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Investigate response to Press Council ruling

A Press Council ruling partially upholding a complaint by Air New Zealand against Investigate has been released today, which is somewhat surprising given that Investigate had been invited to place further evidence in front of the Press Council for a review next Monday.

The council ruled that Investigate had erred by calling the flights "secret", and that our cover montage of an Air New Zealand jet beside a military plane with a soldier nearby was also misleading.

Given that the issue has gone public prior to the review, Investigate has no choice but to release its submission to the Press Council below:

Dear Mary

Further to our last correspondence, please find attached a copy of an email from Air New Zealand head office, specifically the then Manager of Government Relations Rick Osborne, to senior officials inside MFAT.

The email is a further advisory to MFAT about some of the Australian troop flights.

Significantly, the email, at Air New Zealand's initiative, is classified "CONFIDENTIAL". Download file

Also significantly, the email is loosely contemporaneous (just a few weeks prior) with when Investigate was first alerted by Air New Zealand staff about the first flight. Those staff, I repeat, told the magazine the flights were confidential.

In Parliament, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters also conceded the confidential nature of the flights:

Answer: That last phrase is the most apposite part of the question. What they comprised was never advised to Foreign Affairs—that is, who was on the plane, their designation and description, and where they were going to go when they arrived in Kuwait never described to Foreign Affairs. It happens to be a fact that had Foreign Affairs known that, I think its reaction would have been different. However, because of circumstances, that was a matter of confidentiality in respect of the contract itself, and I can see how these circumstances have arisen. The point is that a mistake was made. A lesson has been learnt. We will not repeat that mistake in the future. – Hansard, 16 August 2007

The Press Council made an adverse ruling against Investigate magazine on the secrecy issue, preferring to take Air New Zealand's unsubstantiated complaint at face value, despite our warnings that the airline habitually lies, and our insistence that staff had given us this information.

What evidence does the Press Council have, apart from the rhetorical assertions of Air New Zealand's legal counsel, that staff were NOT told the flights were secret?

Investigate has sources who expressly claim the contrary, and now we have an Air New Zealand email to that effect.

The Council misdirected itself, I also respectfully suggest, as to the significance of the concessions the magazine made initially, both in regard to the appearance of fighter jets leading into Kuwait and to the secrecy issue. I conceded, purely as a conciliatory gesture, that the issue of secrecy may not have been an edict from Head Office, but could have been a localized flight briefing issue. That is not a repudiation of our claim that the flights were secret, and indeed the emails now indicate there was indeed a Head Office secrecy blanket in place – in sharp contrast to the substance of the airline's complaint to you.

As to the cover montage, if the Council were to require the airline to obtain testimony from Air New Zealand flight crew you would find that at least one of the flights was parked at Kuwait between massive US military aircraft that "dwarfed" the New Zealand airliner. Had Investigate managed to have a photographer in place, the substance of the montage would not have been wildly different.

The Kuwait Airport doubles as Al Mubarak Air Base which, in case the Council is unaware, is an international gateway for US troops. Whilst the Air New Zealand plane was not flying US troops to the warzone, which we have acknowledged, they were flying allied combat troops to an airport used by the US military as a staging post for its Iraq operations. Again, our cover montage is not wildly inaccurate at all, and the Press Council have placed too much weight on the US troops angle, whilst overlooking the obvious US military connection at the destination airport. I should add the airline was flying US marines to join their base at Iwakuni.

The cover, in this sense, was representative of a range of possibilities. Did the airline carry US troops? Yes. Did it carry them to Kuwait? No. Did it carry combat troops destined for the US coalition in Iraq? Yes. Do civilian carriers landing at Kuwait always have air bridges? No.

During our hunt for possible photos of Kuwait and Darwin airports and troop flights, we did locate images from Getty where troop flights on civilian carriers were disembarking at Kuwait Airport on the tarmac, as below:

These photos gave the magazine comfort that its montage was not an unrealistic portrayal of the situation. This photo below is from Kuwait Airport, on a chartered troop flight.

The above was also taken at Kuwait Airport, as was this one:

And this flight originated from Kuwait International Airport:

Because of its admitted designation as a "highly sensitive" installation, Kuwait airport is subject to security scares much more regularly than other airports Air New Zealand travels to:

KUWAIT CITY, March 8, 2008 (AFP) - A hoax telephone call warning of a bomb in a suitcase forced the evacuation of two airplanes after they landed at Kuwait's international airport on Saturday, an airport official said.

The first was a Saudia airline flight coming from Jeddah, and the second was a Kuwait Airways flight coming from Damascus, Issam al-Zamel, airport operations manager, told KUNA state news agency.

The planes were evacuated and searched as soon as they landed, as well as the luggage carried on both airliners, he said, but nothing was found.

