NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE
MINE BLAST
NEW INFO: ‘This has never been released to the public’
Caught, But Is He Guilty? The story that will have everyone talking
Dependence
Day Is our welfare to the grave
mentality killing our society?
February 2011, $8.60
McCaw’s Mission
Impossible? After 24 years in the wilderness, is 2011 our year?
current affairs, toys, cars, frankly-expressed opinion & more
Nothing is more liberating than a blank sheet of paper. It’s the chance to create something original.
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HIS/contents
February 2011 Issue 121 www.hismagazine.tv 
cover
16 MORE PIKE LEAKS
After breaking the story last month, we have stunning new information on what really caused the blast
24 DEPENDENCE DAY
Mark Steyn wonders whether our dependence on nanny state has killed our survival instincts
30 McCAW'S MISSION Chris Forster profiles the man and the team who need to win back the chalice this year
32 CAUGHT
But is he guilty? Get your head around this one
features
20 AFGHAN CROOKIES Kiwi journalist Sam Weir finds out how the Taliban are infiltrating Afghan army and police units, in this exclusive report from Kabul
32
HIS/contents 6 opinion
6 /EDITOR Speaks for itself, really 8 /COMMUNIQUES Your say 10 /EYES RIGHT Richard Prosser 12 /THE BRIEFING Catherine Collins 14 /HOTZONE Climate nuttery
36
35 action
36 /MARINE The ultimate dive trip 38 /DRIVE Audi A7 Heaven 40 /SPORT Chris Forster on Black Caps 42 /INVEST Peter Hensley's money advice 44 /MONEY Seven good habits
60
47 gadgets
48 Mobile calls on your home phone 49 The Mall 50 Tech: Smartphone takeover 52 Online with Chillisoft
55 mindfuel
56 /ONSCREEN Vince Vaughn grows up 58 /BOOKCASE Michael Morrissey's summer picks 60 /CONSIDERTHIS Amy Brooke blasts the bureaucrats 62 /THEQUESTION Matt Flannagan on the meaning of life
40
00 over in HERS
14 /READERS POLL good news for Winnie 32 /VALENTINES GIFTS in case you forget 40 /CAN'T SLEEP? Try jasmine
38
NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE
MINE BLAST
NEW INFO: ‘This has never been released to the public’
Caught, But Is He Guilty? The story that will have everyone talking
Dependence
Day Is our welfare to the grave
mentality killing our society?
February 2011, $8.60
McCaw’s Mission
Pieces of journalism that make the country sit up and take notice…provocative, relentless, brash, opinionated, tapping into a public thirst for issues-driven, campaigning journalism.
Impossible? After 24 years in the wilderness, is 2011 our year?
editor
current affairs, toys, cars, frankly-expressed opinion & more
6 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
Same engine, different chassis
W
elcome to Investigate maga zine’s new clothes. This issue marks Investigate’s 11th birthday, and frankly we felt it was long overdue for a rebuild. It’s name remains on the masthead, but the difference between the old Investigate and the new Investigate HIS is like the difference between a 1978 Honda Accord and the 2011 model: much has changed under the hood. What hasn’t changed is the v12 engine that powers this beast. Back when life wasn’t so busy, around eight to ten years ago, Investigate used to enter the NZ magazine and journalism awards. I was reminded of this when I went through some old files and found clippings with quotes like these: “New Zealand’s best current affairs magazine, even better than the Listener” – National Radio, 2000 “Providing strong content where content is king”, wrote the judging panel at the 2001 NZ Magazine Awards. “In times of rampant spin-doctoring and slashed budgets…true investigative journalism must always be applauded,” wrote the editor of Britain’s Hello magazine of Investigate in 2002, for the Qantas Media Awards. Then there was this from the National Business Review that same year: “Pieces of journalism that make the country sit up and take notice…provocative, relentless, brash, opinionated, tapping into a public thirst
for issues-driven, campaigning journalism. Taking on the mainstream media and winning readers. Investigate breaks news stories, a marked contrast to competitors like Metro, Unlimited, North & South and even weekly magazine the Listener.” Why am I telling you this? Because HIS is the new incarnation of that information vehicle, the inheritor of that pedigree. It’s the magazine for people who want to be aware of what’s happening in the world around them, people who want to stay briefed and ahead of the game. More to the point, it’s the magazine you can slip into the grocery trolley and slap down on the table with a hearty, “Look what I bought you darling!” How many other men’s magazines can earn you brownie points? Regardless, we hope you’ll find the Pike River investigation deepens your understanding of what went wrong, and we can highly recommend Ana Veliciana-Suarez’s piece on the man facing jail for reading his wife’s email after she’d used their jointly owned computer. If you flick across to HERS, the Readers Poll results are equally dynamite. Enjoy.
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communiques
Volume 10, Issue 121, ISSN 1175-1290 Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart NZ EDITION Advertising 09 373-3676 sales@investigatemagazine.com Contributing Writers: Hal Colebatch, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Chris Carter, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Heidi Wishart Design & Layout Bozidar Jokanovic Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine, PO Box 188, Kaukapakapa, Auckland 0843, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor Ian Wishart Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 NZ 09 373 3676 By Post: To the PO Box NZ Edition: $85; AU Edition: A$96 Email: editorial@investigatemagazine.com, ian@investigatemagazine.com, australia@investigatemagazine.com, sales@investigatemagazine.com, helpdesk@investigatemagazine.tv All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted. We take no responsibility for unsolicited material sent to us. Please enclose a stamped, SAE envelope. Inquiries in the first instance should be made via email or fax. Investigate magazine Australasia is published by HATM Magazines Ltd
8 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
PIKE RIVER, PART ONE I passed the magazine rack and was alerted to the January issue cover story of this horrible (and apparently avoidable) tragedy which consumed all New Zealanders. So I hoped you had some answers, one or two would have sufficed and diminished the puzzle of contradictions, contractors and consequences which have left a mark on Pike River and challenged our Prime Minister. If your story is true then shouldn’t we direct a portion of blame to the miners themselves? That no-one would have survived the initial blast is accepted. And as the Commissioner of Police said “it’s time to focus on the living” and maybe, to reflect on the mistakes of the dead? Initially I was stunned when Peter Whittall announced that “an illegal event had taken place”. Ever since, there has been the usual tissue box of allegations, questions and public shock at how this could have happened in modern times. I’m reminded of the Erebus tragedy and the finding (that Air New Zealand) had created an “orchestrated litany of lies”. Your article left me wondering if a commission of enquiry would arrive at a similar conclusion over the senseless loss of 29 New Zealanders in November 2010. So many people seem to have so much to hide and I wonder if the truth lies with the men we lost. Hope Taylor, via email
TURN OFF THE LIGHTS, ALREADY Nowadays those who like to keep themselves informed are increasingly hearing talk of the imminent collapse of Western civilisation – which in today’s cosmopolitan world simply means the collapse of all civilisation. The real question however, is not – “Can Western civilisation survive”, but “has it survived”?, and the answer must be “No”. In truth we have never really had Western civilisation, only its promise. That promise was snuffed out sometime during the last half of the 19th century when a decisive proportion of the Western intelligentsia allowed itself to be infected with dialectical materialism – i.e. the socially
lethal doctrine of Marxism / Communism / socialism and the polar opposite of the Christian principles which, at that point, had made the West the greatest civilisation in world history. A little more than one century later we are witnessing, (but mostly with unseeing eyes ), our once great civilisation sliding off the edge of the moral precipice. However, once we come to realise the root cause of a problem, we have the remedy. Our salvation, as always, lies in our own hands. Colin Rawle, Dunedin
TREATY RORTS Congratulations on your Dec. article re the Waitangi industry rorts. At last someone has had the guts (or should I say intestinal fortitude) to try to undermine the cause of the wastage of the many millions of dollars appeasing some of the Maori population at the expense of ordinary Kiwis who find that justice availability is becoming a myth and we’re being left very low on the justice food chain. Derrick Catley, Taupo
GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS? Constitutions do not give anyone anywhere any rights. Constitutions simply enshrine the arrangements prescribed between people for congenial relationships, whether or not the people individually or collectively recognize the transcendency of the law maker that Moses allegedly received the Decalogue from, or any other divine expression. Phillip Hadley, Pukekohe
OBITUARY: CHRIS CARTER It is with deep sadness that we mark the passing just before Christmas of Investigate columnist Chris Carter. Once you got used to his labyrinthine prose it became easy to follow and was a must read for many. We wish to extend our sympathies to his family and friends on behalf of the team and readers at this magazine.
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HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 9
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Richard Prosser
eyes right
The accumulated wisdom of a century and a half of colonisation in New Zealand has been swept away by a tide of misplaced ideology, political correctness, and Governmental ineptitude
10 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
Back to the future
A
nother year has passed, as they do, faster and faster it seems, the older I get. Another year older and deeper in debt, the song says; not so for Yours Truly, I mean I’m older of course, but I’m only about as indebted now as I was this time last year, which I suppose has to count as a victory of sorts. But it is certainly true for the nation as a whole. Our national debt – the Government bit of it – continues to balloon, up by seven percentage points from 2009 levels to 27.5% of GDP, and forecast to hit 29% by the end of this financial year. Factor in personal debt, and the amount New Zealanders owe – primarily to foreigners – soars past 90% of everything we will earn or create this year. Our level of indebtedness has actually grown by the staggering factor of eleven-fold since the “reforms” of Rogernomics were instigated in 1984. In fact a very great deal has gone wrong in this island paradise of ours since those heady days. The Fortress that was Muldoon’s command economy was torn down and replaced by a very leaky building indeed, one that let in the debt while the wealth drained away. New Zealand was once ranked third from the top of the OECD’s standard of living tables; today we are ranked third from the bottom. In the meantime we have sold off the family silver in the form of State assets, opened the doors to foreign ownership of our property, farmland, and businesses (and to hordes of non-English speaking foreigners of dubious worth), dismantled the civil service, emasculated the Armed Forces, and privatised the great State employers of the past.
Apprenticeships are gone, Home Economics is gone, corporal punishment is gone, even compulsory swimming lessons are gone. The accumulated wisdom of a century and a half of colonisation in New Zealand has been swept away by a tide of misplaced ideology, political correctness, and Governmental ineptitude, the lessons of history forgotten, the realities of human nature pushed aside and the behavior of nations disregarded. Amongst the more ghastly follies of the last twenty years has been the dissolution of both the Forest Service and the Department of Lands and Survey, and the creation in their place of that dreadful abomination known as the Department of Conservation. Never before in the history of Government Departments has a more overtly PC, and hopelessly politicised institution, little more than a dumping ground for eco-activists and the enemies of farming and hunting, had life breathed into it, than that misbegotten organisation. DOC appears hell-bent on empire-building, re-writing history, and redefining this country’s landscape. It can’t manage the full third of New Zealand’s land mass currently in its clutches (including 40% of the entire South Island), but it continually clamours and grasps for ever more. It can’t control possums, stoats, or even wasps, but it wages expensive and pointless war on poor innocent wilding pine trees; it dumps tonnes of the horribly toxic 1080, banned in most of the world apart from New Zealand, which consumes some 90% of its annual global production – and other noxious poisons, onto game animals, pet dogs, and into waterways, and it seemingly abhors all introduced plant
species, despite the fact that the entirety of New Zealand’s agriculture, and 70% of our economy, are based on them. But I digress. As usual. This month’s column is not about having a crack at the neo-Native revisionist, iwi-wannabe, Gaia-fundamentalist idiots of the Department of Conservation, though God knows they desperately need it. Another time, perhaps. No, this month I am decrying the very citadel of Rogernomics insanity itself, that oft-cited, little understood, poorly described, and completely unjustified instrument of stupidity known as the Free Market. Nearly three decades on from the first knife thrusts of the Lange-Douglas Government’s treacherous sell-out of New Zealand’s sovereignty, we are still being told that this mythical Shangri-La of economic salvation, the creation of thieves, charlatans, and evil-minded traitors, is a Good Thing. Why? Why, I ask, in the name of everything good and sacred, should the “Market” – whatever that actually is – be free to set its own rules or to operate entirely without them? I ask because nothing else in the construction or organisation of human civilisations is permitted to determine the laws, or lack of them, which regulate its own function. No-one can drive a vehicle on the road without submitting and adhering to a multitude of laws and regulations. No-one may even build the road in the first place without doing the same. No person or organisation may practice medicine, sell or manufacture foodstuffs, operate machinery, fly a plane, build a house, a shed, or a factory, dig a ditch, lay a cable, fire a gun, or even own a dog, unless they first agree to society’s requirements for the doing thereof. But the “Market” wants to be free. Well this writer, for one, asks the question, just who the hell do they think they are? We have rules governing the things people do because those things have the potential to impact upon the lives of others. The material and economic safety of everyone in society is reliant on mutual respect for the conventions by which we all agree to behave reasonably and obey the same laws. The Police, the Courts, the Government itself, must follow the rules and respect the supremacy of the will of the People. And the Market wants to be free of such restraints? I say rubbish. By what right or authority do they demand the freedom to behave howsoever they choose, regardless of what effect that might have on society or its members? The unfettered ability to buy and sell whatever they want, to whomever they want, wherever and whenever they desire, to extract and manufacture and transport and trade anything and everything at all, without regard to any of society’s customs or values, and with no responsibility to that society or for the consequences of such activity? The utter gall of such an attitude is pestilential in its arrogance and nauseating in its capriciousness, and your favourite commentator believes it is high time we said enough is enough. We are the Market’s hosts and providers, and it owes us fealty, obeisance, obedience, and tax, in such manner and such measure as we choose to demand.
People’s lives and livelihoods are dependent on their industries and incomes, and these absolutely need to be protected from the malevolent and the opportunistic, every bit as much as the nation itself must be defended against invaders or enemies from within or without. Tariffs and duties where necessary, import quotas, like-for-like deals negotiated bilaterally at Ministerial level on a case-by-case basis as necessity demands; these are the tools with which Government can, should, and must protect the interests of our businesses and the nation. To do otherwise is the ultimate abdication of Governmental responsibility. So-called Free Trade is never anything like free in reality, and is most certainly never fair. They claim that our dollar must be free to be traded as the market demands, lest our foreign investors should disappear and our economy falter. Absolute rubbish. The sky will not fall if either the Markets or the money traders have to do as they are told for a change. The people who buy and sell our money – the 10th most traded currency in the world – are not investors anyway, they are speculators. The successful amongst them, our Prime Minister included, create nothing of value and contribute nothing to society as a whole, but can make enormous profits for themselves. All credit to them for that, but it is naïve and wrong to ascribe such people the knowledge and abilities of economic gurus on the basis of it, or to pretend that their activities are of any benefit to the economy. Buying low and selling high is the aim of any trader, and there are those who through gift or training are better at it than others, but in essence they are all gamblers, and some are luckier than the rest. The volatility which such free-floating trade creates, however, has serious negative repercussions for New Zealand itself, for exporters and consumers alike, and we would do well to adopt the Singaporean practice of controlling our exchange rate through a managed float regime. Like the promoters of the Free Market, the only people proclaiming the supposed benefits of the prevailing system are those making a personal profit from it, and that they are doing entirely at our expense. The inane and misdirected experiment with free market economics we have suffered under these past 28 years has gone on for 28 years too long, and it is time it was bashed, burned, and buried. We must go back to an age of responsibility in order to go forward into a sustainable future; not to the diktats of communism or as far as the exchange controls of Fortress Muldoon, but to its commands and its ability to direct where necessary, to a sensible middle ground where enterprise is encouraged, fostered, and rewarded, where trade is fair and equitable, and where control of our economy, our Banking system, and indeed our currency itself, are firmly in the hands of the People via the mechanism of the Parliament. The very last thing the Market should ever be allowed to be is Free, and this writer for one cannot comprehend why anyone in their right mind would ever have suggested that it should be.
