who used to own – and remains general manager of – Wanganui Aero Works, the company he started after persuading his father to let him and his brother
go top dressing instead of farming. It was a pleasure interviewing the man who speaks in a measured, calm, sensible manner, who later sold the operation, one of the biggest in New Zealand, to Ravensdown Fertiliser.
So how did he crash the Tiger Moth? Focussing on the pattern of the grass seed he was spreading distracted the young pilot from monitoring his fuel consumption. When the penny dropped that he was going down, it was more of a Toyota ‘bugger’ moment than a wild panic.
“You’ve got a job to do…pretty urgent job to do. The crash investigator Paddy O’Brien once said ‘if you can put an aeroplane on the ground and run it say 20 metres you’ll probably walk away’. Control it to the ground, don’t stall it to the ground. If it’s hill country run it up the side of a hill. Run it into the ground, don’t smash it into
the ground.”
So what happened to Wanganui Aero Works’ ill-fated ZK-LTF? Timing is everything and the time of ZK-LTF’s crash is relevant to much of this investigation, central to issues of work pressure, fatigue and the demise of New Zealand topdressing pilots (and their families).
First: there are no flight and duty time (hours of working and flying) limitations either under OSH or CAA rules. In fact OSH has no jurisdiction over pilots/aviation employers; that’s done by CAA who have OSH personnel helping them. Truck drivers have limitations. Airline pilots have limitations. Australian ag’ pilots have limitations. But not NZ ag’ pilots. Once they did, 25 years ago, but it was too hard so it got scrapped. CAA recognised that ag’ flying was too dependent upon weather and seasons – “windows” – to have rules for pilots’ health and safety.
Whether that is a sensible stand or a facetious excuse for inaction is the point now thrown up for debate. The argument from those who believe the industry must be flexible enough to work during weather windows is essentially this: overall down time exceeds overall flying time, therefore there is no problem, no fatigue. The argument is based on total annual flying hours.
But in the real world there are those who point out some blindingly obvious problems with that analysis. The weather’s been bad for a month, and suddenly a week of fine weather arrives. A plane can be in the air from dawn till dusk; diving, swooping, landing, taking off, seven to ten days in a row to get the backlog of work cleared.
Was pilot fatigue a bigger factor in the demise of ZK-LTF than police, CAA and coronial investigations had suggested?
It would be fair to say that interviews with some became more “adversarial” as the logic of the counter-position sunk in. Credit must go to Bill Sommer, CAA media liaison and ex-RNZAF man who, after two long interviews, seemed to swing away from the entrenched employer and CAA positions of “downtime” and individual pilot responsibility for their own health and safety. The veterans with whom we went “adversarial” listened, but were basically immoveable.
There are some level heads in the industry who while maintaining their view that fatigue is not an issue, say they strive to teach their pilots good health and safety. Mike Keen of Hamilton’s Superair insists he is being accurate in his view that fatigue is not a problem in the industry, nor is work pressure.
“Where are the facts and figures?” he asks. In two long interviews we thrashed the subject and while the 10,000-hour veteran admits that there may have been cases in the past, it is not prevalent now. He says there is too much down time, they may work, say, a 14 hour day, but only fly for six hours and spend the
remainder “sleeping under a wing or having a cup of tea with the farmer.” He insists that his company regularly reminds their pilots to take breaks and manage their work load and says most operators are the same. He recently sent a memo reminding pilots of summer temperatures and rest. Of a Pacific Wings magazine story about fatigue and stress, he says it’s inaccurate because there is no data to back it up. He rubbishes the reference to an “appalling” accident rate but admits at times, “it’s bad.”
Investigate’s argument: forget about annual flying hours and down time. We asked the question: “what is going to happen when, as exists now with companies three weeks behind in their work due to weather, suddenly the weather comes right, there’s a flood of work, and it’s game on, work ‘til you drop, pilots working / flying 14 hour days and taking one 15 minute meal break (we sighted records proving it)? It’s not the big picture (annual hours, down time etc) – it’s the micro one, of suddenly going for it over three days (or longer).”
“It’s a fair point you make,” says CAA’s Sommer, adding, “Everyone else has got responsibility as well. Not just us. The pilot has that responsibility to say ‘I’m too tired’. Now that’s clearly drummed into the guys who are flying passengers around. The safety of those passengers lies specifically with them. [But] In the case of the ag’ operator, well the feeling of responsibility that the pilot feels may be quite different.”
Is that “feeling” called peer pressure and subtle work pressure? Sommer believes things will change: “I’m not saying it’s not going to happen, I’m sure it will be. I’m sure it’ll be examined but I don’t know if it’s going to be that easy to do.”
So why not take advantage of a crash investigation and coroner’s inquest, go proactive, highlight the awareness? Our answer: You can’t if the crash investigator seems to pull punches, saying there may have been work pressure, might have been fatigue. There’s talk of reviews of working conditions pending,
but apparently no real investigation into fatigue and work pressure until after the Coroner’s hearing.
You read correctly. Arguably crucial evidence was not obtained by CAA until after the Coroner’s investigation had wrapped up.
“It’s in writing on your own letterhead” we remind CAA. A clearly concerned official says he can’t comment because the staff involved are away and efforts to date by Investigate to contact them have been unsuccessful due to leave and overseas commitments we are told. More about the CAA bombshell soon.
Cut to the numbers, fatal and injury, what are they?
“Appalling…bad…trending upwards” are the various descriptions from CAA, aircraft magazine writers and the industry. Bill Sommer: “it’s trending up for ag’ ops and trending down for others…you can see it’s really quite something.”
One veteran said he thought about four were killed over about the last three years, perhaps about 15 accidents in total over that period. He knows that 200 have died since the 1940s when the industry began. This man has been flying for 40 years, operated a company for 23 years which had no accidents until 2001 when they suddenly had 3 in one year. (None were fatal and one of them was his first which he attributes to not flying for three weeks, not fatigue.) Veterans say CAA is fudging the numbers. CAA denies this, and says it has the graphs to prove it, that the accident numbers are climbing.
CAA admits that fixed wing topdressers combine with other light aircraft stats which, say some in the industry, is the reason the numbers aren’t accurate.
“That’s not correct, we can separate them out,” says Sommer of criticism that topdressers join hang gliders and balloons. CAA say they can extract the numbers and have done so on “ag’ ops” and besides, everyone in the industry knows the situation is bad.
Arguably though, it’s not the numbers, but the fact that flight and duty limitations do not exist for topdressing, except “civil twilight”: 30 minutes before/after sunrise/set. According to CAA technical examinations, 11 minutes had remained under the civil twilight rule for ZK-LTF to finish and go home. The
device giving that data in ZK-LTF was a pseudo-cockpit recorder, a type of global positioning system (GPS), which could have been switched off due to screen glow distracting the pilot. “1826:50”, the last entry, may be early. The crash investigation says sunset was 1811hrs, “end of daylight” was 1838hrs, crash time “1830 approx”.
Says Mark Ford, a helicopter operator flying over ZK-LTF before the crash, “It was starting to get dark in the valleys, shadow-up. Fifteen to twenty minutes and it would’ve been pretty dark.” Ford believes he saw ZK-LTF well before it crashed because it was spreading on another farm, so by the time it finished that run, landed, reloaded, waited for the loader to park and lock up, transited to the farm and crash scene for its last job of the day, we estimate it could have consumed most of the “15 to 20 minutes to dark” that Ford says was remaining. But there is a variable. The CAA report says Ford told them the time was 5.45pm. Ford told Investigate he was only “five to six” minutes from home, which would mean his sighting was well before sundown at 6.11pm. Even considering the diminished light in the valleys, one would expect there to have been ample light, if Ford’s original sighting time was correct. In the final analysis, according to the technical data, the crash happened just on dark.
Mark Ford is a veteran helicopter logging operator but initially nobody knew where we could find him. In the end of course it was easy, his is the only place in NZ with an ex-RAF Wessex military helicopter, in full camo, parked out the back, with another “squadron” of them in storage – plus the world’s supply of spare parts, literally, 100 containers-worth to be precise. His Wessex helicopter logging operation is as huge as the scrap he is embroiled in with CAA, an organisation he accuses of being rife with corruption.
Ford is one of those larger-than-life Kiwi blokes, a bull of a man and in his no-nonsense way and office, he shared his views of a topdresser crash. Unfortunately CAA, according to Ford, only briefly interviewed him on the side of the road near the crash scene and appeared to focus on an issue which Investigate elects to cover, despite its controversial significance, especially to bereaved families. We do so for completeness, and in the end we say it needs to be viewed in context: was it causative, or distraction from the real issues of pressure and fatigue? It concerns the flying style of the pilot.
Friday evening, nearly two years ago and two men in a helicopter are almost home, flying about 500 feet over the mottled greens of the Forgotten World, when they suddenly see ZK-LTF below them.
“You see an aircraft flying, doing its normal stuff, you think nothing of it, you fly across, see it, oh yeah, just another aeroplane, helicopter or whatever, but for something like that to take my specific bloody attention away, and think to myself, struth, look at that thing, that thing’s near inverted, because it’s frickin’ flying almost upside down. The turns were really tight. That’s why I noticed it…it made me look twice. For me to look back twice and say sheesh that guy’s turning it inside out. That’s exactly what I thought.”
And Ford knows all about fatigue after once taking off with running wheels (removable) still attached and on another occasion, nearly taking off with two heavy truck batteries on the ground, still attached to the helicopter. He says they now “run co-pilots and stop for lunch and breaks after about two hours”, and although it’s his own business he doesn’t pressure his pilots to keep working, “not at all.”
When asked his opinion on the difference between his industry and fixed wing topdresser he replies: “I believe there are a lot more getting killed in aeroplanes than helicopters.” (They’re not, but that’s another story.)
Others say it is not work pressure or fatigue. Hallett Griffin is a 40-year veteran who says his only accident came after three weeks of no flying and at an Australian Conference heard a military pilot lecture on BITS – “back in the saddle” – and its dangers. Griffin also acknowledges that things are not good but insists neither are they bad or appalling as alleged by others. Companies watch their pilots to ensure safety; he says he knows of pilots who have been grounded. So what does he do to instil safety and health, if a pilot is over-doing things? “Keep an eye on him. Bit of a cuff over the ear.”
We don’t know why ZK-LTF smashed into the side of a high buttress-like hill, yet there are clues. Experts have offered opinion: “The aircraft had struck the ground in an attitude that suggested it was pulling out of a dive, but with insufficient height for terrain clearance. Possible reasons for the manoeuvre include a pull-out from a reversal turn…the aeroplane struck the ground very heavily on a heading of 210 degrees M while on a 55 degrees bank to the right and on descent path of at least 30 degrees…after rebounding and crossing an intervening small gully, the wreckage again collided heavily with the ground some 47m further on, coming to rest in several sections… The high ground surrounding the valley where the accident occurred would have increased the effects of the fading light, making height judgement progressively more difficult”, writes Alistair Buckingham, CAA crash investigator.
Ask the farmers and they say ZK-LTF was simply spreading the last of the fertiliser across the face of rising ground, wings at an angle matching the lower slope but in the darkening conditions, struck one of the low ridges of the small gullies near the base of a nameless hill. A farmer standing on the side of the road points to a patch of thistles as evidence: “you see those Kellies Thistles, he shaved them off like a mower, he skipped into the ground.” That from Barry Baldock, the farmer who found the wreckage; who knows his planes, and the land.
So would a diving heavy impact, offered by CAA, be consistent with shaving thistles? Despite that, for now we confirm that the CAA investigation was otherwise reasonably thorough and “exhaustive”, as they remind
the reader.
There are other factors which investigators and the coroner say may have caused or contributed to the crash such as illegal carrying of a passenger during spreading; “exuberance of the reversal manoeuvres”; “sense of urgency to complete the job…”; “pilot’s judgement may have been further eroded by fatigue and
a degree of carbon monoxide absorption (cma).” Let’s deal with the latter briefly for clarification. It relates more to internal rather than external (e.g. fumes) sources of toxicology, of blood saturation levels where normal levels are 1% to 2% cma, 5% to 10% may affect the heart, 15% to 20% dizziness and nausea, 50% may kill. The CAA report includes findings relating to the pilot’s forensic results therefore it can be safely assumed that the cma was relevant, by virtue of the statement “…eroded by fatigue and a degree of carbon monoxide absorption”.
Those and other issues had to be considered by the coroner.
It is 9.30am, another fine day in the ‘naki, already signs of a scorcher but Coroner Roger Mori is happy with a simple desk-top fan in his office at the end of a long corridor in the chambers of Nicolsons, Lawyers and Notary Public. The tall lean father of a representative basketballer, calmly and fully expounds on the coroner’s role generally, and the inquest into the deaths of Richard Sinclair McRae and Jonathan Peter Lourie, ages 30 and 29 respectively.
“I’m required to make recommendations or comments in the avoidance of circumstances similar to those in which the death occurred, or in the manner in which any persons should act in such circumstances, that, in the opinion of the coroner, may if drawn to public attention reduce the chances of the
occurrence of other deaths in such circumstances. So, there we are and of course it is only the sudden and unexpected deaths that are reported to me and of course obviously air accidents fall very fairly and squarely into that category.” He has dealt with about six air crashes over the 21 years but can not remember clearly if any included topdressing but may have. Sitting relaxed behind a large desk, in a casual shirt, no tie, one cannot help but be impressed with his professional yet open manner. Despite issues, some controversial, arising from this case, one of which he is unaware until informed in this interview, he clearly conveys an empathy of understanding towards families in grief. He has never lost a son or daughter and can not imagine the hurt, he says. He is probably being humble for someone having presided over countless enquiries and currently awaiting reports on the latest aircrash in Taranaki, that of a plane which slammed into such a precarious part of Mt Taranaki’s summit, two helicopters were required. “I try to keep myself as remote as I can from families”, ‘he says,but then explains examples of where that “rule” has been broken.
ZK-LTF’s case has at times been controversial. The families accuse authorities of prejudging “cause and effect” and to a degree, Mori even agrees: “to that extent they’re right because all the evidence is prepared in writing in advance.” While the coroner may direct further investigations after receiving reports, it is the police responsibility to call evidence, liaise with families and prepare the evidence in advance for
examination at the inquest.
Mori is well versed in issues of fatigue, both professionally, and personally from a near-tragedy which could have had fatal consequences when a member of his own family, suffering fatigue, crashed a vehicle, escaping uninjured.
An expert from Massey University presenting evidence in Mori’s court about fatigue in another case, testified how physical functions may carry on normally until suddenly the brain literally stops.
“You get tired and the brain will shut off for some seconds… suddenly you’re out of control”, the coroner recounts.
But it is the question of whether the Civil Aviation Author-ity lost control of its own investigation that now rears its head. You see, at the end of the day a coronial inquest is only as good as the evidence that Coroner gets to see. If one of the investigating agencies gets facts wrong, or doesn’t cover all the bases, a Coroner may end up delivering an unsound report. And that’s what the families of Joe Lourie and Richard McRae are alleging.
The most telling piece of potential evidence in this regard is a letter written by a CAA investigator (the “bombshell”) which confirms crucial documents, the actual “flight records”, were not uplifted by CAA until “the day after the inquest”.
The letter goes on to confirm that CAA had vastly underestimated the actual flight hours of the pilot for the preceding days, and that an amended report would be filed by last December. As of the time of going to press, no such amended report has been filed that we can establish. So how could CAA get it so wrong, why do they appear to have not done the enquires “by the numbers”, checked the pilot’s flying hours, why change a report after an inquest? Because that is what this investigation reveals.
CAA’s Bill Sommer was unaware of the letter until Investigate raised it, but says he’s sure that if their investigator changed his report, they would “tell the coroner”.
Well, the investigator has changed his report; according to the document, he admits virtually (to his credit) that he got it wrong, but hasn’t told the coroner about his failure to properly investigate the issue of work pressure and fatigue, nor his amended report (after the inquest). Another expert witness present at the inquest has told Investigate that the coroner specifically asked the CAA investigator if he was sure the numbers (flying hours) were correct. According to the source, CAA replied they were. But they are not and Investigate has a copy of the CAA document to prove it. What is the significance of that to a re-hearing?
Mori has signalled he is open to a re-hearing and even quoted the rules allowing it but emphasises the application must come from the Solicitor-General. He cannot initiate it himself.
Quotes Mori: “Section 38… if satisfied that since an inquest was completed new facts have been discovered, make it desirable to hold another, the Solicitor-General may order another to be held and in that case another shall be held.”
So sayeth the Act. And the new facts (as well as breaches and failures under the Coroner’s Act) are these:
The CAA crash report states the pilot “had not flown on any of the seven days immediately preceding the accident date.”
False.
New facts, verified by Investigate sighting documents and interviews: The crash was on Friday 4 April. On Wednesday 2 April the loader driver and pilot worked/flew from 0500hrs to 1900 hours with one 15 minute meal break! Thursday 3 April, the day before the crash: 0600 to 0645, then 0830 to 1945hrs and one 15 minute meal break! They were averaging twelve-and-a-half hour days with one quarter-hour break. The loader driver worked 25 out of 28 days, taking one small break per day and if the loader driver was working as the pilot’s loader, so was the pilot.
Investigate’s copy of a CAA document shows the agency admits not examining flight records fully until after their report was completed and after the inquest. That document proves that their statement about no flying by the pilot before the crash was wrong, by at least 17 hours. Why?
Because they didn’t investigate fatigue and work pressure properly.
While the CAA could argue that it doesn’t matter as work pressure and fatigue are mentioned in the report anyway, that would be disingenuous. It does matter, substantially. The CAA report forms the basis of the Coroner’s finding and recommendations. It makes minimal mention of pressure and stress, mixing them with items of blame on the pilot as possibilities only. So the Coroner accordingly agreed. It is like saying a driver may have had a bit to drink, but we didn’t take a blood/alcohol measurement so we’re only mentioning the “possibility” in passing.
The CAA report does at least acknowledge, “the accident occurred at the end of a long working day. The pilot had been on duty over 12 hours…80 take-offs and landings…carbon monoxide…a degree of fatigue…potential to dull the edge of the pilot’s skill and judgement.”
It’s all minimalist jargon; understandable, given the investigator is working on the premise the pilot hadn’t worked before the day of the accident. But, if one day’s long work hours were enough to warrant mention, what does the new evidence of flying almost all week do?
Second new fact: the police statement given in evidence at the inquest is that the passenger was sitting behind the pilot.
False.
The CAA report states they were abreast. Which is it? We don’t know because nobody appears to have asked the question. In fact from enquiries, the passenger was beside the pilot, but it casts more doubt on the thoroughness of the original investigations.
Approximately one week prior to the accident Joe Lourie was so exhausted from working from dawn to dark that he sent his friend, a farmer, to get food and drink for him. On another occasion he called Stratford Aero Club and asked them to turn on the lights of their building as a navigational point for landing at night, illegally. Self-imposed bad practice? Or signs of a responsible, well trained pilot under pressure? Farmers close to Joe Lourie and Wanganui Aero Works say that prior to him becoming manager of the Stratford operation it was losing business, attributed to the previous pilot nearing retirement and no longer buying into the work/fly-until-you-drop (or die) culture. That is not a reflection on the retiring pilot but rather a sign of pressure.
“The previous pilot was a lot older and probably ready for retirement,” opines a farmer. “The difference was one wanting to work and the other being very cautious. But they did lose a bit of business because they weren’t getting the manure on…Joe’s thing was to get that business back, plus a bit more.”
Topdressing companies are paid when all the fertiliser bought by the farmer has been spread. So if the job becomes disjointed, broken by weather, including wind, mechanical failures and the like, there is no income, no progress payments. Pressure may come from farmers, “standing over” the pilot pressuring him into flying to their farm “right now” because it looks fine and they want their fertiliser on the ground, now. The plane arrives and, as the pilot suspected, so too does the wind. He tries for half an hour, then flies home again, expenses soar, and net profit plummets.
“It happens,” says a farmer. “It’s pressure from farmers, not all…they want it on now…the job has to be finished, no manure on the ground, no money …weather can hold things up for quite a few weeks sometimes,” he explains.
Then a commercial pilot, after much procrastination and on condition of anonymity comes forward through a third party at first, and then speaks to Investigate directly. Three weeks before ZK-LTF’s crash Joe Lourie was “doing stunts after work”. While that in itself is not bad he says, because most pilots do it, especially at the end of a day, if conditions are safe, but if a pilot is tired, the consequences may be fatal.
“It’s usually ridge-running, not barrel rolls.” It’s like a release from all the pressure which they say “will kill people”. He exclaims, when told of the flying hours, take-offs and landings logged by Lourie:
“I find that incredible”. Then he pauses and says he knows it’s happening. “Some of them are doing huge hours (flying time). I’ve done eight hours and even that’s too much.”
With 1400 hours logged, he rubbishes the veterans who say flying is no more complicated than driving a car. Investigate has been told on several occasions that for an experienced pilot, flying is easier and less tiring than driving. Our informant says that driving can be “automatic” but “in flying you’re constantly thinking and when you land you feel exhausted”.
When Investigate re-interviews a veteran about the informant’s statements, he scoffs and even laughs and we are told again, fatigue is not an issue. But, says our informant, six hours topdressing flying time in a day… “it’s big.” When a pilot gets tired they “get lazy and don’t pay attention.”
Make no mistake, Investigate accepts Lourie broke rules. Carrying a passenger restrained only by a lap belt (both were big men) while spreading was dangerous. Operating just on dark, soaring up into lighter conditions above the hills and back into dark valleys where shadows obscured the smaller ridges, was reckless.
But why, once again, was this experienced, well trained pilot making such mistakes? Was it pressure, squeezing in one more run just on dark, take the pilot home with him and save time, get back on the job early next morning, take him on the last spread instead of returning to the field, collecting him and flying straight home to Stratford, only minutes away by plane, perhaps an hour in an old slow loader on a narrow twisting country road punctuated by more stop signs and railway crossings than a Monopoly board?
We investigated suggestions it was all Lourie’s own fault: a pilot out of control, cavalier in approach. But to the farmers who knew the quiet pilot it was the opposite. “Very quiet,” is their description, “he would say what he had to and that was it kind of thing”. His employers, to be fair, are reluctant to blame Lourie but in interviewing them there is a clear perception that they discount fatigue, and blame pilot error. “He had been warned…” they explain but say no more, out of respect they say for the families.
Joe Lourie had to take responsibility, says a reliable neutral source in Manawatu (not the employers) who once met the young pilot. He was closely supervised for six months at Hunterville with a veteran, where they say he was groomed for the Stratford position as manager/pilot. The source says he was very impressed after meeting the big, tall pilot whom he described as “the future of the industry.” Which again begs the question: what went wrong with the 1000 hour-plus, groomed pilot?
More enquiries and again the veterans say they know the cause and it wasn’t work pressure because there is nothing wrong with squeezing in one last load before dark. One says that if the conditions are perfect, as they were this day, then evening is the ideal time to fly, and goes on to describe the joy of doing the last loads late in the day, not because of pressure, but the elation of flying.
Farmers experienced in topdressing say Lourie was a good pilot. None say he was reckless, one talks of his so called exuberant flying (as in the CAA report where technical data confirms “exuberant” manoeuvres) adding that “he could fly, he could handle it, he was a bloody good pilot” but admits he was “starting to take a few risks.” A farmer who had watched him weeks before the crash thought to himself “take it carefully, Joe”, even telling his wife, but says it was paying off commercially: “he picked up a lot of work.” But it was reaching the point where it was raising concerns. A farmer says “a lot of people commented that Wanganui Aero Works should have pulled the pin on him and cut back his hours…they must have known how many tonnes he was putting on so they should have known the hours (the pilot would need to do) to put that tonnage on. It was a waste of two good lives, I know that,” he muses.
There is another reason for the Solicitor-General to re-open the Coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Lourie and McRae. The last error in the CAA report, perhaps only small, perhaps not. The crash report says “…both occupants were ejected from the cockpit.”
False.
New fact: Witnesses to the crash scene, those who found the wreckage, say the pilot was in the wreckage, “Joe was still in the belts, up off the ground, very peaceful, not really a mark on him. Richard was lying about 20 metres away…”
Barry Baldock then went on to describe the state of the wreckage, and the pilot’s position in it which, for brevity and sensitivity, we have condensed as above. Investigate received allegations that Lourie was not the pilot. McRae, the loader driver was a trained pilot, with aspirations of becoming an ag’ pilot and it is not unusual for official and unofficial training to take place on the job. After enquiries however with police, crash scene witnesses and anonymous witnesses who have no agenda, we are reasonably satisfied that Lourie was the pilot. But cumulatively, the CAA report errors are such they raise substantial doubts about the integrity of the inquest.
So what does the Coroner think of all this?
Roger Mori hints that he is less than happy with the situation. Investigate contacted the Coroner again about the evidence, including the bombshell CAA admission that they got it wrong over the “the pilot hadn’t flown during the week”, and that CAA was intending to amend its accident report. His reaction? A typical no-nonsense one: “S**t, that’s all been done subsequent to my report!”
He adds, incredulously, “they (CAA) can’t change a report once it becomes an official document in a Coroner’s inquest.” He tells Investigate “it’s something that should be investigated.”
We then discuss apparent breaches in the Coroners Act about the informing of parties, such as families and employers. Neither family or employer were informed of the inquest and although blame for that falls on the police, Mori typically doesn’t duck the issue and talks about it being “extremely rare” and “system failure.”
He evinces clear frustrations over certain parties, such as the pilot’s wife, being inadvertently excluded from the inquest.
“I was bloody annoyed”.
Investigate explained to the Coroner the results of enquiries to date and the evidence that proximate cause could more strongly be fatigue. In legal terms, more commonly associated with the insurance industry, proximate cause means after weighing-up all other possible contributory causes, in the final analysis there is one direct, stronger cause. Mori replies with talk about that being “logical …best explanation…what you’re
doing is researching and asking ques- tions…probably the answer is yes…I would say that’s fairly accurate”. If nothing else, let that at least be of some comfort to the families because blaming the pilot, as hinted in the CAA report, and by some industry members, is an easy assumption.
But it’s up to the Solicitor-Gener-al’s office to apply to the High Court, as provided for under the Coroners Act, on the grounds that there are sufficient new facts from the formal evidence: changes to CAA report after the inquest; their admission to erring; breaches of the Act due to the exclusion of families’ members; evidence presented but rejected without being heard.
A re-opened coronial investigation could not only put the pilot’s actions in a clearer light, but also bring an end to commercial and peer pressures that many in the agricultural aviation industry say are killing pilots.
“It was a beautiful sight,” says a farmer’s wife, describing ZK-LTF approaching their farm air strip in the low light of predawn. She says the combination of the plane’s lights, the early dawn colours, vapour streaming off the wings of the white Falcon like long white ribbons, was something she will never forget. The interview turns quiet as she recalls the image, describing it again, painting a word picture that stays in the mind. Later she says that I should go to a small airstrip, at night.
A quarter after nine pm on a country airstrip in Taranaki, and the pilot from the big Cresco topdresser, 3714kg fully laden, parked on the grass, walks through the darkness, and looks puzzled to find a journalist. There are no lights and nearby buildings are in darkness; the place is abandoned apart from pilot and scribe.
He says he landed about 8.15pm, is happy to talk about his job, a tall solid man who now leans over the roof of his car, slumping his body in a sign his day is over. He shares things like hours, working conditions and the importance of the industry.
“Seven hundred thousand tonnes of fertiliser per year, we have more turn-over than any other industry, it’s important we don’t fall over.” He says he manages his fatigue, “you’re not always flying…”, then hesitates. Later he says he’s off to the central North Island and as we talk more there’s a distant rumbling growl, rising like rolling thunder in the still night. From the track leading to the airfield, a monster lumbers suddenly into view, headlights blazing like eyes, a creature common to rural New Zealand: a topdressing loader. Truck-cab at the front, loader-cab and bucket at the back, Kiwi ingenuity at its best.
“My loader driver, he’s coming with me,” says the pilot. Then an older man in a black singlet climbs down and wanders over. The pilot and I exchange farewells, the other looks on silently, confused, then both get into the pilot’s car, and drive away, leaving me alone in the dark, imagining a different scene, two years ago, when pilot and loader took another way home, via grassy slopes of a valley, on a night in the Forgotten World.
The distant silhouette of a giant mountain looms, with snow still present where weeks earlier it too became a place of tragedy, scene of a fatal air crash. Time to go. I’ve booked a cabin overlooking the ocean hoping to enjoy the view but it won’t be, because it’ll be 10.10pm, and I’ve had no dinner, only a quick lunch and the first interview was at 9.30pm, later than the others on this long week when a chief reporter said they too “hate the early morning interviews.” Twice during the 45 odd minute drive to New Plymouth street lights from small towns in the distance seem like approaching car lights, illusions, eyes tiring, itching, then the realisation: could be fatigue.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Investigate Mar 05: DOWN FOR THE COUNT

