INVESTIGATE

Transcription

INVESTIGATE

INVESTIGATE
THE JIHADIS
NEXT DOOR
WHAT’S REALLY RADICALISING
MODERATE MUSLIMS?
NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE
WAITANGI
DAZE
WHY AREN’T WE BEING
TOLD THE TRUTH
ABOUT OUR HISTORY?
ASK JEEVES
THE PG WODEHOUSE
STORY
Feb/Mar 2015, $8.60
MARK STEYN
AMY BROOKE
& MORE
Contents
Feb/Mar 2015
14
THE JIHADIS NEXT DOOR
What’s really radicalising young Muslims? The shocking
answer: it could be you. Just the ‘stench’ of living in
Western culture is encouraging many young men to join
extreme forms of Islam to compensate, and the hate
preachers are there to recruit them. IAN WISHART with
the stunning revelations
22
THE JIHADIS ON CAMPUS
22
The word ‘Islamophobia’ is flung around,
but ShariaWatch UK has issued a new report
suggesting westerners have good reason to be
phobic about the growing extremism of Islam
28
PG’s TIPS
It’s the fortieth anniversary of the death of
brilliant writer PG Wodehouse. HAL COLEBATCH
re-evaluates the literary contribution of
the man who gave us Jeeves & Wooster
IN HERS
WAITANGI DAZE
28
The tribunal has ruled
Ngapuhi never ceded
sovereignty, is it telling
the truth? IAN WISHART
argues no, and lays
out the evidence
Contents
34
38
06Editor
Speaks for itself, really
08Communiques
Your say
46
10Steynpost
Mark Steyn
12 Right & Wrong
David Garrett
34Invest
42Science
36 Gadgets & Mall
44Bookcase
38Tech
46Movies
40Online
48 Consider This
Money in 2015
The latest toys
Self-drive cars
Hacking medical records
Bad luck and cancer
Michael Morrissey
American Sniper
Amy Brooke
36
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Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 5
EDITORIAL
By Ian Wishart
Je ne suis pas Charlie
T
here is nothing more odious, more obnoxious, than
journalists and others in the
liberal media engaging in selfcongratulatory fawning and
onanism as they compete to prove themselves the biggest or most ignorant prats
on the planet. The massacre at French
journal Charlie Hebdo brought out the
worst in that kind of media hypocrisy.
Suddenly, every Gen-Xer with a Twitter account, every Millennial with Instagram, was telling anyone who would
listen that they, too, were Charlie. Yeah,
right. So they were posting offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhammed on their
accounts, in their newspapers or on their
TV broadcasts?
Not by a long shot.
Free speech is one of those rights that
has to be exercised carefully. One restrain
on it is defamation law, which emerged as
a less fatal alternative to duelling when
gentlemen fell out over an insult. Because,
traditionally, the ultimate comeback
from exercising one’s free speech has
always been the possibility of death or
financial ruin.
The editorial team at Charlie Hebdo
knew what they were doing, tweaking the
tail of a religion whose holy book advocates violence against non-believers. Of
course, in any civilised world we recognise that the death sentence is no longer
the appropriate response to an insult, but
Islam is ‘special’ and western liberals in
the media have long argued in favour of
that specialness.
For example, when an idiot Florida
Christian pastor of a tiny 50-strong church
decided to burn a copy of the Koran a
couple of years ago, the “JeSuisCharlie”
brigade in the western news media argued,
almost to a person, that the pastor’s actions
were “despicable…hate-speech”.
There was, it goes without saying, no
defence of the pastor’s rights to his own
free speech commentary on Islam.
In the New Zealand Herald, Tracey
Barnett wrote:
Suddenly, every Gen-Xer
with a Twitter account, every
Millennial with Instagram, was
telling anyone who would listen
that they, too, were Charlie.
Yeah, right.
6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
“You irresponsible imbecile. Not only
do you have blood on your hands, you
have become a symbol of moral bankruptcy in the great American cartoon.”
Ironic, those last two words.
For the record, this magazine opposed
the Koran burning as well as a needless
case of causing offence. Nonetheless, who
had a greater right to issue such comment on the actual substance of Islam – a
pastor who had at least read the Koran,
understood how it advocates violence,
and burned it in a form of spiritual judgement, or a bunch of cartoonists simply
taking the proverbial to get a few laughs?
Why did our vacuous news media rail
so strongly against a pastor’s free speech
rights, yet praise so loudly a liberal, atheist cartoonist’s?
Hypocrisy? Much.
More to the point, will the news media
advocates of free speech welcome this
magazine’s right to report on the state of
Islam currently, or will it join those who
pay lip service to the principle?
At the end of the day, perhaps it doesn’t
matter. If we are going to criticise Islam
or any other religion, we will do it on its
merits, not for comedic value.
www.epson.co.nz/precisioncore
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Your say
SATIRICAL PROFANITY
In the light off the recent slayings in Paris,
I doubt if any religion could have felt as
justifiably incensed by satirical profanity
as the Christian religion. Some years back
the national museum Te Papa exhibited
two compositions entitled “Piss Christ” and
“Virgin in a Condom”. There was an outcry
with people calling for government action.
This was not possible, even though Te Papa
is a national institution, because the laws
governing freedom of expression applied.
I have a strong belief that if the exhibits
had been labelled “Piss Tane” and “Hei Tiki
in a Condom” they would not have ‘seen the
light of day.’
I doubt that this example of my ‘right to
free speech’ will be published in a media
pledged to preserve this right.
Bryan Johnson, Omokoroa
the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet,
classified fluoride as a neurotoxin like other
known neurotoxins such as lead and mercury.
An international critique3 of the PMCSA/
RSNZ report was released on the 1st of
December 2014 which pointed out its many
errors. This no doubt led to the correction of
the report’s most obvious mistake.
Such a fundamental error highlights the
fact that the Report was hurriedly drafted
and little more than a piece of health establishment PR rather than an independent
review of research on fluoride’s adverse
health effects.
1.http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/expertadvice/commissioned-reviews/yr2014/
health-effects-of-water-fluoridation/
2. http://www.thelancet.
com/journals/laneur/article/
PIIS1474-4422%2813%2970278-3/abstract
3. http://fluoridefree.org.nz/
international-peer-review-critique/
GOVT ADMITS FLUORIDE
MAKES KIDS DUMBER
The Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor and the Royal Society of New Zealand
admitted Thursday 15th January, that a serious blunder had been made in their report
“Health effects of water fluoridation: a
Review of the scientific evidence”.
A new version1 is available on the Royal Society’s website where an error message now
states that fluoride exposure studies found an
IQ reduction of one statistical ‘standard deviation’, not one ‘IQ point’ as previously asserted.
One standard deviation equates to a drop
of about seven IQ points but, unbelievably,
the conclusion of the first version of the
report that “this is likely to be a measurement
or statistical artefact of no functional significance” has remained in the revision. Why?
“This is far from insignificant” says Kane
Titchener, Auckland representative of Fluoride Free New Zealand. “Any loss of IQ is
a concern for both parents and society at
large. Most parents have no idea that their
children are receiving unmeasurably high
doses of fluoride through fluoridation and
other sources. For example bottle fed babies
receive at least 150 times more fluoride than
their breast fed counterparts.”
Last year, an article2 by world renowned
neurodevelopmental toxicologists Philippe
Grandjean and Philip Landrigan published in
Mary Byrne
National coordinator
Fluoride Free New Zealand
www.fluoridefree.org.nz
TOTALITARIA COMING
Congratulations on your book Totalitaria,
which I have just finished reading, and I
found it fascinating. A lot of what you wrote
I did know and have known for years but
regarding the UN you certainly helped me
join up the dots – and it isn’t a pretty picture.
The UN I have thought for years is an evil
and corrupt organization and I did not dance
for joy when NZ won a place on the Security
Council, big deal. I will watch with interest
now how we vote when it comes to the Middle East for so far especially when Labour
were in power we were pro Palestinian but
what else would you expect from Helen
Clarke and Co. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit
if she is the next head of the UN she would
fit in beautifully and God help us all then.
Maureen Murray, Tauranga
QUALITY OF LIFE
During the past year, I have lost to malignancy
a colleague, a brother and a brother-in-law. In
none of these cases (continents apart) was
the patient informed what the suggested
treatment could achieve in terms of quality
of life. There was always the issue of possible
prolongation of life, but not what kind of life.
Informed consent, such as before an elective
surgical procedure, is simply not there.
When I asked my brother (a professional
engineer) how he felt under treatment,
his answer was ‘ghastly – since the start of
treatment’. I asked what his expectations
of treatment were. ‘I am leaving it to the
experts’, he responded. As a medical professional myself, I found that strange; but
then he was already under the influence of
his treatment.
This finding is a universal and comprises
a serious flaw in the process of informed
consent. In fact, it borders on the criminal.
Legally, consent is a process, not an event;
this at least implies that a patient may dis-
England for ever the entire Sovereignty
of the country”. These simple words were
translated into Maori by Henry Williams, a
Maori speaker, if not scholar, whom the Maoris trusted. (But the settlers didn’t!
The cession of sovereignty, which the
Treaty enabled, is the very foundation of
our rights and of our very existence as a
modern, democratic nation (as opposed to
the undemocratic, racist and feudal option
that would ensue if the Waitangi Tribunal’s
recommendation should be accepted by this
feckless government). Article One of the
Treaty (the cession of sovereignty) has been
accepted by historians, politicians, judges
and even Maori themselves for at least seven
generations and this nonsensical and false
declaration by the Tribunal to the contrary
should be seen for the crude, self-interested
cuss his/her progress (or lack of it) at any
stage and have the right to withdraw from
treatment at any stage.
F du Toit , via email
and nation-destroying fraud that it is.
Even more alarming is the refusal of the
appeasing and unpatriotic National government to nip it in the bud by a declaration
exposing this lie and upholding the sovereignty of our 175 year old nation.
Thousands of soldiers have died on the
battlefield – in the Maori Wars and the two
world wars – to uphold the sovereignty of
New Zealand and, by failing to condemn this
attack on our nation with the urgency and
thoroughness that it deserves, John Key has
shown yet again that he is seriously lacking
in both patriotism and an understanding of
our constitutional arrangements.
By attacking our sovereignty, our legal
system and our long held rights in this
deceitful manner, the Waitangi Tribunal and
its ragtag bunch of members have shown
that they are the enemy of every New Zealander except, of course, the tribal elite, of
which so many of the Tribunal’s members
are fully paid up subscribers.
New Zealand is sliding down a slippery
slope towards racism and apartheid and this
lie of the Waitangi Tribunal is such a serious
step on that downward path that it is incumbent on every New Zealander who cares for
the future of this country to understand
what it means and then tell as many people
as possible of the dangers that we are facing.
Neither National nor Labour can be
trusted on this issue and we have three
years to spread the word of what is really
happening to as many of our friends, relations, work colleagues, neighbours, team
mates, etc, that we can. This is a war – a war
for our rights, our sovereignty, our flag, our
democracy – indeed for the very soul of our
WAITANGI’S BIG LIE
The powers of the Waitangi Tribunal were
massively, unnecessarily and unpatriotically
extended by the Lange/Palmer government
for no other reason than to try to buy the
votes of Maori at the following election. The
ensuing monster that became the toy of a
series of radical Maori members of the Tribunal and their liberal white lackeys is now
a threat not only to our economy (the higher
taxes we all have to pay to fund the neverending and ever more expensive “Treaty
settlements”) but also to our rights to formerly public areas and now even to our very
sovereignty as a nation.
In November this racist, unelected, and
deeply compromised Tribunal issued Stage
One of its enquiry into Ngapuhi’s (Northland
tribe) Treaty claim, declaring that the chiefs
did NOT cede sovereignty to the Crown when
they signed the treaty in February, 1840.
This is a lie. A very deliberate lie and a selfinterested lie from a Tribunal that seems to
see its sole function as extracting as much
as possible off the ordinary New Zealander
in terms of tax dollars, public resources
(e.g. the loss of the Urewera National Park
to Tuhoe) and, by its new ruling, even sovereignty itself.
The Treaty of Waitangi was a very simple
document and the chiefs of Northland who
signed it understood its terms very well.
By Article One they “cede to the Queen of
country. Truth must prevail over the lies of
the media, of the government and of the
Waitangi Tribunal. Our hard won democracy
must prevail over the racism and feudalism
to which the tribunal is trying to revert us.
A useful first step would be the abolition
of this Tribunal which is steadily wrecking
all that we and our ancestors have built in
this country.
We must nail this lie as, with none of the
mainstream media exposing it, it is starting
to get legs, with Grren M.P., Catherine Delahunty, on the last day of parliament in 2014,
screaming in the parliamentary chamber at
the Prime Minister: “Why will not John Key
accept what every high school student knows
– that the chiefs did not cede sovereignty at
Waitangi in 1840? “ That shows how far the
indoctrination of the young has gone.
For further reading on Article One of the
Treaty see The Great Divide, by Ian Wishart
(pages 164-194), and When Two Cultures
Meet, Dr. John Robinson, Pages 101-7 John McLean (abridged), Wellington POETRY
Refrain
I’ve been waiting for the day
When the wind is at your back
When the path you put your feet on
Is for once the beaten track
When you stop beside the river
Knowing that to rest is not to yield
And smiling under a summer sun
Lay down your sword and shield.
Gwyn Ryan
STEYNPOST
By Mark Steyn
Hollande daze
T
he French authorities killed
three murderous savages. That
was the only good news on a
day in which a third hostage
siege began in Montpellier. The
bad news started at the top, with President Hollande’s statement after the Charlie
Hebdo slaughter and the Kosher grocery
siege: Those who committed these acts have
nothing to do with the Muslim religion.
Yeah, right. I would use my standard
line on these occasions – “Allahu Akbar”
is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” – but
it’s not quite as funny when the streets
are full of cowards, phonies and opportunists waving candles and pencils and
chanting “Je suis Charlie.” Because if you
really were Charlie, if you really were one
of the 17 Frenchmen and women slaugh-
tered in the name of Allah in little more
than 48 hours, you’d utterly despise a
man who could stand up in public and
utter those words.
The louder the perpetrators yell “Allahu
Akbar” and rejoice that the Prophet has
been avenged, the louder M Hollande
and David Cameron and Barack Obama
and John Kerry and the other A-list infidels insist there’s no Islam to see here.
M le Président seems to believe he can
champion France’s commitment to freedom of expression by conscripting the
entire nation in his monstrous lie.
Is he just pandering? There are, supposedly, six million Muslims in France, and
he got 93 per cent of their vote last time
round. Or is he afraid of the forces that
might be unleashed if the Official Lie were
not wholeheartedly upheld? Stéphane
Charbonnier said he’d rather die standing than live on his knees; M Hollande
thinks he can get by with a furtive crouch.
The polite explanation can be found
in Barbara Amiel’s column in Maclean’s,
which is titled “Islamists Won’t Kill Free
Speech – We Will”. She covers some of my
battles with the “human rights” regime
in Canada, and adds a sad postscript to
it. But, apropos the French President, I
was struck by this passage in particular:
Terror can backfire in the sense that
some people finally dislike being scared
and react by doing whatever terror
is discouraging. This is generally a
temporary response. As George Jonas
pointed out in a 2013 column, human
beings find a way of rationalizing
their behaviour so that they can claim
they are refraining from publishing or
saying something not out of fear but
because they don’t wish to offend. They
convert the base notion of being scared
into a noble weapon of seeing someone
else’s point of view. In fact, this is one
of the most insidious aspects of terrorism: we wash our brains and convert
our fear into understanding.
That’s what The New York Times and The
Globe & Mail et al are doing when they
explain that they won’t show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons out of sensitivity to
their Muslim readers, all three of them.
They’ve persuaded themselves that
they’re not acting out of fear, no, sir, but
instead that they’re better people for
being able to sympathize with all those
poor Muslims reeling under a vicious
“backlash” that never comes.
But I don’t think that accounts for M
Hollande, who must surely know better.
As Evan Solomon and I argued on the CBC
this month, France’s Muslim population
is between eight per cent (says Evan) and
ten per cent (say I). But the Muslim share
of France’s prison population is 60 per
cent. That’s about 42,000 people. Among
their number was one of the Charlie
Hebdo murderers, who was trained to a
sufficient level to be able to pull off a terror
attack far more complex and sophisticated
than the Sydney coffee shop siege or the
Ottawa Cenotaph killing. How few of
those 42,000 would need to be willing to
sign up for a month at Camp Jihad before
France would descend into chaos?
The kosher grocery siege was also
relatively sophisticated, not least in its
coordination and in the duplicitousness of the hostage-takers. After issuing the conditions necessary to prevent
them killing hostages, they killed four
of them anyway. Because they’re Jews,
so why would you forgo that pleasure?
When the death toll emerged, my initial thought was that, if it weren’t for the
dozen dead on Wednesday, this would be
the major news event of the week. But
then I remembered: They’re Jews. And
as I wrote in America Alone:
Four years after 9/11, it turned out
there really is an explosive “Arab
street”, but it’s in Clichy-sous-Bois.
Since the beginning of this century,
French Arabs have been carrying on a
low-level intifada against synagogues,
kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc.
The concern of the political class has
been to prevent the spread of these
attacks to targets of more, ah, general
interest. They’re losing that battle...