Why, I ask, in the name of everything good and sacred, should the “Market” – whatever that actually is – be free to set its own rules or to operate entirely without them?
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 11
Catherine Collins & Douglas Frantz
Senior CIA and Bush administration officials argued that stopping the Tinner inquiry and destroying the evidence was necessary to protect U.S. intelligence operations and keep nuclear information
the briefing
away from terrorists
12 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
Down a nuclear rabbit hole
S
even years after the U.S. govern ment proclaimed victory over the rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, the seeds of catastrophe he sowed are still sprouting worldwide. Iran’s march toward an atomic bomb? We have Khan’s nuclear trafficking network to thank. North Korea’s continuing development of nuclear weapons? Again, Khan’s doing. Despite putting the world’s most dangerous weapons in the hands of the world’s most dangerous regimes, not one participant in Khan’s network is in jail today. Even the mastermind himself, too powerful for his own government to imprison, was allowed the comfort of house arrest, and now even that has ended. Instead of a strong message of deterrence, shutting down the atomic bazaar resulted in an unseemly mercy for its perpetrators and a new form of cyber proliferation. By its nature, nuclear trafficking crosses borders. Combating this danger requires international cooperation. Yet at every turn in tracking the Khan network from Pakistan to Iran, North Korea and Libya, national interests trumped counter-proliferation objectives. Decisions by policymakers and intelligence officials in several nations created a calculus in which selling the means to wipe out a city carried less risk of severe punishment than robbing the neighbourhood convenience store. The worst scofflaw was the US Central Intelligence Agency, aided and abetted by senior officials in the George W. Bush administration. Together, they advocated obstructionism masquerading as prudence, blocking prosecutions and orchestrating the
destruction of evidence detailing the full extent of the damage to our security by the Khan network. Khan’s indulgent treatment is well known. Less attention has been paid to the leniency granted his collaborators. None spent more than 4½ years in prison; most served far less. The logistics chief, B.S.A. Tahir, was arrested by Malaysian authorities in late 2003, but he was never charged and walked free in June 2008. Tahir might have helped put a number of his associates behind bars, but the Malaysians refused to let him testify in Germany and South Africa. Similarly, German and South African prosecutors squabbled over evidence and witnesses, leading to light or suspended sentences for four ring members in those countries. But the most flagrant effort to undermine prosecutions was a four-year campaign by the U.S. government to kill a Swiss investigation of the network. Interviews and previously undisclosed documents we reviewed in writing our new book provided a chilling portrait of American bullying at the highest levels to block a criminal inquiry of three Swiss citizens who were part of Khan’s global enterprise: engineer Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Marco and Urs. The Americans stonewalled Swiss requests for help and then pressured them into destroying a staggering quantity of evidence. Senior CIA and Bush administration officials argued that stopping the Tinner inquiry and destroying the evidence was necessary to protect U.S. intelligence operations and keep nuclear information away from terrorists. But our research uncovered more sinister motives.
For one, according to confidential documents, the CIA had paid the Tinners huge sums and wanted to protect their role in bringing down Khan. The CIA also wanted to stop Swiss plans, documented in a parliamentary commission report, to prosecute six of its officers who violated Swiss law by recruiting the Tinners and improperly searching their homes and offices. More important, preserving Bush’s claim that shutting down Khan was a major intelligence victory meant suppressing the disclosure of the real volume of nuclear secrets the network had put on the open market – much of it after the CIA penetrated the ring. In February 2008, documents show, the Swiss succumbed to U.S. pressure and destroyed a huge cache of evidence seized from the Tinners. Among the material shredded, crushed and incinerated under CIA supervision were plans for two nuclear warheads from Pakistan’s arsenal, blueprints for uranium enrichment plants and producing nuclear weapons, and decades of records detailing network transactions. For the last 2 years, a dogged Swiss magistrate has been reassembling fragments of the evidence case, and he recently recommended charging the Tinners. But the case against the CIA agents has gone up in smoke, as has the road map to outposts in the Khan network that remain undiscovered today. The destruction was not only wrong, it was too late. Long before the Swiss seized the cache from the Tinners, the warhead plans and other designs had been transferred to digital formats, easily sent to any computer. Copies were found in Thailand, Malaysia and South Africa; no one is sure where else n The man to blame for Iranian and they may have gone in what we regard as the Korean nukes: Pakistani scientist Abdul world’s first example of cyber proliferation. Qadir Khan. PHOTO: Adil Gill/PPI The lesson here is clear: Leaders must set aside national interests and work cooperatively to stay ahead of nuclear traffickers. United Nations’ efforts ABOUT THE WRITERS on this front have yielded poor results. What’s needed is a new Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz are the authors of multilateral legal regime that puts trafficking in nuclear, chemical The Man From Pakistan: The True Story of the World's Most and biological weapons on a par with crimes against humanity. Dangerous Nuclear Smuggler and the forthcoming book This won’t be easy, but blind adherence to narrow national objecFallout: The True Story of the CIA's Secret War on Nuclear tives increases the risk to all of us. Trafficking.
Among the material shredded, crushed and incinerated under CIA supervision were plans for two nuclear warheads from Pakistan’s arsenal, blueprints for uranium enrichment plants and producing nuclear weapons, and decades of records detailing network transactions. HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 13
From the climate blogs
Frankly, I find this kind of thing terrifying. All the talk of ‘necessary solutions’ and a new Green religion that would provide ‘social glue for the masses’
hotzone
– are we back in the 1930s?
14 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
World climate dictatorship
T
his is a longer post than normal – but trust me, there’s a damn good reason for that. If you don’t read a single one of my other posts, read this one. This post is not about some fringe character. It’s a review of a serious book written by a professor who lectures in mainstream education and is involved in compiling the IPCC reports. The book is published by a respectable publisher for a recognized academic institute And that’s what so scary about it. Professor David Shearman, MD, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Adelaide, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and Law School. Professor Shearman was an Assessor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report and the Fourth Assessment Report. (1) Shearman has penned several books on global warming, such as Climate Change as a Crisis in World Civilization: Why We Must Totally Transform How We Live and The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. His argument is that overpopulation and industrialization are causing an ecological disaster which requires a total change of lifestyle for everyone on the planet. As democracy isn’t up to the challenge, an authoritarian government must (obviously) be imposed to save us from ourselves. Let’s take a look at one of those books, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, which Shearman co-authored with Joseph Wayne Smith. (2) The book was written as part of a series
sponsored by the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. The Pell Center was established at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, by an Act of the United States Congress on September 28, 1996, to honour Democrat Senator Claiborne Pell. (3) The introduction, by the director of the Pell Center, provides a handy summary of the argument contained in the book: “In short, Shearman and Smith argue that liberal democracy – considered sacrosanct in modern societies – is an impediment to finding ecologically sustainable solutions for the planet [intro. p.xi]” Moving to the preface, the authors demand that the reader be prepared to reassess their notions of what is or is not acceptable, and what actions tackling global warming may require. They ask the reader if they are committed to the well-being of future generations: “If so, are you prepared to change your lifestyle now? Are you prepared to see society and its governance change if this is a necessary solution? [preface. p. xiv]” You see, apparently democracy is simply not natural. As the authors put it: “we argue that authoritarianism is the natural state of humanity”. They propose the formation of an “elite warrior leadership” to “battle for the future of the earth” [p.xvi]. Can you see where this is going yet? The authors recognize that religion plays a big part in many people’s lives, and they discuss whether Islam or Christianity fits better with the authoritarian government they see as essential, before deciding that there is a better option:
“However, they are not the only contenders for providing social glue for the masses. Although too much of the natural world will be destroyed for civilization to continue in its present form, some biodiversity will still exist … It is not impossible that from the green movement and aspects of the new age movement a religious alternative to Christianity and Islam will emerge. And it is not too difficult to imagine what shape this new religion could take. One would require a transcendent God who could punish and reward – because humans seem to need a carrot and a stick.” [p. 127] Frankly, I find this kind of thing terrifying. All the talk of ‘necessary solutions’ and a new Green religion that would provide ‘social glue for the masses’ – are we back in the 1930s? But it gets worse. I know, you must be asking yourselves how much more fascistic it can get. The answer is a lot more: “Chapter 9 will describe in more detail how we might begin the process of constructing such real universities to train the ecowarriors to do battle against the enemies of life. We must accomplish this education with the same dedication used to train its warriors. As in Sparta, these natural elites will be especially trained from childhood to meet the challenging problems of our times.” [p. 134] To combat global warming effectively, these ‘natural elites’ will require a government capable of taking the necessary action to combat climate change: “Government in the future will be based upon . . . a Supreme Office of the Biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task.” [p. 134] Worrying stuff, coming from a professor whose previous book (which the Australian government helped to promote) argued that humanity was a ‘malignant eco-tumour’ and an ‘ecological cancer’. (4) I could go on quoting from the book, but I’m sure you’ve already got the gist of what’s being proposed here: Global warming presents such a massive and immediate danger that
democracy no longer cuts it, and an authoritarian ecological government of ‘natural elites’ will have to be found to replace it, as well as a new green religion to help provide ‘social glue for the masses’. Posted on a blog somewhere, such a plan would probably elicit a visit from the anti-terrorist division of the police. But the fact that it comes from a professor at a major university, who works for the IPCC and was written at the behest of a serious academic institute, founded by Act of Congress, means that the author need not be afraid. But we should be. 1) http://www.presidian.com.au/product-climate-change-litigation.html David Shearman is also listed under “authors and expert reviewers” by IPCC here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=688 2) The Climate change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. David Shearman & Joseph Wayne Smith (Praeger Publishing: Wesport, 2007). 3) http://www2.salve.edu/pellCenter/ 4) David Shearman and Gary Sauer-Thompson, Green or Gone (Wakefield Press: Kent Town, 1997) p. 117. The colophon page states that ‘promotion of this book has been assisted by the South Australian Government through Arts South Australia. FOOTNOTE: This article originated on the hauntingthelibrary. wordpress.com blog, which covers climate issues, and is reprinted with permission
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 15
SPIKED THE UNFOLDING STORY OF A TRAGEDY: Last month our special investigation broke the news that Pike’s miners may have blown themselves up by tampering with gas sensors. Now fresh information is widening the blame, and it’s not a pretty picture. Between DOC, the workers, the Cops and the company, no one stood a chance. IAN WISHART has the latest
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ew and even more damning evidence is emerging in the wake of last month’s HIS Investigate story on the Pike River coal mine disaster, and that new evidence suggests tampering with gas sensors in the mine was not only common, but may have been sanctioned by some in management. Last month in a sellout issue Investigate became the first media outlet to reveal details of how contractors working in the mine had spiked the gas sensors deep inside the tunnels. While it may seem counterintuitive, sources told the magazine the company refused to pay contractors for their time if the mine was shut down for any reason. This left some contractors with a financial incentive to switch off the vital safety systems that provided early warning of rising gas levels. Investigate’s revelations are understood to have sent shockwaves through the West Coast mining community, and EPMU President Andrew Little has said they are likely to form a major part of the forthcoming Commission of Inquiry into the tragedy that left 29 men entombed in the mountain and a nation asking ‘Why?’. However, it appears the sensor tampering went wider and deeper than first thought. “It wasn’t just contractors fiddling with sensors,” one source has told HIS. “It was common for the sensors on the motorised equipment they were using at the coalface to be switched off because the exhaust fumes from the engines kept setting them off. The company knew about it, knew it was a problem.” Another member of the mining community has confirmed other unsafe practices inside the mineshaft: “I do feel sorry for Peter Whittall, because he’s going to be the scapegoat in this, I can see it. But the public has a right to know,” she told HIS.
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“People were taking in aluminium drink cans. The aluminium cans, they spark underground. You’ve got different types of gas down there, like you said in that article. Now when you open a can down there it can spark. Aluminium should not be down the mineshaft where any of those gases are. Same as cigarette lighters – the contractors were smuggling in bloody cigarette lighters and smokes! “That’s why I said, all this crap was going on before Peter came on, and then Peter just had a major shakeup. He’s a hell of a nice guy, he wasn’t mean or nasty about it, but like he said when that explosion first happened, he’s weeded out the bad ones.” But it appears Pike River workers and management are not the only ones to shoulder blame. “There are supposed to be three air vents in the top of that hill. There is only one,” the woman told HIS. “When they first put Pike River Coal in underground, DOC agreed to three air ventilation shafts because they needed three. Now, after they’d put the first one in and wanted to put the second one in, DOC withdrew their consent for the other two.”