Unless I am seriously mistaken, there is no actual "evidence" in front of the Press Council that disproves Investigate's initial claim about fighter jets (or the corroborative statements made by TV3's Campbell Live after making its own inquiries), so given the Council's own advice to the magazine to verify claims, it would be helpful if the Council could indicate on what principled basis it ruled our story was inaccurate on this point?

Additionally, apart from Air New Zealand's stated position, is there any independent evidence in front of the Press Council that proves Investigate's montage is substantially wrong?

Air New Zealand is not entitled to a presumption of accuracy or the moral high ground merely because it is Air New Zealand.

I would ask the Press Council to revisit its earlier assessment of the magazine's coverage.

We agreed we were wrong to say flying US troops into war. We have already resiled from that. But by implication and indeed open statement the story was about flying troops up to support the US war effort in Iraq, via Kuwait which is a US base. Had I realized the Council's line of reasoning on the cover montage I would have explained it in more detail and included the photos above earlier.

If the cover line had stated, "flying troops up to a US war" it would have been factually unassailable. Air New Zealand makes too much of a largely semantic error, which I have pointed out previously.

We politely had agreed to differ with Air NZ on the secrecy and fighter jet issue. Given the existence of the Air New Zealand briefing emails slugged "CONFIDENTIAL" I hardly think the airline has a leg to stand on there, and unless the Council has proof that there were no fighter jets in the vicinity I'm uncertain as to how you can make a finding of factual inaccuracy in that regard either.

We are left with the issue of "fairness", (which we accept is within the Council's ambit but where we continue to believe that utilizing our news website is an appropriate fallback position in such rare cases as this), which should also be considered in the context of Air New Zealand misleading the Press Council over the secrecy issue.

Yours sincerely

Ian Wishart

PS: Incidentally, something I overlooked before…portions of the documentation relating to the flights were withheld under the provisions 6(a) and 6(b) of the Official Information Act.

Those provisions state:

6. Conclusive reasons for withholding official information

Good reason for withholding official information exists, for the purpose of section 5 of this Act, if the making available of that information would be likely—
- (a) To prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or the international relations of the Government of New Zealand; or
- (b) To prejudice the entrusting of information to the Government of New Zealand on a basis of confidence by—
  - (i) The government of any other country or any agency of such a government; or
  - (ii) Any international organisation; or

The cheek of Air NZ to state that these flights were not confidential is incredible. For the record, the refusal to provide documents under the provisions above was made on 5 October 2007, well after the flights had been publicized.

Cheers

Ian

Vector Energy sold to Chinese spy?

ANY STORM IN A PORT

China's Trojan horse in NZ

[The following story initially ran in the April 06 edition of Investigate magazine, but is directly relevant to the purchase announced April 28, 2008 of Vector Energy's Wellington grid by the same businessman]

The Hong Kong business conglomerate trying to purchase a stake in some of New Zealand's biggest port companies [and now the purchaser of energy company Vector] has been named as a front for the People's Liberation Army of China, and some of its associates have been caught shipping weapons and alleged WMD technology. IAN WISHART has more

His name is Li Ka-shing, and if his name sounds like a cash register there's a very good reason: this 77 year old Chinese businessman has just been ranked by Forbes magazine as the tenth wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune estimated at nearly US$20 billion. His companies, including Hutchison Whampoa, account for 10% of the value of the Hong Kong stock exchange and have tentacles that reach across the globe – more than forty countries according to one estimate – and in industries as varied as mobile telephone networks, electricity grids, retailing, shipping and real estate.

Many New Zealanders may have become familiar with Li's work in the sixties and seventies, when his main business was making plastic toys with the infamous "Made in Hong Kong" imprimatur.

But there are two sides to the Li Ka-shing story. One is the traditional fodder of business magazines, lauding the rags to riches story of a billionaire whose father died after the Japanese invasion of China before World War 2, leaving a 12 year old boy with the task of earning enough money to feed his mother and siblings. It's a story of a man making wily business decisions, building an empire and showing aspiring MBA graduates how it's done.

And here's how one of those gushing business stories reads:

"The move by the richest man in Asia and one of the richest in the world to take a stake in the operation of the Port of Lyttelton is one that has potentially great benefits for Christchurch and Canterbury and ultimately the rest of the country," said the Christchurch Press in an editorial mid February.

"There is no need to be starry-eyed about the proposed venture. Li Ka-shing has risen from complete destitution as a refugee who fled the raping and pillaging of China by the Japanese in the 1930s to become a multi-billionaire.

"He did it by being an astute and hard-nosed businessman. He also did it, according to one account in a business journal, by 'remaining true to his internal moral compass' and operating with integrity."

Like we said, that's one side of the Li Ka-shing story.

The other side of Li Ka-shing is much darker, and less likely to be taught in graduate classes. It's the story of a man whose companies are regarded by Western intelligence agencies as nothing more than a money-making front for Chinese military intelligence as China prepares for what it sees as an "inevitable" conflict with the US.