The heavyweight courtroom title fight of the world

As a journalist, one’s job is to remain impartial. But MARIA SLADE admits she’s never struggled so hard to retain her objectivity as she did covering the High Court hearing into heavyweight professional boxer David Tua’s bitter and expensive dispute with his former manager Kevin Barry, and former business manager Martin Pugh

I came to the Tua story cold. I knew little about the case, and even less about the venality of the professional boxing world. But it was decided in the newsroom that this was a news, as opposed to a sport, story, and I was dispatched to Auckland’s High Court. “Take what boxing people say with a grain of salt and keep your hand on your wallet,” joked a sports journalist colleague.
But this is New Zealand. The David Tua/Kevin Barry partnership, albeit now soured, was kiwi sporting salt-of-the-earth. The dirty dealings of the boxing ring had surely no more taken hold here than the Mafia had.
One look at the way Barry and his cohort Martin Pugh had dressed to come to court and I realised I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Bleached and greased hair, gold medallions, winkle-picker brogues with white socks and shirts more suitable for a night out clubbing. If they’d wanted to portray the image of wily, slimy creatures that had crawled out from beneath boxing’s nasty underbelly, they were going the right way about it.
Contrast this with the Tua entourage. David Tua and his cousin-turned-manager, former rugby and league star Inga Tuigamala, turned up each morning like five-year-olds on the first day of school. Neatly pressed in business shirts and ties atop black ie-faitagas (formal skirts worn by Samoan men), they sat through every minute of the proceedings. At their sides were their smartly dressed wives, and constantly surrounding them was a guard of friends, family members and boxing comrades. Supporters came and went as the week wore on. David Tua long ago won the public’s hearts and minds in what it perceived as his greatest fight.
Baby-faced, he told the court he was “just a fighter” and that Kevin Barry attended to every other detail of his professional boxing life. “You rely on your manager so you can just fight. I signed things exactly as they were put in front of me. Kevin was my trusted manager.”
David Tua said Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh had a plan. “They talked about a company, but I didn’t know what that was all about.”
What that was about was the trio’s Exclusive Management Agreement which states the company, Tuaman Inc, is owned 50% by David Tua, and 25% each by Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh. Tua was under the impression Tuaman Inc was his company. So was company accountant Jennie Grant. “I was led to believe that the company was David Tua’s, and only his,” she told the court. “For that reason alone the books I was trying to keep were misconceived.”
The boxer described the day in April 2001 when he went with Martin Pugh to look at the asset at the heart of the dispute – the multi-million-dollar, 51 hectare beach front property at Pakiri, north of Auckland. “I thought it was heaven, it reminded me of home in Samoa. Right away I wanted to buy it. I wanted it for myself and my family. I could see myself retiring there and growing a bit of taro.” Tua said Pugh told him to buy it through Tuaman Inc for tax purposes. “He said he was trying to protect me. But I never knew how that was supposed to work.”
The Pugh and Barry camp argue through their shares in Tuaman Inc they own equivalent slices of Pakiri, and that the trio’s plan had always been to invest Tuaman Inc funds in property.
David Tua maintains there was no talk of Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh buying the property with him. “There was never a ‘me and you’ or a ‘we’ll buy it’. The conversation was about the land being bought for me.”
As he spoke to the court I thought, can a man who earned millions of dollars by knocking people out really be that naïve, or is this beguiling innocence a great act?
Trying to remain objective, I also thought that perhaps there’s a certain style one becomes accustomed to living in Las Vegas, and this could explain the impression of Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh. After all they move in the sorts of circles where people keep tigers as pets. Then Barry and Pugh opened their mouths.
Throughout his lengthy cross-examination by David Tua’s lawyer Tony Molloy QC, Martin Pugh was petulant and argumentative. He sat virtually with his back to the lawyer and refused to look at him. At times he patronisingly repeated his replies syllable by syllable as if Molloy was unable to understand them. Kevin Barry was defiant. Both frequently attempted to hammer home a point by talking on and over their cross-examiner. The irritated Molloy raised his voice on more than one occasion, and at one point shouted at Barry: “Will you answer the questions I ask and be quiet the rest of the time!” To which Barry cheekily replied: “I’ve never seen you so angry.” Tony Molloy later remarked, “You have more soliloquies in you Mr Barry than Shakespeare.”
A lot of what Martin Pugh said was nonsense.
Molloy questioned Pugh closely on what he knew of his responsibilities as sole director and therefore the board of Tuaman Inc. Tony Forlong, the accountant Tua hired in July 2003 as the relationship between boxer and managers dissolved, had earlier given evidence that Martin Pugh was “well out of his depth” in running a company. He needn’t have bothered. It was a truth Pugh revealed all by himself as Molloy’s cross-examination progressed.
Pugh disputed the court-appointed accountants’ calculation that between 2002 and 2004, he and Kevin Barry respectively took $1.4 million and $1.2 million out of Tuaman Inc. The QC queried him about the absence of signed and audited accounts for Tuaman Inc for those years. Molloy asked him if he’d had alternative accounts prepared by professionals of a comparable stature to the court-appointed ones, to support his argument.
Pugh claimed that he had but that the court would not allow him to produce them.
Martin Pugh: “The figures I put in front of the court I provided to Price Waterhouse Coopers for their validity check which this court has ordered me not to refer to.”
Tony Molloy: “Where are the accounts? I’m not asking you about validity checks, whatever they are”
Later in the exchange he asserted that no professionally prepared and audited accounts were done because “taxation is decided by the shareholders of the company. The court-appointed accountants have taken the view of undoing three years of methodology of accounting the company followed.” Molloy was moved to remark that it was a stance every New Zealand company would love to take.
When Tony Molloy asked him if he’d ever taken expert tax advice he replied yes, from myself. When then asked what qualified him to provide such advice, there followed a long discourse on how there’s a simple principle involved of paying a percentage of the company’s income in tax, and standard tax return forms are available on the internet. Pugh claimed he adopted a “no harm, no foul” policy with the IRD.
Kevin Barry’s knowledge of company law was little better.
Tony Molloy: “You poured scorn in your brief on the idea that David Tua didn’t understand about shares in the company. What I would like to know is whether you understand. The impression I get from your affidavits is that you think a 25% shareholding in a company entitles you to 25% of the company’s income and 25% of its profit. Is that what you think?”
Kevin Barry: “Yes that’s right.”
The proceedings came down to credibility. It was clear Tuaman Inc was owned half by David Tua and a quarter each by Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh, and that Pakiri was owned by Tuaman Inc. The nexus of the Tua case was the legal principle of express trust – that David Tua had conferred trust on Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh to buy the land on his behalf. The heart of the Barry and Pugh argument was that this had never been put in writing – indeed, it had never even been expressed in those terms.
Martin Pugh’s questionable accounting was therefore not directly relevant to the issue of who owns Pakiri, but it served to highlight the kind of person before the court.
As such, his habit of forging signatures and creatively moving Tuaman Inc funds around were central to their case.
Martin Pugh admitted to Tony Molloy that he had forged signatures on at least two occasions. Once was when he forged Tuaman company accountant Jennie Grant’s signature on a Companies Office document. On another occasion he ‘cut and pasted’ middleweight boxer Maselino Masoe’s signature on to a fight promotion agreement.
The admissions came with no apparent shame. “I received no benefit,” Pugh said. “In closing,” he said grandly, and tried to raise the saga of Prime Minister Helen Clark signing an art work she had not created. Presiding judge Justice Williams cut him off.
Another incident raised by Tony Molloy went to the heart of Martin Pugh’s credibility. In December 2001 around $925,000 was transferred from Tuaman Inc to a company in Vanuatu called Sports Tech set up by Richard Gregory, a friend of Pugh’s. Some of that money was used to set up debit cards for Pugh, his partner Sally Cross, Kevin Barry and his wife, and others.
The sum remaining was around $809,000. The next month $809,000 was transferred back to Auckland to the Baron and Lunar Trust, a family trust associated with Sally Cross. Sally Cross then paid off business debts amounting to $809,000. Martin Pugh conceded the matching amounts looked strange, but said there was nothing “sinister” about it. He claimed he had 200 pages of documents to explain the deal, which he would present at a future trial. “Once you see the documents it will make sense to the court. I do not wish to play my hand in regard to that.”
Martin Pugh variously described the steps in the transaction as a loan, a bond, and then a guarantee. Molloy put it to him that this story was a cover-up for the misappropriation of funds from Tuaman. He denied it.
David Tua told the court he had “a funny feeling” about Martin Pugh. He said it was Kevin Barry’s idea to involve him. “He (Kevin) said he was a smart busi-nessman, and could be the ideal guy to manage the finances and make investments for me. I trusted Kevin. He really wanted Marty on board, so I gave in.”
In his closing address, Tony Molloy said: “Having seen and heard Pugh and his admissions of forgery and lying, and his disdain for the laws of the land that ordinary conscientious citizens regard as an obligation to observe, let alone company directors, it is not at all surprising that Mr Tua didn’t like Mr Pugh.”
Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh fought back hard on the credibility battlefield. They claim it was the Tua camp which was planning to shaft them. The Tuas came to the management duo in January 2001 wanting changes to the EMA, such as the inclusion of a clause allowing David Tua to get a lawyer’s approval before any contract relating to his affairs was concluded. “Unbeknown to Kevin Barry and I, David Tua with his parents and their lawyer were plotting since September 2000 (the Lennox Lewis fight was in November 2000) to terminate the EMA and deprive Tuaman Inc and Kevin and I of our shares and substantial earnings,” Pugh said in his brief of evidence. “No wonder David Tua performed so poorly in losing his World Title Fight against Lennox Lewis,” Barry said. “He must have been feeling guilty as hell.”
They also claimed there were no missing Tua millions, that David Tua had spent it all, and in fact he owes Tuaman Inc. “David told us that he did not want his family, or the family solicitor or his Church, knowing how much money he had as they would have spent it all and that’s a fact (in the end the family and David spent it all anyway),” Kevin Barry states in his brief.
Martin Pugh claims David Tua’s now wife, Robina Sitene, gave the government an old address so she could continue to collect welfare while living with and being well supported by the boxer. “David would get request from Bina or his family all the time, and I mean all the time, to pay bills,” he said.
Jennie Grant sees matters another way. She told the court Kevin Barry and Martin Pugh simply helped themselves to Tuaman funds. In contrast she said David Tua had to come to her for every small amount of money he needed. “How degrading, that man who had earned millions, doesn’t even have his own money.”
Martin Pugh and Kevin Barry allege that matters deteriorated to the point of a High Court hearing because of “women’s scorn”.
“The only conclusion that I can see is that it now seems to be about Jennie Grant, Robina Sitene and their need to “beat him” (Martin) at something, I don’t know what, and trying to justify their belief that David still had millions that he hadn’t spent,” Kevin Barry said.
“I was adamant that this huha had arisen because of Jennie’s sacking and Bina’s finding out that she couldn’t get her hands on David’s money (because he and his family had spent it).”
And so the personal insults flew. The Tuas no doubt had plenty they would have liked to fling back, but they didn’t. Not once.
The court will no doubt decide on sound legal principles who the rightful owner of Pakiri is. Having sat through the week-long hearing, I have a firm view of who morally should win this most colourful of bouts.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 12, 2006

Investigate Archives: Dateline Tsunami

FEB 05
DATELINE PHUKET, TSUNAMI +48hrs

Our coverage of the new millennium’s worst disaster begins in the words of volunteer aid worker Hatairat Estrella Montien:

I was in Bangkok when the tsunami struck. An announcement was made on television requesting translators to assist with foreign tsunami victims. I can speak Thai, English and Spanish, so I sent a request to Phuket Air for myself, (I am a 27-year-old Thai woman), and my Dutch friend, Daniel Van Geijlswijk, who speaks several European languages, saying that we would like to help out at the disaster area. Phuket Air gave us free tickets.

We arrived in Phuket last Tuesday evening and were taken by the Tourist Police to work in their local station. We did not want to stay in the accommodations provided at the Tourist Police as it was inconvenient to get to the Town Hall, so we stayed in Phuket Town, paying our own way.
On Wednesday, we went to the Town Hall and were told that they needed help in Khao Lak, Phang Nga, the primary disaster area. We went there in a car with journalists and another two men who volunteered to help in the rescue effort. Anyone who had a car came to transport victims and volunteers. Many people also supplied food and drinking water.
It took us about two hours to arrive in Khao Lak. It was devastated. Almost nothing was left. The tsunami had carried a large military ship from the ocean, one mile inland. It had torn houses apart and overturned cars. Thousands of coconut trees had been uprooted.
At Khao Lak station, I went with the international diving team to look for bodies. There were five scuba divers, and six or seven helpers. They came from Phuket, most working as teachers at Dulwich International School. Two of them had been diving in Ocean Plaza in Phuket the day before to recover bodies from the basement supermarket. I accompanied them to translate English to Thai since they were working with a Thai rescue team to recover bodies.
We arrived at the Sofitel Magic Lagoon Hotel around 2 p.m. This hotel was once the most beautiful I had ever seen in. They had one of the biggest swimming pools in Asia, with a large ship moored in the swimming pool serving as a bar. It was totally destroyed.
Everything on the first floor was damaged, ruined and broken. It was impossible to imagine how a person could have survived if he or she were caught inside.
There were a few underground rooms that divers needed to clear. We started with a small room next to the beach which used to be a storage room where chemical tanks and pumps were operated by technicians.
Our divers Peter Denton and Hugo Jones went in, after we checked with an engineer the exact location of the equipment in that room for safety reasons. They found one foreigner’s body blocking the entrance. We did not have water pumps so we used buckets until the water reached a level that would allow the divers to enter. It took one hour of manual work, bucket by bucket.Some rooms were too unsafe to enter as the chemical tanks had exploded.
The water level in the smaller room was lower, allowing the divers to remove bodies. Since the corpses had been submerged in water for several days, they had doubled in size, making it harder to take
them out.
I did not want to see the bodies, but I had to be there to translate. When I first saw the dead, apart from the smell, I was OK, not having had enough time to think about it.
The first body we removed was a foreign lady who must have been swept in by the tsunami. We finally took the body out but our diver could not go in again to search as the water had risen to the original level. We checked other rooms, and called it quits for the day at 6 p.m.
On the way to the car we had to walk by corpses that the rescue team had retrieved from hotel rooms. Even though they were wrapped in white cloths, the unforgettable smell was mind-numbing. As soon as I got in the car I could no longer speak. I had pretty much handled it when I was working without time to reflect on the circumstances.
We picked up our friends, Dan and Jaroen at the Khao Lak Information station. They had been helping there while I was working with the diving crew. It took a long time to get back to Phuket as the traffic was very bad. There were a lot of rescue cars, tractors and ambulances. Many volunteers had been there to help the victims who by now had virtually nothing left.
We arrived in Phuket around 8 p.m. and I said goodbye to the dive crew. Debbie, a coordinator, gave me a big hug and asked me if I were prepared to help again the next day. At first I did not answer, but smiled, and finally said I would go back.
At that moment I had mixed feelings; I wanted to be there as much as I hated it. Yet I was willing to give my time and energy since I knew that my assistance would make their job much easier. Yet it was so hard to think
about returning.
The next day, Peter Hamilton picked us up at 7 a.m. from our hotel. We collected water pumps and other equipment. At first I thought they would give us only equipment, but when we arrived, they had a full team of 12 local workers ready to go with us. They questioned me about the situation. I did not tell them much, only saying that they needed to put on masks and gloves when they arrived.
The previous day’s diving crew was told by doctors not to return to the water because of potential infection and disease. So we used a different strategy. Instead of having divers, we pumped all the water out and used a rescue team to recover the bodies.
We went back to the small, submerged room. A Thai man in his late 40s told me that he had been looking for his missing brother who normally worked in this room as a technician. He told me his brother wore a dark blue t-shirt and pants. That was exactly the same outfit worn by a dead body that was stuck inside.
The Blue Canyon staff got two water pumps running. The rescue team arrived and helped us look for the body in the water. They tried to use their camera to search in the room. After 20 minutes, the water was at a level where we could see clearly. As I served as the intermediary for the diving team, the rescue team showed me the image of another body in the room. Maybe they forgot that, I was, after all was not a professional, just a girl, as they showed me the most terrifying image I have ever seen: the rotten foot of a dead body.
I wanted to cry.
We finally moved the body out. The victim was the Thai technician that his brother had been looking for. It was finally over. They wrapped up the body and took it away.
I had a little accident. While they were pumping the water out, I was trying to help dig the place for water to run in to the sea. I fell down when carrying my equipment and twisted my left ankle. The crew went to get the water out from the sailing boat in the swimming pool (the pool bar); there were no bodies there. There were a few other spots where we pumped out water, but I did not see much as I could not really walk by then. I waited for the crew upstairs. There were a few people from the hotel management team, engineers, military crews from government and the families of missing people.
I talked to a woman named Prapaipan, who was looking for her young daughter, Thanyamath, who worked as the front desk manager at the hotel. She sat and cried constantly. She held a poster bearing her daughter’s photo and told me that she wanted to stay until she found her. She asked me what the crew would do next. She was still hoping to find her daughter somewhere.
I was deeply troubled. My mother would have done the same if she lost me. She would have hoped until the last minute that I would still be alive if she could not find my body.
Later a relative came and tried to persuade Prapaipan to go home since there was nothing much she could do there. First she refused to leave, but when the family member explained to her that she was stressing us out because she was crying all the time, she finally agreed to wait at her house.
I hope that this short account tells more about the situation. If you have not made any donation, please do not hesitate. They all need your help.
As much as I want to tell more about what I have been doing for these five days, I cannot bear to. One thing I have learned is that life is too short and good deeds matter. At the end, we all die.
(With Daniel Van Geijlswijk and Simon Osborne)

DATELINE SRI LANKA, TSUNAMI +SEVEN DAYS
By RAVI R. PRASAD
Nishanthan is barely two years old. He cannot walk because of a deformity in his waist. The child sits on the uneven sand under one of the thousands of makeshift shelters provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In spite of his handicap, Nishanthan survived. It was a miracle. His able-bodied parents and siblings were swept away by the killer wave that claimed lives of some 38,000 people in the island nation of Sri Lanka.
“All he does throughout the day is cry,” said 60-year-old Jayaratnam, a neighbor who is now taking care of Nishanthan in the welfare camp. “He keeps saying, ‘Amma, Amma,’ crying out for his mother. He doesn’t know that his mother will never come back.”
When the giant ocean wave hit, Nishanthan was seated in a plastic tub and his mother was bathing him. His fisherman father had gone to see his boat tied at the pier. The family lived along the coast at Kucchuvely village in the eastern Trincomalee district.
Jayaratnam’s wife, Sellamma, had gone to fetch some curd from Nishanthan’s mother and had seen the child. A few minutes after Sellamma returned home, the tsunami hit the coast.
Jayaratnam and Sellamma hugged a coconut tree and survived, but their two children were washed away. In the neighborhood, Nishanthan’s family was not so lucky. They perished.
When the water cleared out after half an hour, Jayaratnam heard the child crying. He spotted the basin perched on a coconut tree. The waves had thrown the plastic basin up, and it landed on the tree between the leaves. Jayaratnam climbed the tree and brought Nishanthan down. The boy did not even have a scratch.
When Jayaratnam moved with his wife to the welfare camp, he brought Nishanthan along. There was nobody to look after the disabled child, and the couple thought it was their responsibility to take care of him.
Living under a tent, sleeping on mats with a couple of bed sheets and pillows, the family of three now depends on handouts given by district officials and aid agencies. The only toy that Nishanthan has is a bucket with a lid, provided by Oxfam.
Now couple is finding it difficult to take care of the two-year-old. They are too old to bring up the child. So they have decided to send him to an orphanage. “I don’t have any income, and the needs of a growing child are far too much for me to meet,” said Jayaratnam. “My wife is suffering from arthritis, so she cannot take care of the baby.”
On Saturday Jayaratnam went to an orphanage in Trincomalee town to leave the child there. It was a harrowing experience both for him and the child. The two traveled for hours, half the time Jayaratnam carrying the child and walking because the roads are bad and no public transport is available.
Several aid agency vehicles whizzed past and Jayaratnam tried to hitch a ride, but none of them stopped. Some of them did not even have anyone other than the driver. As Jayaratnam came closer to the town, an aid agency vehicle gave him a ride in a pickup truck.
Almost two hours after he had left the camp, the man and the child reached the orphanage.
“Good that you have brought the child here,” said the matron of the orphanage, as she asked Jayaratnam to wait for a senior official. “I cannot admit the child, it has to be decided by the warden and some procedures have to be followed.”
After an hour-long wait, the warden-cum-manager of the home turned up. He complained about how he had to wait for the local government official to get food stamps for children in the orphanage.
“We cannot take the child,” said the manager, handing over a printed form to Jayaratnam. “Please fill this up, get the signatures of the Gram Sewaka (village officer), Divisional Secretary, officer of the child probation department and a relative.”
The officer told Jayaratnam that unless he got these signatures — and, most important, the death certificate of Nishanthan’s parents — the orphanage cannot accept the child.
“Where will I get the death certificates?” asked Jayaratnam. “Everyone in his family is dead. Who will inform the registrar?”
Determined to get Nishanthan a place in the orphanage, the man walked another mile to the office of registrar of birth, deaths and marriages. The office was closed for the weekend. “To get the death certificates, I need to contact the Gram Sewaka,” he said. “God knows if he survived or was killed.”
The government has banned adoption of tsunami orphans. If someone complains that Jayaratnam has kept the child, the government could take action against him.
With fear of police arresting him for sheltering Nishanthan, the old man returned to the camp walking all the way.
“Ever since the government has banned adoption, we have been flooded with requests to admit more and more orphans,” said Vyasa Kalyansundaram, a trustee of Sivananda Tapovanam children’s home. “How can the government expect an orphan child to run around and get signatures and death certificates of parents?”
Orphanages are willing to expand and take in more children, but the government rules need to be changed. “The government banned adoption without thinking about the plight of orphans. They need to change the rules for admitting children to orphanages. Many of these rules need to be scrapped,” Kalyansundaram said.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International