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hether the lack of those air vents was material in the tragedy is now a matter for the Commission of Inquiry to determine, but it’s not the only farce they’ll have to investigate. Another man has told HIS that rescue helicopters trying to beat the clock and transport equipment vital for collecting air samples in the first days of the crisis were forced to fly around in circles while bureaucrats argued about landing rights on DOC land. “They flew over the site but couldn’t land for two hours because of the arguments between the police controlling the site and fire officials for the conservation area, so they had to land over six kilometres away and get it all trucked to the site, instead of landing it on the spot. Because when you are flying, you have to get permission to land – this is these stupid local body laws and Resource Management Act and everything else.” But the idiocy didn’t stop there. Police and the mining “experts” they were consulting decided to buy $70,000 worth of tubing to stick down the bore hole to take air samples, but the tubing they purchased was plastic. “They were flying this plastic piping in by the helicopter load, repeatedly, and each time they were having to land kilometres away. It seriously delayed the rescue efforts. You’re right, if people had got into that mine within the first few hours they could have quickly sussed out what was going on and got straight back out again, but because of these delays it was stopped. And the police, and fire people, and this whole issue of taking control of the site away from the workers, I think it caused a lot of extra problems. “The police couldn’t even set up a proper communication base, so they borrowed the communication stuff from the helicopter pilots so they could communicate with everybody.” But while police and bureaucrats fiddled, underneath the mountain the caves burned, with a devastating impact on the plastic tubes being used to get air samples. “When they were putting the tube down to get the readings for the safety – this wasn’t made public – but when they were putting it down, kilometres of tube, it just kept melting, it kept melting, and they couldn’t get readings. They said publicly they were get-
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ting readings and it wasn’t safe, but they weren’t getting anything, the tubes all melted. They used plastic tubes instead of steel! About $70,000 worth of plastic tube all melting in a pile of their own fumes when they tried sticking them down the hole.” When police told the media “the gas readings are off the chart”, the Commission will have to ask the question, “Is that because you were actually sampling burning plastic fumes?” This revelation goes a long way to explaining why Police and Pike River coal management refused to release details of actual gas readings to the media and the wider public: they didn’t have any reliable readings. Had the public and the media known at the time, they may have gone ballistic. The man connected to the helicopter operation has told HIS the authorities intimidated miners’ families into silence: “You know how those families on the news were fuming that the police stopped them from getting in? They knew a lot more than the public knew. They were basically told, ‘If you stir things up, you won’t get your Christmas pay’. The threat to go into receivership was a way to shut them up, but the company knew they were going into receivership anyway because they didn’t have any money.” That harsh allegation is independently echoed by the woman from the close-knit mining community. “Pike River Coal has put the clampers on the families. And the police have been doing a lot of pushing with the families as well, telling them to ease off, if you get where I’m coming from. They’re very dominant in how they’ve been doing it. Two or three of them there who’ve lost their partners, they’ve told me the same thing: Peter Whittall, they’d deal with any day, but they feel one cop in particular is very pushy, saying to them, ‘Oh, you don’t want to do this’, or ‘You don’t want to stir the public up’, all this kind of stuff.” She tells HIS last month’s story has had a huge impact, and the families are wanting answers. She has a theory of her own about the final moments of some of the men. “Have you been down the Pike shaft? I have. And many others. I’m right into old closed mines in particular, and search them out. I always find that when I’m getting a bit light headed or my eyes are getting sore I turn around and come out, because I’m getting to the gas. I’m a sort of ballsy b**ch. “When the first explosion happened, and the air was going in and then the air stopped flowing through the actual air shaft – I reckon what’s happened is that one or two of those miners have got into those air ventilations, and that’s why the air was restricted from going into that mine. Because they are pretty solid onto those walls, those pipes, even with the explosion. Now I reckon a couple have got into there. “Now subsequently Police made a decision to stop the air from getting into the mine, then the pipe fell off the wall in the third explosion. Now, for it to collapse off the wall there has to be weight in it. I reckon those guys were in there. With that first explosion the guys may have had broken bones, shattered rib-cages, so they couldn’t make it very far. But they could have got into those shafts in agony and pain, but not been able to make it out. “The Police had no place in there. They had no idea what they were doing,” she laments quietly. That too is a question many hope the Commission of Inquiry will make a serious effort to answer. n
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he report cleared the kiwis, finding they’d returned fire after first being attacked, but it highlights the dangers that lurk in the shadows of Afghan buildings in the sunset. Friend or foe, who’s to know? NATO and the West have pinned their hopes of success in Afghanistan on the Afghan national army (ANA) and the national police (ANP). The ability to recruit and train these forces to an acceptable level in preparation for the pull-out is crucial to the exit strategy. But recently a complication has arisen which has led many to question the strategy’s viability. Infiltration of Afghanistan’s national forces by members of the Taliban is a difficult and inconvenient issue for officials in NATO and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). It disrupts a strategy which has gained momentum recently after being used with some success in Iraq. However vague, there is now a timeline in place and a strategy formed for the withdrawal of western troops from Afghanistan. Coalition forces will hand over responsibility for security, province by province, to Afghan forces, and by 2014 it’s hoped that this process will be finished (though officials in Kabul are quick to point out that 2014 is a date based on best outcomes). A mixture of pressures on officials in Afghanistan resulted in this plan and timeline being firmed up in late 2010. Chief among these was domestic political heat on the leaders of countries with troops serving in Afghanistan. Prompting from the Afghan government has also played its part with mixed signals coming from the Karzai regime regarding the ongoing presence of foreign troops. In this context the plan was never going to be perfect and it was never going to be problem free. The logistics of the exit strategy demand that a further 110,000 or so soldiers and policemen be recruited and trained within the timeframe. This difficult process is further complicated by two factors. The first is the often deserved reputation of the ANA and the ANP for being unreliable. Since NATO troops have fought alongside the ANA, their reputation for a lack of responsibility and
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sheer incomprehensibility has become infamous. Stories of ANA troops too high on opium to move or too lazy to fight are common-place. The second complicating factor is the threat from within. Of the troops already in the national army and police, or the 110,000 yet to be recruited, how many may change their loyalties and how many may already be loyal to the Taliban? The latter has come to the fore recently with a number of high profile killings. In November 2009 the murder of five British soldiers in Helmand province by a local Afghan policeman forced Whitehall officials to look closely at the problem of infiltration. And in January 2010 the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack which saw a member of the Afghan army kill seven CIA operatives in Khost province, Eastern Afghanistan. Reaction to these attacks has been alarmist, with sensational headlines
putting fear into the hearts of soon to be deployed soldiers who must fight alongside the ANA or the ANP for long periods. The killings have been cause for concern amongst policy makers but even more so for the soldiers who have to face the consequences on the ground. More worrying still are claims from the former director of the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. Antonia Maria Costa claimed in October last year that ‘sleeper cells’ have been set up within Afghanistan’s national forces and that they now await instructions to attack – “Certainly there are sleeping cells, certainly there are individuals who are waiting for instructions to hit and that is one of the biggest problems we have seen in Afghanistan of late”. The recent attacks have drawn attention to what is now considered to be a serious problem and as NATO officials have realised the potential
for more severe attacks, measures have been taken to reduce infiltration. Any Afghan recruited into the army or police must now face a series of tests; they must pass a medical screening, receive a letter of guarantee from at least two people in their village (such as an elder or an official), present a government ID card, pass a drugs test and they must submit to biometric testing (if their DNA matches any on a database of those suspected of insurgent activity they are allowed no further). Officials admit that the procedures in place are not going to stop every attempt at infiltration but they are a substantial hurdle and are usually successful in keeping undesirable elements out of national forces. This use of infiltration as an insurgency tactic isn’t new. It has a historical precedent in Iraq, Soviet Afghanistan and in conflicts further back in history. General David Petraeus faced similar problems in 2007 when planning the Iraq exit strategy. Instances of infiltration had led many to the conclusion that an Iraqi national army would never be capable of resisting those against it. At one stage in 2007 the post of local commander of national forces in Baghdad had to be changed three times in three months because of ties to insurgent groups or secularist militias. Now, although the country still struggles in many ways, security is far higher and progress is being made. The plan for the comprehensive handover of military responsibility to Iraqi forces this year is said to be on track. When I speak to soldiers in the Afghan national army or to policemen in Kabul, the issue of infiltration isn’t something they’re worried about. They suggest that troops are 100% loyal to the future of Afghanistan and that the Taliban are in real trouble. Yes, there were incidents of infiltration in the past but they’re hardly worth mentioning. Interesting though is the fact that western soldiers and officials seem to share a similar view.
Although the ANA have established a somewhat undesirable reputation amongst western forces they’ve also won some respect through acts of bravery. The obscurities of the ANA are now seen as a running joke among western troops and there is a certain amount of amused admiration in the tones of a soldier describing the ANA. The instances of infiltration are rare and do not reflect the overall contribution made by national forces. The official line is that the problem has been over blown by the media. Rigorous investigation of each instance of infiltration has been undertaken, reports of sleeper cells have been considered and the appropriate measures have been taken. By far the bigger issue is the actual recruitment of the troops and – crucially – the ability to train them to a high enough standard. This view is shared by a British official residing in Kabul who spoke with a wish to remain nameless. “The media, he says, have jumped on stories of ambushes and they’ve questioned the exit strategy accordingly. But infiltration of the Afghan army or police will never be a big enough problem to derail these plans. What will be a real challenge is getting the Afghan troops up to scratch in preparation for the pull out”. When I remind him of the comments made by Antonia Maria Costa last year he says, “Yes, there may be some sleeper cells and in all likelihood there will be more instances of infiltration but it’s not something which will be instrumental in this war”. According to many the key to loyalty among Afghan troops is money. This is a country, and Kabul is a city, where allegiances shift like the tides and the timing of the
opium harvest. Loyalties here are often fluid and based on personal benefits and for this reason western investment into the ANA and ANP is crucial. The incentive to stay loyal must be stronger than the incentive to join with the Taliban. Recently, the salary of a new recruit in the ANA has increased from US$50 per month to $165. Depending on where the recruit is based this can rise to $240 and officers and Special Forces are paid more. This increase has had the result of increasing retention of troops and recruitment numbers have risen. This investment from the west is perhaps its most critical at this point and care must be taken to always beat the price offered to Taliban recruits. Years ago – even before talk of an exit strategy – the Taliban saw the writing on the wall. Leaving a strong national force behind was always going to be the best option for NATO when contemplating an exit, and for this reason the Taliban has always sought to gain a presence within its ranks. With each attack by national troops supposedly allied to NATO forces, the trust which has developed between these allies is damaged. And this trust will need to be more and more robust as responsibility is handed over to Afghan forces starting this year. But in the end, although infiltration by the Taliban may cause setbacks for NATO and ISAF, the biggest hurdle for the exit strategy is whether or not Afghan national forces will be ready to face the Taliban on their own when the time comes.
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There’s a growing sense of Western political leaders fiddling while Rome burns. MARK STEYN believes we’re on the verge of a major civilisation upheaval. Buckle up…
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f I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff. In the days when I used to write for Fleet Street, a lot of readers and several of my editors accused me of being anti-British. I’m not. I’m extremely pro-British and, for that very reason, the present state of the United Kingdom is bound to cause distress. So, before I get to the bad stuff, let me just lay out the good. Insofar as the world functions at all, it’s due to the Britannic inheritance. Three-sevenths of the G7 economies are nations of British descent. Two-fifths of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are-and, by the way, it should be three-fifths: The rap against the Security Council is that it’s the Second World War victory parade preserved in aspic, but, if it really were, Canada would have a greater claim to be there than either France or China. The reason Canada isn’t is because a third Anglosphere nation and a second realm of King George VI would have made too obvious a truth usually left unstated – that the Anglosphere was the all but lone defender of civilization and of liberty. In broader geopolitical terms, the key regional powers in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived – from Australia to South Africa to India – and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you’re better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados? Barbados? 24 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
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And of course the pre-eminent power of the age derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go. In his sequel to Churchill’s great work, The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Andrew Roberts writes: “Just as we do not today differentiate between the Roman Republic and the imperial period of the Julio-Claudians when we think of the Roman Empire, so in the future no-one will bother to make a distinction between the British Empire–led and the American Republic–led periods of English-speaking dominance between the late-eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It will be recognized that in the majestic sweep of history they had so much in common – and enough that separated them from everyone else – that they ought to be regarded as a single historical entity, which only scholars and pedants will try to describe separately.” If you step back for a moment, this seems obvious. There is a distinction between the “English-speaking peoples” and the rest of “the West,” and at key moments in human history that distinction has proved critical. Continental Europe has given us plenty of nice paintings and agreeable symphonies, French wine and Italian actresses and whatnot, but, for all our fetishization of multiculturalism, you can’t help noticing that when it comes to the notion of a political West – one with a sustained commitment to liberty and democracy – the historical record looks a lot more unicultural and, indeed (given that most of these liberal democracies other than America share the same head of state), uniregal. The entire political class of Portugal, Spain, and Greece spent their childhoods living under dictatorships. So did Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. We forget how rare on this earth is peaceful constitutional evolution, and rarer still outside the Anglosphere. Decline starts with the money. It always does. As Jonathan Swift put it: A baited banker thus desponds, From his own hand foresees his fall, They have his soul, who have his bonds; ‘Tis like the writing on the wall. Today the people who have America’s bonds are not the people one would wish to have one’s soul. As Madhav Nalapat has suggested, Beijing believes a half-millennium Western interregnum is about to come to an end, and the world will return to Chinese dominance. I think they’re wrong on the latter, but right on the former. Within a decade, the United States will be spending more of the federal budget on its interest payments than on its military. According to the cbo’s 2010 long-term budget outlook, by 2020 the U.S. government will be paying between 15 and 20 percent of its revenues in debt interest – whereas defence spending will be down to between 14 and 16 percent. America will be spending more on debt interest than China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, New Zealand and Israel spend on their militaries combined. The superpower will have advanced from a nation of aircraft carriers to a nation of debt carriers. What does that mean? In 2009, the United States spent about $665 billion on its military, the Chinese about $99 billion. If Beijing continues to buy American debt at the rate it has
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in recent years, then within a half-decade or so U.S. interest payments on that debt will be covering the entire cost of the Chinese military. This past year, the Pentagon issued an alarming report to Congress on Beijing’s massive military build-up, including new missiles, upgraded bombers, and an aircraft-carrier R&D program intended to challenge American dominance in the Pacific. What the report didn’t mention is who’s paying for it. Answer: Mr. and Mrs. America. Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army, which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it. The existential questions for America loom now, not decades hence. What we face is not merely the decline and fall of a powerful nation but the collapse of the highly specific cultural tradition that built the modern world. It starts with the money – it always does. But the money is only the symptom. We wouldn’t be this broke if we hadn’t squandered our inheritance in a more profound sense. BRITAIN’S DECLINE ALSO BEGAN WITH THE MONEY. The U.S. “Lend-Lease” program to the United Kingdom ended with the war in September 1946. London paid off the final instalment of its debt in December 2006, and the Economic Secretary, Ed Balls, sent with the cheque a faintly surreal accompanying note thanking Washington for its support during the war. They have our soul who have our bonds: Britain and the world were more fortunate in who had London’s bonds than America is seventy years later. For that reason, in terms of global order, the transition from Britannia ruling the waves to the American era, from the old lion to its transatlantic progeny, was one of the smoothest transfers of power in history – so smooth that most of us aren’t quite sure when it took place. Andrew Roberts likes to pinpoint it to the middle of 1943: One month, the British had more men under arms than the Americans; the next month, the Americans had more men under arms than the British. The baton of global leadership had been passed. And, if it didn’t seem that way at the time, that’s because it was as near a seamless transition as could be devised – although it was hardly “devised” at all, at least not by London. Yet we live with the benefits of that transition to this day. To take a minor but not inconsequential example, one of the critical links in the post9/11 Afghan campaign was the British Indian Ocean Territory. As its name would suggest, it’s a British dependency, but it has a U.S. military base – just one of many pinpricks on the map where the Royal Navy’s Pax Britannica evolved into Washington’s Pax Americana with nary a thought: From U.S. naval bases in Bermuda to the ANZUS alliance down under to Norad in Cheyenne Mountain, London’s military ties with its empire were assumed, effortlessly, by the United States, and life and global order went on. One of my favourite lines from the Declaration of Independence never made it into the final text. They were Thomas Jefferson’s parting words to his fellow British subjects across the ocean: “We might have been a free and great people together.”