If Chirac, de Villepin and co aren’t
exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren’t
doing a bad impression of the Muslim
armies of 13 centuries ago: They’re seizing their opportunities, testing their foe,
probing his weak spots. If burning the
‘burbs gets you more “respect”, they’ll
burn ‘em again, and again. In defiance of
traditional immigration patterns, these
young men are less assimilated than their
grandparents. And why should they be?
On present demographic trends, it will
be for ethnic Europeans to assimilate
with them.
They tested the foe again this month:
They assassinated the senior editorial
team of the only publication not willing
to sign on to the official “No Islam to see
here” line. And they were rewarded for
their slaughter with the président de la
république standing up in public insisting
there’s “No Islam to see here”.
Almost three-quarters of a century
ago, after the Germans took the French
capital, Kern & Hammerstein wrote a
valentine to the City of Lights:
The Last Time I Saw Paris
Her heart was warm and gay
No matter how they change her
I’ll remember her that way.
I never much cared for the song in a
World War Two context: After all, what
changes? An occupying army marches
in, you defeat them, they march out
...and Paris is Paris again. But Paris –
and Picardy, and France – have been
profoundly changed, and likely permanently. The French capital is a city
of no-go zones, and Jews hunched in a
freezer to avoid death, and a government
gibbering the Official Lies no matter how
ridiculous they sound. And there’s no
easy way to get this occupation force to
march out. Like Kern & Hammerstein,
those of us who loved the city can only
hold her in memory:
No matter how they change her
I’ll remember her that way.
© 2014 Mark Steyn
After issuing the conditions
necessary to prevent them
killing hostages, they killed
four of them anyway. Because
they’re Jews, so why would
you forgo that pleasure?
RIGHT & WRONG
By David Garrett
One law for them, another law for us
F
or 20 years prior to his death
in 2007, James Takamore lived
in Christchurch with his pakeha partner Denise Clarke and
their children. Mr Takamore –
who was born in the Bay of Plenty – was
Tuhoe by birth and ancestry. What has
happened since his death is essentially
a struggle between Maori family members – who don’t care what the deceased’s
wishes were – and the legal system. A
legal system which governs us all, and
which we are all expected to obey.
From the time he began a relationship
with Ms. Clarke, James chose to have little
to do with his iwi. After Mr Takamore’s
death, his body was removed from a community centre in Christchurch,rapidly
transported to the tribal land of his ancestors, and buried. Despite being the executor of his will, Denise Clarke has been
fighting to regain his body for burial in
Christchurch ever since.
Ms Clarke has now doggedly pursued
her fight for almost seven years. She went
first to the High Court, which affirmed
her rights as executor to bury her partner
where she saw fit, and granted her an
injunction allowing her to regain possession of James’s body. By the time she
had obtained her injunction however,
James had been buried by his whanau.
Since the beginning of Ms Clarke’s sad
quest, people have asked “what would happen if the family members were pakeha
and not Maori?” In my view there is little
doubt that the wishes of pakeha family
members would be, if not disregarded,
certainly overridden. If any pakeha did
what the Takamore whanau and hangers
on did, and obstructed an executor bearing a High Court ruling in their favour,
they would be promptly arrested.
As with much else in modern day
New Zealand, it seems to have become
accepted that Maori are “special”, and
not always subject to the rule of law that
governs the rest of us. Speaking of a
recent case where an unauthorized full
autopsy was carried out at Auckland hospital mortuary, a DHB spokesmen said
“The team does its best to respect family sensitivities and wishes, in particular
those of Maori, who find the prospect of
autopsy tough. [emphasis added].
Such an attitude is a disgrace, and an
insult to New Zealanders from other cultural backgrounds. I am the father of two
very much loved children. If – heaven
forbid – one of them was to die in circumstances which required an autopsy, I
would find the prospect very much worse
than “tough”. Thanks to the plethora of
shows such as CSI, we all now know the
brutal reality of a standard “three cavity” autopsy.
The lesson from the cases seems to be if
the family is Maori, their wishes will be
given considerable weight, if not always
given effect to, whereas if they are pakeha, their wishes will be of little account.
But back to James Takamore.
Following her failed first attempt
to regain control of James’s body, Ms
Clarke did not immediately appeal, but
attempted to mediate with the whanau
under the auspices of a Tuhoekaumatua.
The mediation failed to reach an acceptable resolution.
Ms Clarke then found herself in the
Court of Appeal, defending an appeal
brought by members of Mr Takamore’s
whanau against the original High Court
decision. The Court of Appeal confirmed
the decision of the High Court, viz. that
The lesson from the cases
seems to be if the family is
Maori, their wishes will be given
considerable weight, if not
always given effect to, whereas
if they are pakeha, their wishes
will be of little account
Ms Clarke, as executor of James’s will,
had the legal right to his body. Cue further discussions with Mr Takamore’s
whanau, and further legal processes,
culminating in a decision of the Supreme
Court of New Zealand, the highest Court
in the land.
The Judges of the Supreme Court
unanimously rejected the appeal by the
whanau, finding that: 1) Under an ancient
rule of law extending to at least Victorian
times, the executor of a person’s Will
had the duty – and the right – to bury
the deceased’s body; and 2) that if the
actions of an executor in this regard were
“unreasonable”, those decisions could
be reviewed by the High Court; and 3)
Ms Takamore rights to decide where to
bury her partner’s body were reaffirmed.
So far so good.
The case then went back to the High
Court for orders to be made. In a Court
Minute of 8 May 2014 Justice Fogarty
adopted a bullish tone, saying:
“…the High Court does not intend, and
ultimately will not allow, the decision of
the Supreme Court of New Zealand to
be flouted…the Police will continue in
their overall responsibility of keeping the
peace in the area…The Police will retain
their usual discretion and powers to act
to prevent breaches of the law, particularly breaches of the peace.”
His Honour continued:
“I am giving the defendants [named
members of the Takamore family] one
calendar month from today to…cooperate with the exhumation and have
a dignified role in that process.”
In a most commendable display of sensitivity and reasonableness, Ms Clarke then
authorized her lawyer to enter into further discussions with the whanau, and the
Marae Committee who control the burial
ground where MrTakamore is currently
buried. There were discussions between
the High Court Sheriff – who is tasked
with ensuring Court orders are carried
out – the marae chairman, and the local
Police commander. The result of those discussions was, it appeared, that the whanau
became resigned to the inevitability of Mr
Takamore’s exhumation in accordance
with the Court Orders, and indicated that
they would no longer oppose it.
At 5 am on 8 August 2014, James Takamore’s son, together with an undertaker
and others, arrived at the burial ground
to exhume Mr Takamore’s body. Believing what they had been told, they did
not expect opposition. Nevertheless a
number of Police were present in case
of any threatened breaches of the peace.
Ms Clarke’s trust in the good faith of
family members was sadly misplaced. At
the urupa the exhumation party was met
with 30-40 members of Mr Takamore’s
iwi, including two of the defendants in
the High Court case. They indicated
that if an attempt was made to enter the
urupa, they would physically prevent it.
In my view, Ms Clarke had every right
to expect the Police to prevent breaches
of the peace by whanau members, and
to have the Police facilitate the carrying out of Orders and Rulings of the
Court. It appears that threats including
the possible use of firearms were made,
although no firearms were presented.
Against a background of hostility and
threats of violence, the Police advised
the undertakers that their safety could
not be guaranteed. Unsurprisingly, the
undertakers then withdrew.
There is no doubt in my mind that if
the family members and others present
that day were pakeha, an executor in possession of Court Rulings in her favour
– including one from the highest court
in the land – would have had the full
co-operation of the Police, who wouldhave taken whatever steps were necessary
to ensure the undertakers’ safety. Anyone issuing threats or obstructing the
exhumation party would promptly have
been arrested. As it is, James Takamore
remains where he is – hundreds of miles
from his partner and children.
Enquiries reveal that the matter has
now been referred to the office of the
Solicitor General for “advice on how to
move forward”. In my view the answer
to that is glaringly obvious: instruct
the Police to do their duty; to protect
MsClarke and her agents from anyone
who attempts to prevent her exercising
her rights – rights affirmed by the highest
court in the land.
The status quo now is an utter disgrace.
A group of lawless thugs who happen to be
Maori have been allowed to cock a snook
at rulings of all three of our highest courts,
including the highest of them all. A total
of nine Judges in the highest courts in
the land have upheld her rights. All to no
avail. That outrageous disregard of the
rule of law cannot be allowed to continue.
The Treaty of Waitangi is cited ad nauseum by Maori claiming various benefits under it. What is conveniently often
ignored is Article Three, which made
Maori subjects of the British Crown, with
all the rights and duties that such citizenship entailed. Surely the most fundamental of those duties is to be subject to,
and to comply with, orders of our courts.
In the sad case of James Takamore that
is not happening. Ms Clarke continues
her dogged battle to have her partner’s
body returned to her and her children
for burial where Mr Takamore himself
wished to be laid to rest.
As the ripples from the Charlie Hebdo and Lindt Café terror attacks continue to
spread, questions are being asked in cafes, workplaces and houses everywhere:
could it happen in New Zealand? The best answer available so far is ‘unlikely
but not impossible’. The media have focused on five kiwis known to have joined
ISIS and nine more whose passports have been cancelled, but that overlooks
one important factor – the influence of hate preachers within the NZ Islamic
community is far wider than just 14 people, and it’s a story the daily news
media have failed to tell you. IAN WISHART has the details
NEW JIHAD
The struggle to keep the lid on radicalisation
n his seminal book on the rise of militant Islam, The Shade of Swords, scholar
and journalist M J Akbar recounts how
insults have been traded between Christianity and Islam since Muhammad first
darkened the doorways of Jerusalem.
Muhammad, he writes, has been
labelled a “glutton…sex fiend..a devil…
pervert…eaten by pigs”.
Akbar, of course, gets away with this
precisely because he is a Muslim, a
scholar and a journalist, debating the
issue. He was reporting what others said,
not endorsing the insults. The cartoonists
at Charlie Hebdo mocked Muhammad
because they don’t like religion, and were
milking the subject for laughs.
Bile, writes Akbar of the historical conflict , has “infected” the debate between
the two big faiths, and “the Muslim reply
to character assassination was the death
sentence”.
Back in the old days, a thousand or so
years ago, Christians in the occupied territories like Spain and southern France
regularly insulted the Prophet, knowing they would be arrested and killed by
their Muslim overlords. In Cordoba, a
Catholic monk by the name of Perfectus
was surrounded by a Muslim crowd and
taunted into defending Jesus Christ.
“It was a set up by Muslims, of course”,
writes Akbar. “To deny Jesus would be to
deny his own faith, but to reject Muhammad meant an invitation to a beheading.
It was a capital offence.”
Perfectus, says Akbar, initially tried
to answer the challenge cautiously, “but
suddenly something snapped and he
burst into a torrent of passionate abuse,
calling Muhammad a charlatan, a sexual
pervert and so on.”
The crowd dragged the monk off to the
local governor, who tried to be lenient,
realising Perfectus had been provoked.
But then the crowd started up again and
Perfectus thought ‘to hell with it’, and
called the prophet a child molester and
every other insult he could think of. A
few minutes after losing his head in the
heat of the moment, he lost his head in
the heat of the moment.
A group of Franciscan monks in Jerusalem pulled a similar stunt in front of
the Muslim governor of that city in 1391
AD, walking to the steps of the al Aqsa
gold mosque and demanding to see the
governor. When he came out, with his
Muslim entourage, the monks called the
Prophet a similar bunch of names that
Perfectus had used.
The crowd called for their heads, the
governor gave the monks a choice “Convert to Islam or die”.
“They chose death,” writes Akbar,
“because by inverse logic it would ensure
[eternal] damnation on the Muslims.”
What we in the West would call “extreme
Islam” is not some modern aberration confined to a few crackpots, as the daily media
and political leaders would have the public believe. “Islam is essentially a soldier’s
religion,” says Akbar, citing historian John
Bagot Glubb approvingly.
Every time there’s a terror attack,
Islamic apologists appear on TV to reassure the wider community that “Islam is
a religion of peace”. On Newstalk ZB’s
Kerre McIvor morning show over the
summer, one passionate Muslim insisted
to McIvor that “nowhere in the Qur’an is
violence advocated!”
McIvor swallowed it, making the
appropriate sympathetic noises to her
national audience, but the statement is
far from true:
“When the sacred months are over,
slay the unbelievers wherever you find
them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie
in ambush everywhere for them,” urged
Muhammad in the Qur’an, Sura 9:5
“Fight those who believe neither in
God nor the Last Day, nor what has been
forbidden by God and his messenger, nor
acknowledge the religion of Truth, even
if they are People of the Book, until they
pay the tribute and have been humbled.
– Sura 9:29
While it is true the Qur’an has verses
urging peacefulness, those verses were
written when Muhammad had virtually no power and Islam was young and
weak. As Islam’s influence grew through
conquest, the verses became more and
more aggressive. You can pick almost any
book of the Qur’an at random, and verses
urging followers to violence against nonbelievers are everywhere:
“I will cast terror into the hearts of
those who disbelieved, so strike [them]
upon the necks and strike from them
every fingertip,” says Sura 8:12, a verse
authorising beheading and hand-chopping. The same chapter of the Qur’an
carefully establishes that “believers are
only those who, when Allah is mentioned, their hearts become fearful, and
when His verses are recited to them, it
increases them in faith; and upon their
Lord they rely – Sura 8:2”
In case the reader still doesn’t get it, the
Suras go on to note that anyone opposing
the spread of Islam is a candidate for the
beheading alluded to in verse 8:12:
“That is because they opposed Allah
and His Messenger. And whoever opposes
Allah and His Messenger – indeed, Allah
is severe in penalty. Sura 8:13”
Unbelievers who resist risk losing their
heads, those who surrender can be ransomed off:
“Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks;
At length, when ye have thoroughly
subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on
them): thereafter (is the time for) either
generosity or ransom: Until the war lays
down its burdens. – Sura 47:4”
“The prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, never told his supporters to
fight other religions,” said Kerre McIvor’s
caller. Evidently he wasn’t up to speed on
Sura 8:39, which urges fighting until there
is no resistance and Islam is in total control:
“And fight them until there is no fitnah
and [until] the religion, all of it, is for
Allah. And if they cease – then indeed,
Allah is Seeing of what they do.”
For those who argue there is no precedent for spreading terror in the name
of Islam, consider Sura 8:60:
“And prepare against them whatever
you are able of power and of steeds of war
by which you may terrify the enemy of
Allah and your enemy and others besides
them whom you do not know [but] whom
Allah knows. And whatever you spend
in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid
to you, and you will not be wronged.”
Allegedly, Allah told Muhammad that
a handful of committed Islamist fighters
could take down a nation of unbelievers,
because the latter don’t understand the
fight they are in:
“O Prophet, urge the believers to battle.
If there are among you twenty [who are]
steadfast, they will overcome two hundred. And if there are among you one
hundred [who are] steadfast, they will
overcome a thousand of those who have
disbelieved because they are a people who
do not understand. – Sura 8:65”
Why then is there such a difference
between what the Qur’an actually says,
and what Western Muslims say it says?
Part of it is undoubtedly fear of a backlash from the majority community, and
part of it may also be that such messages
interfere with efforts to evangelising
Islam in the west as a “religion of peace”.
Whatever the reason, the end result is
that politicians and the public in western
countries are not getting an accurate picture of the growing Islamic communities
in their midst.
In New Zealand, nearly all media
comment about Islam is coordinated by
the Federation of Islamic Associations
of New Zealand, or “FIANZ”. FIANZ
promotes “Islam Awareness Week” each
year and says it’s all about being open
and transparent:
“We need to build a distinctive New Zea-
land with one identity built on each of us
being sincere in who and what we are, where
we come from, what our hosting home and
culture are. Openness and dialogue are
important to go ahead as a nation,” says a
FIANZ newsletter from 2006.
B
ut it wasn’t being entirely straightforward – “Islam means peace”,
FIANZ said in one Islam Awareness Week article. That’s not ‘peace’ in
the western understanding of the word,
however, that’s ‘peace’ in the sense of ‘no
more resistance’ alluded to in the Sura
above. The more accurate translation of
“Islam” is “submission”, and the word
“Muslims” means “those who submit”.
That’s one of the core doctrines of
extremists. They believe “peace” in the
Islamic sense can only be established in
the world once everyone has been forced
to “submit” to the will of Allah and the
rule of his priests.
Nonetheless, in the spirit of openness
that FIANZ stands for, let’s examine the
situation in New Zealand.
Top secret American diplomatic cables
released by Wikileaks show concern at
the growing infiltration of extremism
into NZ’s Muslim faith.
“A recent influx of Arab and African
immigrants is creating tensions within
New Zealand’s traditionally South Asian
Muslim population,” says one cable from
the US Embassy in Wellington, “as well
as concerns about preventing terrorist
groups and Wahhabi ideology from gaining a toehold here.”
The message, dated 17
October 2006, echoed concerns raised by NZ Muslims
with Investigate magazine
and other media several
years earlier about an influx
of Arabic speaking migrants
bringing extremist doctrine
to mosques here.
In early 2007, Investigate
published a highly controversial article on “Preachers of Hate” who had been
touring New Zealand. One,
named Bilal Philips, had been
secretly filmed by a Channel 4 documentary crew in
a British mosque endorsing
Muhammad’s marriage to a
nine year old girl as an exam-
ple for Muslim men everywhere.
“The prophet Muhammad practically
outlined the rules regarding marriage
prior to puberty, with his practice he
clarified what is permissible and that
is why we shouldn’t have any issues
about an older man marrying a younger
woman, which is looked down upon by
this [Western] society today, but we know
that Prophet Muhammad practiced it,
it wasn’t abuse or exploitation, it was
marriage.”