DATELINE MECCA, TSUNAMI +SEVEN DAYS
By ARNAUD de BORCHGRAVE
The killer wave that swallowed tens of thousands of Muslims was an act of Allah designed to punish the Christians. So went the convoluted logic of some Muslim imams in recent sermons from Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian territories.
If it weren’t for the diligent monitoring of Muslim clerics by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Americans would be in the dark about the outpourings of dangerous drivel fed to devout Muslims gathered in mosques for Friday prayers. Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajiid explained God’s tsunami punishment of Christians stemmed from “the Christian holidays [that] are accompanied by forbidden things, by immorality, abomination, adultery, alcohol, drunken dancing and revelry. A belly dancer costs 2,500 pounds a minute and a singer costs 50,000 pounds an hour, and they hop from one hotel to another from night to dawn.
“Then they spend the entire night defying Allah. ... At the height of immorality, Allah took revenge on these criminals. ... Allah struck them with an earthquake. He finished off the Richter scale. All nine levels gone.”
In the same vein, Sheikh Mudeiris, at a Palestinian Friday sermon in Gaza, said, “When oppression and corruption increase, the law of equilibrium applies. I can see in your eyes you are wondering what is the ‘universal law of equilibrium.’ This law is a divine law. If people are remiss in implementing God’s law and in being zealous and vengeful for His sake, Allah unleashes his soldiers in action to take revenge.”
In Saudi Arabia, one of last year’s measures to counter mosque-generated violence was a ban on imam’s using the word “jihad,” or holy warrior. But the content hadn’t changed much without the banned word. Saudi cleric ‘Aed Al-Qarni told the worshippers, “Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered. This is the path to victory.” He was reacting to the death of a brother “killed by the brothers of apes and pigs, the murderers of the prophets.” In case there was any doubt, he was referring to the Jews of Israel.
He then deplored lamented the lack of Muslim backbone: “One billion two hundred million nobodies. We are incapable of taking action, of being useful, of harming the Jews. The most people do today is to verbally protest over the TV channels or to demonstrate. What is the use of this? ... We must sacrifice people like Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, and Ahmad Yassin, and thousands of others. Houses and young men must be sacrificed. Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered. This is the path to victory, to shahada and to sacrifice.”
Imam Al-Qani went to explain the “idolatrous” people of Vietnam, Cambodia and South Africa, “nations with no calling or divine law make sacrifices ... in people, blood and souls. All the more reason we should too, the nation of Islam.”
Saudi clerics have also urged Iraqis to resist “the American occupation of Iraq.” They can urge jihad without the proscribed word for holy war. Saudi Sheikh Fawzan Fawzan said God’s unlisted number informed him the tsunami was punishment for homosexual behavior and fornication over Christmas, even if the victims are Muslims. “All that’s left for us to do,” he said, “is to ask for forgiveness. We must atone for our sins, and for the acts of the stupid people among us. ... We must fight fornication, homosexuality, usury, fight the corruption on the face of the Earth, and the disregard of the lives of protected people.”
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

DATELINE WASHINGTON, TSUNAMI +TEN DAYS
By ROLAND FLAMINI, Chief International Correspondent
WASHINGTON, (UPI) — The Asian relief effort for the tsunami disaster mobilized quickly and massively and, led by Japan, generated a major share of the global aid. The Arab world, by contrast, has lagged behind, even though the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, was the hardest hit, suffering some
100,000 deaths.
Middle East media commentators have been scathing in their criticism of Arab lack of generosity and public concern. They point out that the combined pledges from the Middle East and the Gulf of around $100 million amount to a fifth of Japan’s single pledge of $500 million. Asian nations — partly because of their proximity to the disaster zone — were the first to provide logistical and emergency help. Immediate aid on the ground from Arab nations, such as doctors, nurses, and engineers has been largely and conspicuously absent.
South Korea and Taiwan have each committed $50 million in tsunami relief. As the major power in the region China has been criticized for holding back because its aid commitment to date is $64 million. But observers say that pledge probably represents about half its foreign aid budget. On Tuesday, King Fahd of the oil rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia ordered the country’s aid commitment tripled to $30 million, “in light of the size of the tragedy and the losses.” Among the other Gulf States, Kuwait’s pledge stands at $10 million, Bahrain at $2 million, and Qatar — said to be one of the wealthiest country in the world — at $25 million. Libya’s contribution is $2 million. But no other non-Gulf Middle Eastern country has so far made an appearance on published lists of leading contributors.
Saudi Arabia plans to raise money from the public with a telethon. But Arab media have expressed anger at the apparent indifference of their governments to the tragedy. One Saudi television talk show host remarked, “Many Arab viewers have become racist. Unfortunately, the tragedy that befell Asians has no effect on many of them.”
In Kuwait, the newspaper Al Qabas created controversy by calling on Kuwait’s leadership to live up to its obligations. The special link between Kuwait and the stricken area is that Southern Asia supplies the super rich Gulf state with much of its domestic and manual labor force, and this — Al Qabas argued — was a good reason why Kuwait and its Gulf neighbors needed to be doing much more. “We have to give them more; we are rich,” the paper’s editor-in-chief, Waleed al-Nusif was quoted as saying in the New York Times Wednesday. “The price of oil doubled, so we have no excuse...They built Kuwait, and they raised our children.”
Several experts are harshly critical of Arab governments, and particularly of the Gulf states, for not being more forthcoming. “Where’s the brotherly Islamic love?” observes Middle East specialist Judith Kipper at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s the usual story of not being able to separate rich Arabs from their money. They give what Islam says they’re supposed to give, and that’s it.” One problem, Kipper says, is that “there’s no concept of civil society.”
But within the Gulf states some private donors argue that the closure of several major charitable organizations as part of the war on terror has undermined the spirit of giving, or has made it harder to find institutions to accept donations.
It is also true that while other religions have mobilized to collect relief contributions, Islamist preachers have cast the tsunami as a manifestation of divine wrath at the decadence, nudity, and immorality of now devastated tourist resorts as Phuket Island and Sumatra. This approach, preached in the mosques Friday, is said to have introduced a certain ambivalence into helping the victims.
There are also political differences. Many analysts believe tsunami aid could have a deep influence on the pattern of international relationships in Asia. The Bush administration is hoping that lavish U.S. generosity will improve America’s image in the region, and even beyond it. Japan, China, and Australia ($764 million in long term aid) are also using tsunami relief as a political tool to increase regional clout. Arab countries were not as drawn to the influence game in Asia. As a result, Arab sources point out, their pledges are not calculated to have political impact.

DATELINE PARIS, TSUNAMI +14 DAYS
By UWE SIEMON-NETTO
UPI Religious Affairs Editor
How can postmodern man — a doctrinally indifferent species, as Cardinal Paul Poupard defines him — react adequately to the deadliest natural calamity in recorded history? Almost mindlessly, television anchormen in Europe speak of the tsunami disaster’s “apocalyptical proportions,” although they seem to know little of the Book of Revelation or the Old and New Testaments’ “little apocalypses,” such as the one in the Gospel of Luke:
“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26),Only Pope John Paul II, so close to the grave himself, seems to have found the appropriate words when he commended the victims — at least 120,000 as we speak — and their next of kin to the love of God.
What else is there to say, unless of course the brightest lights in Protestant theology knocked at the doors of the world’s television studios demanding to be allowed to explain to the perplexed what should be Protestantism’s greatest asset?
Words like these might be fitting: What you have been witnessing in the last days circumscribes the chasm between a grotesque contortion of God’s face and the “Deus revelatus” — the true God revealed in Christ.
The ex-Christian “homo indifferens,” of whom Cardinal Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, spoke recently in Belorussia, is in reality a religious ignoramus. He knows nothing of the faith of his ancestors, a faith that made them build cathedrals and write stirring oratorios
He is therefore unequipped to dialogue with other faiths at a time when this has become indispensable due to the massive influx of Muslims into Europe. For as Michael Weninger, a senior Austrian diplomat and
religious affairs adviser to the European Commission, insists: “Between religious illiterates no dialogue is possible.”
The same applies even more urgently to the task of explaining God’s presence in the light of the tsunami tragedy. Theodicy, the defense of God against the charge that he either wills evil in this world or is powerless against it, has always been one of the most difficult undertakings for people of faith.
But unless theologians return to the very core of Christian doctrine — that precisely by being weak and nailed to a tree God prevails in his cosmic struggle against evil — they will never succeed in this endeavor.
That this cosmic struggle is well underway seems evident to most lay people observing current events, though not to modernist theologians denying the existence of Satan. And of those, there are plenty especially in Germany where batch after batch of new theologians keeps crawling out of the Black Forest, as the saying goes.
Klaus Berger, Heidelberg University’s primary New Testament scholar, estimates that a mere 2 percent of his colleagues consider biblical texts true. Why does Berger belong to that tiny minority? Because, he says, the Gospel writers were willing to be martyred for their stories. “You don’t accept martyrdom for something you yourself have invented.”
The cross — or rather, the crucifix — is the most powerful antidote against evil, natural or otherwise, which supports the position of the defenders of icons in the perennial iconoclast controversies throughout church history.
The Rev. Rolf Sauerzapf, until recently dean of chaplains of Germany’s paramilitary border guards, used to take his troopers in the formerly communist East, to Catholic or Lutheran churches featuring the crucified Christ, in contrast to the starker sanctuaries of other denominations, which only display the empty cross.
“What is this?” the soldiers raised in an atheist environment asked. “This is our God,” Sauerzapf answered. “Instinctively, they understood that this was the Immanuel, the God with us — suffering with us,” he later related.
A special breed of pastors is needed at a time when Europeans have been deprived of any knowledge of God for two or even three generations and when, at the same time, “people are filled with longing (for God),” according to the European Commission’s Weninger.
The destruction of the family, where 90 percent of all education takes place, has led to the prevailing ignorance of and indifference to religious matters, writes Peter Hahne, Germany’s most popular television anchorman.
“This is why faithful clergymen have become so eminently necessary,” says the Rev. Michael Stollwerk, senior Lutheran pastor of the Protestant and Catholic cathedral of Wetzlar near Frankfurt, whose Christmas services were better attended this year than any in his memory: “On Christmas Eve there were 1,800. On Christmas Day there were another 1,800, and on the following day there were still 600. I have never seen this before.”
An astounding number of these worshipers were young. “Many were kids to whom I had become a substitute father or grandfather in confirmation class. Then they joined — or will join — our youth groups,” Stollwerk says. “And then we’ll have them hooked; then they will no longer be indifferent to God. ”Then they will also grasp the Biblical answer to the God question raised by horrific events such as the tsunami catastrophe: “And he (God) will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4).

DATELINE ASIA, TSUNAMI +21 DAYS
By MARTIN SIEFF
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) — The horrendous tsunami catastrophe in South Asia has led to a rallying of human solidarity and compassion at its very best this week.
But after the dead are buried and the period of immediate grieving is passed, the fallout from the tragedy is likely to weaken major governments in the region and possibly exacerbate some bitter, long-running conflicts there.
The still young Congress government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in India is likely to reel for months if not years from the tragedy. Singh had only been in power for nine months when the catastrophe occurred and whatever culpability his government faces for the fatal lack of disaster preparedness along Indian’s coastlines should in justice be shared with the previous Hindu nationalist-led government of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Nevertheless, the catastrophe struck on Singh’s watch. And already hard questions are being asked in the Indian press about the two and a half fatal hours during which the government knew, or should have known, that huge tidal waves were racing westward across the Indian Ocean following the unprecedented earthquake of 9.0 on the Richter scale early Sunday morning below the ocean.
Almost as bad, there will now be the sense of an ill-starred fate hanging over Singh and his policies that marked a radical break from those of the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led government of Vajpayee.
A similar sense of ill-starred omens is likely to overshadow strongly pro-American President Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono across the ocean in Indonesia, where the death toll from the disaster was highest.
At least 80,000 people are now known to have died on the island of Sumatra alone. The eventual death toll could soar far above 100,000 on it. And the worst hit part of the giant island was the energy rich province of Aceh at its northern tip where guerrilla secessionist forces have been waging a fierce struggle for independence for years.
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, all thoughts of human conflict have been swamped by the colossal horrors inflicted by an uncaring Nature. But antennae of the people of Aceh have been honed to alertness by decades of what they regard as shameless exploitation of their riches by the old 32-year military dictatorship of President Suharto from 1966 to 1998. It would not take much to revive suspicions that aid was being given to other, more favored regions first or that the government was simply uncaring and incompetent in dealing with the huge scale of the catastrophe to stir up new resentments.
There is plenty of precedent in South Asia for natural catastrophes being the harbinger of wars and revolutions. The great Bengal famine of 1943 cost the lives of two to four million people. Historians agree the main cause of the huge death toll was a combination of complacency, incompetence and lack of compassion by British wartime officials who were criminally negligent in waking up to the scale of the disaster. But the immediate political result was to destroy Hindu-Muslim community relations in Bengal with many people in each community convinced the other one was hoarding food and deliberately increasing their suffering.
Within four years, Bengal was torn apart by ferocious Hindu-Muslim clashes at independence in 1947 that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The province remains divided between India and the independent Muslim nation of Bangladesh to this day.
Natural disaster triggered war and revolution again in the same area only a quarter of a century later. The inhabitants of the region, then known as East Pakistan, were convinced that the Pakistani government a thousand miles away made no effort to relieve their sufferings after between 300,000 to a million people were killed in a huge tidal surge caused by unprecedented cyclones in the Bay of Bengal in November 1970. Again, mass resentment quickly turned violent and led to a national liberation struggle that cost hundreds of thousands more lives against Pakistan until India intervened the following year and ensured the independence of the nation of Bangladesh.
Sri Lanka, a third nation heavy hit by last Sunday’s tsunamis, has long been rent apart by a bitter ferocious guerrilla-terror war waged by the Tamil Tigers. There too, the wrath of nature has temporarily drowned mere human hatreds. But whether the traumatic experience leads to a new era of moderation, compromise and goodwill or a renewal of old, bitter feuds has yet to be seen.
There is more recent precedent too for a terrible natural disaster catalyzing long festering resentment at an entrenched and incompetent government that was soon after swept out of office.
The great swathe of urban squalor and misery that sweeps crescent-like north of Istanbul and then eastward for 80 miles across the southern shore of the Black Sea is home to 10 million people. This usually forgotten region of Turkey briefly hit the international headlines in 1999 when the terrible Izmit earthquake killed 23,000 people.
The death toll was so horrendous because, as we noted in UPI Analysis at the time, developers had run up hundreds of shoddily built apartment blocks in defiance of building codes.
On Aug. 20, 1999, we warned in these columns, “The disaster may boost the appeal of Turkey’s Islamic fundamentalists at the expense of the government, ultimately threatening Turkey’s strong ties to the West. Turkey is a NATO member — the only Muslim nation.”
And sure enough, the anger and despair fostered by this event funneled a new wave of support to the Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan that propelled it to its landslide election victory in November 2002.
Singh in India and Yudhoyono in Indonesia will soon be made aware of how closely the survivors and relatives of the dead will be scrutinizing the record of their actions both before and after the unprecedented events of last Sunday.
However long they stay in power and whatever achievements they complete or attempt, from now on everything they do will be under the shadow of that judgment.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 12:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

INVESTIGATE ARCHIVE: MULLAHS, GUNS & MONEY

FEB 05
MULLAHS, GUNS & MONEY
We’re inside Al Qa’ida’s pacific hideaway

Prime Minister Helen Clark called it ‘a benign strategic environment’ and disbanded the strike wing of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, withdrawing our fighter jets from a commitment to defend Australia as well. But how benign is it really? What’s brewing just over our horizon that could cause New Zealand and Australia no end of trouble? We sent MATTHEW THOMPSON & photographer KATE GERAGHTY deep into rebel territory in the Philippines to find out

Finally the call comes. A US spook-pack will meet me at a red-light district restaurant. They consume only meatballs and beer, and we’re about to order another round when the embassy official gets edgy. “I think we’re being cased. There’s a guy out there on his cell phone who’s watching us,” he says, tilting his beer stein towards a man staring in from across the road.
The highest ranking of my hosts, sitting with his back to the windows, rolls his eyes.