But in the end, when it mattered, they were a free and great people together. Britain was eclipsed by its transatlantic offspring, by a nation with the same language, the same legal inheritance, and the same commitment to liberty. It’s not likely to go that way next time round. And “next time round” is already under way. We are coming to the end of a two-century Anglosphere dominance, and of a world whose order and prosperity many people think of as part of a broad, general trend but which, in fact, derive from a very particular cultural inheritance and may well not survive it. To point out how English the world is, is, of course, a frightfully un-English thing to do. No true Englishman would ever do such a ghastly and vulgar thing. You need some sinister rootless colonial oik like me to do it. But there’s a difference between genial selfeffacement and contempt for one’s own inheritance. Not so long ago, Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian and soi-disant Islamophobe, flew into London and promptly got shipped back to the Netherlands as a threat to public order. After the British Government had reconsidered its stupidity, he was permitted to return and give his speech at the House of Lords – and, as foreigners often do, he quoted Winston Churchill, under the touchingly naive assumption that this would endear him to the natives. Whereas, of course, to almost all members of Britain’s governing elite, quoting Churchill approvingly only confirms that you’re an extremist lunatic. I had the honour a couple of years back of visiting President Bush in the White House and seeing the bust of Churchill on display in the Oval Office. When Barack Obama moved in, he ordered Churchill’s bust be removed and returned to the British. Its present whereabouts are unclear. But, given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the bust was almost certainly arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order. Somewhere along the way a quintessentially British sense of self-deprecation curdled into a psychologically unhealthy selfloathing. A typical foot-of-the-page news item from The Daily Telegraph: “A leading college at Cambridge University has renamed its controversial colonial-themed Empire Ball after accusations that it was ‘distasteful’. The £136-a-head Emmanuel College ball was advertised as a celebration of ‘the Victorian commonwealth and all of its decadences’. “Students were urged to ‘party like it’s 1899’ and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies, and 19th century Hong Kong.
“But anti-fascist groups said the theme was ‘distasteful and insensitive’ because of the British Empire’s historical association with slavery, repression and exploitation. “The Empire Ball Committee, led by presidents Richard Hilton and Jenny Unwin, has announced the word ‘empire’ will be removed from all promotional material.” The way things are going in Britain, it would make more sense to remove the word “balls.” It’s interesting to learn that “anti-fascism” now means attacking the British Empire, which stood alone against fascism in that critical year between the fall of France and Germany’s invasion of Russia. And it’s even sadder to have to point out the most obvious fatuity in those “anti-fascist groups” litany of evil – “the British Empire’s association with slavery.” The British Empire’s principal association with slavery is that it abolished it. Before William Wilberforce, the British Parliament, and the brave men of the Royal Navy took up the issue, slavery was an
institution regarded by all cultures around the planet as as permanent a feature of life as the earth and sky. Britain expunged it from most of the globe. IT IS PATHETIC BUT UNSURPRISING HOW IGNORANT all these brave “anti-fascists” are. But there is a lesson here not just for Britain but for the rest of us, too: When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. As I always try to tell my American neighbours, national decline is at least partly psychological – and therefore what matters is accepting the psychology of decline. Thus, Hayek’s greatest insight in The Road to Serfdom, which he wrote with an immigrant’s eye on the Britain of 1944: “There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become
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rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel.” The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbour and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority. Within little more than half a century, almost every item on the list had been abandoned, from “independence and self-reliance” (some 40 percent of Britons receive state handouts) to “a healthy suspicion of power and authority” – the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government “do something.” American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government without a similar descent, in enough of the citizenry, into chronic dependency. What happened? Britain, in John Foster Dulles’s famous postwar assessment, had lost an empire but not yet found a role. Actually, Britain didn’t so much “lose” the Empire: it evolved peacefully into the modern Commonwealth, which is more agreeable than the way these things usually go. Nor is it clear that modern Britain wants a role, of any kind. Rather than losing an empire, it seems to have lost its point. THIS HAS CONSEQUENCES. TO GO BACK TO CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY’S now non-imperial Empire Ball, if the cream of British education so willingly prostrates itself before ahistorical balderdash, what then of the school system’s more typical charges? In cutting off two generations of students from their cultural inheritance, the British state has engaged in what we will one day come to see as a form of child abuse, one that puts a huge question mark over the future. Why be surprised that legions of British Muslims sign up for the Taliban? These are young men who went to school in Luton and West Bromwich and learned nothing of their country of nominal citizenship other than that it’s responsible for racism, imperialism, colonialism, and all the other bad -isms of the world. If that’s all you knew of Britain, why would you feel any allegiance to Queen and country? And what if you don’t have Islam to turn to? The transformation of the British people is, in its own malign way, a remarkable achievement. Raised in schools that teach them nothing, they nevertheless pick up the gist of the matter, which is that their society is a racket founded on various historical injustices. The virtues Hayek admired? Ha. Strictly for suckers. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the modern British welfare state in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want,” to be accomplished by “cooperation between the State and the individual.” In attempting to insulate the citizenry from the vicissitudes of fate, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity. Churchill called his book The History of the English-Speaking Peoples – not the English-Speaking Nations. The extraordinary role played by those nations in the creation and maintenance of the modern
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world derived from their human capital. What happens when, as a matter of state policy, you debauch your human capital? The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers; marriage is all but defunct, except for toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims. For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. One-fifth of British children are raised in homes in which no adult works. Just under 900,000 people have been off sick for over a decade, claiming “sick benefits,” week in, week out, for ten years and counting. “Indolence,” as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a free society, but rarely has any state embraced this oldest temptation as literally as Britain. There is almost nothing you can’t get the government to pay for. Plucked at random from The Daily Mail: “A man of twentyone with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute. Why not? His social worker says sex is a ‘human right’ and that his client, being a virgin, is entitled to the support of the state in claiming said right. Fortunately, a £520 million program was set up by Her Majesty’s Government to ‘empower those with disabilities’. ‘He’s planning to do more than just have his end away’, explained the social worker. “ ‘The girls in Amsterdam are far more protected than those on U.K. streets. Let him have some fun – I’d want to. Wouldn’t you prefer that we can control this, guide him, educate him, support him to understand the process and ultimately end up satisfying his needs in a secure, licensed place where his happiness and growth as a person is the most important thing? Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights’.” And so a Dutch prostitute is able to boast that among her clients is the British Government. Talk about outsourcing: given the reputation of English womanhood, you’d have thought this would be the one job that wouldn’t have to be shipped overseas. But, as Dutch hookers no doubt say, lie back and think of England – and the cheque they’ll be mailing you. After Big Government, after global retreat, after the loss of liberty, there is only remorseless civic disintegration. The statistics speak for themselves. The number of indictable offences per thousand people was 2.4 in 1900, climbed gradually to 9.7 in 1954, and then rocketed to 109.4 by 1992. And that official increase understates the reality: Many crimes have been decriminalized (shoplifting, for example), and most crime goes unreported, and most reported crime goes uninvestigated, and most investigated crime goes unsolved, and almost all solved crime merits derisory punishment. Yet the law-breaking is merely a symptom of a larger rupture. At a gathering like this one, John O’Sullivan, recalling his own hometown, said that when his grandmother ran a pub in the Liverpool docklands in the years around the First World War, there was only one occasion when someone swore in her presence. And he subsequently apologized. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” But viewed from 2010 England the day before yesterday is an alternative universe – or a lost civilization. Last year,
the “Secretary of State for Children” (both an Orwellian and Huxleyite office) announced that 20,000 “problem families” would be put under twenty-four-hour cctv supervision in their homes. As the Daily Express reported, “They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.” Orwell’s government “telescreen” in every home is close to being a reality, although even he would have dismissed as too obviously absurd a nanny state that literally polices your bedtime. For its worshippers, Big Government becomes a kind of religion: the state as church. After the London Tube bombings, Gordon Brown began mulling over the creation of what he called a “British equivalent of the U.S. Fourth of July,” a new national holiday to bolster British identity. The Labour Party think-tank, the Fabian Society, proposed that the new “British Day” should be July 5th, the day the National Health Service was created. Because the essence of contemporary British identity is waiting two years for a hip operation. A national holiday every July 5th: They can call it Dependence Day. Does the fate of the other senior Anglophone power hold broader lessons for the United States? It’s not so hard to picture a paternalist technocrat of the Michael Bloomberg school covering New York in cctv ostensibly for terrorism but also to monitor your transfats. Permanence is the illusion of every age. But you cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without profound consequence. Without serious course correction, we will see the end of the AngloAmerican era, and the eclipse of the powers that built the modern world. EVEN AS AMERICA’S SPENDAHOLIC GOVERNMENT OUTSPENDS not only America’s ability to pay for itself but, by some measures, the world’s; even as it follows Britain into the dank pit of transgenerational dependency, a failed education system, and unsustainable entitlements; even as it makes less and less and mortgages its future to its rivals for cheap Chinese trinkets, most Americans assume that simply because they’re American they will be insulated from the consequences. There, too, are lessons from the old country. Cecil Rhodes distilled the assumptions of generations when he said that to be born a British subject was to win first prize in the lottery of life. On the eve of the Great War, in his play Heartbreak House, Bernard Shaw turned the thought around to taunt a British ruling class too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming. “Do you think,” he wrote, “the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?” In our time, to be born a citizen of the United States is to win first prize in the lottery of life, and, as Britons did, too many Americans assume it will always be so. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of America because you were born in it? Great convulsions lie ahead, and at the end of it we may be in a post-Anglosphere world. Mark Steyn is a columnist for Investigate HIS/HERS. His most recent book is America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (Regnery).
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 29
LIVING NEXT DOOR TO CHALICE
Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance, Richie McCaw’s All Blacks have a golden opportunity to stop that big limousine from pulling slowly away with the Webb-Ellis cup inside. HIS sports editor CHRIS FORSTER examines the task to win back the trophy for the first time since Eden Park in 1987
N
ew Zealand rugby’s driving force has a task of Prime Ministerial importance in 2011. It is an election year after all. But more importantly it’s time to set the record straight in the Rugby World Cup on home soil – and Richie McCaw will be the spearhead of the campaign. He turned 30 on New Year’s Eve. He still possesses the phenomenal on-thefield skills and inspirational leadership to be rated by the IRB the best player in the world for the last two years. Few fans or critics, even from the elite halls of English rugby, can deny the open side flanker is a dominant force on the rugby field. But McCaw would trade all of those awards and accolades for one halcyon moment. His driving ambition is to be running out of the tunnel at Eden Park and carrying a nation’s hopes, just before 9 pm on Sunday the 23rd of October. It’ll be just over 4 years since he captained the All Blacks during their Cardiff calamity, the infamous quarter-
30 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
final defeat to France at the Millennium Stadium. That was a night when everything that could go wrong did, and he couldn’t find a way to lead his mates out of adversity. The infamous taunt from Wallabies halfback George Gregan of “four more years” after the All Blacks were eliminated in 2003, echoes through every Cup campaign. Back in early 2007 when I interviewed former All Blacks coach and 1987 World Cup winner Sir Brian Lochore for this magazine on the lead-up to the World Cup in 2007, he was lamenting the recent technical rule changes: “Watching the game last night I wondered how long the ball was actually in play” he said, referring to the endless stoppages and how long it takes to set up the technical phases of scrums, lineouts, penalties and dropouts. “This issue will have to be looked at”. He’s probably echoing the frustrations of just about every frustrated rugby fan in the country. Many of those issues have been laid to rest with the most recent rule changes,
and the All Blacks last season made good use of the latest set of rules to steamroll their opposition in most encounters. Lochore told me four years ago he saw similarities in the Blacks’ buildup to his successful earlier campaign. “We’re in a concentrated period like 1987. We played an attacking brand of rugby. But our tournament was only organised over a luncheon six months before the event. This time we’ve got three years”. Of course, history tells it differently, and it’s disturbing when I look back at what I wrote on these pages in March 2007: Which brings us to the main event. When they get to France and their Mediterranean base in Marseilles, Sir Brian’s greatest concern is they don’t start getting ahead of themselves. The most infamous example was John Hart’s ill-fated Cup campaign in England, when they were flambéed by the French in the semi-final and arrived home as pariahs rather than heroes. As a moment of journalistic prescience,
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it’s one I could have done without as I watched McCaw’s boys go down at Cardiff against the French on October 6, 2007. Richie McCaw had taken over the captaincy in 2006, and the 20-18 defeat to a French side they were supposed to beat, easily rates as the gravest moment in a stellar career. His gifted teammate, record-breaking first five Daniel Carter, is the other key weapon, The Canterbury pair are probably the two best players in world rugby, surrounded by a high performance unit coached by Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith. Now there’s another trio who need to nail an exclamation mark to their resume after forging the most successful record in All Blacks test history. Their task will be as much about man management as coaching and tactical ploys.
McCaw’s workload, fitness and freshness must all be at the peak – along with the “unsaid” wish that he and all their key players stay injury-free. He’s been given time off from the early rounds of the new Super 15 competition, which launches in a crazy, hazy summer schedule of mid-February. It’s an expanded and revamped format this year, with five franchises from the three SANZAR nations, after the addition of the Melbourne Rebels. McCaw will be a key part of a Crusaders unit, which is expected to dominate in a new conference type format. The New Zealand teams play each other twice, along with the Australians and the South Africans. He’s the sort of guy who’ll want to
get stuck in as early as possible, and won’t shy away from the fiercest of confrontations. His combinations with fellow All Blacks Carter, Sonny Bill Williams, Chris Jack and Kieran Read in Crusaders country will be crucial. There’ll be intrigue and scrutiny over every game, every training session, every media session, every PR opportunity. It’ll be intense right through to the kick-off – and the date with destiny in Auckland in late October. In many ways Richie McCaw’s task of lifting the World Cup for the first time in 24 years is on a higher plane than John Key’s bid for re-election.