Philips had also been quoted by the
Washington Post as saying, “The clash
of civilizations is a reality. Western culture…is an enemy of Islam.”
But it gets better. An al Qa’ida explosives
expert, Hampton El, aka “Dr Rashid”,
testified in the court case against World
Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yousef that
he and Bilal Philips had visited al Qa’ida
terror hideouts and that Philips had played
a key role in getting him involved.
And here’s the shocker: Philips was
invited to New Zealand to encourage
young Muslims as a guest of FIANZ,
which said afterwards:
“The visit of Dr Bilal was indeed very
successful and FIANZ hope to continue
in the tradition of welcoming respected
overseas Islamic scholars/speakers to
New Zealand to further enrich our
community.”
“The theme for [Bilal’s] lectures was
“Muslim Minorities living in Western
Civilisations”, notes the FIANZ report.
“There were full attendances in all the
Centres he presented his lecture. His
lectures were very enlightening and
educational.
“A recurring advice throughout his
lecture is for the Muslim community in
New Zealand to join together to pursue
an Islamic way of life in education, housing and commerce.”
The newsletter records that Philips
visited the Federation’s offices to hold
discussions with local Muslim leaders
Hanif Ali and Sheikh Amir, as well as
discussions with Muslim students at Victoria University and intensive workshops
on how to spread Islam with “a group
of enthusiastic brothers and sisters” at
Auckland’s Avondale Islamic Centre.
The Avondale Islamic Centre hit the
news headlines last year after concerns
that its leader, Imam Abu Abdulla
Mohamed Abu Hamam, was preaching
extremism and had “potential terrorist allegiances”, according to a Herald
news report.
Hamam denied doing anything wrong,
and told the Herald he was unsure
whether he was the “Hamam” referred to
in this leaked American embassy cable1:
“New Zealand has approximately
50,000 Muslims, including over 10,000
Somalis, and approximately 708 indigenous Maori Muslim converts. The New
Zealand Police recently provided information indicating some New Zealand
Muslims have fought in Afghanistan,
Bosnia and possibly Chechnya. The police
are also looking at some New Zealand
citizens/residents who may have traveled to the Middle East including Iraq. A
specific example of such a person involves
an individual known only as “Hamam”.
This individual is an Afghan veteran and
a surgeon from Egypt. He is currently
living in Auckland on state benefits and
refuses to become employed. He stays in a
local Mosque and espouses anti-Western
views. He is being monitored by the New
Zealand Police. The EAC [a US Embassy
Wellington intelligence unit] agreed that
some members of New Zealand’s Muslim
community may be sympathetic to terrorist organizations around the world.”
I
n the 2007 article, Investigate identified a
number of extremist preachers who had
been invited to New Zealand to spread
the kind of Islam linked to terrorism.
Hardline Islam. No compromise Islam.
Those hate preachers we listed included
the aforementioned Philips, but also
Sheik Khalid There’s no such thing as
a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend
Yasin, and Yahya Christians and Jews are
“evil” Ibrahim.
We also blew the whistle in that 2007
article on the involvement of Saudi Arabian ‘charity’ WAMY (World Assembly
of Muslim Youth), which has been blacklisted as a front for terrorist funding and
recruitment by the USA after documents
emerged linking it to 9/11 and other terror incidents. WAMY had been running
youth camps for New Zealand Muslims.
The BBC obtained footage from
WAMY youth camps overseas, where
Muslim children were encouraged to
hate Jews: “The Jews are enemies of the
faithful, God and the angels. Teach our
children to love taking revenge on the
Jews and the oppressors’.”
At the time, FIANZ spokesman Javed Khan told Investigate he was aware WAMY
had been blacklisted because
of its links to Al Qa’ida, but
he said WAMY sent FIANZ
a letter denying the allegation
so FIANZ believed them.
In fact, WAMY had been
named in a UN Security
Council report in December
2002, entitled “Terrorism
Financing: Roots and trends
of Saudi terrorism financing”.
That report singles out a group
of Islamic ‘charities’ as funding terror and the spread of
extremist Islam. The concerning news for New Zealanders
wondering about a moderate
Islamic community is that WAMY and
two other named ‘charities’ – Al Haramain2 and the Muslim World League
– have all helped bankroll FIANZ and
the New Zealand Muslim community.
The terror blacklist has never been
lifted, and in 2012 WAMY lost its charity status in Canada because of its links to
terror. US intelligence files noted in 2011
that “WAMY is listed as a Tier I NGO.
Tier 1 NGOs are defined as having demonstrated sustained and active support
for terrorist organizations willing to
attack US persons or interests.”3
WAMY’s own publicly stated aim is
global Islamic “supremacy”, to “arm the
Muslim youth with full confidence in
the supremacy of the Islamic system over
other systems.”4
So it was a surprise to discover that
– despite our 2007 revelations, WAMY
is still listed as a “partner” of FIANZ in
a powerpoint presentation delivered by
FIANZ in 2012. WAMY’s terror links
had been expressly drawn to FIANZ’s
attention in 2007, but the organisation
continues to maintain a relationship.
Also listed as a major partner is an
entity named RABITA, which is the Arabic name for the Muslim World League
– Rabita al-Alam al-Islami – accused
internationally of funding and recruiting terror and spreading extremist Wahhabism. Rabita is Saudi-funded.
Critics, including some in New Zealand’s Muslim community, have accused
FIANZ of turning a blind eye to the
growing infiltration of extremists into
New Zealand.
In a meeting with US diplomats,
FIANZ’s Javed Khan told them there
were “No ‘extremist’ activities” in the NZ
Muslim community, but the Wikileaks
cable reveals, “However, other community leaders dispute Khan’s assertion that
there is no extremist activity, citing the
presence of Saudi-funded organisations
on school campuses and mosque administrations…and reports of Wahhabiinspired propaganda.”
One of those leaders was Shahin
Soltanian, a former president of the
Auckland University Islamic Society.
He left the group because of its growing
radicalisation.5
“Contrary to assertions by FIANZ
president Javed Khan (see ref A) that
there are no extremists in New Zealand, Soltanian told Conoff that Wahhabi
groups have “overtly tried to influence
New Zealand’s Muslim society.” Soltanian said AUIS has sponsored speakers
from Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al Haramain.
Soltanian claimed these two groups
receive Saudi money for their activities.
AUIS’s alleged drift towards or tolerance
of Wahhabi ideology made it difficult for
Shias and even some Sunnis to stay with
the group, and so Soltanian and other
disaffected members left to form AEM.
“Soltanian said the extremists’ activities are not limited to the university
campus; he claims that there are extremist preachers who operate with the full
THE MAJORITY OF ISLAMIC JURISTS AND
QURANIC COMMENTATORS (MUFASIRIN)
CONSIDER WAR TO BE THE REAL BASIS OF
RELATIONS BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND NONMUSLIMS. THEY REGARD THE INFIDELITY
[UNBELIEF] OF NON-MUSLIMS AS THE
CAUSE (‘ILLAT) OF SUCH WAR
knowledge of FIANZ and the GNZ [Government of New Zealand]. After 9/11, he
said the GNZ deported a few rabblerousers, but others operate without hindrance aside from casual surveillance
by the Government. He also claims that
while he and others are trying to counter
these groups’ activities, most of the community remains silent for fear of being
branded infidels.
“Soltanian asserted that inaction by
the government, acquiescence by Muslim
groups like FIANZ, and the extremists’
strong financial backing from abroad
make it difficult to counter their growing
influence. He said their activities often
target young Muslims.”
So just how much can New Zealanders trust the country’s governing body
for Muslims?
O
ne of FIANZ’s big outreach programmes, receiving immense support from the daily news media,
is the annual Islam Awareness Week.
FIANZ operates the Islam Awareness
website as a tool to evangelise to the news
media and the public. On the site, under
the heading, “Why is Islam often misunderstood?”, it is stated:6
“In today’s turbulent world, Islam is
often on the front page – mostly for the
wrong reasons. Islam means peace… The
very word ‘Islam’ means peace. A fifth of
the world’s population is reclaiming this
peace as their chosen way of life.”
It sounds great. But it’s a lie.
“Islam does not mean peace. It does
NOT mean peace. If you thought it did,
get another think going,” says Sheik
Yusuf Estes in a Youtube lecture.7 “Islam
is the surrender, submission and obedience to Allah.
“First of all you surrender your will to
the will of almighty God. Number two you
submit to his commands. Number three,
you obey them to the best of your ability.”
It is true. The word Islam literally
means “submission”, not “peace” as
claimed by FIANZ. Why are they making false statements to New Zealanders?
The Islamic Awareness website continues to mislead in other areas. Under
the heading, “What does Islam say about
war?”, it states:
“Islam permits fighting in self-defense,
in defense of one’s faith, or on the part of
those whose basic rights have been violated. It lays down strict rules of combat
that include prohibitions against harming civilians and against destroying
crops, trees, and livestock.
“War is the last resort, and is subject
to the rigorous conditions laid down by
the sacred law. The often misunderstood
and overused term jihad literally means
“struggle” and not “holy war” (a term not
found anywhere in the Qur’an). Jihad,
as Islamic concept, can be on a personal
level – inner struggle against evil within
oneself; struggle for decency and goodness on the social level; and struggle on
the battlefield, if and when necessary.”
Now, remember that the Islamic
Awareness site is aimed at non Muslims.
If you go to Muslim websites aimed at
Muslims, you’ll find a very different perspective. Again, compare the NZ comments above to this from Islamic scholar
Maulana Waris Mazhari, who despite not
agreeing himself, admits the “majority”
of Islamic scholars support the notion of
aggressive jihad:8
“The issue of offensive jihad has for long
been a subject of heated debate among
Islamic scholars. Some scholars are of the
view that Islam allows for just one form
of jihad, in the sense of war – defensive
jihad. Others disagree, and believe that
Islam permits both defensive as well as
offensive jihad, in the sense of fighting.
Perhaps the latter opinion enjoys the
support of the majority of the ulema.
In contrast to defensive jihad, which is
fought in response to the aggression of
an enemy, offensive jihad allows for war
to be waged against a non-Islamic country in the absence of that country having
taken any steps to initiate fighting against
Muslims. Advocates of the doctrine of
offensive jihad claim that it is a necessary
means to establish the supremacy of Islam
and to destroy the power of infidelity.
“Proponents of offensive jihad consider
it to be not just legitimate but even a farze kifayah or collective duty binding on
the entire Muslim ummah. They go to
the extent of arguing that such offensive war is binding on an Islamic state
against even those non-Islamic countries
that permit Muslims to freely practice
and propagate Islam. The only exception
that they make in this regard is in the
case of those countries that have a peace
treaty with the Islamic state. Even here
the most fuqaha or scholars of Muslim
jurisprudence regard such treaties as only
temporary and as permissible only if the
Islamic state lacks the power to engage
in war. Defenders of this view believe
that a non-Muslim state has only three
options: to accept Islam, to accept Islamic
supremacy and pay the Islamic state the
jizya, or to be ready to accept death.
“The majority of Islamic jurists and
Quranic commentators (mufasirin) consider war to be the real basis of relations
between Muslims and non-Muslims. They
regard the infidelity [unbelief] of nonMuslims as the cause (‘illat) of such war.
They believe that Muslims must engage
in war with non-Muslims continuously
till Islam establishes its supremacy over
all other religions. Since, in actual fact,
this, as Muslims believe, can only happen just before the Day of Judgment, they
argue that Muslims must necessarily continue to wage war against non-Muslims
till the Day of Judgment finally arrives.
The opinion of Imam Shafi‘i and some
other fuqaha is even more extreme in this
regard—they argue that only Ahl-e Kitab
or ‘People of the Book’ [Christians and
Jews] can be permitted to stay alive in
exchange for paying the jizya, and that
all other non-Muslims must accept either
Islam or death.”
There is heavy irony, especially in wake
of the attack on the atheist magazine
Charlie Hebdo, that Islamic extremists
would let Christians and Jews live but
execute the atheist liberals.
Another half truth published on the
IslamAwareness.co.nz website reads:
“Is Islam respectful of other beliefs?
“Yes. The Qur’an states unequivocally:
“ ‘There is no compulsion in religion.
Truth stands out clearly from falsehood…’ (Qur’an 2:256)
“Freedom of conscience is an essential
tenant [sic] of Islam. Truth can only be
seen if it is not clouded by coercion. Protection of the rights of non-Muslims is an
intrinsic part of Islamic law. The Prophet
Muhammad is reported to have said:
“ ‘He who hurts a non-Muslim citizen
of a Muslim State – I am his adversary
and I shall be his adversary on the Day
of Judgment.
“ ‘Beware on the Day of Judgment,
I shall, myself, be the accuser against
him who wrongs a non-Muslim citizen
(of a Muslim State) or Lays on him a
responsibility greater than he can bear,
or deprives him of anything that belongs
to him’.”
W
hat FIANZ doesn’t tell its readers is that the ‘no compulsion in
religion’ command came very
early in Muhammad’s mission, when
Islam was extremely weak with fewer
than 400 supporters in the Middle East. It
had no power to force people to convert.
What FIANZ doesn’t disclose is that
Muhammad changed the rules of the
game once he gained power: you were
free to become a Muslim, but like the
Hotel California, once you’ve checked in
you can never leave.
“...The Prophet said, ‘If somebody (a
Muslim) discards his religion, kill him,’
“9 records the Hadith collection of the
Prophet’s commands.
“Allah’s Apostle: ‘During the last
days there will appear some young foolish people who will say the best words
but their faith will not go beyond their
throats (i.e. they will have no faith) and
will go out from (leave) their religion
as an arrow goes out of the game. So,
wherever you find them, kill them, for
whoever kills them shall have reward on
the Day of Resurrection’.”10
Another example of New Zealand’s
moderate Islamic community aligning
themselves with extremists comes from
the Masjid e Umar mosque in Auckland
– New Zealand’s biggest mosque – whose
Facebook page promotes a Pakistani
firebrand, Muhammad Taqi Usmani.
Usmani is an expert on sharia compliant finance systems, and has come to the
attention of UK watchdog ShariaWatch:11
“Usmani’s book Islam and Modernism has been translated into English and
relevant pages are available online here.
In this book he responds to a question
about whether Jihad needs to be waged
in a country like the UK where Islam
can freely be preached. He responds by
quoting the Quran: “Killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah
after they are humbled or overpowered.”
(Usmani p131) Jizyah is the subjugation
tax imposed on non-Muslims under
Islamic rule. He has subsequently been
removed from the HSBC and Dow Jones
advisory boards, but still sits on several
other advisory boards and is regarded
as a leading Islamic authority on SCF.
It stretches credibility to assume that
the other sharia advisors sitting under
Taki Usmani’s chairmanship of various
boards were unaware of his fundamentalist views.”
Usmani is reported to be a leading figure in the Deobandi brand of Islam – a
mixture of Sufism and Wahhabist doctrine. The Taliban follow the Deobandi
school. Evidently the Masjid e Umar in
Mt Roskill sees something to like in it
as well.
Another Deobandi firebrand being
promoted at Masjid e Umar is Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari, who doesn’t
think Muslims should have western
friends.
“Do not commence by greeting the
Christians and Jews with Salam. If you
meet one of them on a pathway, force
them to walk on the side … The reason for this impermissibility of saying
Salam to non-Muslims is to not show
them respect.”12
Al-Kawthari is also on record saying a
Muslim man is entitled to rape his wife
under Islamic belief, and that adultery
should be punished by death. Ironically,
it appears he was banned from speaking
at the radical East London Mosque last
year for being, well, too radical.13
In his defence, al-Kawthari lashed out
at the media, saying he was reaffirming
the Qur’anic requirements, but that such
laws would never be imposed in a Western country unless it allowed the introduction of sharia law:
“I have merely expressed the standard and classical Islamic viewpoint on
such matters,” he said on his Facebook
page last year. “These punishments are
of course only implemented in a proper
Islamic state and under a certain context.
I do not, in any way, call for or endorse
amputation in non-Islamic countries
such as the UK, where people choose not
to have Islamic law. Islamic legal punishments are only applicable under a proper
Islamic State and, as such, I was merely
discussing the subject in an academic
and theoretical manner.”
As his critics point out, however,
sharia is already creeping into Britain
and European countries where theory is
slowly being replaced by reality, and at
some point a culture conditioned every
day to aspire to Islamic punishments
will flex their muscle to get them. Otherwise, what’s the point in reaffirming
those teachings in the mosques? If you
no longer believe it, why preach it?
The other aspect is that when New Zealand’s largest mosque endorses a preacher
such as this, they are endorsing all his
attitudes, such as those on women. AlKawthari has spoken very approvingly of
what he saw on a visit to Yemen:14
“For women to venture out after dusk is
considered to be highly offensive. Women
do not even go for shopping on their own
unless necessary. The men of the house
are expected to do the shopping or at least
accompany their womenfolk to the shops
and markets. Polygamy is completely normal and an accepted practice amongst
Yemenis, with many Shuyukh and scholars having sometimes up to 4 wives!”
Remember, these are preachers whose
sermons are promoted to New Zealand
muslims, by New Zealand mosques. But
it gets even better.