“So what. They never spray us on the first night,” he says, not even turning around.
The official shakes his head. “I’m not comfortable with this.” He reminds everyone that it is only weeks since a Filipino terror cell working for Jemaah Islamiyah, perpetrators of the 2002 Bali bombing, got caught casing the fortified US embassy on Manila Bay, doing homework for a bomb attack.
The senior officer is still unimpressed. “My boys are outside. There’s no problem,” he says. A pair of hefty Filipinos drink coffee at a table on the pavement.
But Jim, a giant of a man who accompanies US Special Forces around the world in his work for American private security consultancy Dyncorp, stands up. “I’ll settle this,” he says.
Jim walks straight across the road and I glimpse a startled expression on the suspect’s face before he disappears behind the American.
When Jim turns to come back in the restaurant, the man is gone.
“He won’t be a problem,” Jim tells us.
With more beer and meatballs ordered, the officer turns the conversation to terrorism.
“How many guys did you lose at Bali? Almost ninety? I don’t know why you Aussies aren’t jumping up and down about Mindanao,” the officer says, referring to the large southern Filipino island where the bombers trained, and where I would soon be heading.
Another dinner companion, Bob, whom I’m told is “the most crucial guy you’ll meet on all this” (but who declines to reveal either his employer or line of work) talks about the government’s reaction to the “worst maritime terrorist disaster in history” – the sinking of the Superferry 14 in February last year by the Islamic Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).
“They lost over a hundred people on the Superferry and they didn’t give a damn. You wanna know why? Because the Philippines is ruled and owned by a handful of arseholes who couldn’t give a damn about folks who catch ferries. The average guy means nothing to them,” Bob says.
The meatballs arrive and Bob waits for the banter with the waitress to die down.
“I love this country. I could live the rest of my life here,” he says.
“So long as you’re not paid in Pesos,” Jim says.
“But I’m telling you nothing is going to change until there is a French-style revolution and they cut the heads off everyone who run this place,” Bob says.
He drinks his beer then looks at me.
“We’re doing what we can, but unless the countries from this region who have power in the region, and I’m talking Australia … unless you do a whole lot more to push the Filipinos into getting the bad guys, then the only thing that that’s going to get them moving is when they have a catastrophic attack right here,” Bob says.
Given the dangers of staying too long in the one spot, we switch to a bar where a Jim enlists a hostess to help demonstrate the flow of a battle.
“We came up this canyon and met the bad guys around here…” says Jim, hoisting the bar-girl’s breasts this way and that as the battle develops. Meanwhile Bob leans in, trying to talk to me amidst the crush
of female attention.
“You know, 9/11 was planned in this city,” he says, referring to the Manila days of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, al Qa’ida’s former operations leader who oversaw September 11, and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. This Western-educated pair of engineers (Muhammad studied in the US and Yousef in the UK) lived in Manila in the early 1990s, where they brainstormed a variety of terrorist strikes against US targets involving jetliners – abandoned or foiled prototypes of the sort of devastation that Sheikh Muhammad would eventually achieve.
The plans ranged from the 9/11-like ramming of hijacked explosive-laden planes into the Pentagon and nearby CIA headquarters to the Bojinka plot - where 11 American passenger jets would simultaneously explode en route to the US from airports in the Asia Pacific region. The plan also included a wave of church and business bombings and assassinations. When visiting Manila, Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II were to be killed, as was the then-president of the Philippines, Fidel Ramos.
Yousef had considerable expertise with explosives. He warmed up for the mass murder by stashing a small nitro-glycerine device on a Philippines Airline flight from Manila to Tokyo in December 1994. Yousef deplaned before the last leg of the flight, during which his bomb blew a hole in the fuselage, killing one, wounding eleven, and forcing an emergency landing.
However, al Qa’ida’s 11-plane plot came unstuck a month later when bomb-making chemicals caught fire in Yousef’s Manila apartment and the police attending found explosives and a computer with encrypted files that eventually yielded detailed plans for the Bojinka attacks. He was later caught in Pakistan and extradited to the US, where he is serving a 240-year sentence in a federal prison in Colorado. Unfortunately, Sheikh Muhammad stayed in circulation until 2002, when he was apprehended in Pakistan, languishing ever since somewhere in
US custody.
The Abu Sayyaf has long campaigned for Yousef’s release, threatening carnage if his incarceration continues and using hostages as bargaining chips. The US declines to negotiate.
Al Qa’ida’s claws are hooked deep into this country whose southern lands are closer to Darwin than Darwin is to Sydney. In the year Australia celebrated its bicentennial, 1988, Osama bin Laden co-founded al Qa’ida al-Sulbah (“the solid base”), and his brother-in-law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, moved to Manila. There he set up a number of trading companies and non-government organisations while taking control of several Muslim charities, including the Philippine branch of the International Islamic Relief Organisation.
Khalifa ensured that charity money flowed to militant groups as Filipino jihadists came home from the conflict in Afghanistan. Those who served abroad had transformed from parochial rebels into international jihadists, and with a little help from their friends, they transformed the Philippines from a country in which local wars were fought for local reasons into a new Afghanistan. Mindanao, home to the bulk of the Philippines’ five million Muslims, became a citadel of terrorism.
Khalifa financed the Islamist ambitions of Abdurajak Janjalani, an Afghan veteran from the island of Balisan off Mindanao’s southwestern tip. Janjalani started the Abu Sayyaf Group (the name means “bearer of the sword”), and courtesy of al Qa’ida’s largesse, Janjalani sent batches of fighters through religious indoctrination and military training at terrorist academies in regions of Mindanao held by the Philippine’s largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Army. The Abu Sayyaf then grew into the most hated pack of extremists in the Philippines, storming schools and hospitals, raping and murdering nurses, pulling fingernails from priests, beheading and enslaving Christians, bombing churches and ferries, and seizing tourists from resorts as far away as Malaysia. Battered by al Qa’ida-aided terrorist groups including the Abu Sayyaf, JI, and the MILF, the Philippines has for about fifteen years endured the kind of Islamic terrorism that has traumatised much of the West only since 2001.
In the later half of the 1990s, the MILF welcomed Jemaah Islamiyah to Mindanao. Members of the two groups had bonded during the Afghan war, often living and training together. As the International Crisis Group (ICG) reports in Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but Still Dangerous, Filipinos, Indonesians and other South East Asian jihadists stayed mainly in the camps of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan commander whose puritanical brand of Islam earned him the friendship of Osama bin Laden and considerable financial backing from Saudi Arabia. And as the ICG reports, many who later became notorious terrorists (including JI’s Bali-bombing strategist, Hambali, and Janjalani of the Abu Sayyaf), trained at a camp led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.
Janjalani named the Abu Sayyaf in his honour.
I’m sitting in the lounge room of MILF spokesman Eid Kabulu in his central Mindanao home when he tells me that he is one of “many hundred” Muslim guerrilla from Mindanao who travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for the fight against the “Russian menace”. The war was a time of solidarity between Islam and the West, he says. “Recall even that bin Laden was there and they were fighting side by side with the Americans and there was no quarrel at that time, but later on they quarrel.”
Kabalu says that many of the MILF’s Afghan sponsors, including Sayyaf, enjoyed power after the war as victorious mujahidin leaders, but “later on they were overthrown by the Taliban.” So the Filipinos came home to Mindanao, and brought JI with them.
The Philippines is a terrorist playhouse – a rugged wonderland of guns and machismo from its labyrinthine capital, Manila (population 10 million), to the feudal countryside where government control grows weak and much of the Muslim community ignores the rule of law, instead following a vendetta system known as “rido”. Rido necessitates blood money, payback killings, the targeting of relatives, and even attacks on the families of police should they try to intervene.
About 90 percent of the country’s 83 million-strong population are Catholic, and in fact Islam accounts for less than 5% of the population, but Mindanao is home to enough radicalized Muslims to have been home to a three decades-old insurgency going that has cost an estimated 120,000 lives. The MILF can field about 12,000 well-armed, well-trained guerrillas at the drop of a hat, and has tens of thousands more in reserve. Today an uneasy peace exists between the MILF, which denies links to JI and other terrorist groups, and the Filipino government: Under an agreement signed almost three years ago, the MILF is required to block the entry of wanted men into their communities, and to work with the authorities to pursue and apprehend fugitives inside its regions. The military and police, meanwhile, are required to submit to the insurgents their order of battle and the names of the hunted. But this is all just theory: almost three years later, the government has yet to even nominate its delegates to a Joint Action Group that will oversee the enforcement of law as called for by the ceasefire.
More to the point, the idea that the MILF and JI aren’t thick as thieves, and that any information given by the Filipino government would not immediately be passed on to terrorists is laughable, as shown during a 2000 government offensive when the army overran a joint JI-MILF training centre called Camp Hudaibiyah. What they found was a veritable graduate school for jihadists.
Courses ran for as long as three years, but shorter programs were available, including an 18-month special: “It consisted of three semesters, each six months, with two-week breaks at the end of the first and second semesters … practical explosives training covered familiarisation, identification, and handling of TNT, C-4, black powder, ammonium nitrate and RDX, detonating cord and detonators, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)”, according to the ICG report. The JI students were also embedded with the MILF in areas of greatest tension with government forces, so that they might benefit from “jihad exposure”, the report says. A witness at the trial of JI’s accused spiritual head, Abu Bakar Bashiyar, told an Indonesian court in December that he stood beside Bashir at Camp Hudaibiyah’s 2000 graduation ceremony of JI terrorists. In Collier’s report for the ICG, Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism and the Peace Process, he writes that “the men who trained or became instructors in Camp Hudaibiyah include many of the JI members most closely associated with the Bali bombings and other atrocities in Indonesia and the Philippines.”
Nevertheless, despite this glaring Exhibit A – Camp Hudaibiyah – and plenty of other evidence from arrests and corroborated admissions that the two groups have worked together on bomb attacks in the Philippines and Indonesia, and that joint training continues in remote camps, the government maintains that the MILF is not a terrorist organisation in order to maintain the fiction of a ceasefire. When guerrillas are caught or implicated in bombings, the government settles for the useful fiction that the guilty parties are from the MILF’s “lost
commands”, thereby excusing the organisation of responsibility and allowing the peace process to trundlealong. The government has even persuaded Washington to leave the MILF off its list of foreign terrorist organisations.
Observers such as the International Crisis Group and JI defectors have reported that as the Philippine military threatened Camp Hudaibiyah, JI retreated into a more remote, mountainous MILF region and set up a new camp known as Jabal Quba. But under the terms of a ceasefire signed in July 2003, government forces are barred from approaching Jabal Quba without prior permission from the MILF – though the rebels routinely
invite government officials and members of the press to come on three-day guerrilla-
supervised hikes to the Jabal Quba area, where up to 30 JI terrorists are reportedly training at any one time, according to Rohan Gunaratna.
“Mindanao is JI’s strategic base. As long as the camps are active, JI will replenish
itself,” says Gunaratna, a former principal investigator for the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch. Indeed, key to the MILF’s long-term ceasefire strategy might be seen in the very name Camp Hudaibiyah: In the early days of Islam, when the Prophet Muhammed lacked sufficient military force to take the town of Mecca from the Quarish tribe, he signed the Hudaibiyah Treaty, a 10-year mutual non-aggression pact. But within three years, the Prophet’s army had grown more than fivefold, so he slaughtered the Quarish men, enslaved the women, and seized the town. This theologically-justified technique of using a treaty to rebuild forces became known as a Hudna, and Hudaibiyah was its first application.
Mindanao is a threat to the world.
Mindanao is a sprawling, mountainous island, shaped like a leprous poo-dle that’s just been kicked in the rear. My plane flies over the rugged forests of the snout-like Zamboanga Peninsula on the island’s west and banks steeply to land at Zamboanga City, known as the City of Flowers due to its bougainvilleas and other distractions.
The predominantly Catholic seaside city also has a reputation for danger. Unfairly, according to locals quick to point out that no-one has been killed in a bombing for years (well, about two, which is a long time in the action-packed Philippines). And as for the menace of kidnap-for-ransom-groups (known as KFRGs), well, that’s a problem all over the country. Just don’t wander around at night and try to avoid routines. And maybe don’t visit the countryside, because of the bandits. (“You have bandits in Australia?”). Foreigners are told not to even trust the police near the labyrinthine Muslim ghetto of Rio Hondo, they say. Anyone could be an agent of the Abu Sayyaf, or in their pay. The people staring at you from every doorway and window will think you are rich, or work for a big company that will pay a ransom. Or that you are a US soldier. Or CIA.
One afternoon I walk through markets and find the usual smiles and calls of “Hey, Joe!” replaced by dead-eyed glares. Then I hear a man pass the word: “Military”.
Someone blew up a US soldier just outside Zamboanga City in 2002 – killed him and three locals at a side-street bar next to the joint US-Filipino training facility. When I land at the airport, a fit young American in casuals from my flight is met by a pick-up full of uniformed US soldiers. My guess is they’re whisking him out to base.
A large “caliber” pistol is used to put a photojournalist down nearby Jolo while I’m in Mindanao. One shot to the head as he takes sunset photographs.
I sit and watch Baslian’s peaks and ranges glimmer blue to black as the day fades from the outdoor bar of the grand and empty Lantaka Seaside Hotel in Zamboanga City. All along the horizon, Basilan’s peaks and ranges glimmer blue to black as the light fades. Pearl hawkers and sea gypsies on the beach climb back in their boats, some to cruise home across the strait. The barman serves icy bottles of San Miguel beer and talks about how good business was when Marcos held the country under martial law. The Muslim and communist rebellions were even worse then, but the hotels, restaurants, beaches and shops were packed with Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Americans, Swedes, and Australians, he says. Democracy brought political instability followed by Islamic terrorism and the kidnapping of foreigners. Now business is so bad that half the hotel is mothballed, with patronage only picking up when journalists flock to cover the latest Abu Sayyaf outrage out on
the islands.
Yet even in quiet times, the Armed Forces of the Philippines remains an important source of income for Zamboanga City, which hosts the headquarters of the military’s Southern Command, a.k.a. Southcom. The AFP divides the nation into three theatres, one for each of the Philippines’ major island groups (Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao), with Southcom handling military operations in and around Mindanao.
At Southcom’s helm is Lieutenant General Alberto Fernando Braganza. Braganza has only been on the job a couple of days when we talk, but his office is already well set-up, and he leads me past the leather sofa set and ornate mahogany furniture to admire his statue of the Blessed Virgin, a framed photograph of his first parachute jump, and various awards and citations. Mindanao is the largest of the three Philippine commands, so Braganza’s ten-month posting marks a distinguished end to a long career. Commissioned as an officer in 1972, he will retire in September this year. And if what Braganza tells me is correct, then Mindanao’s reputation for mayhem is also due to hang up its boots. Terrorism, rebellions, and lawlessness? Dead and buried, by and large.
The general commands 40,000 troops in the Philippines’ most volatile region – an area viewed worldwide as contested ground in the war on terror – and with every smile, every carefully selected reminiscence, every casual flex of the arm, he seems to project that all worry is unnecessary. Thus Braganza is piqued by warnings to avoid his domain. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as well as the US State Department, say they have information about terrorists planning attacks, possibly against coastal resorts, and recommend deferring all non-essential travel to Mindanao.
Braganza tells me that although “local cells” of JI are active in the Philippines, including those caught casing the US Embassy, such criminals have no future because “the people want peace”.
“It is really unfair to have this travel advisory not to go to Mindanao – it’s a very peaceful place,” Braganza says. I ask how he can say that when the Indonesian courts are full of JI members talking about their carefree student days in Mindanao learning the dos and don’ts of bomb-making and guerrilla warfare. I ask how his reading of the island’s peacefulness jells with the simple fact that large regions of Mindanao are held by JI’sallies and protectors, the MILF.
“We control all territories,” Braganza says, smiling. Once upon a time, Mindanao suffered from “the threat of terrorism, insurgency, criminality and lawlessness”, but today it is “very safe”, he says. And generally fine for tourism. Heck, even the four most wanted Abu Sayyaf commanders are taking advantage of the new Mindanao.