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 31
HIS/talkpoint
CAUGHT
BUT IS HE GUILTY? Sometimes a story comes along that causes all of us to stop what we’re doing, prick up our ears, and measure our own experiences against it WORDS BY ANA VECIANA-SUAREZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY VETTA
32 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
H
ave you ever snooped on your mate? Checked pant pockets, browsed through files, clicked on e-mail? I haven’t, but truthfully it’s for lack of time, not disinterest or principle. If tempted, I’m not sure what I would do. Suspicion might make me nosy. That’s why I so carefully read the story of Leon Walker, a Michigan man facing up to five years in prison for accessing his wife’s e-mail without her consent. Prosecutors say he violated a state law that prohibits unauthorized computer access in order to “acquire, alter, damage, delete or destroy property” – a law intended to punish identity thieves and protect trade secrets. I venture to say Michigan lawmakers never imagined it would be used to police the shades of trust (and mistrust) between husband and wife. Leon Walker’s now-ex-wife, Clara, kept a copy of her passwords in an address book next to the home laptop. This proved convenient for Leon, 33, who logged onto her Google account and had his suspicions confirmed: She was having an affair with the second of her two former husbands, a man who had once been arrested for beating her in front of her young son. Worried that his wife’s lover might be abusive to her around his daughter and stepson, he handed the e-mails over to his stepson’s father, the first husband, who filed an emergency request for custody. “I felt that with the risk to my daughter and to my stepson, I had an obligation to check,” he told the Today show. “I had no choice.” Clara found out Leon had accessed her e-mail when those messages became an issue in their divorce and child custody battle. An unpleasant and embarrassing surprise, to be sure, but between her cheating and his hacking, I doubt the Walkers were on good terms anyway. Clara hasn’t told her side of the story via the media, but Leon maintains he was within his rights because he had purchased the computer and it was a joint marital asset. Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper says he simply broke the law. That triggers a host of questions: How much privacy can husbands and wives expect from each other? At what point is an intrusion justified? Is an e-mail account different from snail mail or even Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? And who decides the consequences when a spouse crosses the line – the aggrieved party or the long arm of the law? I doubt Leon Walker’s case, to be tried next month, will go far. A marriage is not a business with trade secrets to protect. If we make snooping in your spouse’s stuff a crime, then checking for lipstick stains might be Exhibit A. What do we criminalize next – checking the cookies on your kid’s computer? In a perfect world, spouses would have no cause to poke around in desk drawers or e-mail accounts, but trust is often the first victim in a fractured relationship, and an overzealous prosecutor shouldn’t be allowed to play referee. At the end of a marriage, as at the beginning, it’s the couple who must set the boundaries of honesty, secrecy and privacy.
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HIS action /MARINE 36 The Ultimate Dive
There’s one place in the world for this
/DRIVE 38 Audi’s 7th Heaven The new A7 hits NZ shores: the highlights
/SPORT 40 Cricket woes In search of their missing mojo
/INVEST 42 Beware spruikers Investors are being offered cheap US property – for a reason
/MONEY 44 7 habits worth knowing
if only: >>
“It was a spineless batting collapse, and one that goes against every grain of coach Wright’s being, and the backbone he wants to restore”
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HIS/ACTION/SPORT
marine
SHAR K BA IT THE ULTIMATE DIVE
WORDS: Manuel Meyer\DPA PHOTOGRAPHY: Andrew Woodburn\AFRICA IMAGERY LOCATION: Tofo, Mozambique
D
iving instructor Xandrey is carefully observing the water’s surface. Nothing is moving. Everyone is tense on board the blue-grey diving boat, full of expectation. Xandrey steers carefully towards the beach. “There, where the waves are breaking, is where they usually surface,” he says. “It’s because there is an especially lot of plankton here – that’s their favourite nourishment.” Wilfried Meyer, a masseur from northern Germany, is also expectantly watching the smooth surface of the water. A number of minutes go by, minutes which feel like hours. Suddenly, a cry from Meyer: “There they are!” He points to the starboard side and Xandrey hits the gas. And then in fact they appear – four gigantic, almost fearsome shadows glide past the small boat only five metres away. From this distance their dark backs with white spots on them
are clearly recognisable: whale sharks! Things quickly get hectic on the boat. Most people can’t get their diving gear on fast enough. Some are so excited that they almost forget their masks before they jump into the water. As if possessed the three divers start to swim after the whale sharks. These giants among sharks don’t seem to be bothered by any of this. Calmly they float just below the water’s surface and with their huge jaws filter the plankton from the water. The whale sharks swim very slowly. Wilfried Meyer overtakes one of the animals in order to take a picture of the wide-open jaws. The swimmer and shark are about half a metre apart. Nonchalantly, the shark watches him with its tiny eyes. “The feeling of swimming right next to the largest fish in the world is simply indescribable,” the diving enthusiast remarks. A whale shark is almost 10 metres long and weighs
GETTING THERE: Thai Airways fly Auckland to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Mozambique, www.thaiair.co.nz 36 HISMAGAZINE.TV HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb February 36 2011 2011
HIS/action
up to 12 tons, yet they move with a lightness and elegance which is almost as impressive as their size. The encounter with a whale shark is a highlight for every diver. And one does not even really need to be able to dive. The best view of the sharks is simply by snorkelling along the water’s surface. But it is only rarely that these giant creatures will show up right in front of your mask. Mozambique is one of the few places on the planet, however, which virtually offers a “whale shark guarantee” to divers. Diving instructor Xandrey also confirms this: “I have not yet had a single diving guest who has gone back home without having seen a whale shark.” The huge fish are to be found here year-round. Between October and April, the chances of seeing one are said to be
more than 90 per cent. The reason is that the clear waters of the Indian Ocean in the Mozambique strait between the island of Madagascar and the African continent’s south-eastern coast are particularly rich in food for the whale sharks. Above all the reefs offshore from the small coastal villages of Tofo and Barra in the south of Mozambique are listed in virtually every diving magazine as the best place anywhere in the world for diving – not only for seeing whale sharks, but also mantas. In fact, the locals refer to the shoreline region as “Manta Coast.” The expectations are therefore high and they are fulfilled: like ghosts, nine giant mantas float past divers at the “Giants Castle” reef 30 metres down. For a moment, they block the sun’s rays. The manta has a span of 7 metres and can reach a weight of up to two tons. On some of the numerous cleansing stations such as the world-famous “Manta Reef” one can see 10 or even more of these peaceful devil manta ray being cleaned up by cleaner fish. An unforgettable experience. Even more impressive is an encounter with the largest inhabitants of the oceans which can take place here off Mozambique’s coast – the humpback whale. Above all it is between July and October that they come to the area to deliver their calves. Diving or snorkeling close-up to the shy giants is not permitted. “But they can be easily watched from a boat nearby or even from the beach,” says Bettina Schaeflein of the Barra Reef Divers centre. She says she will often sit in the evenings on the terrace of her wooden beach house, nestled between coconut trees, and listen to the whales’ singing. Scarcely any other diving region offers such a variety of large-sized fish as does Mozambique. Besides whale sharks, humpback whales, manta rays, skates, dolphins and tortoises, there are also huge groupers, barracudas, bull sharks and white spotted sharks. Scuba divers’ hearts also beat more quickly in the diving area near Ponta do Ouro in the south of the country. At the “Deep Sea Pinnacle Ponta” more species of shark are found than scarcely anywhere else in the world. Everything from bull sharks, hammerhead sharks and tiger sharks to the great white sharks, with their powerful jaws and razorsharp teeth, swimming in pursuit of the huge schools of tuna fish.
HISMAGAZINE.TV February 2011 37 37 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
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HIS/action
argeting the lucrative Sportback market, Audi is releasing its new A7 in New Zealand, blending the sporty lines of a coupe with the spaciousness of a station wagon. Released in Europe in October, the A7 brings back memories of the 100 Coupe of the 1970s with a long hood, sportily flowing C-pillars and sharply dropping rear. Expect to pay around $150,000 for the NZ version. The interior is typical of Audi design, with a "wrap-around" horizontal line extending from the driver's side across the instrument panel to the passenger door. Layered wood veneers and optional ambient lighting give an added treat. Ventilation and massage functions for the front seats are an optional extra. Other options include a new head-up display that projects the most important information on the windshield, including thermal imaging to detect any pedestrians in your path at night. The MMI touch operating system combines a hard drive navigation system with the convenience of touchpad input. Topping the range of hi-fi choices are the Bose sound system and the Advanced Sound System from Bang & Olufsen, which features 1,300 watts of power and 15 speakers. Audi offers the A7 Sportback in Europe with a choice of four V6 engines - two petrol and two diesel units. They produce between 150 kW/204 hp and 220 kW/300 hp. The new 3.0 TDI, produces nearly 180 kW/240 hp with a consumption of 6 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres. The 220 kw supercharged petrol and the 180 kw turbodiesel are the initial Kiwi offerings. All engines feature a recuperation system, thermal management and a startstop system. The newly developed power steering features a highly efficient electromechanical drive. The Audi drive select dynamics system is standard and can be supplemented by the optional adaptive air suspension with controlled damping. Oh, and the sportback? The rear-spoiler kicks raises up at 120 km/h, a dead giveaway if you happen to pass a speed camera.
HISMAGAZINE.TV  Feb 2011  39
sport
chris forster
A dreadful run of 12 straight defeats in the two forms of limited overs cricket came under the guidance of Mark Greatbatch, who’d only taken over from Andy Moles in 2009
40 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
Redemption time It’s not often New Zealand and Australian cricket are on a level playing field. But this is no positive for the Black Caps, far from it. Both teams are trying to dig their way out of the doldrums for the ODI World Cup on the sub-Continent.
F
unny how much coverage cricket gets when things are going pearshaped, especially in summer. The media thrives on disaster, after all. When there’s nothing much else happening, the national cricket teams on both sides of the ditch command an unhealthy amount of attention. And calamities have been happening. In Australia it was the Ashes, test cricket’s greatest rivalry. It became a nightmare for Ricky Ponting’s team, but evolved into a triumph of empire-conquering delight for the throngs of English supporters. The England team, expertly led by Andrew Strauss, waltzed past the Australians with two dominant, record-breaking thrashings at the hallowed grounds of the MCG and the SCG. The scale of the defeat on home soil has prompted the inevitable tidal wave of scathing editorials, calls for internal reviews, sackings and plenty of advice from past greats. New Zealand Cricket’s also been dealing with a crisis and another shakeup of its coaching and selection regime. A dreadful run of 12 straight defeats in the two forms of limited overs cricket came under the guidance of Mark Greatbatch, who’d only taken over from Andy Moles in 2009. The partnership with captain Daniel Vettori –
and all the power he wields – simply wasn’t working. Greatbatch infamously told Live Sport’s radio show that they played “like dicks”, after one of the four straight ODI defeats in Bangladesh. A shake-up came just before Christmas. He’s been relegated to a selectorial role, allowing the much-wanted elevation of John Wright to coach of the Black Caps. Wright is a hard-nosed Cantabrian, the best opener the country’s ever produced, who made his name in coaching circles with a successful stint in charge of the politically-charged Indian team. The logic goes if you can succeed with the egos, money and mega population that propels India, the New Zealand job should be a doddle. It hasn’t worked out that way so far. Wright did manage to stop the rot in the Twenty-20 internationals against Pakistan after Christmas, but the first real test in Hamilton against a second-string team, went horribly wrong. They lost all ten wickets in one pitiful session on the third day of the opening test match. The last ten wickets fell for 74 runs, including the four of the top six batsmen for a single run, against an unheralded attack.
HIS/action
n TREVOR KOLK
Pakistan’s two prize bowlers – Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif – are absent and suspended and going through the legal wringer over spot-fixing charges at an extended anti-corruption hearing at ICC headquarters in Doha. It was a spineless batting collapse, and one that goes against every grain of coach Wright’s being, and the backbone he wants to restore to the New Zealand team. Harsh words, reality checks, constructive coaching, changes in personnel – it was all in place for the second test in Wellington, where Vettori rebounded from his batting slump with a 6th test century. But the longest form of the game has been quickly forgotten, for the challenge and onslaught of 100 over games. It’s World Cup time, and the New Zealanders are as per usual rated as dark horses, but not serious threats. They’re using 5 ODIs on home soil against Pakistan to get in the mood. But they’re now heading to a region where they experienced the humiliating defeats to Bangladesh and India, in this form of the game. The Australians hope to regain their usual aggression and poise in a 7-match ODI series against arch-foes England, which could be seen as overload or a perfect wind-up for the main event. Ricky Ponting’s due back from surgery on a little finger fracture. That’s temporarily handed over the captaincy reigns to
his jaunty deputy Michael Clarke, who had to stomach the final Ashes burial in Sydney. The pugnacious Ponting will be relishing his time away from the media spotlight, after copping if from all quarters as the “baggy greens” failed miserably on home soil. He’s 36 now, one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the game. But a string of failures, and what’s been perceived as erratic leadership against the dominant English team, have fast-tracked him towards the dreaded word, retirement. The feisty Tasmanian won’t go without a fight, and much will depend on the Australians successfully defending their World Cup title. After all they’re aiming for a fourth straight triumph at cricket’s premier international event, and Ponting’s been involved in all of them. Daniel Vettori is a familiar and intelligent face in New Zealand sport. True to his bespectacled, bearded appearance, he’s articulate in kind of a downbeat professor sort of way. This relaxed demeanour’s had to put up with all sorts of pressures and responsibility since inheriting the role from Stephen Fleming in 2007. He’s recently turned 31, still relatively young in cricketing terms, especially for a slow left arm spin bowler, and a crucial batsman down the order for the Black Caps cause. But THAT defeat against Pakistan – the Hamilton howler – was a hard pill to swallow. His reality check with the media afterwards summed up the plight of the New Zealand team and the task facing Vettori and coach Wright if they’re to emerge from the gloom. “It comes down to decision making. There’s no real rash shots, just poor decisions. You need guys to stand-up, we didn’t get that. Run outs didn’t help. It’s just tough. It was a really sad performance from us today, a dismal batting performance. There’ve been good performances from all the top 6 (batsmen) we just have to become more consistent”. You can only imagine the dressing down the humbled team got in the changing room from their new hardline coach. “Wrighty’s stated quite emphatically – he wants things to change, and I do too. And it’s got to start at the Basin”. Vettori did his part with a fine test century on day two of that test, returning from a batting slump with a return to his unorthodox shot-making. World Cups can be quite dull. The last two tournaments have been, as the ICC insists on going through the ritual of round-robin pool games, meaning 6 games each for the two groups of 7 teams. This is to find the quarterfinalists, which are almost a certainty – with the exception of Bangladesh trying to force their way past the West Indies and into the top four in Group A. What it boils down to is a drawn out array of ODI games for more than a month, before the action gets really interesting in late March. On the positive side it’s a chance for the wounded powers of Australia and New Zealand to get their houses in order. There is a big difference here though. The Aussies will never be able to forget their Ashes humiliation on home soil by England, even if they make it four Cup victories in a row. In New Zealand – a World Cup victory – in a year the Rugby World Cup will dominate, would be seen as a triumph, and a portent of things to come. It would also wipe out memories of those disastrous results in Bangladesh, India and Hamilton.