The Voice of Islam is a New Zealand
produced TV programme broadcast
on Sky each week and in some countries around the world. According to its
website, Voice Of Islam is part funded
by FIANZ. So let’s look at some of the
preachers Voice of Islam regularly broadcasts to New Zealand muslims:
Abdul Hadim Quick
Abdur Raheem Green
Bilal Philips
Yahya Ibrahim
Yasir Qadhi
Abdur Raheem Green has been a radical Islamic preacher in Britain, where he
chaired a Muslim charity, the Islamic
Education and Research Academy, the
IERA. That charity, although denying the
allegation, has been linked to young British muslims who have joined ISIS in Syria.
It is currently under investigation, with
Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reporting:15
“IERA is run by the extremist preacher
Abdurraheem Green and its board of
advisers has included Bilal Phillips, an
unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993
World Trade Centre bombing, and the
notorious extremist preacher Haitham
al-Haddad. IERA is also under investigation by the Charity Commission.”
Green was recently pinged in a video
recording of one of his outdoor speeches
in Hyde Park encouraging the crowd to
manhandle a Jewish passerby:16
“Why don’t you take the Yahoudi [Jew]
over there, far away so his stench doesn’t
disturb us?”
The extremist is also on record urging Muslims to pay no heed to the idea
of democracy, calling the Western system
they live in an insult to Allah.
“Let us ask if democracy means that
sovereignty is with the people, that the
people have the right to decide what’s
halal [allowable] and haram [forbidden],
and it’s up to them, then no Muslim with
any mustard seed’s worth of imam can
agree with this.”
Green is a regular preacher on the New
Zealand Voice of Islam TV service. It may
be that his sermons on TV here are less
inflammatory, but by endorsing him as a
regular preacher Voice of Islam is sending
a message that his views fit with theirs,
and those of local muslims.
The same goes for Bilal Philips and Yahya
Ibrahim, covered earlier in this report.
Abdul Hakim Quick was the subject of
a New Zealand Broadcasting Standards
Authority complaint in 2004 for suggesting homosexuals should be stoned
to death. He argues on his website that
he is being taken too literally, and that he
was only re-stating the Qur’an.
Yasir Qadhi is described in British
reports as a “Holocaust denier” who
promotes his denialism:17
“ ‘The Hoax of the Holocaust’, I advise
you to read this book … a very good
book. All of this [the Holocaust] is false
propaganda … The Jews, the way they
portray him [Hitler], also is not correct.”
If your national Islamic federation
is posting misleading statements on
its website, associating with
organisations linked to terrorist fundraising and turning a blind eye to extremism,
how should the New Zealand
public react?
If the local TV service for
muslims is regularly posting sermons from extremist
preachers and thus lending
them an air of authenticity
and credibility, how should
the New Zealand public react?
If the country’s biggest
mosque is endorsing extrem-
ist preachers on its Facebook page, how
should the New Zealand public react
when local muslim leaders tell the media
their community is moderate?
And then there’s the elephant in the
room – what has caused this radicalisation in Europe, Australia, Britain and
even New Zealand – where some 40
people are on a terror watchlist? According to none other than Abdur Raheem
Green, the radicalisation of young muslims is a direct result of exposing them to
Western culture in their new countries.
“What is the benefit for that brothers
and sisters for us living here in the West?
We are surrounded with evil. We are
surrounded by people who are indulging
in the worst type of evil. I don’t mean
they’re drinking alcohol, they’re taking
drugs, they’re fornicating. The worst type
of evil is shirk [not being focused entirely
on Allah’s will]. The worst type of evil is
kufr [disbelief, not following Islamic law
to the letter]. The worst type of evil is
making partners with Allah, and denying Allah and turning away from their
lord and their religion.
“So many brothers come from Algeria
and Morocco and these places and they
come thinking, and they go to the discos,
and they do this and they do that, and
they come and bit by bit they start seeing
the reality of what it is really actually like.
And so many of them, Mashallah, start
practising Islam and they start practising it very strongly, which they never did
in their countries, because they saw for
themselves the reality of the situation.
They saw for themselves what it is really
like. They looked behind, you know, the
make up and they saw the reality of what
is behind is an ugly old bag.”
I
n other words, by seeing the huge
contrast between what they believe
and what the Western world offers,
some Muslims forget their faith while
others become even more fundamentalist. If Green is right, then the West
has itself created radicalised Muslim
youth by allowing them to immigrate
and immerse themselves in what their
preachers call an ‘evil’ culture.
It is this crisis of conscience in young
Muslims, says former CIA analyst Emile
Nakhleh, that Saudi Arabian ‘charities’ are
attempting to exploit. Where al-Haramain,
WAMY and Muslim World League have
sown the seeds, host countries are eventually left reaping the whirlwind. He cites
the impact of Boko Haram in Nigeria: 18
“I visited those areas during my government service and witnessed the
growth of Islamic activism and radicalization first hand. I spoke to dozens of
Islamic activists in the region about the
so-called root causes of their activism.
“Saudi NGOs, including the International Islamic Relief Organization
(IIRO), the World Assembly of Muslim
Youth (WAMY), and al-Haramayn,
funded a plethora of projects in Nigerian villages and towns in the north and
provided meals to needy Nigerian Muslims, especially during the holy month
of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha.
“They built mosques, Islamic educational institutions and libraries, community centers, and health clinics. Saudifunded Koranic schools taught Nigerian
children to recite the Koran in Arabic
IT SHOULD BE STRESSED THAT THE VAST
MAJORITY OF NEW ZEALAND MUSLIMS
REMAIN HONEST HARD-WORKING FAMILY
PEOPLE WHO RECOGNISE THE SAME
PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED IN THIS ARTICLE BUT
ARE TOO AFRAID TO SPEAK PUBLICLY IN
CASE THERE’S A BACKLASH AGAINST THEM
and preached to them how to become
more committed Sunni Muslims.
“The word “jihad” became a central
component of the discourse of proselytization. The underpinning argument
was that Islam was under attack by all
sorts of “infidels” and “apostates,” which
demanded a “jihadist” response,” says
Emile Nakhleh.
All of which points to a final obvious
conclusion: when the daily news media or
politicians point to New Zealand’s “moderate” Muslim community, they are denying reality. From “no extremists” a decade
ago, there are now around four dozen on
a watchlist and possibly many others the
government doesn’t know about judging
by the high level of interest in extremist preachers. Nothing in New Zealand’s
approach to Islam has changed, in fact
we’ve become far more tolerant, but the
extremism has grown regardless.
The elephant in the room is FIANZ
and the hate preachers who’ve been sold
to New Zealand muslims as examples of
good teachers. The Saudi Arabian teams
we reported on eight years ago taught kids,
some of whom became radicalised and
some of whom have now died in Syria.
Of course, it should be stressed that
the vast majority of New Zealand Muslims remain honest hard-working family
people who recognise the same problems
identified in this article but are too afraid
to speak publicly in case there’s a backlash against them. The biggest enemy of
moderate Muslims, however, are national
organisations and mosques who endorse
extremist preachers, perhaps because
they are accepting Saudi Arabian money
to do so. If true, it is a good example of
selling one’s soul.
FOOTNOTE: We approached FIANZ president
Dr Anwar Ghani for comment, but FIANZ did
not respond.
References:
1. www.wikileaks.org/plusd/
cables/05WELLINGTON684_a.html
2. www.investigatemagazine.com/nov03terror.htm
3. www.wikileaks.org/gitmo/pdf/su/
us9su-000940dp.pdf
4. www.nytimes.com/2003/09/17/world/
flow-of-saudis-cash-to-hamas-is-scrutinized.html?pagewanted=2
5. www.wikileaks.org/plusd/
cables/06WELLINGTON826_a.html
6. www.islamawareness.co.nz/faq.php#22
7. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7rJo7Bde
QY&noredirect=1
8. www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/
features/articles/a_critique_of_the_doctrine_of_offensive_jihad
9. www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/
hadith/bukhari/052-sbt.php#004.052.260
10. www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religioustexts/hadith/bukhari/084-sbt.
php#009.084.064
11. www.shariawatch.org.uk/articles/
whats-wrong-sharia-compliant-finance#.
VLiPSCuUeSo
12. www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4178/
cardiff-university-kawthari
13. www.standforpeace.org.uk/refutingthe-east-london-mosque-elm-deniespromoting-extremism-again/
14. www.almujab.wordpress.
com/2010/01/05/reflections-of-muftiibn-adam-al-kawthari-on-tarim/
15. www.www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11263309/
Terror-link-charities-get-British-millionsin-Gift-Aid.html
16. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10854579/
Anti-Semitic-charity-under-investigation.
html
17. www.standforpeace.org.uk/worst-ofthe-worst-britains-salafist-movementthe-night-of-power-conference-2014/
18. www.lobelog.com/
nigerian-terrorism-causes-and-solutions/
THE CALIPHATE
AGENDA
IDENTIFYING THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
T
he recent rise of Islamic State (or IS or ISIS), a group
which has declared a Caliphate (Islamic state) across
parts of Syria and Iraq, has attracted a new spurt of
young British citizens to fight for jihad.
The United States launched military strikes
against Islamic State in August, following reports
that the Yazidi people, a religious minority in Iraq,
were being effectively ethnically cleansed from the
region. Among the atrocities, which included mass
shootings, live burials and slavery, were mass forced
conversions to Islam. Nasser Muthana, 20, a former
medical student from Cardiff, bragged on Twitter
about forcing members of the Yazidi community
to convert to Islam and undergo a form of spiritual
healing – days after claiming there were “hundreds
of Yazidi slave women” in Syria.1
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said in August
2014 that around 500 British citizens were now fighting for Islamic State.2 It has even been reported
that there are more British Muslims fighting for
Islamic State than there are serving in the British
armed forces.3
Story after story emerge and point to the same
In late 2014, the British watchdog group ShariaWatch issued an
extensive report on why and how young Muslims are being radicalised
in the UK. In this extract from the report, ShariaWatch argues that
actual terrorism is merely the tip of the iceberg poking out of the
water that ordinary people can see. Within Islam itself, they claim,
are many more people lending moral support to extremism
conclusion – a growing number of young
British citizens are immersed in Islamic
extremism, so much so that they are willing to give their lives for perhaps the
most brutal Islamic terrorist group yet
to emerge.
Other vicious groups are attracting
support from British youth as well. The
horrific Boko Haram, which achieved
global infamy with the kidnap and “sale”
of hundreds of young Nigerian girls,
also has a strong British connection.
The apparent “ringleader” of this group,
Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, was according
to reports formerly a student at a UK
university.4
Such cases go back several years. Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called
“underwear bomber” who was convicted
of attempting to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear en route
from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, was also a British student.
The revelation that large numbers of
young British Muslims are travelling to
fight for Islamic terror groups has raised
inevitable questions as to what can be
“radicalising” young people on such a
scale. This report argues that British universities, the extremists who are regularly
permitted to preach there, the student
bodies who seem intent on enabling
Islamism, as well as the culture of censorship that has developed on campus
to shut down anything deemed offensive
to Islam, is aiding the radicalisation of
young British Muslims.
FUNDING
Eight universities, including Oxford
and Cambridge, accepted more than
£233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused
of trying to blow up Delta Flight 253
on the way from Amsterdam to Detroit
on December 25, 2009./ NEWSCOM
sources between 1995 and 2008.5 This is
according to a report by the director of
Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Professor
Anthony Glees. Professor Glees wrote
that external Arab and Muslim funding
was the largest single source of funding
to UK universities, and that the funds
were being utilised to expand extremist religious thought – particularly in
university Islamic societies.
Professor Glees attracted controversy
for warning of the influence of Islamist
thought in British universities. He has
also expressed concern that 70 per cent
of politics lectures at the Middle Eastern
Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford,
were “implacably hostile” to the West and
Israel. He has urged the Government to
take action, but the action it has so far
taken is to call for more Islamic study
centres.
Later, in 2011, reports revealed that the
London School of Economics (above) had
received financial donations from an
organisation led by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi,
son of the former Libyan dictator. The
gift had a total value of £1.5 million, and
according to the BBC, a “contract worth
£2.2m to train Libyan civil servants” was
also secured.6
Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London, the London School
of Economics, Exeter, Dundee, and City
University have all received millions of
pounds from Arab and Muslim donors.
In 2011, the Telegraph reported:7
“Much of the money has gone to
Islamic study centres: the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies received £75
million from a dozen Middle Eastern
rulers, including the late King Fahd of
Saudi Arabia; one of the current king’s
nephews, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal,
gave £8 million each to Cambridge and
Edinburgh. Then there was the LSE’s
own Centre for Middle Eastern Studies,
which got £9 million from the United
Arab Emirates; last November, a majority
of the centre’s board was revealed to be
pushing for a boycott of Israel.”
“The management committees of the
Islamic Studies centres at Cambridge
and Edinburgh contained appointees
hand-picked by Prince Alwaleed. Other
universities have altered their study areas
in line with their donors’ demands.”
“Although much of the money is
claimed to be directed towards apolitical ends, this can often be misleading.
The gift by foreign Governments of language books, for instance, can have a
significant effect on what is taught; in one
case, the gift of an art gallery was found
to have had a direct impact on teaching
and admissions policy.”
Student Rights reported in 2011 that
“following a Freedom of Information
request dated 26th April 2011, the School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
revealed information regarding monetary
donations received from the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, amounting to a grand
total of £755,000 between 2006 – 2010.”8
ANTI-SEMITISM
Not coincidentally, given the increase
in Islamist thought in UK universities,
and the free reign given to Islamic hate
preachers, anti-Semitism is simultaneously on the rise throughout British
higher educational institutions. An
All-Party Parliamentary Report in to
anti-Semitism in 2006 revealed several
instances of anti-Jewish sentiments,
including those “expressed by academics
towards Jewish students”.9 The report also
stated: “The activities of certain extremist
Islamist groups have long given cause for
concern among local Jewish communities and on university campuses. We were
given evidence that many of them have
produced or distributed literature of an
overtly anti-Semitic character, some of
which has called for the killing of Jews
and the destruction of Israel.”
Further findings of the report included:
• Leaflets with [anti-Semitic] quotes have
been distributed on university campuses in Britain, causing Jewish students to feel harassed and threatened.
• When left wing or pro-Palestinian
discourse around the Middle East is
manipulated and used as a vehicle for
anti-Jewish language and themes, the
anti-Semitism is harder to recognise
and define and Jewish students can
find themselves isolated and unsupported, or in conflict with large groups
of their fellow students.
• The Union of Jewish Students stated
that a number of university campuses
are being used as recruiting grounds by
extremist groups which have a history
of anti-Semitic rhetoric and behaviour.
LIKE IN THE UK, REPORTS OF EXTREMIST
ANTI-SEMITIC, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC,
MISOGYNIST AND HOMOPHOBIC SPEAKERS
IN US UNIVERSITIES ARE FREQUENT.
FURTHERMORE, ATTEMPTS AT SHUTTING
DOWN CRITICISM OF ISLAM ON AMERICAN
CAMPUSES HAVE ALSO OCCURRED
• Although they are banned from most
campuses under the NUS No Platform
policy, Hizb ut-Tahrir (which calls for a
global Caliphate under sharia law) have
reappeared under a number of aliases.
A 2003 BBC Newsnight documentary
exposed their activity at Kingston University and they have also been active
at UCE Birmingham and Queen Mary,
University of London amongst others.
• The Commission for Racial Equality
(CRE) stated that relations between
Jewish students and the Students’
Union at the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS) in London
have been particularly strained and
in the past the Israel Student Society
was banned by the Union. In February 2005, the SOAS Students’ Union
attempted to ban Mr Roey Gilad of the
Embassy of Israel from addressing the
University’s Israel Society.
• In 2005 the Association of University
Teachers (AUT) passed a motion boycotting two Israeli universities, Haifa
and Bar Ilan.
• In 2002 the University of Manchester
Students’ Union proposed a motion
that anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel
was not anti-Semitism, and that Israeli
goods should be boycotted. A leaflet
from the General Union of Palestinian Students, quoting from a neo-Nazi
propaganda forgery entitled ‘Prophecy
of Benjamin Franklin in Regard of the
Jewish Race’, was distributed amongst
students queuing up to vote.
Anti-Semitism (primarily advocated by
Muslim and left-wing students) on campus is not a British phenomenon, but
is occurring across the Western world.
Hamas on Campus10 is a North American
group dedicated to uncovering anti-Jewish rhetoric in universities throughout
the US and Canada. A group of particular concern is the Muslim Student Asso-
ciation (MSA). An American terrorism
expert, Patrick Poole, said the following: “The Muslim Student Association
has been a virtual terror factory. Time
after time after time again we see these
terrorists, and not just fringe members,
these are MSA leaders, MSA presidents,
MSA national presidents, who’ve been
implicated, charged, and convicted in
terrorism plots”.11
Described as “a Saudi creation” in the
Middle East Quarterly, the MSA has
Ahmed Shama on its list of past presidents. Shama is reported to have shouted
“Death to the Jews” outside an Israeli
consulate in Los Angeles in 2000.12
Like in the UK, reports of extremist
anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, misogynist and homophobic speakers in US
universities are frequent. Furthermore,
attempts at shutting down criticism
of Islam on American campuses have
also occurred. For example, in Berkeley
in California, a motion similar to the
“Islamophobia” motion in LSE (above)
was passed in 2013.13 Like the LSE
motion, this resolution sought to define
“Islamophobia” as “the irrational fear of
Islam, Muslims, or anything related to
the Islamic or Arab cultures and traditions”. This is incredibly wide-reaching
and effectively seeks to outlaw any negative view of any aspect of Islamic or Arab
culture, including – no doubt – sharia
law. Crucially, like the LSE motion, it
seeks to outlaw and shut down scrutiny
of ideas – a disturbing endeavour in itself,
but even more so in an institution dedicated to learning.