“They have been moving around. They are enjoying Mindanao.
That these fugitive sightseers have little to do but relax in sleepy backwaters or visit relatives on Basilan, shows that the military is “making great strides” in taming Mindanao. “Abu Sayyaf is a spent force. We have destroyed their will to fight, although to some extent there could be recruitment.”
“There has been no major incident for about two years now, except for the Superferry,” Braganza adds.
The Abu Sayyaf’s bombing of the Superferry 14 as it left Manila Bay bound for Zamboanga City killed about 130 people and is the Philippines’ worst ever terrorist outrage. I ask how this fits with the “spent force” theory.
“We are on top of the situation,” he says.
Reassuring news, provided we also ignore carnage in Mindanao’s Davao City, the Philippines’ largest metropolis after Manila. Braganza made his remarks in November last year, but bombs twice hit Davao City the year before, killing more than 40 and injuring about 170, the deadliest in a wave of bombings across Mindanao in 2003.
Still, Braganza assures me that Mindanao is mine to explore. “It’s very safe,” he says.
“But what about all the locals telling me I’ve got a 50/50 chance of making it if I go for a drive up into the mountains?” I ask.
Braganza scoffs. “No. Not at all. I go everywhere in Mindanao, and it is very safe.”
“OK, well, I’ll drive around then.”
Braganza smiles and leans forward. “Because you don’t know the area and might not find your way, I will have you escorted,” he says.
Five weeks after I interviewed General Braganza, a bomb exploded in a market at Mindanao’s General Santos City, a major tuna fishing port, killing 15 people and injuring about 70. The regional police chief said after the 12 December blast that he would keep an open mind about who might be the guilty party, because of the large number of rebel groups operating in the city. Filipino authorities are notorious for destroying evidence, sometimes ordering blast sites cleaned up before forensic crews are finished.
But perhaps this bombing will yield a greater amount of evidence than usual with the help of more methodical investigators – a senior officer of the Filipino Marines told me that the Australian Federal Police now have a presence in General Santos City. The Federal Police had not answered questions about this claim at the time this went to press.
Braganza proves as good as his word. I don’t feel in any danger whatsoever of getting lost touring Basilan. Not while sitting in the centre vehicle of a three Humvee convoy, cruising with the colonel responsible for mili-tary operations on the island, an army information officer, a plain clothes intelligence officer from the Filipino Marines, and a dozen or so troopers in full battle gear. With Rosary beads dangling from the rear-view vision mirrors, we cruise the mainly Muslim province, checking out paramilitary checkpoints, sites of notorious terrorist crimes (hospitals stormed and nurses dragged away to be raped and killed; Catholic schools raided with 53 students and staff dragged away; teachers tortured, raped, their breasts cut off), the lush mountains, far-flung combat bases, and other attractions.
The man in charge is Colonel Raymundo B. Ferrer, commanding officer of the 103rd Infantry Battalion. He talks me through the early stirrings of Basilan’s terrorist madness.
“We were hearing some things through the Afghan war, how some Muslims were recruited from the Philippines,” the colonel says. “After the Afghan war they have to come back. They’re jobless, but with training and ideology. The Abu Sayyaf Group emerged.”
Abu Sayyaf champions an Islamic state across the Basilan and the Sulu archipelago, but its rampages belie a strong profit motive. Ferrer says that waving the Islamic flag is itself just another money-making tool for the Abu Sayyaf. “They just have to use the word ‘jihad’ so they get support from Muslim countries. They are not like the Taliban,” he says.
Yet the Taliban and the Abu Sayyaf have some common friends. “Mindanao has al Qa’ida cells. ASG definitely had training from al Qa’ida,” Ferrer says.
Ferrer wears jungle fatigues for the island tour, but at night he sports an Elmo t-shirt. while his men pile the tables high with fried chicken, grilled fish, limes, rice, mangos, papayas, and beer.
Ferrer tells me the US approach has had better results than Germany’s earlier payment of US$25 million. The ransom was ostensibly for community development projects, but the terrorists threw a little around to beef up their popular support, and then invested in better weaponry.
“They bought speedboats with two outboard and two inboard motors – they could do 50 knots. Our boats could not keep up,” Ferrer says. “And the Abu Sayyaf are sea people, they know the sea like a highway.”
“The politicians raised bad memories of Americans fighting there when they colonised the Philippines one century ago, but that was just a smoke screen,” Ferrer says. “The truth is that this is a feudal country, and the reason that ASG were not finished off on Jolo and Tawi-Tawi is because the politicians like things to be backward. They are very rich from how things are and they do not want anything to change or to be developed. People will not question the status quo if they are not educated”. Ferrer says, then shifts in his chair and rests in his thoughts. If terrorists, insurgents, or anyone else wants to sneak up on the camp, now is the time, because the militia rock band starts rocking in one of the huts. Ferrer comes out of his reverie, and looks at me. “We are kept as a guerrilla force, you know. The government only gives us enough resources to remain as a guerrilla force, so that we are not too strong. I don’t know how long I can sustain the peace,” he says.
Cotabato City, half Christian, half Muslim, is a gunned-up frontier town of about 150,000; a transit point for terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, evacuees and rebels en route to the interior of the Philippines’ major southern island, Mindanao. “Wanted for Kidnapping” posters decorate sidings around Cotabato City, each showing twenty or so fugitive members from some of the Philippines’ multitudinous kidnap-for-ransom groups.
Police cradle M-16s as they patrol the town, given the region’s well-armed outlaws. Yet the situation the Cotabato City constabulary handle is rosy compared to their colleagues to the east around Davao City, where the communist New People’s Army frequently kill cops in ambushes and raids.
Stroll the Cotabato City streets and you will also see Government soldiers driving by in trucks and Humvees, part of the 6th Infantry Division which is headquartered beside the airport on the outskirts. The 6ID are the ones likely to be doing the shooting and the getting shot at during the occasional ceasefire violation.
A couple hours’ drive from Cotabato City will take the intrepid into what the army calls “MILF communities”, majority-Muslim regions in which able-bodied men are presumed guerrillas with ready access to serious firepower. In many of these areas, both the military and police would be inviting serious violence if they entered, so they don’t, even if General Braganza entertains a different story. Jemaah Islamiyah, on the other hand, is welcome.
Arrests, confessions, and raids have shown conclusively that the town has a JI problem, but only to those who want to believe. I attend a dinner for the International Monitoring Team – the multinational inspection force tasked with keeping both sides moving towards a peace deal - where the mayor of Cotabato City, Muslimin Sema, dismisses “the alleged presence of so-called terrorists”.
“This is a peaceful city,” says Sema, as he complains that the United States is holding up aid money until counter-terrorism is taken seriously. Sema is on the executive of the MNLF and holds substantial power over civil administration in the five majority Islamic provinces which were designated the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the 1996 peace agreement. The ARMM is kept afloat courtesy of a United Nations trust fund.
The next day Major Dickson Hermoso, who chairs the Government’s side of the Coordinating Committee for the Cessation of Hostilities, a ceasefire panel working through a peace process with the MILF, shows me a JI safe-house where the police found preparations for bio-chemical attacks – just another bland little building in a narrow street not far from his own home. “They like it here because it is a good neighbourhood,” he says.
The ceasefire chairman dresses his family with Kevlar when central Mindanao is in the mood to celebrate. Hermoso has already been shot a couple of times, not from the wild sky-firing at Cotabato City during Ramadan, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve, but in “engagements” with communist rebels elsewhere in the archipelago.
“I am friends with my God,” says Hermoso, smiling as he displays scars where bullets passed through his wrist and side without crippling damage.
Yet the Catholic Hermoso prefers that during festivities, his family’s faith not be similarly tested.
“With my kids we all wear Kevlar helmets and hide under a concrete roof, because my house was hit twice and once a bullet lodged in my bed,” Hermoso says. “It is illegal to shoot into their air, but there is not much the police can do to stop it, because when people see them coming, they just play hide and seek with their guns.”
And when Ramadan ends, the 4AM call to prayer of the Cotabato City muezzins has a distinctive percussive accompaniment.
As pleas to Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, and to His prophet Muhhamad wail across the still-dark tropics, jarring blasts from automatic weapons suggest that many believers are not yet in the mosques. The shooting continues for about 90 minutes.
In a van with blacked-out windows speeding through Maguindanao province towards the edges of Government control, the casually-dressed major draws a pistol from his picnic basket.
“I brought this because you are coming, and my boys also have guns,” he says, gesturing towards the plain-clothes pair up front. “Your white skin is an incitement, because to the Muslim you represent the infidel – the one who refuses to accept Allah.”
We drive through poor districts where people hang in doorways and under shade, waiting until sunset to break their Ramadan fasts, pull up at a ceasefire monitoring station at Buliok – a traditional MILF heartland currently enduring an army presence.
Government forces overran Buliok in 2003, using tanks, air-strikes and infantry to kill perhaps 100 guerrillas, and reportedly suffering a similar number of casualties.
Now the barangay looks like any other – tidy thatched houses lining the paths; kids shooting baskets on a pair of the Philippines’ ubiquitous backboards; hut-front stalls offering Coca-Cola and cigarettes.
Normal, except for the Philippines army jeep pulling up with “Armageddon” painted across the windscreen and its load of soldiers fanning out with their weapons. And normal except for the Local Monitoring Team (LMT) board stuck up showing cell-phone hotlines to call should the ceasefire come to an abrupt halt.
A chubby guy hired on to the government side of the LMT strolls over, but the MILF representatives are nowhere to be seen.
Hermoso walks me past the mosque to the edge of the Mindanao River, where we watch a constant run of boats moving passengers and goods. Many are piloted by young boys and some can be seen carrying pistols. Across the river a row of huts sit before light forest, with no one visible, nor any sign of human habitation. I have never before seen a collection of clean, empty buildings in the Philippines.
We had hoped to meet the guerrillas working for the Buliok LMT, but it turns out they are somewhere over the river.
“That is MILF territory,” Hermoso says.
“So can we cross the river? Go and talk to people over there?”I ask.
“No, not without prior arrangement with the MILF, or it would be a ceasefire violation,” Hermoso says.
“So how can anyone know what’s going on in MILF areas?” I ask.
“The IMT arranges visits as part of the peace process.”
“But if they’re arranged in advance with the MILF, won’t JI or Abu Sayyaf terrorists know to go away for the weekend, and pop back when the monitors are gone?”
“Yes, but this JI is not part of the problem or mandate of the IMT,” Hermoso says.
I remind Hermoso that the MILF has made the presence of terrorists in their camps a peace issue by inviting Australia and the US to join an IMT visit to a facility where scores of JI and Abu Sayyaf are known to have trained and strongly believed to continue training, Camp Jabal Quba, tucked away in a remote volcanic region north of Cotabato City.
The MILF spokesman, Kabalu, told me that the rebels had nothing to hide from Western governments, and an arranged visit in the company of guerrillas to an area three days’ hike from the road would “determine once and for all the presence of alleged Jemaah Islamiyah or any suspected terrorists”.
However, Australian and US embassy officials told me that they ignored the offer because the visit would determine nothing.
Hermoso says that is true. “By telegraphing the moves of the government in going up there, we will not see anything, but we appreciate the gesture of the MILF in inviting us,” he says. Welcoming this gesture is part of “confidence building”, which may gradually turn the MILF from its support of terrorists.
When I point out the deadly futility of this strategy, Hermoso smiles. “We have to build confidence. It is gradual but it is the only way,” he says.
Major General Raul Relano, commanding officer of the 7,000-strong 6th Infantry Division, apologises for the heat. He has ordered the 6ID to do without air conditioning for the next few months to cut energy consumption, and his headquarters by the airport are sweltering.
We sit down to coffee, and Relano talks about the terrorist groups he hunts. “In the Philippines we have the Communists, Abu Sayyaf, JI, and religious organisations connected to al Qa’ida.”
The JI presence in rebel areas has been reported by informants, Relano says. The MILF routinely issue denials, “but their statements are always cloudy.” Relano tells me the military tries to monitor movements, but “these are areas not easily accessible to troops. Whenever they go there, skirmishes ensue.”
These altercations can get very bloody, because “they have heavy weaponry, RPGs, mortars that they got from their counterparts in the Middle East, and some they have manufactured in country. They have money from their kidnapping activities, and are able to buy heavy weapons. Informants tell us they have so many money, probably some from Saudi sympathisers,” Relano says.
Of prime concern are the scale and spread of JI training in ceasefire-protected zones. Relano talks about rebel strongholds, heavily defended regions with large standing forces where the MILF trains its guerrillas.
“And is JI also training in those areas?” I ask.
“I have two ideas on this – if you’re having confidence building measures and peace talks, you have to trust them. But in Cotabato, we always have these doubts,” Relano says. “Being a soldier is being smothered somewhat by being a peace-lover, otherwise we would be confrontational and no peace would be ensuing,” he says. “I know they’re training in bomb making and terrorist activities. I was informed by my informants within that they have invited bomb-makers of MILF as part of their tactical operations,” Relano says.
The ceasefire committee of Major Hermoso and his MILF counterparts
is meant to be gathering evidence of what goes on “in these disputed areas …but as of now, they have not been able to do that,” Relano says.
And so it goes. Terrorists trained in Mindanao keep detonating explosives in public places, adding to the several hundred civilians killed and thousands wounded over the past few years across South East Asia.
The MILF spokesman, Kabalu, sent his sons to pick me up and so I sit in his Cotabato City house one night, struggling to wear down his ad nauseam denials of the guerrillas hosting terrorists in their camps.
“Have JI ever trained in MILF areas?” I ask.
“No.”
“So why do so many JI terrorists say they have?”
“What I believe is the source of this information, is that during the time that Chairman Salamat Hashim decided to open up Camp Abu Bakar to all walks of life … have gone to the area. Because the Chairman’s intention is to demonstrate somehow to the people of the world the kind of community that he envisioned to be established in this part of the world,” Kabalu says. “It was a model community. That is why people from other parts of the world came to the area … Indonesia, Malaysia, even Thailander.”
Kabalu leans back, aglow at the thought of his ideal world. Then he looks at me again. “We do not discount the possibility that some might have infiltrated at the time, but the idea there was not to invite terrorists, but to show to the world that we have this kind of community that would cater to the needs of our people, the Bangsamoro people,’ he says.
I ask if the model community involved explosives training.
“There might be some, but as far as the MILF is concerned we do not have a relationship or connections with this group,” he says.
I tell him that JI defectors and captives have told investigators that they trained for up to three years in MILF camps. I tell him that the International Crisis Group reports that JI operatives had instruction in weapons, demolition, traditions of the Prophet, bombing, ambushes, Islamic law, jihad, and other essentials of contemporary militancy.
“It’s a possibility,” Kabalu says. “But we made it very very clear that the academy … is only for the armed forces of the MILF. It is not for foreigner. In fact, outsider is not needed in the camp. But they are free to observe. There are some limitations, but as part of our campaign to expose the real intention of the MILF, we allow them to stay and observe. There might be some sort of possibility that they might, shall we say, manage to enter the camp. Maybe pretend as Tasaug [a Muslim tribe from which come most Abu Sayyaf] from Jolo, Basilan, or Zamboanga. Because facial identity – Indonesians look almost the same as Filipinos. This Malay race has very similar appearance,” Kabalu says.
So Indonesian terrorists – including many of the Bali bombers – snuck into the MILF’s military classes, quietly living and training or up to three years, but no one noticed because they look like Filipinos. My head spins. I’m starting to feel that I’m in an alternate universe where all the world is a stage, but the actors are packing
real guns.
Turning the conversation to Australia, Kabalu says that the MILF did not have a problem with Prime Minister John Howard’s comments last year that he would launch attacks on terrorists overseas if they were planning strikes against Australians and local authorities did not seem to be stopping them. “If there’s really a terrorist cell here, why not?” Kabalu says.
Furthermore, there was little the MILF could do to stop Australia, a country “groomed to become a superpower”, from attacking its camps. Yet, without an “honest investigation” preceding pre-emptive strikes, Howard’s actions would only complicate matters in Mindanao, Kabalu says. “Instead of using force, his concern about Mindanao and the issue of terrorism could be channelled to the peace process.”
Rather than needlessly sending in the SAS, Australian officials are welcome to join the IMT’s MILF-supervised camping trips to destinations such as Jabal Quba. Such visits will “conclude it once and for all, because as far as the MILF is concerned, there is no terrorist haven in our area and in our camps”, Kabalu says.