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 41
invest
peter hensley
When the home owner can’t afford to meet the mortgage repayments, they move out and drop the keys off the local bank on their way out of town. That is if the bank is still open. In 2010 a record number of 157 banks failed. 140 failed in 2009
42 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
Don’t invest in US real estate Peter Hensley gives a timely warning about a new investment pitch sweeping Australasia
T
he recent holiday season was open house at Jim and Moira’s. The extended family and many friends seemed to flow through their house on the hill like the water over the rocks in the valley below. If you stood on the balcony you could see the stream empty itself in to the ocean. The wind direction dictated the noise level of the waves depositing themselves on the beach. Weather wise it had been a memorable summer, the number of people utilizing the coastal walkway was a testament to this. The Christmas tree had been taken to the recycling place by the time Paul and Debby called in. It had been several years since their last visit and Paul was keen to tell Moira about the new investment plan he had stumbled over on his last visit to Australia. He had attended an investment seminar and the information presented was dynamite. Paul was so enthusiastic about the concept he thought he might even promote the model in New Zealand. The indicated net returns were over 20% pa. Moira was thrilled to see them and instructed Jim to put the kettle on and put some home baking on a plate. Moira took them straight through to the conservatory overlooking the beach. They were protected from the gusty westerly and the umbrella was angled to shade them from the morning sun. Moira said that Jim had been irresponsible in between Christmas and New Year when he had played golf without applying
sun block. He had suffered for it and apart from handing him a tube of antiseptic cream she had given him no sympathy, only grief when he mentioned it. Moira was most interested in the progress of the children, Ben and Max. Max was still at university and the more academically gifted of the two. Debby was proud to update Moira on their achievements. Ben graduated several years ago and had joined the Department of Defence. He had landed on his feet, however Debby was not able to explain to Moira what his job responsibilities entailed as it was all secret squirrel. Debby was surprised that Paul was able to contain his excitement until Jim had joined them with morning tea. He had talked about nothing else for the past month and it was she that suggested they visit with Jim and Moira as she was confident that Moira would be able to provide some common sense and balance to curb his enthusiasm. The whole thing sounded too good to be true and whilst she loved and supported Paul in all his endeavours, her intuition was nagging at her that all was not as it seemed. Moira sat patiently as Jim passed the newly iced cup cakes around the table and Paul explained that he was considering buying rental properties in Detroit as a way of providing for their retirement. The investment return in some of the examples was well over 20% pa and that was after all the costs had been taken into account.
HIS/action
n Rustic cottage, views to die for, needs a little TLC, offers over $300,000
Moira asked him to go into detail and was impressed how he had arrived at his cash flow forecasts, taking into account local property taxes and even allowing for a slight deterioration in the exchange rate between the US and New Zealand dollar. It was clear that he had done his homework. The spread sheet was a work of art. The formulas clearly indicated that they could invest $100,000, lever it up four times, and buy 10 properties for an average price of $50,000. This would result in a minimum of $20,000 a year, plus any capital appreciation that might occur. The houses even came with a rental guarantee for 12 months and a local property manager who would manage the properties and pay all the local taxes. While Paul looked triumphant and obviously proud of his presentation Jim quietly concentrated on consuming his second cup cake as he instinctively knew what was coming next. Debby was torn between her loyalty for Paul and her intuition which screamed suggesting that it was a bad idea. Moira sat quietly and asked Paul if he could clarify a few issues for her. Paul had put a lot of time into his research and thought that he had covered all bases and subsequently was confident he could answer any question Moira came up with. Her first question was about current mortgage rates and whether or not the collective mortgage of $400,000 would be from an NZ or a US bank. He replied that it would be a US bank as the mortgage rates were a lot cheaper. Moira glanced a disapproving look at Jim as he reached for his third cup cake and his hand quickly slipped away from the cake plate to the tea pot. Moira looked at Paul and asked what interest rates the US banks were offering on term deposits. A shade over 2% was his response. Well why aren’t US citizens buying their own real estate and getting a better return than what they can get in the bank, especially if it came with a 12 month rental guarantee. Paul did not have an answer for that. Moira went on to explain that one in nine houses in the US
is empty. There are examples where houses are being sold for $1. The reason for this is that US house mortgages are actually non-recourse loans. This means that when the home owner can’t afford to meet the mortgage repayments, they move out and drop the keys off the local bank on their way out of town. That is if the bank is still open. In 2010 a record number of 157 banks failed. 140 failed in 2009. Moira continued, saying that the rental guarantee was simply the real estate company overcharging for the house and paying back Paul and Debby’s own money to them in the first year. After that they would most likely be faced with an empty house, no cash flow and a debt obligation they could not meet. Another aspect that the Aussie based seminar promoter did not mention is that it is extremely difficult to prove who actually owns many of the houses currently for sale. The recent banking phenomenon of repacking and on-selling mortgages has highlighted the fact that some banks have been delinquent in completing the appropriate (and required) mortgage transfer documents. This oversight has placed the true ownership of many homes in limbo. There have been media reports that suggest that families have moved back into their own homes knowing that the banks don’t have the ability to actually proceed with the foreclosure process. As Jim refreshed the tea pot he noticed a relieved look had come over Debby’s face. She inherently knew that it was a bad idea and was thrilled that Moira was able to burst Paul’s bubble. Jim marveled at Moira’s communication skills. She poked holes in Paul’s idea whilst at the same time praising him on his investigative skills and willingness to look for ways to improve their financial situation. Paul took it all in good humour and his mind drifted to that old adage, if it sounds to good to be true it probably is. A copy of Peter Hensley’s disclosure statement is available on request and is free of charge. Copyright © Peter J Hensley, February 2011.
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 43
HIS/money
Habits
of Highly
Successful
Spenders
O
nly occasionally does financial success or failure hinge on a single event: receiving a huge inheritance or going broke because you suffered from an expensive medical problem. More often, prosperity and its lack are born of habits, the seemingly small money decisions we make daily. When talking about people and money, themes emerge. We’ll call them the Seven Habits of Highly Successful Spenders, borrowing shamelessly from a best-selling book’s title. These bits of money wisdom might just help you start 2011 on the right financial foot. 1. Care about spending. Money success has just two components: earning and spending. Earning money – from paycheques, investments or running your own business – is sexier to talk about, even more fun. But the truth is, you can’t outearn dumb spending. Look at all the millionaire celebrities, sports stars and lottery winners who end up broke. 2. Sweat the small (recurring) stuff. You’ll often hear, “It’s not worth my time to clip a 50-cent coupon!” That’s hard to argue with. But it’s also misleading, because nobody advocates clipping a single 50-cent coupon. Supermarket shopping ninjas clip coupons regularly, match them to store sales and stockpile items they use. They can save about 50 percent on their entire shopping bill. That still might not sound impressive until you apply that savings to how much an average family of four might spend annually at the supermarket: about $10,000 a year on food, cleaning supplies and personal care products, according to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey. Saving half that, or $5,000, every year starts to sound like real money. 3. Shop it. Fundamental to almost every spending decision is this: Prices on the same products and services often vary,
44 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
sometimes wildly. If you don’t compare prices, you’re deciding to be powerless as a consumer. That’s especially true today, when it’s so quick and easy to compare prices online. 4. Get FIT. Among categories of household spending, three continue to reveal themselves as prime targets for easy, painless cost-cutting. They are Food, Insurance and Telecommunications, or FIT. They are recurring expenses for which prices vary widely in competitive marketplaces. Be liberal in defining those categories. For example, food includes eating at home, dining out and work lunches. Insurance includes car and home insurance and buying extended warranties. Telecommunications might include your wireless phone plan, your Internet and TV service. 5. Know thyself. People are different. Money advice that resonates with one person rings hollow with another. But basic, tried-and-true money advice is valuable, so you must figure out how to apply it to your life. For example, if you’re a born spender who needs to save money, you need to put savings programs on autopilot. Contribute to Kiwisaver at work or set up direct debits from your cheque account to a savings or investment account. That gets the money out of your hands before you can spend it. And avoid temptation by staying out of the mall, cancelling store catalogues and unsubscribing to retail e-mail. Ultimately, the idea isn’t to change your money personality but to thrive with the one you have. 6. Keep your eye on the prize. We’re bombarded with marketing all day long: online, TV, radio, billboards, newspapers. That means we have to continually tell ourselves “no” to spending temptations right in front of us. That takes a lot of discipline. It’s easier if you have specific reasons to say “no.” Those reasons are financial goals. They not only include such goals as saving for retirement or a kid’s college tuition, they also can include a vacation in the tropics, a down payment on a house or a kitchen remodel. It’s said that to see what’s truly important to a person, look at their calendar and their chequebook. Are you spending time and money the way you truly want to? If not, you need some goal setting. 7. Know there’s no free lunch. Academic studies show that the idea of getting something “free” sparks an intense excitement in the human brain. But few things are truly free. You pay for “free” financial advice from brokers in the form of commissions and other fees baked into your investment returns. Your “free” cash-back credit card rewards might be costing you. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago recently concluded that such cards lead to overspending and debt, dwarfing any cash-back rewards. And keep in mind the quip that’s often true for “free” online services that have your personal information: “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” These seven habits aren’t the be-all and end-all of money management. Rather, they might be starting points toward a successful 2011 for you and your wallet. Gregory Karp is the author of Living Rich by Spending Smart
Available on Blu-ray and DVD Now!
“Thrilling!” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times
“Electrifying!” – Anthony Breznican, USA Today
“Undeniably Fun!” – Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times
www.roadshow.co.nz
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 45
© 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved. TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX, FOX and associated logos are trademarks of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and its related entities.
HIS gadgets /GADGETS 48 New Releases The latest in tech toys
/THE MALL 49 How about golf? Things to unwind with
/TECH 50 CES 2011 Smartphones take over the world
/ONLINE 52 Unsecured Wi-Fi It’s a great way to catch something
Converge: >> “Devices such as Apple’s iPhone can be used to monitor blood pressure... and even replace a traditional laptop”
50 HIS/TECH
HIS/gadgets
1
GShock GD100 The new G-Shock GD100 Series boasts a comprehensive range of functions including a world time function showing the time in 48 cities around the world, five alarms, a stopwatch, and a countdown timer along with the newly developed luminescence circuit that drives a high brightness white LED without using any more power than previous backlights. This new technology provides approximately 6 times the brightness of a conventional LED, and achieves outstanding visibility, even in a bright location. Available nationwide – RRP $269.00
XDECT R series The XDECT Repeater Series of Cordless Phones is the new benchmark in the cordless phone industry with the inclusion of a Diversity Antenna System giving unprecedented coverage and optimal reception and clarity by mitigating multi-path errors. The High Gain Antenna allows for greater range and to eliminate dropout areas in your home by extending the coverage and extended range or distance for multi-storey homes and business applications like Factories, Farms and Warehouses where distance is critical. www.uniden.co.nz
Nokia N7 Billed as the ultimate business smartphone, the Nokia E7 boasts Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support alongside a luscious 4-inch touchscreen display, which uses Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility. The Nokia E7 also comes with a slide out four-row QWERTY keyboard making it the ideal mobile business device. Despite the addition of a full keyboard, the E7 is only a smidge deeper than the Nokia N8 at 13.6mm thin. The device also boasts an 8-megapixel snapper and comes complete with 16GB of on-board storage. www.nokia.com
Olive O6HD Audiophiles would definitely know of Olive, as this brand does not skimp when it comes to audio quality. Well, their latest O6HD music server definitely looks set on paper to dish up a pretty good performance, where US$4,999 will net you a 2TB unit. Each purchase will come with a pair of TI 192khz/24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1792 modules, virtually flawless encoding (as per advertising claim) and decoding of lossless audio, simultaneous stream support, as well as the aforementioned 2TB AV hard drive which is touted to run as quietly as a church mouse. www.olive.us
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HIS/mall
Marshall Headphones Marshall is finally making their debut personal headgear products official. The headliner is called the Major, which are the collapsible headphones shown above. It comes with both 3.5mm and 6.3mm (via an adapter) connectability and “super soft” cushions to keep your ears comfortable. The exterior of the headband is made from the same vinyl Marshall uses on its amplifiers and the price is US$99. www.marshallheadphones.com
Onkyo M-5000R ‘retro styled’ Power amplifier Music, when you hear it in all its glory, has the power to lift the spirits and transport you into another realm. Driving you there in audiophile style is Onkyo’s newest hi-fi power amplifier, the M-5000R. Signal quality on the M-5000R is meticulously preserved by new AWRAT technology, while three-stage inverted Darlington circuitry provides extremely efficient power output. Massive twin Toroidal transformers and four 27,000 μF capacitors work to stabilize the power supply and current, respectively. Due to be released in NZ Feb 2011 SRP$4999
DMC GF2 The world’s smallest and lightest DMC-GF2 is equipped with a built-in flash which adopts new pop-up mechanism to prevent vignetting effect due to short distance between the flash unit to the interchangeable lens.Featuring 12.1-megapixel high speed Live MOS sensor and high performance Venus Engine FHD, the DMCGF2 boasts high picture quality not only in photo but also in movie. The operation is extremely easy to understand for any level of users with the adoption of touch control and the new GUI (Graphic User Interface) designed for DMC-GF2. www.panasonic.net
Callaway Diablo Octane The new Diablo Octane Driver from Callaway is another revolutionary development in golf equipment. It’s got a lighter and more efficient club head and longer shaft to increase head speed and power at impact which means it will evolve your golf game by helping you drive the ball further. RRP $499
HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 49
tech
2011: YEAR OF THE SMART PHONE Troy Wolverton’s just been at the huge US Consumer Electronics Show
T
he smart phone is quickly becoming an electronic Swiss Army knife. Already used to surf the Web, check e-mail and get turnby-turn directions, smart phones will soon acquire many more features and functions. At the Consumer Electronics Show this past month, tech companies demonstrated how devices such as Apple’s iPhone could be used to monitor blood pressure, serve as the brains and display for car radios, and even replace a traditional laptop or desktop computer. I wrote before the show that the PC’s reign as the dominant kind of computer was threatened by new devices, including smart phones, tablets and smart TVs. But it was eye-opening at CES to see the degree to which the smart phone is becoming the new PC – only more capable. US consumers already can use the iPhone to remotely control set-top boxes, such as Apple TV. Soon, smart phones will be able to direct a much wider range of devices, including televisions, stereo amplifiers and
DVD players, becoming, in effect, universal remote controls. One new use for smart phones is to replace the brains or displays once built into stand-alone devices. For example, companies such as Withings are developing personal health devices, such as blood pressure cuffs, that attach by cable to an iPhone. An application on the iPhone initiates a blood pressure reading, displays the results and tracks readings over time. Similarly, QNX, which is now owned by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, demonstrated technology that would allow drivers to access smartphone applications on the centre console screens of their cars by connecting their phones to the consoles either wirelessly or by a cable. That would allow drivers to call up Pandora, say, without having to pick up their smart phone or have the app preinstalled on their car stereo system. And a company called Oxygen Audio showed off an aftermarket car stereo unit that doesn’t include a screen at all. Instead, it has a dock in front into which you slide an iPhone. The device relies on the iPhone to tune in Internet radio stations or access turn-by-turn directions and provides a special iPhone app to tune in FM or AM radio stations. Meanwhile, auto giant General Motors and startup Mavizon Technologies have developed applica-
tions that allow smart phone users to connect to the sensors already in cars to find out when they need to change their oil or when their tire pressure is low. Perhaps the most revolutionary steps are those that effectively transform smart phones into PCs. Motorola showed off an accessory for its upcoming Atrix smart phone that looked like a laptop. Only it wasn’t really a computer. It was just a shell for a display, keyboard, track pad and battery; it had no CPU or operating system on it. On the back, it had a dock for the Atrix smart phone. The Atrix comes with a program called Webtop that automatically launches when it’s docked, allowing it to perform like a PC. Driving this expansion of smart-phone capabilities are a number of factors. The processing power and memory within the devices are becoming comparable to what is found in PCs, allowing phones to run ever more powerful applications. Makers of the underlying phone operating systems have quickly evolved their software, allowing outside programmers to take advantage of a growing number of functions, sensors and capabilities built into the devices. And application marketplaces have made it easy to find and install new programs for smart phones. But smart phones also have some inherent advantages over PCs: They’re much more portable, they’re aware of their location, and they’re often much less expensive than PCs. That means consumers can upgrade them and take advantage of new features much more frequently. This innovation focused on smart phones is certain to continue. Heck, it’s getting to the point where I won’t be surprised if the Swiss Army knife of devices even starts sporting a pocket knife or bottle opener. There’s got to be an app for that, doesn’t there?