Berkeley also hosts an annual conference on “Islamophobia”. Lee Kaplan
wrote of the 2014 conference: “Almost
all presenters who spoke about the 34
or more “academic” papers that were
discussed continually asserted that
white racism and colonialism were the
causes of “Islamophobia” throughout
More recently, Bill Maher, the comedian and TV host who is a strong critic
of Islam, was the subject of a 4,000 signature student petition demanding he
be disinvited from speaking at Berkeley.
Again, the Muslim Student Association
featured largely in the protests – accusing
Mr Maher of “cultural racism”.16
CONCLUSION
AYAAN HIRSI ALI, THE SOMALI-BORN
FORMER DUTCH MP AND EX-MUSLIM WHO IS
HUGELY CRITICAL OF HER FORMER RELIGION
WAS AWARDED AN HONORARY DEGREE
FROM BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY... THIS WAS
WITHDRAWN FOLLOWING PROTESTS FROM
MUSLIM STUDENTS AND GROUPS
America and Europe. In their view, this
“Islamophobia” is driven by the media,
while racism against people of color is
the main cause overall behind the (supposed) persecution of Muslims. Fear of
terrorism was of no legitimate concern.
Discussions also centered on discrimination against women and gays, a practice
deemed not to be a widespread problem
in Islamic practices, but the result of
‘Islamophobia’”.14
In other universities, critics of Islam are
barred. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born
former Dutch MP and ex-Muslim who
is hugely critical of her former religion
– particularly its treatment of women –
was awarded an honorary degree from
Brandeis University in Massachusetts in
2014. This was withdrawn, however, following protests from Muslim students
and groups, including the Muslim Student
Association and the controversial Council
on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
CAIR also objected to the screening
of a film focusing on honour violence,
predominantly a Muslim phenomenon
where women are killed for “dishonouring” male family members – the “dishonour” usually involves sexual behaviour.
According to Fox News: “CAIR convinced officials at University of Michigan
to cancel a screening of the film last week,
and a CAIR official confirmed a second
screening was cancelled at the University
of Illinois. CAIR has since made attempts
to shut down additional showings.”15
Political Islam has been growing in power
and brutality, all over the world, over
recent decades. It is manifested not only
in the violence and terror of groups such
as Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic State,
but in an ideology (often propagated
peacefully and lawfully) that believes in
a global Caliphate under strict and brutal
sharia law. Such a Caliphate would treat
women as sub-human, would present an
enormous threat to Jews, non-Muslims
and homosexuals, and would destroy
free speech and democratic principles
entirely.
Despite protestations from primarily left-wing advocates, it is becoming
increasingly clear that those who support
and campaign for Islam and sharia do not
do so as a result of poverty, or isolation,
or “disenfranchisement”, or “marginalisation”; in fact, quite the opposite is
true. To argue that proponents of political Islam are powerless or side-lined in
Western society is factually inaccurate
to the point of absurdity. Proponents of
Islamism often dominate discourse in the
media, and particularly in universities.
It is perhaps more accurate in fact to
argue that it is the opponents of Islamic
extremism who are side-lined, silenced,
harassed, and even prosecuted.
Evidence reveals that the result of
this has been an exodus of young British graduates leaving the UK to fight
for a brutal and violent terrorist group,
Islamic State. Some argue that Islamic
State exists as a response to Western
aggression, colonialism, or imperialism
– indeed such rhetoric is common on
university campuses. Western colonialism does not explain however Islamic
State’s brutal kidnap and rape of Yazidi
women and girls (who have never been
involved in Western colonialism), nor
does it explain Islamic State’s mass murder of many Muslims, and nor does it
explain the stoning to death of women
for adultery, or indeed the slavery and
barbaric treatment generally of Muslim
women throughout the Islamic world, at
the hands of their fellow Muslims.
The battle against political Islam is failing for many reasons; most importantly
because our leaders fail to see the explicitly religious motivation of groups such as
Islamic State, or the religious motivation
of many who seek to join their ranks.
Some Western leaders are arguably complicit in the so-called “radicalisation” of
young British Muslims, when they legitimise and condone anti-Western and antiIsrael thought and rhetoric. For example,
at a time when anti-Semitism is growing across Europe – to the extent that
even major supermarkets remove Kosher
items from their shelves,17 marches take
place where protestors chant “Jews to the
Gas”,18 and when Jewish shops and businesses are being violently attacked19 – the
left-wing Labour Party in Britain voted
in Parliament to recognise the “state of
Palestine”, despite it being ruled by a
known terrorist organisation which is
clear about its aim to murder all Jews.
While giving this level of legitimacy to
the murderous terrorists of Hamas, the
British Left (including the Labour Party)
does nothing to confront Islamism and
the preaching of Islamist hate in our own
educational institutions, thus sending a
powerful message that the mainstream
political Left is on the side of Islam. Leftdominated student unions send the same
message by boycotting Israel while refusing to condemn Islamic State.
The unfortunate truth is that the political Islamist narrative is becoming dominant and those who object have become
pariahs – nowhere is this more evident
than in higher education, both in Britain
and elsewhere in the Western world. Those
who seek open debate about the nature
of Islamic doctrine are labelled “Islamophobic” and “racist” – such accusations
can have devastating consequences for
careers and reputations, and the threat of
such accusations alone is usually enough
to ensure self-censorship on the part of
those who seek to scrutinise.
Simultaneously, Islamic societies and
centres in major universities are receiving vast funds from brutal Islamic states
– most notably Saudi Arabia.
Given the influence of Islamism on British campuses, and the silencing of detractors, it is incumbent upon our leaders to
recognise the true nature of political Islam,
its threat to women, Jews, non-believers,
homosexuals and democracy itself, and to
do so as a matter of urgency. British journalists, lawyers, and indeed political leaders, are almost all university graduates and
are therefore exposed to what is becoming
a default position – that the West is a force
for negativity, and that Islamists must be
accommodated (or rather appeased) and
free speech curtailed.
Sharia Watch UK does not support
the notion that those who believe in
extremist Islam should be silenced. We
do however argue that incitement to violence against women, Jews, homosexuals
or non-believers should be prosecuted,
and that such incitement should not
be permitted anywhere if it crosses the
threshold of criminality, including on
university campuses. Furthermore, we
believe that those who oppose the ideology of radical Islam should be permitted to speak openly and not be subjected
to dishonest accusations of “racism” or
indeed “Islamophobia”.
Sharia Watch UK also believes that
below the threshold of actual violence
and terrorism lies a vast plane of often
highly supremacist and intolerant ideas
and behaviours; these ideas and behaviours must be robustly and unapologetically challenged. In the context of student
radicalisation, this need to challenge ideas
and behaviours is all the more pressing
within the campus environment. University bodies and student leaders that seek
to shut down debate, criticism and even
ridicule of Islam are particularly culpable
in fuelling radicalisation.
There is endless debate about the
“cause” of radicalisation. There is no
shortage of theories placing the blame
squarely on the shoulders of external
actors and external factors. Perhaps the
time is finally upon us to ask whether
the “cause” of Islamic radicalisation is
within Islam itself.
FOOTNOTE: To read the entire ShariaWatch
report on radicalised Islam, visit:
www.shariawatch.org.uk/sites/default/files/
downloads/Learning%20Jihad.pdf
References
1. www.theguardian.com/
uk-news/2014/aug/25/
counter-terrorism-laws-warning-mi6-chief
2. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/
middleeast/11051731/A-balance-betweenrights-and-security.html
3. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/
defence/11049851/More-British-Muslimsfight-in-Syria-than-in-UK-Armed-Forces.
html
africaandindianocean/nigeria/10836250/
British-born-Boko-Haram-ringleader-wasradicalised-at-UK-university.html
5. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
uknews/1584954/Extremism-fear-overIslam-studies-donations.html
6. www.bbc.co.uk/news/
education-15966132
africaandindianocean/libya/8360103/
Libya-and-the-LSE-Large-Arab-gifts-touniversities-lead-to-hostile-teaching.html
8. www.studentrights.org.uk/cms/rc1/wpcontent/uploads/2011/06/Saudi-SOASBriefing.pdf
9. www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/
uploads/All-Party-ParliamentaryInquiry-into-Antisemitism-REPORT.pdf
10. www.hamasoncampus.org
11. www.hamasoncampus.
org/#!multimedia/c112f
12. www.meforum.org/603/islamismscampus-club-the-muslim-students
13. www.electronicintifada.net/blogs/
nora/student-senate-uc-berkeley-passesresolution-condemning-lecturers-islamophobic-hate
14. www.frontpagemag.com/2014/leekaplan/uc-berkeley-islamophobia-conference-pseudo-scholarship-at-taxpayerexpense-2/
15. www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/02/
muslim-backlash-against-film-will-hurtwomen-says-honor-diaries-team/
16. www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-mahersuc-berkeley-speaking-invitation-sparksfuror/
17. www.theguardian.com/business/2014/
aug/17/sainsburys-removes-kosherfood-anti-israel-protesters
18. www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/
opinion/jochen-bittner-whats-behindgermanys-new-anti-semitism.html?hp&
action=click&pgtype=Homepage&modu
le=c-column-top-span-region&region=ccolumn-top-span-region&WT.
nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=2
19. www.huffingtonpost.
co.uk/2014/07/22/france-jewish-shopsriot_n_5608612.html
PG’s
TIPS
A light brew, sometimes
lacking substance
FORTY YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, IN FEBRUARY 1975,
ACCLAIMED WRITER AND LYRICIST PELHAM GRENVILLE
WODEHOUSE PASSED AWAY AT THE AGE OF 93. IN THIS
ANNIVERSARY CRITIQUE OF WODEHOUSE’S BODY
OF WORK, HAL COLEBATCH ARGUES THAT WHILE THE
WRITER WAS ONE OF THE GREATS, HE ALSO WASTED
HIS OPPORTUNITIES TO EXERCISE FREE SPEECH
P
.G. Wodehouse is not only a perennially popular author: as well as a readers’ writer, he is also a writers’ writer.
I know of no critic who has been able
to attack – indeed I have never found
any who wished to attack – his literary
craftsmanship, and his themes can only be attacked
by a critic prepared to risk looking very silly indeed.
Hilaire Belloc in 1939 called him “The best writer
of English now alive,” and “The head of my profession.” Someone said that to criticize his work was
like taking a spade to a soufflé.
This, however, is not quite the whole story: occa-
sionally in the soufflé are grains of something
harder, such as the description of soap-box orators,
among whom, “an Atheist was letting himself go
with a good deal of vim, though handicapped by
having no roof to his mouth” – there is a Grahame
Greene novel in 21 words. His send-up in one of the
Mr Mulliner stories of the deranged Bacon/Shakespeare conspiracy theories is deadly and, though
he would never have touched so grim a subject, one
could wish he had lived long enough to similarly
flay the malignant idiocies of the 9/11 “truthers.”
When Wodehouse was accused of collaborating
with the Nazis as a result having made five broad-
casts on Berlin radio in the early part
of World War II, three highly-proven
anti-Nazis – George Orwell and Malcolm
Muggeridge, then both of the Left, and
the conservative Evelyn Waugh - were
among those who came to his defence
at different times, as did John Masefield,
then Poet Laureate and President of the
Society of Authors. British intelligence
investigated the affair and found him
no worse than foolish, but there was a
little more to it.
Wodehouse, then nearly 60 and a civil-
ian, had been taken prisoner during the
German invasion of France. His defenders pointed out that the broadcasts were
quite innocuous – they were light-hearted
accounts of his internment experiences.
Waugh suggested that, if anything, they
actually helped British morale by portraying the Germans as bumbling, comic
and enslaved by petty routine at a time
when the Wehrmacht otherwise seemed
an invincible and super-efficient juggernaut. Waugh also argued that Wodehouse had behaved bravely by letting
himself be taken prisoner – staying put,
as ordered, rather than fleeing and adding to the hordes of refugees who were
choking the roads needed by the Allied
armies. Anyway, the Germans quickly
dropped the broadcasts, apparently finding them useless. I am not judging how
correct Waugh’s arguments were, but the
texts of the broadcasts were published by
Encounter in 1954, and it was then obvious to those who had heard of them only
by repute that they had been harmless,
except for the fact that they had been
P.G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975)
English novelist and writer.
From a cigarette card
published 1937/ NEWSCOM
made at all. Comments such as: “If this
is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower
Silesia must be like ...” could hardly be
taken as pro-German.
The Daily Mirror’s intensely-proLabour columnist “Cassandra” (William Connor) was one who led the attack
against Wodehouse as a tactic of classwarfare, with Wodehouse identified as
part of the upper class. Connor leveled
libelous and preposterous charges against
Wodehouse of being a Nazi propagandist
(Though the aristocratic Tory Duff Cooper was also involved, possibly through
believing his own propaganda.)
The consensus of his defenders’
opinion was along the lines that while
Wodehouse had been naïve and foolish
in making the broadcasts, he had had
no treasonous intent and knew nothing
about either politics or war.
He had little motive in venally making
the broadcasts to gain early release as he
would have been released in a few months
when turning 60 anyway, and evidently
had no inkling that they would cause
any offence, let alone fury, in England.
The “phoney war” had ended with the
German offensive which resulted in his
capture, and his own captivity had not
been harsh (the civilian prisoners had
access to library books and entertainments) but he had had little if any news
of events. According to his defenders,
he simply had no understanding of how
grim and total the war had become since
he was captured. He had apparently made
the broadcasts to keep his name before
his American readers, and had accepted
no German money. He had kept himself
with the German royalties on his books.
In the world of total war he was a babe
toddling in a very dark and monsterfilled wood. Still, it is notable that be
returned to France after his release and
remained there for the rest of the war,
though he could presumably have got
back to England via, say, Spain – that
is hardly a point in his favour and it is
something his defenders have tended not
to mention (What a Tom Stoppard-type
play might be written about P. J. Wodehouse meeting Sartre and Beckett at a
literary soiree in occupied Paris!)
It is notable that Orwell, Muggeridge
and Waugh, among the most accomplished literary stylists of their age, and
all men of considerable moral seriousness – a constant theme in all their works
is the conflict between civilization and
barbarism - admired Wodehouse’s style.
So did that formidable wit and intellect,
Msgr. Ronald Knox. So, I note, does our
own Frank Devine, himself certainly
no stylistic slouch. Waugh wrote of him
“delivering future ages from a captivity
which may be more irksome than our
own.” Among other admirers, Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, creator of
Parkinson’s Law, was moved to write a
complete biography of Jeeves, along with
one of Horatio Hornblower.
Frank Devine has made the interesting
suggestion that Jeeves was inspired, not by
an English valet, but by an American Negro
upper servant. This may well be true, but
my own suggested key to Wodehouse, to
his great blunder in 1940, and perhaps to
his perennial popularity, is different:
I suggest that, setting aside his juvenilia and work published before 1914,
Wodehouse was writing what is sometimes known today as a counter-factual:
a story of what the world would have
been like if some historical event had
been different.
The modern US writer Harry Turtledove is one who has produced a series of
such stories, one set in a world where the
Confederates won the American Civil
War, for example, another about an alien
invasion in the midst of World War II,
and a series set in the Byzantine Empire
as it might have been if Islam had never
arisen. Another such series has postulated an Earth where a meteor strike
never killed the dinosaurs, and some of
them eventually developed intelligence
and a civilization.
W
odehouse, I suggest, was writing stories, as much as Tolkien
was to do, quite consistently over
many years and comprising the major part
of his whole canon, set in an imaginary
world, “sub-creating,” again like Tolkien,
an England transmogrified and idealized.
This work was all one gigantic story set in
a certain and distinctly-visualised imaginary world.
Tolkien’s work was inspired in part by
the First World War: along with his idyllic descriptions of The Shire (England)
are “the arid moors of the Noman-lands”
in Middle Earth which clearly echo “No
Man’s Land,” and there are a number
of other instances where his landscapes
seem to be inspired by it, such as the
Dead Marshes, like flooded trenches full
of corpses, and the intensely-described
desolation before the Black Gate of Mordor, far from the green and lovable Shire:
“Here nothing lived, not even the leprous
growths which feed on rottenness. The
gasping pools were choked with ash and
crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as
if the mountains had vomited the filth of
their entrails upon the lands about. High
mounds of crushed and powdered rock,
great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed to
the reluctant light … a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing …”
But Wodehouse’s was a very different
imaginary world to that of Tolkien’s heroic
adventures and battles set in a remote past.
Wodehouse’s image of modern England
was summed up in passages like: “The sun
shone down from a sky of cornflower blue,
and what one would really like would be
to describe in leisurely detail the ancient
battlements, the smooth green lawns, the
rolling parkland, the majestic trees, the
well-bred bees and the gentlemanly birds
on which it shone.” There is so often sun
and bird-song. Other stories begin: “Sun-
shine was gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a marked
twittering of birds in the ivy outside the
window…”, “The day was so warm, so fair,
so magically a thing of sunshine and blue
skies and bird-song …”
T
stories, I suggest, were consistently
set in a counter-factual modern England where the First World War never
occurred. Jeeves, remember, first appears
in 1917, and Bertie Wooster would, in the
real world, probably have been dead in a
shell-crater by then, along with much of
the rest of the membership of the Drones
Club. Wodehouse’s stories are a sort of
science-fiction.