EPILOGUE
The Philippines is in trouble. Terrorists and their allies control territory that the government cannot. From rebel sanctuaries, the Islamists perfect satchel and car bombs, and the use of electronic detonators, and absorb the religious indoctrination that allows them to justify the slaughter of commuters, tourists, shop assistants, church congregations and many others. That “son-of-a-gun JI” which murdered 88 Australians and sent hundreds of others limping home is sitting pretty in the wilds of Mindanao, training new generations of terrorist commanders to replace those arrested, killed or snatched by the US.
A culture of jaw-dropping denial flourishes in the Philippines, where many continue to take aim at foreign requests to take terrorism seriously. “Outdated” was how the chairman of the Filipino House committee on foreign affairs, Antonio Cuenco, recently described US travel warnings about possible terrorist attacks in
the Philippines.
“The Philippines has succeeded in addressing the threats posed by the terror groups Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf Group … JI, for its part, is now merely a ghost,” Cuenco told the Philippine press.
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Gerry Salapuddin, agreed, saying that the terrorist threat was at its lowest. Salapuddin, who represents Basilan island, the birthplace of the Abu Sayyaf, dismissed the threat on three counts: the MILF’s involvement in peace talks; the MILF’s denial of links to JI, and
a flying visit by the US ambassador to the Philippines, Francis Riccardione, to Jolo, which is listed as dangerous by the US State Department.
Rohan Gunaratna says that Westerners must take Filipi-nos’ stoic nature into account when trying to compre-hend what seems to outsiders like a lack of resolve about terrorism. “The Filipinos have a much higher capacity to take violence, even 100, 200, 300 people can die [without shocking the nation], because these are systemic problems and the Filipinos can live with these,” Gunaratna says. Terrorism is just one abrupt way to die in a country that offers many – an environment that cultivates the Filipinos’ apparent acceptance of some level of carnage. “They are not like Australians, Europeans or the Americans. They have a very high capacity for suffering,” Gunaratna says.
Nevertheless, terrorism and lawlessness deter investment and feed the country’s fiscal woes, so the Filipino fatalism and casual hope in a duplicitous peace process is dangerous in many ways. The country badly needs leadership, Gunaratna says. More worrying, the Philippines’ flip-flopping, inattentive, rhetoric-rich yet follow through-poor leadership, has led to growing calls for a return to dictatorship. Numerous politicians, business leaders, and even the chair of the Asian Institute of Management, have called for a return to authoritarian rule. It is a view that I heard from a wide cross section of average Joes in my travels.
Until the terrorist groups are neutralised, “you must understand, the threat in South East Asia will eventually affect Australia,” Gunaratna says. More than attacks on bars and embassies, the terrorists will target shipping and significant economic assets, inflicting more mass casualties, but also seriously damaging trade in the
region – and worsening the poverty of millions.
Gunaratna says that Australia already offers intelligence assistance, but with constant revelations of corruption, ineptitude, and apparent collusion between elements of the army and its foes, “the real investment is to provide more extensive training to discipline the Filipino police and military.” Another valuable contribution would be offering legal expertise to help the Philippines develop counter-terrorism legislation.
Aborting the peace process would be a mistake, Gunaratna says. “The largest number of terrorists have been produced from regional conflicts, such as Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mindanao, Kashmir, and Maluku. So it is important for us to have peace processes and resolve these conflicts wherever possible, and right now the MILF is willing to talk and I think we should not waste that opportunity,” he says.
The ICG’s Collier agrees, saying that the long term solution lies in making the peace “agreement as attractive as possible. The more you can offer, the fewer discontents there will be”. Collier suggests that Australia could start funding the peace process to ensure it is more than a sham. “The local monitoring teams aren’t being properly funded. They have a very Spartan monthly allowance, and the Cotabato LMT hasn’t been paid in two months. So if they’re sent out to investigate an incident, they have to pay for the petrol out of their own pocket. We’re not talking big money … it would be AUD $13,000 a month for all the LMTs,” Collier says. Other measures include giving the Philippine navy faster speedboats and other border security measures to stem the free flow of terrorists and weapons between the Philippines, and Indonesia and Malaysia.
Yet the peace-first approach led to the MILF’s “model community”, where Camp Hudaibiyah quietly trained scores of mass murderers in how to best shred civilians in their war for Islamic totalitarianism. Right now, the training continues in other areas under MILF control, including Camp Jabal Quba. When the US went into Basilan, the exercises were denounced by commentators from the right and left as American imperialism in action, yet it worked. Areas under MILF control need to be worked over with M16s, engineers, and aid workers. Mindanao needs to be freed from the vendetta system and its feudal warlords. Peace deals which hold the backwardness in place through autonomy deals with corrupt chieftains offer the average citizen little hope for a prosperous future. The lies, duplicity, and dangerous allegiances of the Philippines’ Islamic warlords will continue to threaten South East Asia until their lands are brought under the rule of law.