Makers of the underlying phone operating systems have quickly evolved their software, allowing outside programmers to take advantage of a growing number of functions, sensors and capabilities built into the devices
50 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
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HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 51
online
WHY IS UNSECURED WI-FI SO RISKY?
E
veryone knows how a radio works. A signal goes out and every radio in range can tune in. Wi-Fi is essentially the same. The access point (AP) transmits and your PC receives. But your PC also sends data back to the AP, exchanging information. The key difference between radio and Wi-Fi is that any wireless-enabled PC can eavesdrop on the information that the AP and PC send and receive. The way to protect your data from other computers that might be snooping is to encrypt the data. If your data isn’t encrypted then your username and password can be “sniffed” and stolen. So, how do you encrypt your data? There are a variety of ways to do this. Let’s start with a secure wireless access point. There are 3 main levels of wireless security. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was the first wireless security protocol and offers such weak encryption that it is generally considered as unsecured. The next security protocol was WPA. WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) is better than WEP, but still unsafe. The current protocol is WPA2. When you connect to a wireless access point, you want to connect using WPA2. Unfortunately, that isn’t your choice. Either the wireless access point offers it or it doesn’t. If you have a wireless router that is less than a few years old, then you should have it configured to use WPA2 encryption. A second way to encrypt the data over a wireless, or even wired connection, is to use a VPN (virtual private network). VPN’s are good for work, but not, for instance, internet cafes. When remote employees use a VPN it encrypts the data between the computer and the company. So if you are at the local internet cafe reading your email from your Hotmail account, your corporate VPN is not protecting you. There is only one way encrypt your data from an unsecured AP: SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Without getting too
52 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
techie, when you are at a web site that starts with HTTPS then your data is encrypted using SSL. When you go to log into your Facebook account the login button actually takes you to a webpage that starts with https://, which encrypts your username and password so that hackers can’t sniff it. The problem is that after you are logged in, Facebook and most other social networking and email websites revert back to http://, which means your data is not encrypted anymore. If you are reading your email, another person on the network can read it as well. But it gets worse. Once you log on to a website, it puts a cookie on your computer and that cookie is repeatedly sent back and forth with your data so the website knows you are logged on. The cookie is not encrypted and if someone else gets that cookie
The cookie is not encrypted and if someone else gets that cookie they can access your account. They can send email, tweets or messages to your contacts and friends. They can change your profile and the email address that confirmations or notifications are sent to.
they can access your account. They can send email, tweets or messages to your contacts and friends. They can change your profile and the email address that confirmations or notifications are sent to. One way to reduce the risk is for websites to use SSL all of the time. Google has only gotten some of it right. If you log in when you go to www.google.com, then it is not encrypted. The cookie won’t get an attacker into your email account, but it will look like you visited every site the attacker visits after they steal the cookie. Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, MySpace, Twitter and most all of the other social networking and email sites out there are doing virtually nothing to protect your data privacy as long as they do not default to full SSL sessions. Hacked together by Chillisoft NZ from various sources, blogs and ramblings including Randy Abrams, Director of Technical Education, Cyber Threat Analysis Center at ESET, LLC (developers of ESET NOD32 antivirus software)
we protect your digital worlds HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011 53
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54 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
HIS mindfuel /ONSCREEN 56 The Dilemma Tricky situations make good comedy
/BOOKCASE 58 Michael Morrissey The bad acid trip and other tales
/CONSIDER THIS 60 Amy Brooke How Biggles was banned and who should be blamed
/THE QUESTION 62 Matthew Flannagan Is God a 21st Century Liberal?
This movie: >> “Creates a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood”
56 HIS/ONSCREEN
onscreen The Dilemma ssss | reviewed by betsy sharky
Vince Vaughn grows up
T
he dilemma for The Dilemma, the new Vince Vaughn comedy, is how to tackle some serious business seriously – telling your best friend that his wife is cheating – without losing the funny business of the glib good-time guy that has kept fans flocking to Vaughn’s films for years. Although the seriocomic mash-up in the hands of director Ron Howard is not without its issues, this is a time when bait and switch is not a bad idea. It’s not really about the laughs – what The Dilemma ultimately does best is create a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood. (No, the inanely grating Couples Retreat doesn’t count.) Grown-up is a good look on Vaughn. From the first scene, it’s clear that screenwriter Allan Loeb has created a far more adult world than we’re used to seeing Vaughn navigate. Rather than Old School issues like how many kegs does a frat party need, or Wedding Crasher tips on cruising for quickies, here the discussion over dinner leans toward the philosophical, with the guys wearing suits and sampling the wine like they could actually tell if it was a decent vintage. The movie is set in white-collar Chicago, a nice change from the more typical Southside grit, with cinematographer Salvatore Totino (Frost/Nixon, Cinderella Man) making liberal use of the city’s distinctive architecture and a lot of light to build a beautiful backdrop. The complications swirl around two close couples – Vaughn’s Ronny and his girlfriend and gourmet chef, Beth (Jennifer Connelly), and his best friend and business partner Nick (Kevin James) and his wife, Geneva (Winona Ryder). The guys specialize in automotive design, a high-end boutique business with Nick the engineering genius (far enough from the Paul Blart: Mall Cop loveable dunces he usually does to feel fresh) and Ronny the marketing whiz, with James’ and Vaughn’s sensibilities a good match. They’re on the cusp of getting the break of a lifetime from a Motor City heavyweight, and Starring: Vince Vaughn, Ronny is just as close Winona Ryder to proposing to Beth Directed by: Ron Howard in hopes of building Rated: PG13 a long-term life that Running time: 118 minutes looks a lot like Nick and Geneva’s. The
56 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
stakes and the tension couldn’t be higher. But in a botanical garden as lovely and dangerous as Eden, Ronny’s notions about life and love are upended when he spots Geneva secretly smooching a tattooed hottie named Zip (Channing Tatum). Just what to do about his discovery is unclear and most of the film is fuelled by the comedy and the drama of Ronny figuring out how and when to tell Nick that his 20-yearmarriage is apparently a sham. Now this is the tough part – for Ronny and the director, who’s returning to comedy after decades of more dramatic fare from critical highs that include Frost/Nixon and A Beautiful Mind to the lows of The Da Vinci Code and its Angels & Demons follow. Drenched as it is in relationship issues, the comedy in The Dilemma turns out to be a complicated beast, requiring more layers than the sentimental romances of Howard’s early hits such as Splash and Cocoon. While he hits most of the darker notes, the filmmaker proves too indulgent with the lighter riffs, when a little restraint would have made for a better film. There were hints of the more versatile actor Vaughn might become a few years ago in The Break Up opposite Jennifer Aniston. The Dilemma is yet another step in that direction, and, perhaps, the end of an era as well. Now that the good-time guy has walked around in big boy shoes, I’m not sure there’s any way of going back.
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HISMAGAZINE.TV  Feb 2011  57
bookcase BOOKS EDITOR | michael morrissey
A bad acid trip & other tales UNDERCOVER
By Keith Bulfin Bantam, $39.99 Undercover is a gripping on the edge-of-your-seat thriller. The question remains – is it really a thriller or simply a true to life report from a dangerous life? The answer seems to be a bit of both. Certainly, it is written up as a first person narrative biography and reads as a life account rather than a work of fiction which isn’t to say that a degree of fictionalising hasn’t occurred. Bulfin is a New Zealander who graduated from the University of Queensland with a double major in economics. Subsequently, he worked in the finance industry in South Africa, the UK and Papua New Guinea. Though his account carries an ambiance of claimed innocence, Bulfin narrates how he was raided by the Victorian Fraud Squad and decided to plead guilty. His logic was that he might otherwise have lost in a “prejudiced court” and receive an even heavier sentence. He received a three year sentence. Compared to the 20 or 30 year sentences handed down to multiple murderers, it might not sound like very long but in Bulfin’s gruelling account it comes across as a pocket eternity. Since in civilised countries inmates have toilet facilities in their cells, some might regard their stay in prison as somewhat of a cruise and certainly it is a great improvement on the barbaric type of Asian prison where inmates are all crowded together. But bear in mind prisoners are locked up in tiny cells up to twenty three and a half hours a day. Bulfin foolishly tells the guards he suffers from claustrophobia and is a vegetarian. He doesn’t get a lot of sympathy. Bulfin writes: “Living in Sirius East was like being a bad acid trip inside a hall of mirrors.” Taken literally, this sentence means, the prisoner is confronted by multiple unpleasant hallucinations. As fate would have it, Bulfin found himself a fellow prisoner with Daniel Gomez, a tall, educated Mexican drug lord fluent in four languages who also happened to be a banker. Because of their mutual interest in finance, the two became friends. Let it be noted that Bulfin estimates the drug traffic from Mexico to the United States is worth over $80 billion a year. One hundred and twenty people are killed each month. When Bulfin emerged from prison he was approached by the DEA with a job proposal. Most people have heard of the DEA or Drug Enforcement Agency. It was created by President Richard Nixon in 1973. Today, they have more than five thousand agents and a budget of over $2 billion. Because of his previous
58 HISMAGAZINE.TV Feb 2011
As fate would have it, Bulfin found himself a fellow prisoner with Daniel Gomez, a tall, educated Mexican drug lord fluent in four languages who also happened to be a banker. Because of their mutual interest in finance, the two became friends
association with drug lord Gomez, they wanted him to use his financial know-how to track the movement of drug funds from Mexico to the USA. This means he had to work hand in glove with drug lords. To say the work would be dangerous is an understatement of massive proportions. Though the DEA agents tell him he won’t be put at risk! How could he not be? After a while, Bulfin was moving up to a million dollars a day and more for Gomez. Everything is happening as it should (under dangerous cover) until on one occasion a DEA agent is recognised by Columbian gangsters and a deadly shootout ensues. Unlike the movies (or James Bond), Bulfin doesn’t stay calm, cool and collected but urinates in his pants during the murderous violence. Thereafter, he has to be protected by a witness protection programme. The rest of the book is a series of nerve-wrenching escapes from vengeful hit men. The stresses and strains on family life are clearly detailed (probably one reason why James Bond spent most of his career not married). This account is somewhat like a James Bond story but in its way more gripping as it is so clearly underpinned by fact rather than fantasy. Highly recommended as a vicarious exploration of a dangerous life style. But don’t start reading it late at or you’ll stay up all night.
THE TORCHLIGHT LIST
By Jim Flynn Awa Press, $33 This is the sort of compendium that I used to relish – an intellectual /academic/ writer makes a list of the world’s great
HIS/mindfuel classics and gives succinct reasons why a book should be chosen and why we should read it. Flynn enthusiastically writes, “I am now seventy-six and the magic realm of literature captivates me as much as it did when I was four.” Good on you, Jim! To re-echo my remarks in the previous review, literature itself is currently seen to be in danger from the barbaric linguistic brevity encouraged by cellphones, emails, texts, Twitter, Facebook, videogames, movies (though movies often reinforce the reading of books) and the laconic style of conversation seemingly encouraged by footballers – or does Sir Colin have a novel tucked under his jersey? Flynn notes that a sixteen year-old killed his older brother over access to Playstation but observes that no teenager has killed anyone over who gets to read War and Peace. Flynn’s method is to visit all the cultural centres of the world and pick some 200 books as the finest representation of world literature. He omits Greece, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium but (being a kiwi) sneaks in a mention of New Zealand with Gee’s Plumb, Frame’s Owls Do Cry and Mulgan’s Man Alone. It’s a sound choice but then what of Katherine Mansfield or Owen Marshall? Flynn’s lists are a provoking mixture of the expected and the unexpected (or in some cases unknown to me) and a few glaring omissions – or are they provocations as well? Like many readers, I have only heard of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Flynn confidently informs us we should read three more – The Black Obelisk, Three Comrades, A Time to Love and a Time to Die. I shall look out for them. However, I consider it unlikely that The Black Obelisk, as the blurb claims, is likely to be the “best book of the century”. Among numerous classics of which I was ignorant are included Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev and and two books about the Spanish Civil War by Camilo Jose Cela, and C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow which Flynn declares the best history of blacks after slavery. I was happy with his list of American greats but thought listing The Naked and the Dead as Mailer’s one good novel seems a little harsh. As Flynn warms up, he become more outrageous. “I have read Spanish novelists whose work is set post 1950s. Perhaps I have had bad luck, but all were fatally infected.” Fatally infected by what? Literary cholera? French writer Philippe Sollers’ achievement in writing a novel using one continuous phrase “ranks with going through a prolonged head cold without blowing one’s nose.” I may be backward but I can’t see the relevance of the metaphor. Now for some of Flynn’s extraordinary omissions. Prominent among them is listing Gabriel Garcia Marquez but failing to mention One Hundred Years of Solitude widely regarded as the greatest novel of the last fifty years. Nor is there any mention of J. D. Salinger. However, when Flynn really likes a writer such as Philip Roth, Erich Maria Remarque or Isaac Bashevis Singer he gives them an enthusiastic thumbs up. And in the end that’s what literature is about – enthusiasm amounting to love. Literature currently needs all the love it can get.