I have read by no means all of Wodehouse, but I have read a fair bit over the
years, and in all the stories about young
upper and upper-middle-class Englishmen, which seem to be set from 1917 on
into the 1920s and 1930s, I do not recall
a single mention, even in passing, of
the First World War or any of its concomitants. No members of the Drones’
Club have empty sleeves or eye-patches,
among these young Englishmen there is
no reference to mud, shell-shock, Armistice Day, medals or absent friends. It is
a consistent world in which income-tax
and death-taxes have not destroyed the
ability of a large class to live on inherited
wealth and patronize graciousness.
The frenzied sexual and other behaviour which were part of the backdrop
to the 1920s and the 30s, and are a
backdrop to Evelyn Waugh’s novels set
in that period, are not “on stage,” and
do not harmonise with Wodehouse’s
world, even though it is plainly set later
than the beginning of the 20th Century
with cars, aeroplanes, steamships, etc.
There are eccentrics in Wodehouse to
be sure – practically all his characters
are caricatures in a sense, though his
olkien’s Shire, which his heroes are,
among other things, trying to save
from war and devastation, is a bit
like that, although more serious things
happen to some of its people, and it is
never forgotten that the Shire is a working landscape: it has fields and woods
and gardens, not smooth green lawns
and rolling parkland, and it is protected
by guardians that its inhabitants hardly
know of. In Tolkien’s Middle Earth there
are “ancient battlements” to be sure, but
they are still manned by grim warriors.
Away in the Dead Marshes: “It was dreary
and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still
held sway in this forsaken country. The
only green was the scum of livid weed on
the greasy surface of the sullen waters.
Dead grasses and rotting weeds loomed
up in the mists like ragged shadows of
long forgotten summers … There was a
deep silence, only scraped on its surfaces
by the faint quiver of empty and desolate
seed-plumes, and broken grass-blades
trembling in small air-movements that
they could not feel. ‘Not a bird!’ said Sam
mournfully.”
In Wodehouse’s England even the East
End slums are happy, care-free, gay and
fecund. In Young Men in Spats: “On
every side, merry matrons sat calling
each other names on doorsteps. Cheery
cats fought among the garbage-pails.
From the busy public-houses came the
sound of mouth-organ and song. While,
as for the children, who were present in
enormous quantities, so far from crying
for bread, as he had been led to expect,
they were playing hop-scotch all over the
pavements. The whole atmosphere, in a
word, was, he tells me, more like that of
Guest Night at the National Liberal Club
than anything he had ever encountered.”
(It is sobering to read in April, 2008, that
councils in Britain are banning hopscotch and sending men to erase
Stephen Fry and Hugh
hoppy-games from
Laurie epitomised Jeeves
pavements for
and Wooster for the younger
“safety” reasons.)
generation on TV
Wodehouse’s
letters suggest he took the major ones
very seriously – but not real degenerates
like the Mitford women. In one or two,
or even half a dozen, stories these various absences would be unremarkable,
but in a canon as large as Wodehouse’s
they can only be, as our Marxist friends
used to say, “no coincidence.” It cannot be
anything other than a deliberately-taken
and explicit position.
Further, Wodehouse as a chronicler of
his particular version of England is not as
narrow a writer as he sometimes gives the
impression of being. Evelyn Waugh has
pointed out that: “Of his three distinctive
cycles that of Blandings is aristocratic,
that of Mr Mulliner middle class, and
that of Wooster an intricate combination of moneyed leisure and desperate
impecuniousity.”
Waugh said in the same essay, getting
near my point: “For Mr Wodehouse there
has been no Fall of Man, no ‘aboriginal calamity.’ His characters … are still
in Eden.” Actually it is not quite Eden,
and Man is quite Fallen – there are
swindlers and thugs and fanatics and
lunatics and poor people. As a former
sportswriter he also knew the tough and
dangerous world of professional boxing, and his stories which feature the
boxer Battling Billson are written with
an insider’s expertise. At a society wedding (the bridegroom is a crook): “Out
of the church came a beauteous being,
leading on his arm another, somewhat
less beauteous. There was no denying
the spectacular effect of Teddy Weeks.
He was handsomer than ever. His sleek
hair, gorgeously waved, shone in the sun,
his eyes were large and bright; his lissome
frame, garbed in faultless morning coat
and trousers, was that of an Apollo. But
his bride gave the impression that Teddy
had married money. They paused in the
doorway, and the cameramen became
active and fussy.”
It is a Fallen world, but a great shadow
is missing. It is a picture, painted in simple, clear prose, of England as it might
have been had the shots not been fired
at Sarajevo.
A
s far as the Second World War
goes, Hitler is mentioned in one
story written in the 1930’s, Buried
Treasure, but only in passing in regard
to his undeveloped moustache, moustaches being the real interest of the story.
Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts are sent up
quite savagely and effectively as Roderick
Spode’s Black Shorts, “swanking around
in footer bags.” (It was one of the earlier
attacks on Fascism in Britain. Coming
from Wodehouse, and considering who
his readers were, this attack may have
been more effective than if it had come
from a more habitually political or obviously left-wing writer). Much later, in the
Cold War and the Space-Age, there is a
mention somewhere of the Sputnik.
The first Russian Revolution is mentioned in The Clicking of Cuthbert, but it is
a very long way away – too far away to be
taken seriously, and it is assumed the Russian Revolutionaries are as keen golfers as
the most Wodehousean Englishman. And
Wodehouse appears, apart from of course
the Berlin broadcasts, to have made no
literary use of his experiences in World
War II – most writers would consider such
experiences priceless capital.
When Wodehouse’s languid heroes
are threatened by formidable rivals in
love or other competitors – tough, capable, potentially or actually violent men
– these tend to be explorers, big-game
hunters and the like, not soldiers: “I like
a man to be a clean, strong, upstanding
Englishman who can look his gnu in the
face and put an ounce of lead in it.” – His
gnu, not his Hun. His stories of English
rural and village life hardly even seem to
mention those normal fixtures of such
stories, “The Major” and “The Colonel.”
Apart from a child’s sailor-suit with the
cap-tally “HMS See-Sik” I can recall no
references to a Navy or Air Force. In
fact, when we have here is a sort of saga
(Wodehouse warned: “Except for the tendency to write articles about the Modern
Girl and allow his side-whiskers to grow,
there in nothing an author today has to
guard himself against more carefully
than the Saga habit.”) of alternate history.
One gets the impression that none of
his characters, such as Lord Emsworth,
have had any “toughening” experiences.
They are not in the Territorial Army as
men of their class would tend to be (and
which has provided material for innumerable comic writers). Nor are they
pacifists or utterers of pacifist sentiments.
The very consciousness of past or future
war – and this in the 20s and 30s – simply
has no part in their world. In a time of
manifestos, Wodehouse uttered none.
Wodehouse’s comedy is utterly different to that of his great admirer Waugh:
they are at opposite ends of the comic
spectrum in regard to darkness and light.
The first page of Waugh’s first great comic
novel, Decline and Fall, sets out what
could be a very typical Wodehousean
situation – members “sonorous of name
and title” of the Bollinger Club gathering at their old University college for a
“Beano” – but before that first page is
finished one knows one is in a far darker
world than any that Wodehouse ever
created. And when World War II came
Waugh, though at nearly 36 more than
a decade older than most junior officers,
instantly threw up his writing career,
moved Heaven and Earth to get into the
Army and undertook Commando and
parachute training.
It may be that both Tolkien and Wodehouse sought escape or consolation from
the horrors of what the 20th Century had
done to England by creating imaginary
worlds where things were different, but
Tolkien, who had been a soldier in the
First World War, remained engaged with
the real world as well – and he would never
have made broadcasts on Berlin Radio.
What either Wodehouse or Waugh
would make of Britain today – when
the papers carry not one or two but a
continuing stream of stories of adults
being kicked to death by gangs of drunk
and drugged teenagers (the former Archbishop of Canterbury says they form
gangs to “fend off unfriendly adults”),
including a blind man, Colin Greenwood,
who refused to carry a white stick because
it was a magnet for such attacks, while a
local council prohibits skull-and-crossbones flags being flown at infant’s pirates’
parties because the neighbors may be
intimidated, and another prevented a
garden gnome from wearing a policeman’s helmet, where on projected trends
births within marriages are already a
minority in some areas, and Muslim
parents protest against pro-homosexual
story-books being forced on their 6-yearold children by government schools, I
do not know. Somehow I suspect that
of the writers mentioned here, Tolkien
would have been the one to deal with it.
Yet Wodehouse, I think, was doing more
than merely offering escapism: his stories
were, obliquely, a comment on that world
which they refused to engage.
Wodehouse did, however, write one
war-story, a rather significant one for
the purposes of this essay. He had begun
his career as an author before World
War I, at a time when there was a great
vogue of (then) “counter-factual” stories
about future wars with Germany and
German invasions of England, following the model of the 19th Century The
Battle of Dorking. William Le Queux was
mass-producing such works, and Kipling
was encouraging young men to join rifle
clubs, and warning of raids and invasions
to come in poems like “The Dykes” and
“The Islanders.”
In Voices Prophesying War, I. F. Clarke
has pointed out that Wodehouse sent this
genre up with the 1909 spoof counter-factual, The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved
England. It was probably the only comic
story among those grim and horrific
warnings. He opened it after the fashion
of the propagandists of the day by addressing a letter to his readers from The BombProof Shelter, London W: “It is necessary
that England should be roused to a sense
of her peril, and only by setting down
without flinching the probable results of
an invasion can this be done. This story, I
may mention, has been written and published purely from a feeling of patriotism
and duty. Mr Alston Rivers’ sensitive soul
will be jarred to its foundations if it is a
financial success. So will mine.”
T
he story has Wodehouse’s typical
technique of refusing any engagement with tragic or even serious
subjects. The news of the German landing is conveyed with British phlegm in
the small print of the Stop-Press: “Fry
not out, 104. Surrey 147 for 8. A German
army landed in Essex this afternoon.
Loamshire handicap: Spring Chicken,
1; Salome, 2; Yip-i-addy, 3. Seven ran.”
With the genre of counter-factual invasion stories becoming definitely overcrowded, it was appropriate that it further: “No fewer than eight other hostile
armies had, by some remarkable coincidence, hit on that identical moment for
launching their long-prepared blow.” The
golf-courses of Southern England were
over-run with improbable invaders from
places like Switzerland and Monaco, but
these failed to distract the inhabitants
from their golf and generally leisurely
and idyllic life. Clarke comments: “The
book was not a success. After a heavy
diet of war stories and appeals to join
the Territorials, the public was not likely
to be amused by such frivolity.” Further,
of course, the “invasion paranoia” was
more than paranoia pure and simple, and
denial and mockery was not the whole
answer: Britain would shortly be in real
peril, if not exactly in terms the counterfactual novelists foresaw. The First World
War could have been lost in several ways
(What if a few German shells had landed
differently at Jutland?).
I am not quite as unqualified a literary
admirer of Wodehouse’s work as were
some of the literary giants of his time,
largely because I think he failed to do his
great talent justice by the extent of his
evasion of serious issues. I recognize him
as a superb stylist, and have roared with
laughter at many such gems as “Gussie
Presents the Prizes,” and “Goodbye to
all cats.” It would normally be absurdly
po-faced, priggish and presumptuous to
advise that a great comic writer should be
more serious, but one may venture to do
so in this case, perhaps, and with trepidation, simply because Wodehouse gives us
so much evidence that he was capable of
greater themes. As it is, I find reading too
much of him at once cloying (well, that is
my own fault, I should know by now that
he is best taken by me in small doses – a
short story is the ideal length). And better
too much Wodehouse any day than even a
little Harold Pinter or Ken Loach!
I do find his almost unfailing habit
of undercutting the too-infrequent
moments when he engages in important
things irritating. One would actually
mind this less in a lesser writer. The most
beautiful and airy literary balloon should
sometimes have some ballast available.
It is not unreasonable to expect some
responsibility from a man of great literary gifts living in dire times.
But that quibble having been quibbled,
what a writer Wodehouse remains! What
gems abound! And no one else could have
written them. (“Into the face of the young
man who sat on the terrace of the hotel at
Cannes there had crept a look of furtive
shame, the shifty, hangdog look which
announces that an Englishman is about
to talk French.”)
When we consider Chesterton’s observation that “I know when a thing is meant
to uplift the human spirit and when it
is meant to depress it,” we know which
side Wodehouse is on and can thank and
salute him for it.
It seems likely that Wodehouse’s
absolute rejection of the fact of war and
totalitarianism in the 20th Century in
his literary work had some connection to
his being unable to cope with it sensibly
when it caught up with him.
Though he does not seem to have been
an active pacifist, he was a victim of the
pacifist frame of mind. In Tolkien’s The
Lord of the Rings there is a character very
like him in the merry Tom Bombadil:
the evil Ring has no power over him,
but he does not understand its importance and cannot be trusted to behave
sensibly in dealing with it. This does not
excuse Wodehouse’s German broadcasts
– he was no fool and he had, in a sense,
a duty to understand the vile nature of
the Nazi regime and understand that no
co-operation with it was morally acceptable – but it does perhaps explain them.
Wodehouse mentally rejected the Age
of the Totalitarian State and its concomitants, and whatever may be said against
that position, it was a less dishonourable
one than that taken by many writers of
welcoming it.
His ridiculing of Spode’s “Black Shorts”
fascist movement is one of those passages
which show what he could do when he
dealt with serious subjects. Whether
Wodehouse chose to write the way he did,
or whether he was one of those authors
who could not write any other way, is
impossible to say. Perhaps a psychologist
would explain Wodehouse’s way of dealing with the 20th Century as a huge exercise in denial. If so, it was one which found
enormous resonance and popularity.
In the end, and in a peculiar way,
Wodehouse’s great counter-factual saga
of England – if that is what it is – can
touch the imagination and even the
heart. The vision he evokes, not only of
sunniness and gentleness, but of order,
certainty and even good manners are
among the things we could do worse than
aim at now.
INVEST
By Carolyn Bigda
Invest in satisfaction
I
f you’re pulling together your budget
for 2015 or have made “spend less” one
of your New Year’s resolutions, consider this tip: Rather than simply cut
back on dinners out or trips to the mall,
think instead about how to spend more
meaningfully.
Jonathan Clements, a columnist for
The Wall Street Journal Sunday, makes
that point in his book, Jonathan Clements
Money Guide 2015, a road map of sorts for
managing your money in the year ahead.
He says that to make our dollars really
count, we should look back at how we
spent our discretionary money in 2014.
Then ask the question, were those expenditures satisfying?
If the answer is no, you know where to
start tightening your budget.
A good way to get started is to look at
a year-end credit card summary, which
some banks provide. The summary gives
you an overview of how much you spent
in certain categories throughout the year,
say, transportation and groceries.
You can also sign up for services such
as Mint.com or Xero, which aggregate
online financial accounts and track
spending in real time. You can also look
at past purchases and calculate how much
you’ve spent, on average, in any one area.
Research shows that experiences tend
to be more gratifying than possessions,
and Clements suspects that will be the
case for most people when they think
about their purchases in 2014.
“What made you most happy was,
probably, going out to dinner with friends
or taking a vacation with the family,” he
said. “It won’t be the new refrigerator.”
In my case, I got a new refrigerator in
late December.
“I still really like it,” I said.
“Wait a month,” Clements said.
That’s because, eventually, things start
to lose their lustre: A new car will one
day need repairs. A new refrigerator
gets dirty and cramped. Our memory
of experiences, on the other hand, tends
to grow fonder over time.
“The broken-down car just sits in the
driveway, taunting you,” Clements said.
Once you’ve gotten your priorities set,
you can make spending decisions that
give you more bang for the buck and free
up dollars for other goals, such as paying
off debt or building up savings.
Jessica Flaherty, 30, graduated from law
school in 2009 with more than $100,000
in student loan debt. She works in the
nonprofit sector and isn’t making the
high salary she expected to earn when
she was in school. To chip away at her
sizable debt load, she doesn’t buy as many
new clothes and other items.
But some things were just too important to cut.
“I kept the day-to-day things, like getting coffee,” Flaherty said. “I can’t make
good coffee myself. I’ve tried, and no one
wants to work with me if I haven’t been
caffeinated.”
She also allows herself to go out with
co-workers for a sandwich once a week.
“I didn’t want to miss that social aspect
at work,” she said. “That was important
to me.”
In 2012, Kelsey Folmar decided that she
and husband, Kendan, should pay off his
remaining $17,000 in student loan debt.
Using Mint.com to scour their finances,
she discovered they had spending leaks,
including convenience store purchases,
which alone averaged $130 per month.
After plugging those leaks – and renting a room in a family member’s home
for only $400 per month for nearly a year
– the couple, both 27, paid off the debt
last April. But all the while, they allowed
themselves some indulgences.
“We had a budget for going out to eat,”
Kelsey said. “It’s just something my husband and I have always enjoyed. It was
the one thing we splurged on.”
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GADGETS
Ricoh Theta M15
Epson Expression Photo XP-950
The Expression Photo XP-950 puts professional-quality photo printing
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What is RICOH THETA? Special camera that shoots
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The fish-eye lenses on each side of the compact body
capture images of just over 180 degrees, which are
stitched together inside the camera body. RICOH
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Amazon Echo
Inspire 1
DJI’s most advanced technology comes together in an easy to use, allin-one flying platform that empowers you to create the unforgettable.