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Investigate Archive, Feb 05 edition, PARADISE

PARADISE BY THE DASHBOARD LIGHTS
The mysterious road death of Paul White hits the big screen

Truth, as is often said, can be stranger than fiction. Or as Pontius Pilate remarked, “What is Truth?” The search for truth, or at least a version of it, lies at the heart of all journalism and it is the centre thread of Geoff Murphy’s new local thriller, Spooked. IAN WISHART revisits his own association with the truth of this particular story:

The call came, as they often did, with an appropriate aura of cloak and dagger: “Ian, it’s Simon Mercep here at TVNZ. We’ve just had a call from the film director Geoff Murphy in Los Angeles — he wanted your phone number.”And then, just for good measure, Simon lowered his voice: “Wow, what’s that about, mate?”

The answer came in a long distance call just a few minutes later, and the legendary director of Goodbye Pork Pie, now on location in the US shooting an action thriller with Steven Seagal, was on the line.
“Yeah,” the voice croaked through the receiver, “I’ve been reading this book of yours, Paradise Conspiracy. I think it’d make a good movie.”
That was December 1995, just two short months after The Paradise Conspiracy launched itself onto the NZ top ten bestseller list and where it was to remain for 18 months. The success of the book had taken everyone, not least its author, by surprise. In hindsight, perhaps we should have seen it coming.
For a start, in a kind of cosmic harbinger, Mt Ruapehu awoke from a long slumber and exploded spectacularly the very hour that we pushed the ‘go’ button at the print factory.
And at a more down to earth level, Paradise lifted the lid on the multi-million dollar wheeling and dealing between politicians and big business. It implicated New Zealand in international arms trafficking, and it began by probing the mystery death of a small time computer dealer named Paul White. During the course of the investigation, my own home was broken into, a copy of the yet to be published manuscript stolen and delivered to Sir Michael Fay, and my vehicle sabotaged by a different party again.
Fay used his influence, and knowledge of the impending book, to warn off would be publishers. Suddenly, no matter which way I turned, no-one was willing to publish The Paradise Conspiracy. With $80,000 in private funding secured, 5,000 copies of the book were printed in Australia — we couldn’t take the risk of having it locally printed, both for issues of security and also to avoid having the stock fall within the jurisdiction of a
New Zealand court if an injunction application was lodged.
Knowing that major publishing companies had been threatened if they handled the book, we made a decision to bypass bookshops as well. We couldn’t take the risk that we’d get 5,000 copies into the shops only to have them withdrawn from sale or left in back rooms.
And so, the birth of The Paradise Conspiracy was as clandestine an event as those within its pages: we booked radio ads for “an undisclosed product”, we hired an 0800 call centre, and then we let rip at 6am on Friday October 13th 1995 with the ad campaign and news stories on National Radio, the National Business Review and Radio Pacific.
By 9am that day, the call centre had already taken more than 2000 orders at $34.95. By 10am the major book chains, Whitcoulls and Paperplus, had ordered a thousand copies to cope with people walking in off the street demanding to read the dramatic new book they’d heard about on the radio, and by 5pm the entire first print run had sold out and we’d ordered another 5000 books. On Monday morning, the mailbox contained cheques and credit card orders worth more than $150,000 — an incredible payback on the high risk $80,000 I’d borrowed to get the project rolling. Ten years on, the 40,000 copy, nine print-run book has finally become celluloid, but not without its own plot twists and turns along the way.
Although Murphy was the first to officially show interest in the book, he wasn’t alone. The success of John Grisham’s The Firm in the US, and strong similarities in the “tax haven/dirty dealing/was it murder?” plot-lines meant that Paradise came to the attention of American agents fairly soon after Murphy’s first call. One confided that his interest had been piqued at a Hollywood dinner party where the conversation had turned to books and movies, as it inevitably does in America’s entertainment sausage factory. The agent remarked that the college student son of the host was on a break from the University of Wisconsin.
“He said, ‘if you want to know a book they should make a movie out of, you should read The Paradise Conspiracy’.”
It transpired that the student was studying tax law, and his professor had recently returned from Australia where he’d picked up copies of The Paradise Conspiracy to use as a class textbook.
“Mel Gibson’s a neighbour of mine,” the agent name-dropped shamelessly. Nonetheless, he gave up trying to sell the concept of a movie from “Noo Zeelin? Where’s that?” to the Hollywood set. This was, of course, the days before Peter Jackson became a household name.
On the local scene, film and TV producer Don Reynolds also expressed strong initial interest in Paradise, although the meetings in early 1996 ended in a “let’s talk further” that would take several years to be realised.
Murray Newey, who’d produced the Black Beauty TV series, asked for the movie rights but committed suicide the day before our scheduled second meeting.
Geoff Murphy re-entered the picture early in 2001. He’d spent much of his spare time crafting his own screenplay of the Paul White section of the book, and had big plans for it. Originally bracketed as an $8 to $10 million movie featuring Bladerunner’s Rutger Hauer, the deal fell apart at literally the last minute for a number of reasons.
From Geoff Murphy’s point of view, the overseas investors wanted a formulaic thriller that would directly appeal to the US and European markets, but that wasn’t the movie he was wanting to make. Instead, he wanted to tell it as a New Zealand story, in a New Zealand setting, with local actors. Although local producers, including Barry Everard — now the chairman of the Film Commission in New Zealand — tried hard to make the project fly, a deadline imposed by the Europeans was missed, and Paradise, or Spooked as Murphy was now calling it, remained stillborn.
It was June 2001. Enter Don Reynolds again. “Mate, we like the way you write, and we’re wondering if you’d be prepared to write an international TV series for us on the intelligence/CIA themes. We’ve got a co-production deal going with Canada, Australia and Britain, and we’re going to try and sell it to TV3 as well. Can you come up with a treatment [filmspeak for a programme synopsis]?
“Yeah, no problem,” we responded. Reynolds wanted the treatment for the first episode in his hands by the first week of September 2001 to send to network executives in Canada who were driving the project.
Drawing from material in The Paradise Conspiracy, and early Investigate articles, we plot-lined 13 potential episodes of a new drama series with the working title ECHELON. This was a not very veiled reference to the network of electronic eavesdropping stations first referred to on page 61 of the original Paradise and
later developed into a book of its own by Nicky Hager.
Sadly, although we regarded ECHELON as some of the finest screenwriting we’d done, the project came to a crashing end. You’ll see why when you read the following extracts from the first episode, sent to Don Reynolds on 8 September, 2001:
EPISODE 1, TWIN TOWERS (loosely based on true story)
ECHELON’s US bases intercept 45 seconds of a phone call originating from Auckland to a number in Kabul, Afghanistan, they pick up the words “explosive”, “tower” and “Sydney”, and a date — four days hence. Is it a plot to blow up Sydney’s Centrepoint tower, or is Auckland’s Sky tower the intended target? With only four days’ warning, RACHEL Johnson and her team must mount a TransTasman security crackdown without panicking the public or the media: find the terrorists, identify the target, disarm the bomb, or bombs, and find out why the hell information from an earlier intercept wasn’t passed on by the Americans. So in the middle of all this, when someone claiming to be a journalist dials her unlisted mobile number and starts asking questions about an organisation that doesn’t officially exist, she just knows it’s going to be one of those days.
EPISODE 1, TWIN TOWERS. INDICATIVE SCENE BREAKDOWN: TEASER EXT/INT HELICOPTER/SKYTOWER. NIGHT.
The beat of a chopper blade and the shadow of the machine itself carve a hole in the otherwise sparkling nightscape of the city. The dashboard clock shows 1.53am. The routine crackle of crime on the police radio is interrupted…
For those who still doubt that God can give foreknowledge, consider this: The treatment was on Don Reynolds desk on the morning of September 8. The opening paragraph referred to attacks on the “twin towers” four days hence – September 12 NZ time. And in the first scene of the episode, the time on the clock is 1.53am – the exact moment in NZ that the first hijacked plane struck the first of the World Trade Centre towers…on September 12 – or 8:53am New York time, September 11.
Oh, and the culprits in the Twin Towers attacks episode were Osama bin Laden and his al Qa’ida group.
The treatment had been sent on by Don to Canada. It arrived there on September 12.
And that was the last time Don Reynolds ever asked me to write a TV script. The whole ECHELON concept went out the production window, along with dozens of similar action/thrillers out of Hollywood that had to be canned while they were in production out of sensitivity to the situation.
Negotiations with Murphy resumed in 2003, but I didn’t realise until the launch party for Spooked that Don Reynolds was a co-producer. After all this time, both he and Geoff Murphy had come through.
And so to Spooked itself. Apart from a cameo appearance by the author, and copious amounts of kiwi vernacular, the film stays remarkably close to events in The Paradise Conspiracy. The first time I saw it, I was in shock. You see, I’ve never actually read a finished copy of Paradise. Most authors, after going through draft after draft of their manuscripts, never want to read them again, and I’ve never read one of my own books. And so the surprise at seeing part of your life on screen through someone else’s eyes is eerie.
Cliff Curtis, who plays journalist “Mort Whitman” in the movie, spent several hours over coffee picking my memory of events, trying to get a feel for his character and how he might react in given circumstances. It paid off. Curtis’ performance of anger, frustration and being reluctantly sucked into the swirl of intrigue and paranoia was right on the nail.Chris Hobbs, playing Paul White’s character Kevin Jones, gives a masterful portrayal of White being railroaded into a psychological black hole, and John Leigh and Miriama Smith are respectively irrepressible and suitably cynical in their roles as White’s friends.
Variety magazine in the US calls Spooked “a stylish, conspiratorial nail-biter. Self-confident and jazzy.”
Leaving aside my personal involvement, I’d have to say it is easily the most watchable New Zealand movie I’ve ever seen.Director Geoff Murphy posits the still-burning question: who killed Paul White, and why? His suggested answer is provocative. You’ll have to see the movie to find out.
SPOOKED, Rated M, Contains offensive language, in cinemas from February 3.

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March 11, 2006

The Abraham Debate

A couple of months ago I wrote this column for the Tough Questions section of Investigate magazine.

Because it has engendered some complex debate, I'm uploading both the column and the comments on it to give the debate enough space to play out.

Archaeology and the Bible

In the lead-up to Christmas, few people would have noticed a geekish but stunningly important scientific discovery that lends further weight to the Bible’s version of history. And no, I’m not talking about the show-pony trial in Pennsylvania where a secular humanist judge let his own personal theology influence his verdict on Intelligent Design.

Instead, the piece of news I’m referring to is yet another brick in the increasingly solid wall of biblical archaeology – discoveries by scientists that prove the Bible was right all along.

In this case, the news relates to a debate featured several years ago in this magazine’s pages: whether or not ancient Israel was sophisticated enough for a Davidic/Solomonic kingdom to really exist.

Briefly recapping, minimalists led by archaeologists like Dr Israel Finkelstein argue that the Old Testament is largely fiction, because the Jews were simple, uneducated nomadic herdsmen at the times when King Solomon allegedly reigned, around 900BC. Finkelstein and others claim the Old Testament was not written by Moses and the Prophets, because Israel had no written language until 600BC or even later, and that the authors of the Bible simply made stories up about past events to create a fictitious history and keep their followers motivated.

Finkelstein’s claims have been seized on by liberal theologians like New Zealand’s Lloyd Geering to bolster their own arguments about the “myth” of the Old Testament, and that Christianity is itself untrue because we “know” the OT on which Christianity is based has been proven wrong.

Great line of reasoning – except for the inconvenient fact that it’s a load of old cobblers. And just before Christmas, a very important and equally inconvenient fact hit the headlines in international academia – the discovery that the world’s oldest version of the modern alphabet had been found during an archaeological dig in Israel. Archaeologist Ron Tappy reported that a stone bowl, dating to the 10th century BC and carrying legible alphabet symbols, had been found by one of his research team at a remote location in the ancient kingdom of Judah, south of Jerusalem.

As a fellow archaeologist told reporters, if there’s now proof of literacy in tiny villages during the time of Solomon, imagine the kind of literacy that must have existed in Jerusalem itself. Far from being a bunch of peasant goatherds, the discovery appears to prove that a highly sophisticated and literate society must indeed have existed in ancient Israel.

Just as the Bible says it did.

Naturally, such a discovery in the Middle East has political ramifications. Proof of an ancient Jewish empire of Biblical scope lends more weight to Israel being a spiritual homeland for the Jews, and lessens the claim of Palestinian Arabs, whose presence in the region came around the time of the Muslim conquests in the seventh century AD, about 1,700 years after Solomon’s time.

Two other discoveries announced just before Christmas add more weight to the Bible as well. One is the discovery of a massive building that appears to be King David’s palace (further proof of a wealthy kingdom), and the other an inscription found at a dig on the site of the original Philistine town of Gath that appears to bear the name of “Goliath”. The Bible records that Goliath came from Gath, and the inscription has been dated to the correct time period (the time of David).

More significantly from a faith perspective, however, the latest discoveries are yet more proof that the Old Testament has been proven historically accurate in everything capable of verification after all these centuries. There is not one single historical detail in the Bible that has been categorically proven incorrect, and hundreds of details previously thought erroneous have now, like the latest discovery, established the accuracy of the Bible after all.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 08:41 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

March 09, 2006

Major security breach over Census collecting

A census collector has been exposed as a formerly insane killer who slit the throats of his wife and two young children.

Statistics NZ says the man failed to disclose his criminal background when hired, but has now resigned.

The bigger picture: obviously Stats was running no criminal record checks on anyone collecting private information from householders around the country.

How big is the security breach?