As this 1996 diplomatic cable release by the US Government under a Freedom of Information request shows, Li Ka-shing's businesses didn't make money the hard way.

""Embassy Panama has received information to the effect that HIT (Hutchison International Terminals) is controlled by mainland Chinese, perhaps through a Macao front which allegedly recently invested $400 million in HIT," states the cable. "Such control would have security implications and might affect the Panamanian government's views on awarding the port concessions."

The "mainland Chinese" referred to in 1996 have turned out to be the Chinese Government itself, and more specifically its People's Liberation Army – more of which in a moment, but first some background.

Intelligence agencies have used what they call "arms length" front companies – genuine commercial operations whose owners are sympathetic to a particular cause. Back in the 1970s and 80s, for example, America's CIA set up a global freight airline, Air America, and a merchant banking operation, Nugan Hand Bank of Australia, to help launder money and assist with so-called "black operations" that the US government could not directly be involved in. Discretion, and plausible deniability, required "cut-outs" who could take the heat if discovered. One CIA front company, US accounting firm Bishop Baldwin Rewald Dillingham & Wong, even went so far as to open an office in Auckland in 1983.

But there's one difference between CIA front companies and Chinese ones. Ultimately, the US government takes a major PR-hit when dirty covert operations are uncovered. The Chinese government suffers no embarrassment when caught spying, because of its tight control of Chinese citizens and the lack of democratic accountability.

Investigate enjoyed a world exclusive in March 2000 when it reported that Chinese businessman James Riady, wanted for spying and illegal payments to the US president, Bill Clinton, had been in New Zealand as a guest of the National Government and introduced to Clinton at APEC.

Ever since Clinton was elected to the Whitehouse in 1992, China has bought influence in American politics by using businessmen like Riady and Li to donate to Presidential campaign funds, or the election campaigns of key senators and congress representatives. As a result, when America's lease fell due on the Panama canal in 1999, the Clinton administration let it slide, and Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Whampoa picked up control of the crucial ports at either end of the Panama canal. According to US reports, Hutchison also paid substantial bribes to Panamanian officials to secure the deal.

Amazingly, the deal also allows Hutchison to transfer its control of the Panama facilities to any other organization or country of its choosing, meaning it could – in the lead up to a conflict – effectively place the canal directly and officially in the control of China, allowing Chinese military and naval forces to legally occupy and defend their beachhead in the Americas. Because of the immense strategic importance of the Panama canal, any military attack on it could cause damage making the canal impassable regardless of who controls it, thus limiting US options.

Newssite WorldNetDaily reported a 1995 diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in the Bahamas revealing Hutchison had just been given the go ahead to build a US$88 million container port there. The embassy copied its cable to the Drug Enforcement Agency and US Customs, noting the possibility of a major increase in smuggling through the Hutchison facility.

They were right to be concerned. There are growing reports of a strong Chinese organized crime presence in Panama.

Some analysts fear the US is becoming more vulnerable to "Trojan horses", in the form of cargo or container ships that dock containing weapons of mass destruction and/or short to medium range ballistic missiles, leaving America vulnerable to a surprise attack with no possibility of missile intercept because of the short ranges involved. Indeed, this has been one of the security fears over the past month because of a bid by a Dubai-based company to take control of major US ports – the possibility that weapons of mass destruction could be smuggled in through civilian ports controlled by foreign interests.

Al Qa'ida has already been implicated in smuggling Islamic extremists into the US across the Mexican border, but China is equally active in shipping the ingredients of terror through commercial operators. Li Ka-shing, for example, sits on the board of CITIC, the China International Trust Investment Company, which has also been active in New Zealand business circles and still has a presence here. But US investigations have determined CITIC is also a People's Liberation Army front company, and during the Operation Sidewinder investigations in Canada recently authorities discovered quantities of weapons had been supplied by a CITIC company and stored on Mohawk Indian reservations.

CITIC was also in the news at Christmas after signing a US$900 million contract to build an aluminium smelter in Iran. Aluminium tubing is used in the production of missile technology and nuclear weapons.

China's state owned national shipping company COSCO, again a 50% joint venture partner in some of Li Ka-shing's operations, has been implicated in the sort of activities that would make the CIA blush.

"Both U.S. Senate and Canadian intelligence sources have described COSCO as "the merchant marine for China's military"," reported Canada Free Press last year.

"According to U.S. intelligence reports, COSCO vessels do not just transport Oriental bric-a-brac. COSCO vessels have been caught carrying [two thousand AK-47] assault rifles into California and biological-chemical weapons components into North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. Add to these disturbing events that Canadian law enforcement agencies have kicked in with hard-line information that Chinese Triad criminal elements are active in and around Canadian ports."

But it isn't just smuggling items in, there is also the question of Chinese spies operating through front companies to smuggle information and technology out of countries like Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand – all of which have been named internationally as prime targets for Chinese intelligence.