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Amazon Echo is designed around
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to the cloud, where we leverage the power of Amazon
Web Services to recognize and respond to your request.
Plus, Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream other
popular music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora
from your phone or tablet.
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MALL
DW Classic Glasgow
Philips Norelco Series 9000
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This is a beautiful watch that celebrates the timeless and
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Whether you are attending a formal event, playing a game
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Sugoi Zap Jacket
Our modern lives force us outdoors to commute and train in the dark,
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Nightcap
Nightcap by Original Penguin is a spicy, woody, aromatic
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TECH
By David Undercoffler
Automakers on the road
to self-driving cars
F
orget 80-inch televisions or WiFi-connected blenders. At the 2015
Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas, it’s the automakers who are dominating the conversation.
Brands like Mercedes-Benz, Audi,
BMW and Toyota used the annual show
to highlight the rapidly approaching selfdriving car, as well as in-car apps and
hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
“CES is a place where automakers can
reach an entire new audience of consumers who are looking for what’s next,”
said Costantine Samaras, a professor of
engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “Even if it’s just at the concept level,
there’s a lot of spillover for technology up
and down an automaker’s supply chain.”
The concept car was exactly what
Mercedes-Benz brought to this year’s
event. Mercedes Chief Executive Dieter
Zetsche on Monday unveiled a radical
self-driving concept dubbed the F 015
Luxury in Motion.
The low-slung oddity highlights what
Mercedes thinks its cars could look like
– and how they could function – just
15 years in the future. The large sedan
holds four people, who can sit facing one
another in lounge-style seating while the
car drives itself.
Toyota – which used last year’s CES
to show off a self-driving prototype –
used this year’s show to talk hydrogen.
The company announced that 5,600 of
its patents related to hydrogen fuel cell
vehicles and refueling stations will be free
to any competitor that wants to use them.
“The first-generation hydrogen fuel
cell vehicles, launched between 2015
and 2020, will be critical, requiring a
concerted effort and unconventional collaboration,” Toyota Senior Vice President
Bob Carter said. Toyota will bring the
hydrogen-powered Mirai sedan to the
U.S. market in October.
Other automakers used CES to offer a
look at the near future of autonomous cars.
Audi was the first automaker to get a
permit from the state of California to test
self-driving cars on public roads in 2014.
Like an eager 16-year-old, the automaker
used this new permit to drive autonomously from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas
in a prototype A7.
Per current law, the car drove the 560mile journey with a specially licensed
person in the driver and passenger seats.
Despite driving at night and in heavy rain
at speeds up to 70 mph on public roads,
the trip was trouble-free, Audi said.
Luxury automakers in particular will
face a challenge as self-driving cars
become mainstream. When they do,
automakers and analysts alike expect
fewer traffic jams, safety improvements
and reduced greenhouse gases.
But self-driving cars are likely to begin
a transition from a product owned by an
individual to an on-demand, subscription-based service.
It’s not just high-dollar automakers
with an eye on self-driving cars. During
his keynote address Tuesday, Ford CEO
Mark Fields made it clear that an autonomous Ford was a certainty in the future.
But he said his company would take its
time and make sure that the technology
was approachable for everyone.
Technology is hardly the only hurdle
for self-driving cars. There are knotty
regulatory challenges (test vehicles are
currently allowed on public roads in just
four states); data privacy issues, since
these cars accumulate massive amounts
of information about how they’re used
and where they go; and ethical issues
like how to program a car to react when
a collision is unavoidable.
“We’re in the Wild West of autonomous
vehicle law and policy,” said Samaras of
Carnegie Mellon University. “The danger
is a 50-states strategy where every one is
different and automakers are locked into
a less progressive path.”
Despite transportation policy traditionally moving very slowly, Samaras
says he’s optimistic that automakers’
rapid development of self-driving cars
will speed up policy change.
“These are surmountable challenges,”
he said.
Ford, meantime, is conducting 25
experiments around the globe on how
transportation is evolving with technology. Fields said there’s an on-demand,
minute-by-minute car-sharing program
in London; a partnership with an organization in Africa that maintains a fleet
of vehicles used to deliver doctors and
medical care to remote villages while
simultaneously mapping the area; and a
cloud-based system in Atlanta that uses
sensors already on many new Fords to
gather data on open parking spaces.
Such a discussion is exactly why Ford
has been coming to CES for the last eight
years, Fields said.
“For us, it’s a way to showcase our
innovations,” he said. “We want to be
viewed as part of this community.”
AUDI WAS THE FIRST AUTOMAKER TO
GET A PERMIT FROM THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA TO TEST SELF-DRIVING CARS
ON PUBLIC ROADS IN 2014
The self-driving concept car ‘Audi
Prologue’ of car manufacturer
Audi is on display at the 2015
International Consumer Electronics
Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada,
USA, 06 January 2015. The vehicle
drove on stage by itself.
ONLINE
By Joe Carlson
Keeping hackers
out of hospitals
T
he humble infusion pump: It
stands sentinel in the hospital
room, injecting patients with
measured doses of drugs and writing
information to their electronic medical
records.
But what if hackers and identity thieves
could hijack a pump on a hospital’s information network and use it to eavesdrop
on sensitive data like patient identity and
billing data for the entire hospital?
It is not a far-fetched scenario. Though
it hasn’t happened yet, the hacking of
wireless infusion pumps is considered
a critical cybersecurity vulnerability
in hospitals – so much so that federal
authorities are focusing on the pumps as
part of a wide-ranging effort to develop
guidelines to prevent cyberattacks
against medical devices.
Pumps with Wi-Fi were selected to kick
off the new effort because their individual
vulnerabilities are magnified by their sheer
numbers inside hospitals and clinics.
“Infusion pumps are ubiquitous. At
Allina, we have over 3,000 infusion
pumps across the system,” said Linda
Zdon, director of information security
and compliance at the 12-hospital Twin
Cities health system. “Almost every hospital patient at some point has an infusion pump. So it certainly strikes at an
area that has a broad application for most
patients, and therefore has a significant
impact on health systems.”
Allina is one of several Twin Cities
health care players that has been working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology since the spring
to develop a type of technical analysis
known as a “use case” for wireless pumps.
The companies’ goal is to speed along the
development of new standards to harden
medical devices against cyberattacks and
computer viruses.
Devicemakers say they’re already hard
at work improving security, but hospitals
complain that the companies have been
moving too slowly on a vulnerability that
puts hospitals’ information systems at risk.
In a Nov. 21 letter to the Food and
Drug Administration, the American
Hospital Association urged the federal
government to “hold device manufacturers accountable for cybersecurity.”
The Homeland Security Department,
meanwhile, is reportedly investigating
suspected cybersecurity flaws in one
model of infusion pump.
Patients tend to fear a malicious person
would try to steal data or even scramble
the dosing instructions for an individual
pump. While those risks are real, security
experts say they’re far less likely than a
hack to gain access to a hospital’s wider
network traffic. For one thing, attacking
an individual through their pump would
draw attention and close off what could
be a potentially lucrative entry point to
many patients’ data.
Minnesota companies like Allina,
Fairview Health Services and Health-
PUMPS WITH WI-FI WERE SELECTED TO
KICK OFF THE NEW EFFORT BECAUSE
THEIR INDIVIDUAL VULNERABILITIES ARE
MAGNIFIED BY THEIR SHEER NUMBERS
INSIDE HOSPITALS AND CLINICS.
Partners are playing a central role in
the development of the new federal
guidelines through early collaboration
with researchers. The NIST project was
unveiled in December in a presentation
before the University of Minnesota’s
Technological Leadership Institute. NIST
hopes to publish this first set of recommendations as soon as next fall, and then
move on to security vulnerabilities in
implantable medical devices and large
equipment like magnetic-resonance
imaging scanners.
Although it’s a common fear that talking openly about cybersecurity vulnerabilities will give hackers ideas, experts
note that attackers would still need an
extraordinary amount of skill and access
to a device to pull off an attack.
The FDA – working independently
from the NIST study – has been concerned with infusion pumps since it
launched a 2010 review of software
defects and related issues in response to
56,000 reports of adverse events.
Separately, the FDA last fall convened
its first-ever cybersecurity conference
for medical devices, including infusionpump makers. That work is ongoing.
Following the FDA meeting, Reuters
reported that Homeland Security officials have opened investigations into
suspected cybersecurity flaws in medical devices, including an infusion pump
sold by Chicago-based supplier Hospira.
Hospira, which is listed as the lone
devicemaker company working with
NIST on the infusion pump guidelines,
declined to comment for this story.
CareFusion, a major infusion-pump
devicemaker based in San Diego, listed
several specific steps it takes to secure
its devices, including working with
third-party experts to test and validate
product security and using strong data
encryption.
It remains to be seen whether the news
about hacks at Sony and Target or the NIST
will spur more rapid action by devicemakers. But it if doesn’t, the companies won’t
be able to say they weren’t warned.
After the Sony hack, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a statement saying, “This event underscores
the importance of good cybersecurity
practices to rapidly detect cyber intrusions and promote resilience throughout
all of our networks. Every CEO should
take this opportunity to assess their company’s cybersecurity.”
SCIENCE
By Karen Kaplan
Stem cells and ‘bad luck’ cause cancer
W
hy are some types of cancer so
much more common than others? Sometimes it’s because of
faulty genes inherited from one’s parents
and sometimes because of behaviours
like smoking a pack of cigarettes every
day. But in most cases, it comes down to
something else – stem cells.
This is the intriguing argument made
by a pair of researchers from Johns Hopkins University. In a study published in
the journal Science, they found a very
high correlation between the differences in risk for 31 kinds of cancer and
the frequency with which different types
of stem cells made copies of themselves.
Just how strong was this link? On a
scale that goes from 0 (absolutely no correlation) to 1 (exact correlation), biostatistician Cristian Tomasetti and cancer
geneticist Bert Vogelstein calculated that
it was at least a 0.8. When it comes to
cancer, that’s high.
“No other environmental or inherited
factors are known to be correlated in this
way across tumor types,” Tomasetti and
Vogelstein wrote.
Researchers have long recognized
that when cells copy themselves, they
sometimes make small errors in the billions of chemical letters that make up
their DNA. Many of these mistakes are
inconsequential, but others can cause
cells to grow out of control. That is the
beginning of cancer.
The odds of making a copying mistake
OVERALL, THE RESEARCHERS CALCULATED THAT
65 PER CENT OF THE VARIATION IN THE RISK OF
DIFFERENT TYPES OF CANCER CAN BE EXPLAINED
BY HOW OFTEN STEM CELLS COPY THEMSELVES
are believed to be the same for all cells.
But some kinds of cells copy themselves
much more often than others. Tomasetti and Vogelstein hypothesized that
the more frequently a type of cell made
copies of itself, the greater the odds that
it would develop cancer.
The pair focused on stem cells because of
their outsized influence in the body. Stem
cells can grow into many kinds of specialized cells, so if they contain damaged DNA,
those mistakes can spread quickly.
The researchers combed through the
scientific literature and found studies
that described the frequency of stem cell
division for 31 different tissue types. Then
they used data from the National Cancer
Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology
and End Results database to assess the
lifetime cancer risk for each of those tissue types. When they plotted the total
number of stem cell divisions against
the lifetime cancer risk for each tissue,
the result was 31 points clustered pretty
tightly along a line.
To put this notion in concrete terms,
consider the skin. The outermost layer of
the skin is the epidermis, and the innermost layer of the epidermis contains a few
types of cells. Basal epidermal cells are
the ones that copy themselves frequently,
with new cells pushing older ones to the
skin’s surface. Melanocytes are charged
with making melanin, the pigment that
protects the skin from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays.
When sunlight hits bare skin, both basal
epidermal cells and melanocytes get the
same exposure to UV. But basal cell carcinoma is far more common than melanoma – about 2.8 million Americans are
diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma each
year, compared with roughly 76,000 new
cases of melanoma, according to the US
Skin Cancer Foundation. A major reason
for this discrepancy, Tomasetti and Vogelstein wrote, is that epidermal stem cells
divide once every 48 days, while melanocytes divide only once every 147 days.
Overall, the researchers calculated that
65 per cent of the variation in the risk of
different types of cancer can be explained
by how often stem cells copy themselves.
The pair also determined that some
cancers – including lung cancer in smokers and hepatocellular carcinoma in
patients with hepatitis C – occur more
frequently than their stem cell replication
rate would suggest. In these cases, getting
people to change their behaviour can
prevent many cases of cancer, Tomasetti
and Vogelstein wrote.
But for most of the tumour types they
analysed, a cancer diagnosis comes down
to little more than “bad luck,” they wrote.
There’s not much that patients can do
to prevent these cancers, they added, so
doctors should focus on finding them
early when they are more susceptible to
treatment.
BOOKCASE
By Michael Morrissey
Off with their heads
FEARING THE KYNGE
By Bernard Brown
Foundation Press, $22.00
I have known nominally retired Professor Brown – professor of criminal law
at the University of
Auckland – for an
embarrassingly long
time. He hasn’t aged
greatly except poetically (and I mean
this kindly). He is now entering a fruitful maturity at the moderately ripe age
of 81. Nowadays, in the field of writing,
especially poetry, 80 seems to be the new
60. He still teaches, and his mind remains
honed as sharp as a brief by top criminal
lawyer Peter Williams.
Brown is well known to the lawyers
and judges of Auckland because he has
taught most of them. The list would
fill the remainder of this review, so I’ll
just mention a few: Winston Peters, Sir
Douglas Graham, Jim McLay, Barry Brill,
David Baragwanath, Sir Peter Blanchard,
Dame Sian Elias, and Dame Judith Potter.
Professor Brown also taught law to highly
distinguished Ex-Governor General Sir
Anand Sataynand. It is mentioned in
his memoir that he also taught Charlotte Grimshaw and the reviewer, but
we escaped the long arm of the law and
became writers, a somewhat less lucrative
profession than being a lawyer.
I have saved the finest barrel for last –
the redoubtable David Lange, our most
colourful and undoubtedly our largest
prime minister. There exists a book called
The Wit of David Lange and I defy anyone
not to read it without cracking a smile, if
not guffawing. Rumour, probably spread
by Kim Dotcom, asserts that there exists
a companion volume entitled The Wit of
John Key. It consists of 100 blank pages.
Along the course of his distinguished
teaching career, Brown has turned his
legally learned brain to several volumes
of light verse which provide the reader
with many a satiric throaty chuckle.
When Brown reads them in his resonant
baritone, they assume an aural gravitas
that is thrilling to hear. The current volume has a more serious motif than earlier
work – that of King Henry VIII’s penchant for not only bumping off several
of his six wives, but also their suggested
lovers, however unlikely it might be that
they were actually guilty. For instance,
one of the men alleged to be a lover of
Anne Boleyn was actually homosexual
(presumably not bi), another was her
brother. “Soothsayers, trimmers and
suspected traducers” also fell victim to
King Henry’s paranoias and the headsman’s axe. Politics was different in sixteenth century London to the so-called
dirty politics of today. Though blogs may
inflict a mortal wound on one’s reputation, they will not take off your head the
way a Tudor axe can and did.
Before I focus in on the poems, I must
praise the delightful complementary artistry of Brian Lovelock who won the New
Zealand Post picture book award in 2009
for Roadworks (together with Sally Sutton). On the cover, we see the broad-shouldered king in all his wrathful splendor – a
portrait image borrowed from the famous
original by Hans Holbein, the Younger.
Instead of looking regal, he is frowning,
clearly vexed, as he stares towards us, his
invisible subdued subjects, any of whom
might find their head had taken a different
trajectory from their body. Later, we see
him being whispered to by a conspirator;
being delighted by a portrait of Anne of
Cleaves, whom he later married. Marriage to Henry was generally – to quote
Thomas Hobbes – “nasty, brutish and
short”, though not poor and solitary (to
complete the famous quotation).
Sir Thomas Wyatt, himself a poet of
note, fell out of favour (extremely easy
to do in Tudor times) and got the chop
in 1536. Skillfully assuming his persona,
Brown has him wittily state:
Spoken poetry’s the safest
route to ply. You can deny it left your
tongue
that way. Any kind of writing leaves
its scraps:
the King’s Bench calls it evidence.
Never write all of
your words upon one sheet. You’ll self
destruct.
Print should be avoided like the
plague. It was invented
to incriminate – and send us poets to
the block.
This is Brown at his best – superb writing. Far better than many other poets
more in vogue, such as Michelle Leggot.
And aesthetically and philosophically
astute. Of course it is that obese ogre
Henry VIII who is to blame for Wyatt’s
death, not print per se. Yet he was sent to
the block. Some survived Henry’s capricious wrath. Will Sommers, the court
fool, who served two kings and a queen
with his wit, inspired the fool in King
Lear and missed out on the axe. Perhaps
his wit saved him. Among those who did
not escape Henry’s sporadic murderous
wrath were Thomas Cromwell, his chief
minister and Anne Boleyn, wife number two. Cromwell, a staunch supporter
of the king’s political machinations was
eventually found guilty of treason and
heresy. In other words, they rounded up
the usual suspects. When Cromwell was
executed, a thousand halberdiers stood
guard for he was very popular with the
common people. A halberd was a fearsome weapon – a pole several feet long
with a battle axe blade and hook attached
to its upper end.
Anne Boleyn, who managed to catch
the most flak of Henry’s numerous wives,
was accused of adultery, treason, incest
and witchcraft which adds up to a heftier
and more lethal package than a dirty
blog. Ms Boleyn had a wondrously wry
sense of gallows humour (though it was
the axe not the rope that ended her time
on earth) for on the eve of her execution,
she declared, “I will not keep you, I have
only a little neck”.
Brown’s poems show historic acuity,
political wit, the cadenced snap of an
Auden poem, as well as echoes of an earlier English poetic tradition going back
to the aforementioned Thomas Wyatt. By
not seeking to be aggressively up to date
in his poetic style, Brown’s work may outlast those who use more current modes.
The fashionable does not always equate
to a permanent space in that firmament
we call literary immortality.
BAREFOOT YEARS
By Martin Edmond
Bridget Williams Books Ltd, $15.00
Martin Edmond is
our finest writer of
non-fiction. His earlier works include
The Autobiography of My Father;
The Resurrection of
Philip Clairmont;
Dark Night: Walking with McCahon
and my personal
favourite (and I believe his masterpiece),
the immensely learned Zone of the Marvellous, which exhaustively though pleasurably explores the notion of the antipodes in the western imagination.
Barefoot Years is a more modest offering
in bulk and theme because it belongs to
the on-going series of small-sized BWB
texts published by Bridget Williams. The
three I have so far read are mini mem-
oirs that explore childhood while others
(unread but soon to be) often have a more
political or historical focus. These slim
elegant little books rarely top 100 pages
and cover a wide variety of topics including personal memoir, historical, political
and ideological subjects by notable authors
such as Professor Anne Salmond, Maurice
Gee, Kirsty Gunn and Geoff Chapple.
Edmond (son of poet Lauris Edmond),
kicks off his exquisitely written memoir by
asking “What’s the first thing you remember?” This question, often asked, cannot
always be answered for, as he explains,
though he seems to be able to recall his
first memory, buried within is the ghost of
another memory and within that a third
“more spectral image” ... and so on.
In other words, memory is a bit like a
Chinese puzzle box. Edmond writes of
an infinite regression of memory within
memory which “discloses not a cloudy
nothing but an everything, which we still
cannot name”. If you consider this quote
carefully, it is profound –it restates the
notion that the stuff of not only matter
but thought and memory are unknowable, rather than about to be clarified
beyond dispute by machines or sterile
academic discourse. He then quotes
from that fine poet, William Carlos Williams, who said “that memory is a kind of
accomplishment”. All of which adds up to
a kind of intelligence and acuity of language and perception that you would be
lucky to locate anywhere else – by which
I mean a text. It is the opposite of a modish academic writing style which tends
to dominate the analysis of anything
considered difficult. The problem with
academic writing is it quickly becomes
conservative, ponderous, and often does
what it aspires not to do – think inside
the box, rather than outside it. Edmond
is of course university-educated and is
familiar with the frequent poverty and
constriction of academic thought, but can
think laterally (thank you, Mr de Bono)
or outside the box. Edmond belongs to
the grand tradition of the essayist who
relies on originality – a carefully wrought
and intelligent style that doesn’t just imitate whatever is fashionable at universities and which will be out of date before
the next decade is up or when the next
slithery paradigm shift occurs.
After this brilliant start, Edmond reverts
to the relatively more straightforward task
of invoking his childhood on the Farm
House in Ohakune and other small towns
on the volcanic plateau of the North Island.
At the risk of appearing indulgent, I’d like
to quote one of his lengthy sentences which
shows off his prodigious talents – the talent
of a writer who has a beautiful style that
can reach out for the unusual metaphor
or phrase and play with time:
“Now – by which I mean then, in the
1950s – there is, on the left, the depot
for the market gardens owned and
operated by Chinese Maoris, specifically the Sue Joe family; their red
sheds, their blue tractors, their battered paintless Bedford truck; their
many fat and smiling children of different sizes and sexes, like babushka
dolls unfolded out of some obscure
collusion of genealogies.”
Breathtakingly brilliant prose, and
notice how closely objects and people
are observed and notice also the warm
tone of Edmond’s writing. As the story
unfolds in its confident, generous and
leisurely way, one is taken on a rich journey through the meticulously detailed
splendours of a childhood lived on the
volcanic plateau. The conclusion when
he leaves his home zone is not only nostalgic, but gut-wrenching, though in a
convivial way. And the author knows
that the nostalgia trip has concluded its
course – that he is leaving his childhood
for good (or at least the memory of it):
“’I’ll never be happy again’, I say melodramatically, almost luxuriously to
myself; while the car turns the corner into Clyde Street and begins to
labour up the hill that leads to the
town: and, beyond the town, the whole
wide world.”
Is there a dry eye in the house?
Having read a goodly amount of
Edmond’s work, it becomes all but obligatory to draw the conclusion that he doesn’t
have a bad word to say about anyone. This
generosity of outlook is the opposite of
what is so prevalent in New Zealand
writing – a self righteous aggressive tone
which aims to politicise what sometimes
is better humanised. Thank you Martin,
for all your intelligent, stimulating, fertile
books – and the works to come.
MOVIES
By Roger Moore & Colin Covert
Cut the sniping
A
s focused as the blurred, often
random moments of unsteady
steadicam shots and as coherent
as co-star Wei Tang’s indecipherable Chinese accent, Michael Mann’s Blackhat is
a classic January fire sale thriller.
Mann’s worst film since he transitioned
into the pantheon of “major directors,”
the best reason Universal had for rolling it
out at all must have been some misguided
attempt to pander its way into Chinese
favor. Is there a theme park deal we haven’t
heard about that was at stake here?
A hacking thriller starring Chris
“Thor” Hemsworth, it would seem a
can’t-miss, just from its timing. The villains might not be North Koreans, but
that’s not obvious as we see a Chinese
nuclear power plant cyber-hijacked into
a near meltdown, and the U.S. commodities market manipulated to a near crash.
Somebody’s behind both incidents.
The lone Chinese investigator, Capt.
Chen (Leehom Wang) insists that the
U.S. Justice Department get his former
M.I.T. roommate (Hemsworth) out of
prison to help crack the case. Hathaway
co-authored the RAT (remote access tool)
code that compromised the targets and
now threatens world stability.
Viola Davis, the movies’ Queen of NoNonsense, is the F.B.I. agent in charge of
the ankle-braceleted Hathaway, someone
trying to give the Chinese just enough
cooperation to crack the case. Anything
more, it is NOT said, would compromise
national security. Because the Chinese
have massive hacking efforts all their own.
Chen has a willowy, computer-savvy
sister (Wei Tang) and she falls hard
for the chiseled convict hacker with a
lock of hair always draped over one eye.
Even that fails to generate friction in
Mann’s movie, a film where the villains
are unseen for the first hour, and seem
designed by a political correctness committee when they do arrive.
The Chinese are all stoic cops or
intrepid investigators, with Hathaway
the lone American who has a clue about
what’s happening, and why. It’s not that
Blackhat is hard to follow. The extreme
close-ups of computer info traveling
down circuits, brooding shots of Hemsworth thinking, sometimes with his shirt
off, the shoot-outs where agents with pistols out-shoot bad guys with automatic
weapons, tell us enough. And if you’ve
ever wondered what a keyboard looks
like, inside, looking up at the keys as
they’re struck, this is the movie for you.
Davis has little to do, the Chinese players are set-dressing and Hemsworth isn’t
much without his hammer.
Maybe that theme park deal will materialize, and Mann taking one and making one for the team will pay off. Otherwise, Blackhat will serve no purpose
other than deflating the Heat director’s
reputation and the star’s chances of ever
starring in anything that doesn’t involve
a helmet with horns on it.
BLACKHAT
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Viola
Davis, Wei Tang, Leehom Wang
Directed by: Michael Mann
Running time: 133 mins
Rating: R for violence and
some language
GG
AMERICAN SNIPER
Cast: Bradley Cooper,
Kyle Gallner, Sienna Miller,
Keir O’Donnell
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Running time: 132 mins
Rating: R for war violence,
language, sexual references
GGGG
C
lint Eastwood carried guns for generations onscreen. As a filmmaker
he sees male heroism as a question, not an answer. Behind the camera
he makes stories that focus on painful,
alienated men. There were blue-collar
Bostonians scarred by an abusive past in
Mystic River, and views of war punishing
a nation’s own soldiers in his World War
II duo Flags of Our Fathers and Letters
From Iwo Jima.
American Sniper, Eastwood’s 37th film
as a director, is his darkest, tightest, most
morally ambiguous drama since he shot
the western dead with Unforgiven. It is a
rich study of combat violence without a
moment of jingoism or propaganda. Its
central focus is the psychological wounds
that haunt a top U.S. marksman from
the battlefields of Iraq to his Texas family home.
The film is equal parts biography and
war film, with its protagonist not a tightly
focused portrait but a metaphor about
what happens to countless veterans. It
dramatizes the life of the late Chris Kyle
(played by a bulked-up Bradley Cooper),
the deadliest sniper in American history.
Cooper, an actor known for emphatic
and memorable dialogue, delivers a
deeply felt and moving performance as
the strong, silent Kyle. We meet him at an
aimless period in his youth. Though he
was a good rifleman since childhood and
a strong rodeo rider, he was directionless
until two things happened. He married
Taya Renae Kyle (Sienna Miller). And on
Sept. 11, 2001, he decided to join the elite
Navy SEAL program to defend his country. (Kyle was actually a two-year Navy
enlistee by that point, but Eastwood’s
film compresses history into convenient
dramatic form.)
Exhausting training matures Kyle from
awkward, wandering galoot to one of
the nation’s finest fighters. In his thinking, there are three types of people in the
world. The sheep are blind to the true
nature of the world. They are endangered
by the wolves, and need protection from
sheepdogs – the U.S. military’s warriors.
But when his first armed tour begins
just weeks into the second American
invasion of Iraq, Kyle faces a life-anddeath crisis. On a rooftop in Nasiriya, he
holds a woman and little boy on the battered town’s sidewalk in his rifle scope.
If they are hostiles hiding explosives
beneath their clothing they could kill
patrolling SEALs. If he shoots and he’s
wrong, the fatal mistake could end his
career. His decision led him to four tours
in Iraq and 166 confirmed kills.
Eastwood is sympathetic toward veterans, critical of what combat does to
them. He powerfully stages the war’s
shootouts, standoffs, the crackle of gunfire and struggles against a rival Syrianborn shooter as lethal as Kyle. The film
is stunningly shot by cinematographer
Tom Stern, a regular with Eastwood for
a decade. The grand plan of the combat
is never quite in focus, but emotional
wounds are the story’s linchpin.
Kyle is proud to defend his nation but
never exultant. What he does touches
him like a waking nightmare. When he
has his first young targets in his sights,
the film cuts back to his own childhood,
hunting with his father. In Iraq, Kyle can’t
keep his thoughts from returning home.
Back in Texas he’s pulled again and again
to Middle East battles. Even a testy argument with his wife during a routine drive
stirs up Kyle’s anxiety about a hostile
car chase. This is the face of collateral
damage.
CONSIDER THIS
By Amy Brooke
The education bureaucracy
has failed New Zealanders
S
omething has gone very wrong
with the mass education of
children in our state schools.
Parents sending their children to private, including
Catholic, schools, are also among those
disappointed at an over-eager compliance
with the destructive zeitgeist of the age.
Offering children standards of excellence,
learning of real value, is now sidelined in
favour of simplistic theories substituting
the teaching of content with mere skills,
so children can access the internet (problematic enough) – rather than be taught
well by enthusiastic, knowledgeable teachers. And we have another problem here,
with many teachers themselves incompetent. See Justine Ferrari, The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/
national-affairs/education).
Moreover, the sheer waste of children’s
precious time by prioritising infotainment,
(including the trivialized, even ultimately
destructive pop/rock subculture), rather
than in-depth teaching, is saddening.
A focus on the superficial, ultimately
intellectually boring, linked to constant
media emphasis on “celebrity” status, ties
in with the highly damaging sexualising of children – one of the most pernicious results of the forelock-tugging in
response to never-ending compliance
edicts from the education bureaucracy .
Parents at their wits’ end about which
way to turn make considerable financial
sacrifices to afford schools they presume
will help to steer their children away
from government educationists’ politicised priorities. In many instances it’s a
pretty vain hope. By far the majority of
today’s teachers and principals are obviously ignorant of the real agenda long
underpinning a fight for the control of
our children.
They’re not alone. Far removed geographically from the pressures of millennia of threatened invasion and the
constant threat of war; never exposed to
an aggressive history beating against and
invading our borders; long unexposed
to extreme racial and religious conflict:
most New Zealanders are far less intellectually alert than Europeans can afford to
be. They have had nothing like a genuine
education in the history of the world; the
significance of battles fought and lost;
the extraordinary bravery of individuals
opposing perceived evils of their times.
Most will not have been made aware
of the importance, even – let alone the
actual date – of the signing of the Magna
Carta, (June 15, 1215) which changed the
face of English history, ultimately resonating across the world.
In essence, New Zealanders are unaware
that the battle to control a country never
stops, and the most promising area for it
to be fought is in our schools. Moreover,
underpinning everything happening here
for more than half a century has been neoMarxism. How many are aware that in the
1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx and
Engels railed against “bourgeois claptrap
about the family and education” demanding that “we replace home education by
social”. They demanded free public education so that the State, not parents, could
control children.
The spreading of the home schooling
movement throughout this country is
heartening. New Zealanders choosing
this are not only achieving extraordinary
success, but at the same time protecting their own children from some of the
downright pernicious influences we are
seeing more and more evident throughout our schools, including the growth
in bullying. I’ve now learned of a former
ERO offical who is encouraging his son
to home-school his own children.
The utterly inappropriate forcing of sex
education – even throughout primary
schools onto new entrants – has had its
inevitable consequences. Children can
now be at the mercy of agenda-driven
teachers – some of whom themselves
have behaved sexually inappropriately
towards children. Others advocate killing
a child in the womb as a legitimate way of
coping with the consequences of sexual
experimentation. Promoting homosexual
propaganda and practices is encouraged.
Not only parents and children, but concerned principals and teachers are also at
the mercy of government-employed theorists who have apparently learned absolutely nothing from the consequences of
the politicisation of education this last
half-century.
It is no surprise that the constantly
interviewed, no doubt well-meaning former Secondary Principals Association
President Patrick Walsh appears taken
aback at the way young boys today treat
girls, objectifying and sexualising them.
“It’s a disturbing trend and it’s starting
in primary schools.” Some parents, to
his consternation, regard this as normal
behaviour for teenagers.
Why shouldn’t they? It’s exactly what
they have been taught these recent decades
– that casual sexual encounters count for
little, with parental values sidelined and
moral values derided. Unfortunately the
useless suggestion Walsh offers is for the
ministry “to consult with schools and
resource these”. It plays into the hands
of the feel-good, think-bad educationists
who conclude the schools should offer
even more sex education, ignoring the
role this whole damaging attack mounted
against children has played in teenagers’
lives. They seem oblivious to the fact that
decades now of heavily promoting sex
education right throughout schools has
done more to help sexualise the culture,
and to destabilise our young, than even
our utterly irresponsible media, long
influenced by Hollywood’s attack on the
conservative values of the West.
As the astute Australian commentator Bill Muehlenberg points out, children
are our future, and the way our children
develop determines how society develops.
When ideological battles are fought…
”those who can control the children will
be able to determine the outcome, which
is why totalitarian states always seek to
get control. Some ‘free’ democratic states
today seem to fare little better. Children are
still being fought over with states and parents contesting who gets to educate them.”
Germany is a modern Western democracy. Yet incredibly, or deliberately, the
Nazi Jugendamt has never been disbanded, and the law against homeschooling still stands. The Jugendamt still
has the power to snatch children away
from their parents when they are considered to be “endangered”. And homeschooling families in Germany today are
very much under attack.
“While there may be only 300 to 500
such families in Germany today, many
are considering leaving the country, since
government persecution is still taking
place. “A number of such cases range
from Hans and Petra Schmidt, of southern Bavaria, as described by LifeSiteNews.
com (July 10, 2009): www.lifesitenews.
com/ldn/2009/jul/09071009.html – to the
scandalous: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-2300568/Obama-administration-wants-DEPORT-home-schooling-family-Germany-fined-threatened-
A sense of moral purpose
and respect for Christian
values is often a motivating
factor for home-schooling
prosecution-teaching-children.html
A sense of moral purpose and respect
for Christian values is often a motivating
factor for home-schooling. Yet the EU
has already sided with German authorities against successful home-schooling
families. And throughout the Western
world, some governments are taking an
adversarial role against parents, seeking to influence, or coerce children into
politicised thinking, instead of that of
their parents.
As elsewhere, New Zealand homeschooled children are now on the whole
apparently achieving extraordinarily
well academically, and I was very much
interested in talking with the dedicated,
highly-trained Karen Dawson, with three
of her charming, talented and achieving
children, who oversees one of the homeschooling groups in the Nelson area. Fifty
families comprise this particular group
alone. The brilliant resources and help
available for parents, and the excellent
possibilities for the beneficial socialising
of children – and for parents meeting
regularly – puts paid to any of the usual
charges of the children being deprived of
socialisation. A wealth of useful information is also available on excellent, informative sites, such as the Home Education
Foundation – http://hef.org.nz
That more parents are rejecting the ongoing politicisation and dumbing down of
education is the most encouraging challenge now offered to a deterioration in quality teaching and learning which should
never have occurred in this country.
© Amy Brooke
You can help by sharing us on
Facebook: www.facebook.com
/100daystodemocracy
www.amybrooke.co.nz
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