SHORT TAKES THE BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF 2010 Reviewed by Richard Pachter The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century By Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz Harvard Business Press, 480 pages (US$41.99) This sprawling, old-fashioned biography of Albert Lasker brings to life an important figure in the world of advertising and politics. Among his accomplishments, according to the authors, is the prominence given to content and copywriting; the consumercentered ad; modern political advertising; branding commodities, particularly produce; selling previously unmentionable female hygiene products; and more, including the “creation’’ and popularization of orange juice as a daily morning beverage.
The Art of Choosing By Sheena Iyengar 12/Grand Central, 352 pages (US$37.99) If you choose to read Columbia University professor Sheena Iyengar’s fascinating book, you may have a slightly better idea of how humans formulate decisions. We like to be in control but often consciously (or not) defer to parents, authorities or even strangers. We often say one thing then do something else. Choices we feel strongly about one day may fade into an afterthought with time. Iyengar’s frequent digressions and asides are as cogent and interesting as her main points, and certainly as descriptive; an amazing feat for a sightless person. But then, her vision extends far beyond the physical domain.
Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age By Douglas Rushkoff OR Books, 152 pages (US$16) The author’s mission is to raise awareness of the human implications of our technologies – the context (if you will) of our actions. His Decalogue is a set of rules of conduct. To wit: “Do Not Be ‘Always On’; Live in Person; You May Always Choose ‘None of the Above’; You Are Never Completely Right; One Size Does Not Fit All; Be Yourself; Do Not Sell Your Friends; Tell the Truth; Share, Don’t Steal; and Program or Be Programmed.” On the surface they seem pretty obvious, but like their Biblical counterparts, they add up to a wise and ethical way to conduct oneself, in this case, mostly within the online and virtual worlds.
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consider this:
amy brooke
The strong, well-written underpinning of moral values in similar stories – where courage, honesty, and behaving well were regarded as an essential part of growing up is no doubt why their writers were blacklisted by those who saw, and see, the medium of children’s writing as serving a much different purpose
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The banning of Biggles
A
typical example of the wide spread politicisation of education gripped in the political correctness vice comes from a young Australian studying for Higher School Certificate. “Some brainiac,” she laments, “has stipulated that for the rest of this year our English classes – every single one of them – have one theme. That's right. One idea for a whole term. “Too bad,” she sighs, “if it’s a really bad idea, which ours is…We’re studying ‘belonging’. We read Shakespeare's As You Like It and hunt for clues about belonging. We read poetry. More belonging. We watch films. And still we’re searching for signs of belonging. I should be writing an English essay right now on how knowledge brings a sense of belonging… Is this what clever grown-ups call critical literacy? Only people who use words like discourse and post-structuralism get it. In our English class, all we get is bored. And we have one of the good English teachers…” If this bright girl can rebel, why can't her teacher, in the straitjacket of conformity to the typical theorizing of dunderheads running ministerial bureaucracies? How good to see this young writer rejecting the nonsense of educationists’ prattle about “pedagogy or intertextuality…about discursive backgrounds (whatever they are)”… about “deconstructing {literature} with all the dreaded isms. Racism. Feminism. And that truly boring one. Environmentalism. And I’m not even kidding.” As she points out, what always draws readers is captivating characters, fine writing, humour (if welldone) and a great story.
None of these criteria, of course, demonstrably figure in relation to the New Zealand children's book awards, ever-based on the establishment’s culpably politicised criteria such as embracing biculturalism – or multiculturalism – or our supposed national identity – or a myopic “relevance” to a child's own immediate world. Our forever-with-us arbiters of taste and fashion have stepped into the same shoes of those who had the gall to actually ban the stories of that supremely imaginative writer, Enid Blyton. Her colourful little Noddy books are loved, still, by 3 to 4-year-olds, as are Mr Galliano’s Circus and The Famous Five series for older children. The Magic Faraway Tree and The Magic Wishing Chair stories, with Blyton’s school tales and her wizards, spells and potions (together with Ursula Le Guin's school of wizards), underpin J. K. Rowling's Hogwart stories, which owe a lot to these predecessors. Their huge success derives from children grateful for an overdue antidote to the wretchedly tedious, largely crudely-written, social realism stories demanded by publishers, convinced they are reflecting back to needy young child readers their “relevant” world. Librarians are similarly propagandised by the same fashionable thinking relating to the themes needing to be inflicted on children today. The attack on what was disapprovingly regarded as wholesome writing, containing real heroes, such as the Biggles stories, saw these thrown out of libraries. Moreover, the strong, well-written underpinning of moral values in similar stories – where courage, honesty, and behaving well were regarded
HIS/mindfuel as an essential part of growing up is no doubt why their writers were blacklisted by those who saw, and see, the medium of children's writing as serving a much different purpose. Why have we let the politburos with their reductive, third-rate formulae so long dominate our directions? They are guaranteed to produce nothing of any great note, but undoubtedly, with their PC-Aotearoa-centred obsessions, stifle the intellectually truly creative. Among our overarching, supposedly intellectual elites (doing no justice to the true meaning of this word) we find mediocrity, banality, conformity – derivative writing and thinking. Its sources are poverty of intellect, posturing and pretentiousness – fed by over-large doses of that self-esteem so long fostered by our educationists. We can expect little more when any passing acquaintance, even, with what constitutes genuine excellence in writing and thinking has long been withheld from New Zealanders passing through our largely trashed education system. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man can exercise highly damaging control. The consequences for children should cause us to demand far better. Vigorous rebellion from good teachers is well overdue, to far more determinedly fight our thirdrate education controllers who have reduced a once creditable school system to close to intellectual rubble. One rebel, the maverick Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, now has a unique demand – that “all Londoners must first learn to read.” In his forward to a report by Miriam Goss’s “So why can't they read?” published by the Centre for Policy Studies, Johnson says “The astonishing levels of illiteracy are not only an indictment of our failures in the last 20 years” (he should take this much further back) “they are an indication of potential. Imagine if we could so focus on the five, six and seven year olds {so} that hardly any 11-year-olds were having difficulty. Think of the difference we could make to the economy and society.” Indeed. But there’s little sign this idea is palatable to educationists, who, these recent decades, have endorsed every obviously silly theory to produce opposite outcomes. Banning phonic teaching of reading to new entrants; abandoning teaching children how to actually spell, punctuate, understand grammar and syntax; encouraging text messaging to replace literacy: these give us a fair idea of what our establishment has been up to. Michael Gove, Britain's new Education Secretary, is streets ahead of our education minister in pointing out how damagingly the Left have loaded the dice against disadvantaged children. In Britain, pupils are now to be penalised in exams for poor spelling, grammar and punctuation. A sweeping overhaul of the education system is to reverse years of dumbing down by Labour. The damage done here is reflected in the embarrassment so many New Zealanders feel about not knowing how to use their own language well. Its consequences have contributed to our shockingly large numbers of prison inmates, most of whom are subliterate.
With relevance to the debate about over-full prisons, and anger at the sop of home detention sentences now ritually handed out, I'm reminded by Ingrid Lindsay of Invercargill of an interesting experiment, brainchild of Robert Waxler, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, who “convinced his friend Judge Kane to take eight repeat offenders and place them in a reading programme he (Waxler) devised, instead of sending them to prison. It now runs in eight states, including Texas, Arizona and New York. The subject matter? Texts of Plato, Mills, Socrates. The programme is called Changing Lives through Literature. As Ingrid notes, “It is a remarkable proven hypothesis that reading skills are critical in the world we live in… that literature has a strong and good influence on moral behaviour and social standards, and as such should be valued and given a rightful place in education… Literature has given hope, and life without any hope is a pretty bleak place.” An appealing daydream is to sentence the usual ministerial advisers to home detention, to feel “belonging”… and to require, before their eventual parole, that they “demonstrate an understanding” of what really constitutes excellence in thinking and writing. This, of course would mean abandoning their posturing and jargonized theorising to beginn to learn, listen, reflect, and understand. Our children? They would be far better off under the care of those genuinely knowledgeable. © Copyright Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz
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the question
matt flannagan
While God does not command wrongdoing it is likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would at some time command something contrary to what we think is wrong.
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Is God a liberal?
O
n 11 September 2001 Islamic terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Centre killing thousands of innocent people. Ostensibly they did this because they believed God commanded them to do so. This event has invigorated a fear latent in the Western psyche since the 17th century when wars of religion tore Europe apart, the fear of religious fanaticism, of people willing to murder hundreds in the name of God. These fears were centre-stage recently at a Conference held by the Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. Sceptics presenting at the conference argued passionately that the God of the bible issues commands which are at odds with contemporary modern understandings of morality. Adultery is punished with death; on some occasions, God is portrayed as commanding the killing of non-combatants in “holy wars” against the local Canaanite population. There is a lot that can be said about these concerns and in a short column I cannot say everything. In many instances I think the sceptics fail to appreciate the context and genre of the passages they cite. They fail to appreciate, for example, that Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts employ highly figurative rhetoric, which hyperbolically describe victories in terms of total annihilation of the enemy. They fail to appreciate that Ancient Near Eastern legal texts, as noted by Raymond Westbrook, “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.” Or that, as JJ Finkelstein points out, they “were
not meant to be complied with literally” but to “serve an admonitory function” and so probably do not command execution for the crimes mentioned. Sceptics can fail to grasp that claiming the bible is God’s word does not mean it did not come to us mediated through the writings of human beings who wrote in a particular time and place using the language, rhetoric and literary conventions of their time and so and frequently they fail to appreciate the bible is a Canon and that passages need to be read in their broader context i.e. taking into account the whole bible. A full articulation of these points, however, would take more space than I can here muster. Instead I will address another feature of this issue which concerns the general method in play here. In each case the sceptic takes a purported divine command and compares it to a moral belief that he takes to be correct. The conclusion he draws is that the purported command is inauthentic. This is of course a possibility; there is, however, another possibility that on at least some occasions, moral statements these sceptics are relying on are mistaken. This feature of the dialectic became clear to me after a public debate I had on these issues in August. A sceptic wrote to me claiming that even granting the issues about the genre of the biblical text, the bible still presents a picture of God who issues commands out of accord with contemporary modern understandings of morality. Suppose one grants that when read in its literary context, the Torah does not literally prescribe the death penalty for adultery or sodomy, it still is con-
HIS/mindfuel demning sexual activity between consenting adults. This raises an interesting question, why does the sceptic assume that God, if he existed, would be a contemporary western liberal? Why assume that he would never command anything politically incorrect or out of accord with trendy Western mores? The sceptic assumes that it is appropriate to assess purported divine commands with his own moral perspective. Why? The most sustained argument for this method I know of comes from a Moral Philosopher at Yale University, Robert Adams, in his excellent book Finite and Infinite Goods. Adams states that “Our existing moral beliefs are bound in practise, and I think, ought in principle, to be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” Adams reasons that we can only accept the claim that God’s commands constitute our moral duties if God is understood as perfectly good; if God were evil or morally indifferent then it would be possible for him to command wrongdoing and we cannot have a duty to do wrong. Once this assumption is granted, however, one cannot coherently say that God has commanded just anything. We have some grasp of what goodness is, what counts as right and wrong, what kinds of things a good person does not command. Therefore, God cannot coherently be called good if what he commands is contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. As Philosopher Raymond Bradley notes, to do so would be “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” that deprive “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil’.” In response, I will simply note that critics of Adams’ argument have shown that as it stands it needs qualifying. It is true we have some grasp of what goodness is but this is mitigated by two factors. First, our moral judgements are fallible. While God does not command wrongdoing it is likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would at some time command something contrary to what we think is wrong. To say otherwise dogmatically assumes that we are such good judges of morality that God could never disagree with us. Second, our moral concepts are subject to revision. We change our opinions about the goodness and rightness of certain things without “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” or depriving “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil.’” If this were not the case then one could never honestly or rationally change one’s mind on an ethical issue. Consequently, Adams’ argument does not show we cannot attribute to God’s commands contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. Rather, as he says elsewhere, we cannot coherently ascribe to “God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” Elsewhere he allows for “the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center” but “we can hardly hold open the possibility of anything too closely approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places”. Therefore, Adams does not establish the claim that “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” It does, on the other hand, suggest that we cannot coherently “accept a theological ethics that ascribes
to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” Adams argues that we cannot coherently or defensibly accept a theological ethics which, in effect, makes good and evil trade places and which so radically transforms our concept of goodness that it becomes a synonym for what we call evil. Nor could we accept an ethical system that calls our concept of goodness so radically into question that it breaks down. Certain beliefs such as, “that killing, assault, theft and lying are in general wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies” or that without special overriding reason it is wrong to inflict pain and suffering on others or treat them with contempt” are so central to our account of goodness that we cannot coherently accept that a perfectly good being has issued commands which negate them. However, many moral claims are highly controversial and such that people can debate them and change their minds on them and so on. When they do it is implausible to suggest that their concept of goodness was so radically at odds with previous beliefs that “good and evil would trade places” or that it is merely a word game that the position holding these things could be endorsed by a good person. Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say that it is obviously self-contradictory. Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can dismiss those views we disagree with as conceptually incoherent, as being so radically at odds with our understanding of good so as to be incomprehensible or merely semantic gymnastics. Even when we disagree with people on these issues in many instances we need to take what they say with real seriousness and be open to the possibility that they are right and we are wrong. This means one should not be too quick to dismiss a purported divine command merely because it is contrary to a contemporary liberal morality. Obviously one cannot coherently attribute anything at all to God and claim he is good and Adams is correct that we cannot accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking. However, one function of theological reflection is to critique our contemporary mores and an authentic encounter with God’s will is likely to contrast with some of our moral beliefs. It is sheer hubris to suggest God would always agree with us. Is it really impossible for an all knowing, all good being to disagree with us on the seriousness of adultery or the propriety of capital punishment? To say no is to tacitly assume that modern 21st century liberal westerners have made no mistakes and their understanding of morality is infallible and inerrant. Those who make such an assumption have a dogmatically certain faith in contemporary liberal mores. Such attitudes are normally attributed predominantly to religious fundamentalists and I think the irony of this speaks for itself. Dr Matthew Flannagan is an Auckland based analytic theologian who researches and publishes in the area of Philosophy of Religion, Theology and Ethics. He blogs at www. mandm.org.nz.
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