Posted by Ian Wishart at 03:28 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 08, 2006

Holland to legalise euthanasia of children

Talk about going to hell in a handcart. And the Dutch wonder why they're all going to be speaking Arabic in 20 years' time...

GRONINGEN, Holland, March 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - It will be legal to euthanize children in Holland within a few weeks. Doctors will now be able to collaborate openly with parents for the death of severely handicapped or suffering children, without risking charges of murder.

The country has set up a committee to regulate the illicit killing of seriously ill infants by doctors. The Groningen Protocol, drafted by euthanist Dr. Verhagen of the Groningen hospital and adopted by the committee, will allow doctors to kill children who are suffering extreme pain from terminal illness, with no hope of recovery. The parents must give consent, and two doctors must agree on the child's diagnosis.

Adult euthanasia has been legal in Holland since 2001, but this is the first time a country has allowed parents and doctors to kill a child.

Doctors in Holland already "help to die" at least 15 babies every year, with no legal consequences.

The suffering caused by bizarre genetic disorders is frequently used to justify child euthanasia. In fact, a more frequent cause for euthanasia has been the more commonly occurring disorder spina bifida. Between 2002 and 2004, Groningen hospital began reporting cases of infant euthanasia to authorities-all deaths were of infants with spina bifida, according to the Times.

The issue, as it always is with euthanasia, is a "slippery slope" argument. Incrementally, the Dutch have become more Nazi eugenics-based in their approach by basically adopting a wedge mentality: they know they can't force people to accept the whole agenda all at once, but bit by bit they do it.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 12:31 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

What produces wealth?

Saw this from Michael Medved:

A Conservative Climate Produces "Hot Cities" —Michael Medved

A business journal called "Expansion Management Magazine" just released its list of the top cities in the country for corporate growth. For the second year in a row, Nashville topped the annual ranking of "America's Hottest Cities," followed by Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Charlotte, Memphis, Jacksonville, Knoxville and Birmingham.

Amazingly, the list included none of the traditional bastions of culture and liberalism on the east or west coasts--no New York, Boston or San Francisco. All of the top cities, in fact, were located in red states--states that carried for President Bush in both the elections of 2000 and 2004.

It appears that one of the key elements in creating a positive environment for corporate growth is a conservative political climate, in which residents understand that a profitable company is a boon to the whole community, not a threat or embarrassment that needs to be punished with more regulation and taxes.

Posted by John Wallace at 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 05, 2006

She'll be first up against the wall when the revolution comes...

This woman gives Islam a serious serve on Al Jazeera TV a couple of days ago...she's a secular Arab and she clearly is not impressed at the rise of Wahabbism.

It's a video link, so it'll take a few seconds to load.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 01:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 04, 2006

The ultimate Labour Party spin

At the start of this past week, in response to Investigate magazine's stories, Prime Minister Helen Clark threw down a gauntlet: "put up or shut up"

At the end of this week, after a barrage of people "putting up" as per Helen Clark's request, Labour now calls it a "witch hunt".

I'm sorry, who started it?

Who could have put Benson-Pope out of his misery in a second?

H1 is a real piece of work.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:03 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 02, 2006

Why David Benson-Pope is a liar...

There, I've said it and I'll say it again: David Benson-Pope is a lying scumbag who, in my opinion, should never be allowed near vulnerable children again.

He and Labour have used parliamentary privilege to attack Investigate magazine's website and myself personally. Benson-Pope has also gone on national TV to repeat the claims.

However, let's nail Benson-Pope to the wall in a legal sense, shall we?

Labour's line in parliament is simple: BP's behaviour matched school policy at the time.

Oh really?

There are a series of statements from teachers given to police during last year's investigation. A number of the teachers, while supportive of Benson-Pope, added of their own volition that it was school policy as far back as 1982 for male teachers to handle boys, and female teachers would deal with girls, and that on camp a female teacher should always have been present during visits to a girls dorm.

For those who have the police file, I've identified the statements by date and time of interview:

1. 18/7/2005. 0925hrs. Interview with the Female Dean in 1982. Points out that school policy was a gender-driven Dean structure where boys would be dealt with by male Dean (Benson-Pope) and girls by female Dean

2. 17/7/2005, 1500hrs. Page 2, bottom paragraph re Tautuku camp. “The Lady teachers disciplined the girls. The male teachers disciplined the boys.”

3. 21/7/2005. 1515hrs.Page 4, re Tautuku camp. “As a female teacher I was mainly dealing with the female pupils at night.”

4. 22/7/2005. 1000hrs. Page 4, Tautuku camp. “If it was females standing outside the were always covered – in night attire – and there was always a female teacher present”

5. 1/8/2005. 2045hrs. Page 3, Tautuku camp. “There would always have been a female teacher present for the girls.”

If that was indeed the policy in 1982, and the teachers may be guilty of making false statements to police if it was not, then how could Benson-Pope have failed to be aware of it in 1997?

This edited snippet from Questions for Oral Answer today underlines the attempt by Labour to mislead parliament and New Zealand, in my opinion:

Social Development and Employment, Minister—Allegations

1. Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by his statement that: “I am also aware that Mr Benson-Pope has stated that his behaviour complied with school policy at the time.”; if so, does he believe that statement includes all allegations that have come to light about the Hon David Benson-Pope’s conduct as a teacher, including those investigated by police?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education): Yes. I stand by my statement that Mr Benson-Pope has stated that his behaviour complied with school policy at the time. A large number of allegations have been made about Mr Benson-Pope’s conduct by members opposite, but they remain without foundation.

How could Benson-Pope be acting within school policy? Clearly, he wasn't. But if you study Maharey's answer closely, he fudged it as well. He didn't say the DBP complied with school policy, he says DBP SAYS he complied with school policy.

And again, how could he be acting "within school policy" if in fact he administered corporal punishment (common assault) when it was against the law in both the Crimes Act and the Education Act?

Then there's Benson-Pope's attempts to deny the facts, purely on the basis that Investigate carried them.

Judith Collins: What does it say of his personal judgment that he referred to the latest allegations of improper behaviour as “nonsense”, only to acknowledge later that there had been complaints, and then to apologise?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: The quote referred to was in relation to the articles on the Wishart website, and those allegations were despicable—as despicable as the comments of that member in the House yesterday.

This was a follow-up on the Labour Government attacks on Investigate yesterday, which included these comments:

4. Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she accept the Hon David Benson-Pope’s statement last Saturday that allegations he entered the girls’ shower block and dormitories were “a nonsense”; if so, why?

Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister): The Minister was reacting to the Investigate magazine website, which clearly contained allegations that were sensationalist. I am satisfied that issues were raised with the school that it deemed not to be disciplinary matters, but following which school policy was changed.

Dr Don Brash: Has the Prime Minister asked Mr Benson-Pope why he has stated that the recent complaints, now backed up by a letter and by the former principal, were “a nonsense”; if so, what was Mr Benson-Pope’s response?

Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: As I have said, the allegations on that website were sensationalist. I do not intend to go through them one by one. Anyone reading them can see that they stretch matters far beyond the letter sent by the parent.

There's a reason they went beyond the "letter sent by the parent": Investigate's allegations came from a different source, a woman whose testimony is now going to police, a woman who was physically assaulted by David Benson-Pope and whose parents also laid a formal complaint with the school, a complaint which the school is now "unable to find".

It appears Labour wants to ride this out by ignoring the substance of the Investigate claims, and taking the view that if it wasn't in the Herald on Sunday, it didn't happen.

Except, numbnuts that they are, H1, H2 and Maharey have overlooked that the HoS did indeed carry allegations from Investigate's source, the girl who was physically assaulted in a German class.

For the record, here's what she'll be telling police, from an interview posted on Investigate's website and in The Briefing Room:

One woman has told Investigate Benson-Pope walked unannounced and uninvited into the girls dormitory while they were getting changed after a mud run.

“He knew we were in there. It was straight after the mud run, he knew we were all in there getting changed and things like that and he just wandered straight on in, and thought he had the right to do that.”

The woman says up to twenty-five girls aged 14 and 15 were in various stages of undress, some fully naked, during Benson-Pope’s “visit”.

“Girls were naked and in the process of getting changed.”

She says the Labour MP lingered, staring, for 30 seconds, before finally getting out because of the pandemonium his presence was causing.

“Screaming and yelling and telling him to get out, and all this swearing.”

The woman says it was the second time that day Benson-Pope had attempted to see the schoolgirls undress.

“He walked in on the showers one time, then later on that day walked into the dorm room while we were getting changed. Straight on in.”

This incident happened at the fourth form camp in 1997. The woman told Investigate she and the other girls were embarrassed and dumbfounded that a senior male teacher felt he had the right to enter the girls’ dormitories at all, when it should only have been female staff permitted.

“He’s an arsehole. He really is. I don’t know if any other students did, but me and my parents made a formal complaint about it, but nothing was done about it.”

She says they took their concerns in the first instance to Bayfield principal Bruce Leadbetter.

“We were told to write a letter and it had to go in front of the Board of Trustees. But that never happened.”

And this is what she said about the physical assault:

One student told Investigate David Benson-Pope used a ruler to slap her across her thigh, leaving “a red mark”. The student’s crime, apparently, was failing to count to ten in German. She told Investigate her reaction was one of shock.

“[I thought] Holy shit!, and I looked around the room to see if anyone else had seen it and people had.

“I seriously would like to have him in a room and tied to a chair so I could knock the living shit out of him! To be quite honest.”

So what is Benson-Pope's response in parliament to these allegations, recorded on tape by Investigate?

Rodney Hide: What credibility does the Minister think he has as the Minister in charge of social development, the infirm, children, and the elderly, when as a teacher he slapped a young girl on the thigh, which was against the school policy at the time and, indeed, against the law—or will he deny that, as well?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I am happy for the New Zealand public to make its own judgment about my actions. I completely refute the ridiculous statement that has just been made by Mr Hide.

Benson-Pope has a big problem here. Firstly, he doesn't understand the word "refute", which is a tragedy really given his background as a language teacher. To "refute" something you actually have to prove it wrong, not merely stand on your hind legs and yap.
Saying "I refute" is meaningless, unless you explain how you have refuted, which he hasn't.

Additionally, he has repeated to parliament in unequivocal terms that he did not slap a girl on the thigh, which he knows and we know would be a breach of the Crimes Act punishable by up to five years jail if convicted.

Do we believe him? No. Benson-Pope has lied to parliament, one of the most serious offences a Minister of the Crown can commit.

Part of the problem for the Opposition and the mainstream media in nailing Benson-Pope to the wall has been an inability to recognise the jugular when they see it.

For example, this exchange:

Judith Collins: Did the Minister ever enter a girls’ changing room after the school policy change in 1997?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I am not aware of any further allegations in that regard. I am happy to confirm that I do not believe that any of my actions have ever been outside the school policy of the day.

Benson-Pope was again lying to Parliament. After all, he must have read the Investigate website article in order to find its allegations "despicable". He must have been "aware" of our allegations in order to bleat about them. Contained in those allegations was this:

If Bayfield High did discipline David Benson-Pope, and there’s no evidence they did, it didn’t work.

According to another female student in an email to Investigate, David Benson-Pope again tried to see naked schoolgirls on the 1998 fourth form camp, his last year at the high school before entering parliament.

“I do remember one incident involving him when I was in 4th form at a school camp at Tautuku. I remember that the girls were in their dorm getting ready for a tramp and we were all mucking around and taking ages to get changed. BP [Benson-Pope] got quite agitated and just marched on into the dorm without knocking or any warning at all and yelled at us all to hurry up. At this stage quite a few of us were still trying to get changed.

“I'm not sure if anybody reported this incident to the other teachers but it was talked about for a few years after that and it didn't do much for his image with the students in my year!”

The same woman told Investigate she also found the Labour cabinet minister “sleazy”.

“He was not well liked among the kids in my year, or by too many people at all! He came across to me as really arrogant, self important and a little sleazy, and could be very domineering and intimidating to students who didn't obey him.

On TV3's Campbell Live, and One's Close-up, Benson-Pope ignores those allegations, and baldly asserts that he has never walked in on girls changing. Essentially, his claim is that he only ever walked to the door of the shower block and didn't see anything because the girls were behind closed shower doors.

Again, this ignores the reports in the Herald on Sunday and on TV that he demanded the girls come out then and there (naked), and that they refused to because he was there.

Benson-Pope pointedly ignores the dorm incidents merely because the Herald on Sunday didn't use the "naked" word in its article. Both DBP and Helen Clark cling to the line that "even the girls in the showers say he couldn't see anything". But they ignore the strong evidence that he say partially clad girls in the dormitories in both 1997 and 1998.

The tragic thing is that the media today let DBP get away with that lie.

Benson-Pope further complicates matters by asserting that a female teacher went in to the showers and dorms first. If that is true, why were the girls spoken to by Investigate and the Herald on Sunday taken by surprise in a state of undress ranging from fully clothed to fully nude?

If a female teacher went in first, she wasn't seen by those girls. Indeed, she must have been a blind female teacher not to have seen girls dressing and allowed Benson-Pope in.

Regardless of truth, Labour kept up the pretence that Investigate's evidence was irrelevant.

Hon Phil Goff: Can the Minister confirm that the claims and innuendo made several times now by Mr English and Dr Brash have in fact been contradicted by the statements made by the principal, who made it absolutely clear that: “There is no question about anyone entering the showers,” there was no question about any compromise of privacy, and the hurry-up call was made from the door; and, further, that those statements were in fact supported by the girls who were quoted in the Herald on Sunday last Sunday?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Yes, I am aware that the account given by the principal differs from the account given by people such as Mr Bill English. It is my understanding, of course, that Opposition members have embarked upon using sources such as that from Investigate as their sources of information. I do not think anyone in his or her right mind should use that journal as a source of information.

Few media outlets have ever sustained such direct attacks from a Government using parliamentary privilege. But then again, few media outlets have scored as many hits on a ruling junta.

Again, as David Benson-Pope will find when the police come calling, Goff's, Maharey's and even Clark's credibility will be tested against Investigate's and its sources.

The information we collated was enough to cause a week-long barrage against Labour and force David Benson-Pope to do something he'd never done before: apologise.

Is the Government really stupid enough to believe the magazine couldn't back its claims to the hilt?

Meanwhile, there is one tit-bit from the police file that no-one has yet discovered. A senior teacher tells police:

6. 26/8/2005, 1015hrs. Page 4, Last paragraph. “Lastly, the only thing I can recall is a friend of Mr Benson-Pope’s taking $5,000-$6,000 out of the school textbook fund, he was a gambler and dealt with by the police. His name was Mr [deleted] he was a good friend of Benson-Pope’s; thinking about this, I am not sure if it was in fact deal with by the police.”

Here is a friend of David Benson-Pope's who allegedly somehow gets his paws on $6,000 from the school textbook fund - a lot of money in 1982 - and according to the witness it may not have been dealt with by police. Surely in a public school where public money is at stake police should have been called in?

Only question time will tell.

There is one final chink in Benson-Pope's "I acted at all times within school policy" farce:

7. 7/7/2005. 1430hrs. Senior Master’s statement to police. Page 2, Tautuku camp, last paragraph. “There was one incident at a school camp that occurred at Tautuku camp, it was about an assault, it was serious enough that we tried to get Benson-Pope back from camp, but he wouldn’t come back from camp. I can not remember how it came to the notice of the school but the headmaster dealt with it in the end.”

Another complaint, another alleged assault.

I was wrong about "gone by lunchtime". I didn't expect Helen Clark to be foolish enough to stake her own reputation on Benson-Pope. The beauty of it is that the Ninth Floor's unprecedented willingness to clasp the asp to its chest may be the slow acting poison that finally destroys the Clark government.

Watch this space.

Posted by Ian Wishart at 06:09 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Labour scores own-goal

The Ninth Floor of the Beehive came up with a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it Benson-Pope. Problem was, they sent Benson-Pope himself to execute said plan.

As part of the spin process, H1, possibly in conjunction with H2, decided DBP should go on a "charm offensive" (or should that, as the record shows, be "offensively charming"?) with the Parliamentary Press Gallery doing a series of one-on-one interviews, presumably bursting into tears in each one.

However, foolishly, the Ninth Floor overlooked the fact that the journalists might decide to actually ask some inconvenient questions, like "what were you doing back in the girls' changing rooms a year after the policy changed?"

Yup, you guessed it: they gave Benson-Pope a spade and he's just dug a bigger hole. Details will emerge in news stories, I am told by my little bird in the gallery.

H1 is probably having a Homer Simpson moment as we speak...

Posted by Ian Wishart at 12:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 01, 2006

The Smoking Gun...

Prime Minister Helen Clark told parliament yesterday that David Benson-Pope's actions were entirely in line with school policy at the time.

Perhaps she can explain, then, whether the Minister's return to the girl's changing rooms a year after the policy had been clarified, was in line with school policy as well?

Posted by Ian Wishart at 11:25 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack