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Just a heads-up

Investigate magazine is trialling a new digital format for "The Briefing" - an interactive PDF. If you are interested in taking a squizz you can download it here.

To get on the list for future issues, however, you need to email us...details are on the masthead.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 21 August 2007

Is Labour planning to call a snap election as soon as their poll ratings improve and NZ wins the Rugby World Cup? Is THAT the real reason Goff and co went caustic last week over Investigate's Air New Zealand story - because it interfered with a carefully planned demolition of John Key. While it is significant that poll trends had just started to favour Labour again, the idea of an early election could normally be brushed off as idle speculation but for Adolf Fiinkensein picking up on a slip of the tongue by Clark in her interview yesterday with Newstalk ZB's Paul Holmes, where she talked about Australia interfering 'in the run up to an election' in New Zealand.

Clark should be grateful her Labor counterpart across the ditch, Kevin Rudd, chose to get naughty in a New York strip club four years ago. While the Aussie media and political rivals dish up more info on events at the club - now reported to actually be a brothel rather than a 'club - they're not paying as much attention to Clark's outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease over the Air New Zealand troop flights.

The Guardian and other Brit media are reporting a possible "imminent" arrest in the disappearance of three year old Madeleine McCann. "The hunt for missing Madeleine McCann has entered a "decisive phase", with an arrest in Britain possible in the coming days, it has been reported," says the newspaper.

Speaking of newspapers, as Farrar over at Kiwiblog has pointed out it's been a grim year for tree-based media, with a race in some cases between readers and editors to see who'll quit first. While I think there will always be a market for printed magazines and books (for the sheer tactile pleasure and convenience as much as anything else) I'm not convinced that printed newspapers can survive, especially if they fail to offer unique perspectives. A major international study has confirmed similar plummeting readership overseas, accompanied by sliding broadcast news ratings. With the internet offering a smorgasbord of news services, filtered by on-the-ball bloggers, news consumption is moving in fresh directions. As I said, if the printed media cannot offer more than just a stale mainstream perspective, they will fade to grey.

"Online hooligans" - in the form of anonymous bloggers, are meanwhile being blamed for suicides and other nasty side effects as authorities contemplate whether blogs need greater codes of responsibility.

Scientists are predicting they'll create artificial life within a few years, and that it will be a big deal. Reading the story, however, I was struck that they are not so much "creating" life as copying the format of existing life. It'll be a cell (done already) built from DNA (done already). I'd be far more impressed if they created new biological life from an entirely novel template. But THAT won't happen.

The BBC has decreed that art is not allowed to imitate life, by backing away from running a plot-line in the TV series "Casualty" where staff had to deal with the aftermath of an Islamic terror attack. The Beeb decided it would be offensive to Muslims. But never fear, apparently it is OK to be offensive to Vegans in Britain, so the Beeb will run the plotline with carnage caused by animal rights extremists. It should be mentioned for the record that PETA has not carried out any tube bombings or suicide attacks on airports and nightclubs in Britain.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 16 August 2007

PLAGIARISM BY TVNZ
Always amusing to watch the mainstream media duck, weave and obfuscate when it comes to stories broken by Investigate. If there's any chance of giving the magazine a good kicking, they're all over us like a rash. Otherwise, they simply plagiarise and steal our stories. Take TVNZ's One News - watching their bulletins last night you'd think the Air New Zealand story had mysteriously dropped from the sky into their laps - a gift from the fairies perhaps. No mention at all that it was an Investigate story, which is standard journalistic practice. Then there's Newstalk ZB. You'll remember this was the station that tried to ridicule Investigate's police corruption coverage, and then refused to run any story at all when we tabled hard documentary evidence of corruption. Despite running a whingeing press release from Air New Zealand trying to bag Investigate, ZB failed to run Investigate's response at all. UPDATE: Newstalk ZB's Richard Sutherland is onto this now, and trying to find out why their email systems lost our news release...Main point is they're giving us right of reply, so honour is restored on all sides, hatchet buried. What about TV3's Nightline? It picked up on the outraged squawks of aviation writer Peter Clark, including his allegation that our entire story must be rubbish because the cover was Photoshopped. Did Nightline contact Investigate to clarify? No. Did Nightline bother to check whether TV3 already had the facts in house? No. The record will disclose that 3News Wellington chief Gordon McBride was told by us at 2pm that the cover was a photoshopped montage. Nightline went to air 8.5 hours later with its facts wrong. The irony of a TV channel doing a news story critical of Investigate fact-checking, whilst itself falling flat, was not lost on me. Earlier in the night, of course, Campbell Live led off with reportage of its own claiming that one of the Air New Zealand flights had strayed into a no-fly zone (hence the fighter escort that Air New Zealand denies).

MORE ON AIR NEW ZEALAND IN LATEST INVESTIGATE
You didn't think our story was confined merely to some military charter flights, did you? Heck no. Here's just a snippet of some of the things Air New Zealand staff have told us:

(ON AVIATION SECURITY SERVICE:) "The hand-held metal detectors they use do not work near the floor as there are metal rods in the concrete. Anyone can take whatever they like onto an aircraft by simply placing an item in their shoes.

"A senior officer grabbed the ears of an officer and banged his head against the car door for not knowing where the spare wheel was kept in one of their cars. There are apparently many breaches of human rights in this organization, staff I spoke to were baffled as to how they get away with it.

"IDs are never checked. Recently at the Air NZ gate, an Air NZ staff member tested Aviation Security by going through the checkpoint with a photograph of a monkey on the ID. It was not picked up."

(OR ON ALLEGED TAX EVASION BY AIR NZ:)
"...The final crunch, in this long series of leaks, however, comes from a former staff member who alleges the airline evaded Fringe Benefit Tax on staff travel.

"John Armstrong is a former Air New Zealand travelcentre manager, whose biggest claim to fame perhaps was creating the so-called "Pink Flights" to cater for the gay and lesbian market back in 1998. Although he left the airline in 2001, Armstrong, himself gay, watched from the sidelines when this year’s Pink Flight hit the news headlines as gay travelers and politicians joined the flight for a weekend trip to the Gay Mardi Gras in Sydney.

"So far, no big deal, you might say. Except for this. Armstrong alleges he didn’t jump, he was pushed, and in the course of trying to remedy his situation he has passed a lot of information to his local MP, Prime Minister Helen Clark. Information that includes extremely serious allegations of tax evasion by the government-owned airline.

"Armstrong claims his information has never been followed up, as no-one from the IRD has interviewed him or asked for the evidence he holds..."

All of this and more in the print edition article on Air New Zealand, out today.

CHOCOLATE CURE FOR PMS?
Is it the real thing or just another stunt to suck dollars from the purses of women worldwide? A Canadian company claims to have developed a chocolate bar that alleviates the symptoms of PMS.

MADE IN CHINA:
Hot on the heels of the Mattel toy recall, news this morning that cheap babies bibs manufactured in China have been found to contain dangerous levels of lead...news that Mums and Dads will undoubtedly be delighted to hear over breakfast. Is there anything made in China that is actually safe for human use?

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 15 August 2007

EMBARASSING QUESTIONS LOOM FOR HELEN CLARK ON IRAQ:
Investigate magazine will be releasing a major story in its latest issue, officially instore tomorrow although in the hands of many subscribers today. We will be posting a news release on this here later today, along with a statement from the state-owned enterprise concerned confirming the veracity of our story and that the Government was formally advised in advance of the enterprise entering into the contracts described in the magazine. That should leave Prime Minister Helen Clark facing some interesting questions in the next 48 hours, especially given last week's attack on National leader John Key for his stand on the Iraq war.

US WARNED BY TOP OFFICIAL: 'REMEMBER THE FALL OF ROME"
The US federal Comptroller-General has issued a bleak warning to the world, saying problems internationally and domestically bear a "striking" resemblance to the cocktail that led to the fall of Rome. It's a message that I of course am already articulating in Eve's Bite, but the US Comptroller General puts it pretty succinctly himself: "Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

STATISTICALLY IMPROBABLE:
Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen has appointed a former Labour Party apparatchik to head the Tertiary Education Commission. David Shand was a Labour city councillor in Wellington who stood for Wellington Central in the 1975 General Election under the Rowling banner, but lost. His Labour background is mysteriously absent from the Cullen news release announcing the appointment last night. Shand takes over from a social liberal change agent, former Labour Education Minister Russell Marshall (in the Lange administration). Isn't it odd (some might say statistically improbable) how many senior state positions end up going to party people instead of Joe or Josephine Bloggs who may have better credentials?

RATE MY UNIVERSITY COURSE:
Meanwhile, Shand could end up having his tertiary courses peer-reviewed and graded by a new website. Auckland University engineering major Bowen Pan has set up  www.ratemycourses.co.nz , where students nationwide can praise or diss the courses they're taking, thus allowing other prospective students to get more informed feedback.

ISLAM AWARENESS WEEK:
The Labour Government is once again pushing its Alliance of Civilisations agenda, and seeing as we are now halfway through Islam Awareness Week what better way to celebrate than catch up with the activities of the Religion of Peace in America. Frontpage magazine documents a new form of jihad in the West, using lawyers to intimidate critics of radical Islam into silence, and it also carries the story of just such a case, where an alleged 'civil liberties' group is trying to sue a whistleblowing academic, Robert Spencer, to prevent him highlighting the excesses of radicals.

THE SECRET POLICEMEN'S OTHER BALLS-UPS:
For those who missed them the first time around, our June lead story about Dunedin police corruption has just been uploaded in full to InvestigateMagazine.TV. And if you remember the controversy, where Police Minister Annette King used National Radio and TV3 to attack the credibility of one of our sources, you'll also appreciate our July lead story, which skewered King, Broad and a bunch of others dead to rights and has now resulted in a Police Complaints Authority investigation. The second story is a humdinger, because all the evidence was carefully documented and not one mainstream media outlet (save the SST) picked it up. This, after they had all been baying for "more evidence" from Investigate.

DVD GIVEAWAY COMPETITION:

TBR.cc has a copy of Paul Henry's new DVD of his documentary series, "Ends Of The Earth", to give away courtesy of Roadshow New Zealand. To enter for the prize draw this week, simply visit the Roadshow website and then email us here with the name of one other DVD on that site that you'd also like to see. The team at Roadshow are waiting with interest to see what kind of obscure interests TBR readers have. All correct entries will go in the draw to win this free copy of Paul Henry's highly entertaining DVD, and we'll make the draw after 7pm on Sunday with the winner announced Monday. You can also read our very politically incorrect interview with Henry in the latest Investigate, out tomorrow.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 14 August 2007

Prime Minister Helen Clark appears to be taking a political pounding over the Electoral Finance Bill currently before Parliament. With the weekend's political poll showing National still holding a commanding lead, the party's Deputy Leader Bill English has been landing more punches, telling Clark she has only herself to blame for the mess as a growing community voice starts to rise against the Bill. The draconian legislation would give the State the right to silence ordinary free speech and political discussion and lobbying in election year.

New figures show little improvement at the child welfare coalface. A six year old Taranaki girl in CYF care has been moved to nine different homes in the past year, whilst an 11 year old boy from Christchurch has moved 11 times. As National's associate welfare spokeswoman Anne Tolley points out, kids need routine.

What is it that young testosterone-fuelled males need? As the country debates yet another boy racer death over the weekend, I was reminded of an article Investigate ran two years ago where the blame is actually laid on the feminisation of society. How, you may ask? Well, as Paul Ham wrote, it has a lot to do with the female urge to nurture and protect, manifesting itself in society now there is much greater female political influence, versus the need of young bucks to prove themselves, to themselves.

It is Islam Awareness Week in New Zealand, a chance for all of us to have the warm fuzzies about the Religion of Peace. Or is it? Debate has broken out about Islamic intentions on a number of blogsites, while in the US and in Australia there is growing controversy about the spread of Islamic schools and the fundamentalism associated with them. This is the key question. How far should Western tolerance extend towards an intolerant religion?

Meanwhile the Global Warming debate is about to embarrass Newsweek magazine. After a huge cover scare story this week aimed at ridiculing "climate change deniers" (as if they can somehow be equated with the Flat Earth Society), the magazine is about to publish a scathing critique of its own coverage in next week's issue. Does liberal hand-wringing and self-flagellation truly know no bounds?

Apologies for the infrequent posting - print deadline called me away.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 7 August 2007

Cruel coincidence on different sides of the globe this morning, as children in England and New Zealand nurse horrific facial injuries caused by staffordshire bull terrier-cross attacks. In Christchurch, NZ, a two year old girl is expected to undergo months of surgery to repair her face after a dog escaped from its owners' property into a public park, launching itself at the little girl as she played. A passer-by, alerted by the screams of his own 14 year old daughter who was witnessing the mauling, rushed to the toddler's aid and eventually pulled the dog off by half-strangling it. Meanwhile in Britain, only hours earlier, another little girl, the same age, is recovering after being attacked in the garden of an English pub by the same kind of dog. Meanwhile, a rampaging Panda makes it three maulings in a row for the 48 hour period.

Not a good day for law enforcement, either. In Oklahoma a policer officer has been stood down after accidentally shooting a five year old boy to death with a ricochet while taking potshots at a poisonous snake. And in Florida a 30 year old woman showed up for her driving test drunk, and managed to run over her driving instructor.

A better day however for an American 17 year old, although it didn't start out that way. Leaning over the balcony of his sixth storey hotel room to grab a bathing suit fluttering down from the 11th floor, Matthew Savage tumbled over the edge and plummeted to the ground. Ordinarily such a story would end on a tragic note, but Savage bounced off other balconies and onto a slanting roof before landing in bushes. Amazed at the miracle of opening his eyes and failing to see angels, Savage picked himself up to begin dusting the leaves off and check for damage, but was promptly pounced on by paramedics, strapped to a board and flown to hospital. He was, however, fine and reportedly is auditioning for a role in the next Roadrunner cartoon.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 3 August 2007

ALLIANCE OF CIVILISATIONS, OR DEATH OF THE WEST?

Anyone wanting clues to one of the next big social engineering battlegrounds in New Zealand need look no further than this news from Britain. Echoing developments alluded to in Eve's Bite and in the June issue of Investigate, Britain's Labour Government is reportedly considering compulsory Islamic studies for all students, as part of enforcing "tolerance". Perhaps sensitive to the "outing" of the UN's Alliance of Civilisations agenda, politicians are being careful not to evoke the name, whilst still outworking its recommendations. New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark seems to have taken on a messianic mantle on behalf of the United Nations' Alliance of Civilisations project. She raises its themes repeatedly, including in last week's Herald interview where she said:

"Both [former PM] Tony Blair and [PM] Gordon Brown, [are] very interested in the role I have played on the national identity issues because this is quite a critical issue for Britain now - what it is to be British, what defines national identity. They are also interested in the high level of social cohesion we get in New Zealand across a very multicultural, multifaith society."

In other words, if you believe Clark, she's to blame for the mad mullah-appeasing policies being unleashed in Old Blighty this month.

One wonders whether Clark will follow the British lead on DNA profiling, however. The Times is reporting Brit Police want power to take DNA samples from motorists pulled over in traffic stops, and from petty offenders like litterbugs. Will there be anyone left in Britain that Nanny State is not already filming from hundreds of covert cameras, trawling through their emails and phone conversations and scouring through their DNA? And you wonder why I referred in an earlier post to the West's growing slide into totalitarianism?

Speaking of daft socialists with agendas, Graeme Hunt is pulling no punches in his new book out this week, Spies and Revolutionaries. In it, Hunt finally confirms that Wellington civil servant Dr Bill Sutch, along with Paddy Costello and Ian Milner, was spying for the Soviet KGB. The Sutch affair hit the headlines in the mid 70s when he was arrrested and tried for espionage, although as Hunt notes he walked free largely because the jury was not allowed to hear the detail of the "secrets" Sutch had been passing to the Russians. Not that the SIS were fantastically good at counter-surveillance at the time - my own mother was a witness to one of the more surreal moments whilst grocery shopping at Karori Mall in the early 70s, where she saw and recognised Bill Sutch - looking out of place because he was striding through a supermarket in a suit and coat - whilst 20 metres behind him tailed two more men in suits and coats. All very Clouseauesque. Of course, old communists never die, they just morph into the political movement RAM.

Meanwhile, from our "Bad Omens" department, the revelation that a seven-legged lamb was born in the South Island this week has made world headlines. Publicity the Beef and Lamb people couldn't possibly buy, and I strongly suspect wouldn't want to. Clean green NZ turning out mutant restaurant fodder, not a good look. More pesticides anyone? Maybe the Vegans have a point after all.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 2 August 2007

US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is turning up the global heat with a warning that he would be prepared to send US troops into Pakistan to hunt terrorists if push comes to shove. The story, which broke overnight in the US media, seems to be part of a chest-beating competition Obama is having with rival Hilary Clinton after she called him naive last week, but nonetheless the peaceniks won't necessarily have anything to cheer about if Obama or Clinton win. "The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid," the Associated Press reports. On the other hand, ironically, al Qa'ida also wants a military assault on Pakistan. Strangebedfellows doth politics make, and Pakistan must be wondering what it did to deserve all this.

Students of history will remember that major wars often erupt from the ashes of financial collapse - partly because major wars re-stimulate the world economy by creating manufacturing booms. Students of history will also be aware that the US economy is living on borrowed time and starting to go into meltdown, which in turn is panicking the rest of the world's financial markets. When trading re-opens for the day, expect further investment flight and a rise in the price of gold.

You may think the publicity surrounding tortured Rotorua 3 year old, Nia, is a one-off of sorts. Unfortunately not. In one American city two teenage girls have been arrested for abducting a pregnant woman and trying to steal her unborn baby. In another city the bodies of two babies have been found in rubbish bags, while in another a woman has been arrested for this.

As you chomp through your cornflakes in prep for another day at the office, ponder yet another health hazard story to add to cellphones, aspartame and bacon: computer printers. Yes, apparently the humble laser printer has just been found to exude minute toxic particles that all of us are inhaling deeply into our lungs.

The Briefing Room: AM Edition, 1 August 07

Welcome to a new feature on this blog, which we'll try and make daily (print deadlines permitting), a wrap of significant news and blog stories for the day.

Coverage begins with the latest NZ study on marijuana use, suggesting cannabis could be five times more harmful than tobacco in terms of lung damage. Coming hard on the heels of last week's continued revelations about an increased likelihood of mental illness, it's been a bad week for the stoners down at bong central.

Radical Islamic issues continue to dominate headlines. Here in New Zealand TV One's Close Up is under fire for failing to ask any hard questions at all of disgraced British MP George Galloway last night, despite full coverage of the Galloway controversy in the latest Investigate magazine. Across the ditch, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews claims deported terror suspect Mohammed Haneef was involved in "suspicious" chat room conversations, releasing a transcript where Haneef's brother says "Nothing has been found out about you", while in Washington visting British PM Gordon Brown has pledged to keep fighting the war on terror right around the globe, but also to push for increasing globalisation under the aegis of the UN.

Domestically, the proposal to interrogate every female who enters a New Zealand hospital about sexual, physical and psychological abuse looks set to be another litmus test on the social engineering front, especially with plans to roll the scheme out further. Could this be a cover for teachers soon being required by law to ask children whether their parents still smack them? Watch this space. Meanwhile, National's Jackie Blue is giving only qualified support to the scheme: "It’s great for women to have a safe environment in which they feel supported in talking about their experiences with violence, but it must not lead to an anti-male witch-hunt. It would be terribly wrong for all men to be labelled potential wife-bashers and child abusers.”

National meanwhile has pulled out of a planned junket to Australia by a parliamentary committee, one of the highlights of which is Labour's Charles Chauvel taking the MPs to meet his former employer for nibbles. National describes the trip as a waste of time and taxpayer funding.

From the oddities file this morning - a story first broken by Investigate magazine two years ago, the prospect of face transplants is coming a lot closer with a Boston hospital now offering the operation. Would you want someone else's face?

And still on the bizarre, Russia is trying to combat its birth-rate death spiral by encouraging lovefests: "Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia". Regardless of the entertainment value, the issue is serious right across the West. On current demographic trends, many countries are halving their populations every generation, creating an increasingly geriatric population mix with little ability to defend themselves or resist a massive political power shift at the hands of immigrant communities. Disturbingly, the linked story suggests Russia's answer maybe a return to totalitarianism - these sexfests take place at the equivalent of Hitler Youth camps.

Finally a reminder - we're significantly increasing the back-catalogue of Investigate content online as part of the upgrade of our main website. Because it relies on dynamic RSS content it will be slightly slower to load as it seeks and updates for the latest material. Feel free to browse and familiarise yourself with what is available. One of the things I recommend is our Multimedia page where you can access streaming radio from NZ, Australia and the US, including talk hosts like Limbaugh and Savage.