According to the Canada Free Press report:

"Conspiracy theories were tossed out the window when U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher revealed that the U.S. Bureau of Export Affairs, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Rand Corporation had identified Li Ka-Shing and Hutchison Whampoa (Li's primary business) as financing or serving as a conduit for Communist China's military in order for them to acquire sensitive technologies and other equipment."

But again, Chinese intelligence is one step ahead of the West. Just as Bill Clinton had been paid off in the US in order for China to gain access at the highest levels, so too was the-then Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien:

"Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien's connections to the burgeoning CITIC conglomerate served as his entrée into the private sector," says Canada Free Press. "While John Turner was leader of the federal Liberals, Chretien was working for Gordon Securities, one of the many Li-controlled companies on Canadian soil."

According to Canada Free Press, Operation Sidewinder was "sideswiped" after political pressure from Chretien.

With the Chinese military currently embarking on the most rapid rearmament in world history, the involvement of Chinese commercial entities should come as no surprise.

An American Defense Council report published two years ago paints an extremely disturbing picture for the West.

"Li Ka-Shing, the leader of Hutchison Port Holdings (China's primary shipping line), has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and to the CITIC. The CITIC is believed to serve as a funding umbrella for the Chinese military, supporting the acquisition of military-related technologies. Hutchison Port Holdings manages, operates and is in possession of significant portions of three of the world's top five ports as measured by both the number of containers shipped and total tonnage shipped.

"China's other two huge shipping lines are directly controlled by the Communist Party. One, the China Ocean Shipping Co (COSCO) was described in the Cox Report issued by the US Congress as follows: 'Although presented as a commercial entity, COSCO is actually an arm of the Chinese military establishment'."

According to the Defense Council report, there are 10 strategic global shipping "choke points" that are crucial to US oil and trade lifelines.

"In the last decade, China has succeeded in building, managing or operating strategic ports adjacent to, or, as in the case of the Panama canal, at the entrance and exit of seven of these 10 global shipping choke points."

What has not been widely reported is another paragraph in the Congressional investigation into Chinese spying:

"The Clinton administration has determined that additional information concerning COSCO that appears in the Select Committee's classified final report cannot be made public," concluded the watered down version released by the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

COSCO already has a strong presence in New Zealand, with offices in Auckland and Christchurch and a container line service that runs into Auckland, Tauranga, Napier, Wellington, Nelson, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers. Four of its vessels here, including the Aotea, are Panamanian registered.

While there is no doubt that COSCO routinely ships ordinary freight, every day, as any other commercial business does, there are also days when it ships the extraordinary, as this American news report notes.

"At least three arms shipments were traced from China to the Cuban port of Mariel during the past several months, according to an article Tuesday in the Washington Times. All the arms were aboard vessels belonging to the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co., or Cosco, U.S. intelligence officials told the newspaper. The explosives were said to be "military-grade" material, the newspaper said.

"U.S. officials said Tuesday that the subject of arms trafficking between China and Cuba is a worrisome one, though they stopped short of confirming the Washington Times account. "We are very much concerned with this PLA [People's Liberation Army] cooperation and movement of military equipment in Cuba," said James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, when questioned during a hearing of the House International Relations subcommittee."

Questioning of Li Ka-shing is something Canadian government security advisor Scott Newark would like to do. He told the respected online journal NewsMax.com that a request by Li's Hutchison group to purchase ports in the US be given full congressional scrutiny.

"I'd like to suggest that the appropriate congressional committee hold hearings and that they call Li Ka-shing as the first witness. I volunteer to be second, but frankly there are people far more knowledgeable than me in this regard, including for example the International Association of Airport and Seaport Police, which just held their conference in NYC. As a speaker at that conference I urged ridding ports of such crime and rogue government-connected companies, not making them the local constabulary."

According to NewsMax, Newark identified five critical port security issues: "preventing smuggling of drugs, guns and people; preventing export of stolen products; providing site security as a result of 9/11; preventing terrorism related smuggling; and preventing attacks on ships leaving ports."

To that end, Newark sounds a warning that is relevant for New Zealand authorities as they consider whether to approve a buy-in by Hutchison into Lyttelton and possibly the Auckland or Tauranga ports.

"We need full scrutiny of the principals of Hutchison Whampoa and all of their business or government-related associations, and any history of any activity of them or their associates – including links to organized crime and terrorist groups, activities or states supporting the same – that would raise concerns to any of the above.

"We should give full scrutiny to any relationship of Hutchison Whampoa, its partners, directors or officers with any foreign government that would raise concerns to any or all of the above issues."

If that isn't ringing warning bells at the Christchurch City Council and in the Beehive, it should be, especially as the Li's business partner – the Chinese military's "merchant marine arm" COSCO - is already a big player in New Zealand ports.

Both COSCO and Hutchison have faced this negative publicity overseas. In COSCO's case, it hired one of America's leading public relations companies to spin the strong business and economic benefits of trade with China to the news media and key politicians, while playing down the "unfounded and negative" stories we've just highlighted. According to commentators the PR ploy has worked, with coverage of the company in the US largely restricted to positive business and trade stories in the media.

Nor is Li Ka-shing a stranger to New Zealand business. In Australia, he's the majority owner of Hutchison 3G Mobile, but you might be surprised to learn Theresa Gattung's Telecom New Zealand holds the remaining 19.9% in a joint venture.

Ironically, it was only a decision by US telecommunications regulators to threaten a veto that stopped Li Ka-shing's Hutchison from buying the giant international phone network Global Crossing three years ago. The purchase would have given Hutchison the possible option of eavesdropping on phone and data calls being made on Global Crossing's planet-wide network of undersea phone cables linking all the continents. Global was also bidding for US Defence contracts at the time.

Li's business ventures with the Chinese military include the Guangzhou Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Company, a Chinese air force company 25% owned by Li; and a one-third stake in AsiaSat, also part owned by the People's Liberation Army.

The move by Hutchison Port Holdings Ltd (HPHL) to purchase the Lyttelton Port Company in Christchurch raises some more questions for Helen Clark's Labour Government to answer. HPHL is registered in the British Virgin Islands, the same Caribbean tax haven at the centre of our February story about the New Zealand Labour Party's biggest campaign donor, Owen Glenn. Coincidentally, Glenn is also a shipping handler who's managed to get a rare Class A business licence in China and is said to have influence in Beijing, but whose operations don't appear to stack up based on what Investigate was able to discover. Glenn funneled $500,000 into Labour's election coffers last year.

Is the New Zealand Labour Party receiving money from the Chinese Government through a complex web of shady business figures and front companies? At this point Investigate doesn't have enough information to answer one way or the other, but the magazine's investigations are continuing.

In the meantime, we have discovered Li Ka-shing has reserved the name Hutchison Ports New Zealand Ltd with the Companies Office. The deal relies at this stage on Christchurch City Holdings Ltd acquiring the 31% of Lyttelton port shares that it doesn't already own, and that purchase offer closes on April 8. If CCHL gets the shares it needs, it plans to sell down 49.9% of the port to Hutchison. But Hutchison would get majority control of the company actually running the port on a daily basis, effectively putting the Chinese Government in command of imports and exports out of Christchurch.

The Christchurch Press reports the deal was driven initially by Lyttelton Port Company management, but picked up by Hutchison Port Holdings executive directors Mark Jack and Richard Pearson – both apparently ex-pat kiwis. A search of Companies Office records lists a Mark David Jack, resident in Hong Kong, as sole director of Ardmore Hangars Ltd – set up last year – and Ardmore Aviation Services Ltd, set up in 2003.

We have been unable to confirm any New Zealand directorships for Richard Pearson.

Christchurch mayor Gary Moore has dismissed reported links between Hutchison and the Chinese military as the work of "conspiracy theorists" who'd been listening to a sole US congressman, and Mark Jack has told critics to ignore the bad media and concentrate on the company's economic performance – a carbon copy of the PR stance Hutchison has taken in the US.

But Gary Moore – as provincial local body mayors often are – suffers from not being privy to intelligence. If it was only "conspiracy theory", why was Hutchison forced to back away from Global Crossing? And if Moore is correct about only one congressman raising concerns about Hutchison, why did the South China Morning Post report that Hutchison's paid lobbyists in the US were targeting three, including the then Senate Majority leader Trent Lott and former US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger who testified Hutchison's takeover of the Panama canal would pose a security threat to the US?

And if Gary Moore is correct, how does he explain the now-released 1999 intelligence briefing from the US military Southern Command which states: ""Hutchison's containerized shipping facilities in the Panama Canal, as well as the Bahamas, could provide a conduit for illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the west to the PRC, or facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the Americas."?

We put similar questions to a spokesman for Christchurch City Holdings Ltd, the current majority owner of Lyttelton Port Company, and ended up in a slanging match where the response to the allegations was "so what if he is?". The spokesman pointed out that national security issues were something for the Prime Minister to sort out, and Christchurch was only interested in the commercial deal.

The spokesman referred to a statement by a US Clinton administration official in 1999 to the senate hearing that Hutchison Whampoa's operation of the Panama ports would have no impact on shipping movements, and that the company had no known ties to the Chinese government.

However, those claims have already been tackled by the Washington Times' Insight magazine:

"Western policymakers and business leaders have little or no idea of China's grand strategy and how Beijing's leaders want to situate their country for the next century. When, in 1999, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) sent Insight's report, "China's Beachhead at Panama Canal," to then defense secretary William Cohen, he called for a full national-security appraisal of the problem. Lott told Cohen, "U.S. naval ships will be at the mercy of Chinese-controlled pilots and could even be denied passage. It appears we have given away the farm."

"At Lott's request, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing in which four Clinton-administration witnesses testified that Hutchison Whampoa posed no security challenges to the United States [see "PC Answers on Panama Canal," Nov. 22, 1999]. But not one of the witnesses could answer the fundamental question, posed by Sen. Robert Smith (R-N.H.): "Do you believe the People's Republic of China uses commercial enterprises to advance their military interests?"

"Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of defense, Brian E. Sheridan, who had issued a defense of Hutchison Whampoa, confessed, "I don't know." Alberto Aleman Zubieta, whom Clinton had appointed to run the Panama Canal until 2005, didn't answer either. Neither did Joseph W. Cornelison, the deputy administrator of the Panama Canal Commission, nor Lino Gutierrez [the official referred to by Christchurch City Holdings Ltd's PR man], then principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs. All had contradicted their testimony. Only Marine Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm, then chief of the U.S. Southern Command, answered affirmatively to whether Beijing uses commercial enterprises to advance its military interests, saying only: "I think so."

"That was it. And apparently the government has learned little since. "Many of those who are engaged in China policy or who invest there remain blithely ignorant of Chinese goals to replace the United States as the reigning world power," says Thomas Woodrow, a former senior China analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency."

Lino Gutierrez is the Clinton official whose testimony was used to rubbish suggestions of Chinese government investment. He told the senate hearing:

"Through publicly available information, we have been able to ascertain that neither

Hutchison-Whampoa, nor its subsidiaries Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) and the Panama Ports Company (PPC), have any significant investment from mainland China."

What isn't clear is how Gutierrez determined that, when many key companies in the group including Hutchison Port Holdings are registered in tax havens so their true ownership cannot be searched.

Investigate did finally get to put a series of questions to CCHL Chief Executive Bob Lineham. The questions, and his answers, are as follows:

How is CCHL satisfied that, even if Hutchison is a front company for the People's Liberation Army of China, that its majority stake in the operating company for the Port of Lyttelton remains a good idea?

Answer from Bob Lineham:

"In the event that Christchurch City Holdings Limited's (CCHL) Takeover Offer for Lyttelton Port Company Ltd (LPC) succeeded, and Hutchison Port Holdings Ltd was introduced into the Port of Lyttelton, the Christchurch City Council would retain control of the Lyttelton Port Company with a 50.1% voting majority (through CCHL) of the shares in LPC.

"The purpose of the new port operating company in which HPH would have a 50.1% share is to operate the Port of Lyttelton. It does not and cannot control the Lyttelton Port Company. With HPH as a port partner, the Port of Lyttelton would be controlled, as it is today, by the people of Christchurch through CCHL and the Christchurch City Council.

How is CCHL satisfied that Li Ka-shing is a legitimate businessman, in the face not only of his vast personal fortune in a socialist country, but also his well-documented ties to communist China and its ruling politburo long before the 1997 handover of Hong Kong? No answer received.
Why is it not strange that a communist state can be home to the world's tenth richest man, without corruption being a factor? No answer received.
In what way has CCHL consulted with the New Zealand government or its officials over the proposed buy in?

Answer from Bob Lineham:

"The introduction of Hutchison Port Holdings to the Port of Lyttelton would be subject to the usual regulatory consents that are required when an overseas company is involved."

Li Ka Shing or companies and individuals associated with him have been implicated in smuggling 2,000 AK 47 fully automatic military rifles into California, and shipping componentry for nuclear weapons to Iran. CITIC, a Chinese Government company that Li helped found and sits on the board of directors of, is building an aluminium smelter in Iran the product of which can be used in missile technology and the production of nuclear weapons. Why are the reputational issues surrounding Li Ka Shing not a concern to CCHL? No answer received.
Why is CCHL not concerned about the fact that Hutchison was prevented from purchasing telecommunications provider Global Crossing in 2003 because of concerns that he was a security threat to the US? No answer received.

And if the Christchurch port administrators are relying on assurances by Clinton administration officials that Li Ka-shing is not a security threat, they could be backing the wrong horse. Sadly, Investigate has reported before on how badly briefed New Zealand officials are on international intrigue. Former National Government Prime Minister Jenny Shipley was given a briefing by Foreign Affairs and Trade on visiting businessman James Riady in 1999 that read like this:

"The Lippo Group is one of Indonesia's largest conglomerates in terms of market capitalisation with estimates of value putting it at having US$11 billion in assets.

"The vision of its founder Mochtar Riady is to transcend the institutional limitations placed upon organisations run in the traditional overseas Chinese pattern and adopt a modern publicly owned and professionally managed pattern of business.

"Mochtar has formed alliances and joint venture partnerships with world class multinational corporations and has high calibre professional management staff working for him.

"The Lippo empire rose out of the success of the Lippo Bank. Unlike just about all other banks in Indonesia its founder Mochtar Riady tended to shun the Suharto connections that for other conglomerates in Indonesia were the keys to success.

"He avoided lending to politically connected groups or to state enterprises and instead built his business on legitimate retail and trade finance."

Yes, well. That's the New Zealand intelligence briefing, but while our diplomats were talking about how politically-neutral and non-crony like the Riadys were, the businessmen themselves were on the run from US justice for illegally laundering $4 million of illegal Chinese government donations to President Clinton's re-election fund.

The saddest part of that story was the information about the Riadys was in the public domain, just as the information on Li Ka-shing is, but New Zealand trade officials chose to ignore it or write it off as "conspiracy theory".

Interestingly, one report from a US Congressional team that visited Panama says "Li Ka-Shing is an investor in the Riady family's Hong Kong China Bank." It is this international game of join the dots that seems too hard for New Zealand officials to understand.

The Riadys were heavily involved with a company called China Resources Ltd, which is also a joint venture partner with Hutchison in the Panama canal. China Resources has long been known as a front for Chinese intelligence, but this too was completely missing from the intelligence briefing given to Shipley. Indeed, judging from their innocuous contents one would have to suspect the briefing was in fact prepared by Chinese intelligence!

"The Lippo Group has a strategic position in China and Hong Kong with substantial investments and relationships with powerful business and government people and organisations.

"It owns 49% of the Hong Kong Chinese Bank with the remaining 51% held by China Resources (Holdings) which is a wholly-owned enterprise of China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation."

So despite Christchurch's insistence that New Zealand authorities have it all in hand and that citizens can rest easy in their beds, Investigate is reminded of this news release about the previous Asian-investor golden boy James Riady, issued by the US Department of Justice in 2001:

JAMES RIADY PLEADS GUILTY WILL PAY LARGEST FINE IN CAMPAIGN FINANCE HISTORY FOR VIOLATING FEDERAL ELECTION LAW

WASHINGTON, D.C. - James Tjahaja Riady will pay a record $8.6 million in criminal fines and plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the United States by unlawfully reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds in violation of federal election law, the Justice Department's Campaign Financing Task Force and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles announced today.

In addition, LippoBank California, a California state-chartered bank affiliated with Lippo Group, will plead guilty to 86 misdemeanor counts charging its agents, Riady and John Huang, with making illegal foreign campaign contributions from 1988 through 1994.

As the world's largest port operator, there are sound economic reasons for Hutchison to operate New Zealand ports. But there appear to be equally sound political and strategic reasons as to why they should not. If the deals proceed, it could turn into yet another political bombshell for the Labour Government to work through, a government that is, itself, close to China.

ABSOLUTE POWER

COMING SOON>> http://www.helenclarkbook.com

Deborah Coddington pinged

JUNE 2002 EDITION

Evidence of a political and financial spider's web involving Cabinet Ministers, millionaire businessmen, senior journalists and newspaper editors in a plan to manipulate public opinion has emerged in a pile of explosive documents leaked to Investigate magazine.

The documents, pictured on the following pages, show tentacles of influence spreading out from New Zealand Business Roundtable CEO Roger Kerr across virtually all the main sectors of NZ society.

A source with access to the Roundtable's confidential files dumped a number of them in the hands of this magazine that show:

~A National Cabinet Minister apparently seeking money from Fay Richwhite in 1993 for personal reasons

~A list of policy demands being delivered by David Richwhite, Lion Nathan boss Doug Myers, Air New Zealand chairman Bob Matthew and Roger Kerr to Minister of Labour Bill Birch

~A summoning of National Prime Minister Jim Bolger and Bill Birch to a meeting with Myers, Matthew, Kerr and Telecom boss Rod Deane at Brierley's head office in Wellington

~An apparent close working relationship betweenDominion editor Richard Long and the Business Roundtable

~That the Business Roundtable offered to bribe — in Investigate 's opinion - journalists and columnists in newspapers to write articles showing Roundtable policies in a favourable light

~That a journalist who is now a senior writer for North & South magazine was secretly paid by the Business Roundtable to write a book under her own name that portrayed Roundtable policies in a favourable light

~That speeches and articles allegedly written by top business leaders may not have been written by those business leaders at all, but by the Business Roundtable as part of a cynical attempt to manipulate public, business and political opinion

North & South's Editor-at-large, Warwick Roger, who has publicly accused Investigate journalists of wallowing in conspiracy theories, may like to publicly explain the relationship between his magazine's senior writer, Deborah Coddington, and the New Zealand Business Roundtable, in the wake of the publication of these documents.

Not only do the papers obtained by Investigate show Coddington failed to reveal a conflict of interest regarding her authorship of the book Turning Pain Into Gain, but that she looked forward to continuing her close relationship with the Business Roundtable while supplying "business/economy articles" to North & South and other news media as well.

Coddington decided to hide from the public the fact that she was secretly drawing a salary from the Business Roundtable because she worried that readers would doubt her journalistic credibility if they knew.

Other prominent New Zealanders to emerge as mouthpieces of the Business Roundtable include authors Karl Stead and Alan Duff.

A letter from Stead to the Roundtable's Michael Irwin in March 1994 begins:

"I would like to write the piece you suggest for the Dominion, accepting NZBRT's offer to make up payment to one day's work at the agreed rate."

The article was about education.

Another document shows Roger Kerr offering to top up another columnist's usual payment from the Dominion by a further $500 "to make it worth the trouble" to write an article where the "thinking is in line with that in our study".

Investigate has no knowledge whether Dominion editor Richard Long knew that the Business Roundtable was secretly payingDominion columnists extra money to write pro-freemarket articles, and the magazine makes no allegations in this regard. But the documents on the following pages do show a very close relationship between Roger Kerr and Richard Long.

Investigate is also aware that Long ordered alterations to some of the news coverage of the Winebox Inquiry by Dominion correspondents, allegedly because it showed New Zealand First leader Winston Peters in too positive a light.

Ironically, it is in an article published by the Dominion attacking Peters that the Business Roundtable's hypocrisy is best illustrated.

The article, allegedly written by Business Roundtable chairman Doug Myers but apparently penned by Roger Kerr, is headlined "Importance of Being Honest" but could more accurately have been slugged "The Pot Calling The Kettle Black".

"The importance of the judgement of the District Court in the defamation case taken by Selwyn Cushing against New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, from the Business Roundtable's perspective, is that the accusation that it had sought to exercise improper political influence was found to be totally baseless," crowed Myers [Kerr] in the opening paragraph.

"Winston Peters should, as a minimum first step, make a full and unequivocal apology forthwith to all parties wrongfully accused.

"From a national perspective, the sequence of events has highlighted the lack of substance underlying the claims about corruption in New Zealand made in the AustralianFour Corners programme and the earlier TVNZ programme For The Public Good.

"There have been other instances in recent years of false and exaggerated claims by politicians, regulators and journalists about alleged inadequacies in our laws, regulations or codes of behaviour as they affect commerce.

"Contrary to such claims, the general reputation ofbusiness in this country for honesty and integrity is deservedly high. New Zealand has come out in first place in international surveys by Transparency International as the country which is freest from corruption in business and politics.

"The Business Roundtable supports demands for the highest standards of honesty and integrity in politics and business. It is up to individuals and firms to set such standards and to promote them in the wider community.

"As an organisation, the Business Roundtable believes that there is no place for improper influence in any sphere of public life. It operates on the basis of open and transparent research and analysis and on the principle that public policies should be determined on the merits of the relevant arguments.

"When the disreputable television programme For The Public Good was found to have made blatantly untrue allegations about improper business influence on Government decisions, Television New Zealand received the stiffest penalty ever handed down by the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

"Similarly," concludes Myers [Kerr], "Michael Laws resigned from Parliament after accusations of improper conduct. At a time when New Zealand is facing important choices in the coming election, it is vital that public debate should focus on the merits of policies, that high standards of integrity in politics should be upheld, and that those who fall short of them should be held accountable."

Investigate has not sought comment in advance from any of the parties mentioned in the documents on the next few pages because of the high likelihood of an expensive gagging writ. Instead it will be up to other news media to seek reactions to this major story and the leaked documents.

However, Investigate did invite the Justice spokespeople from each main political party, and an expert on journalism ethics, to comment on a hypothetical case we put to them. Their responses follow after the documents: (read the original article, with documents, online here)

a question of journalistic ethics?

The events detailed in these documents happened several years ago. We asked journalism ethics expert Jim Tully, and a group of senior politicians, to answer what they understood to be a series of hypothetical questions. Their answers should not be construed as informed comment on what you have just read, but their answers are indicative of current attitudes to such practices in general terms:

1.Please comment on the ethics/professionalism of the following scenario: If any journalist was to write an article for a newspaper on an important matter and received money from an interested lobby group for doing so...

Journalists must be seen to be independent in their information gathering. They should avoid affiliations and incentives which compromise their independence and create, or indeed appear to create, conflicts of interest.

A journalist employed by a news organisation, or freelancing, who receives money from a source or an individual/organisation which has an interest in the material published or broadcast is compromising their independence and is, arguably, performing the role of a public relations person not an independent journalist if that is what they are purporting to be. If they were commissioned to write the article, the conflict of interest is clear-cut.

It would be appropriate for any financial relationship to be declared to the publisher and to be acknowledged on publication. Readers are entitled to know the an article was written on this basis just as we would expect articles on, say, the travel pages to acknowledge any provision of free travel and accommodation etc and by whom.

2. And a book?

If the book was commissioned by the lobby group, one would expect this to be acknowledged.

3.If a newspaper editor were to run a feature article on a political topic, written by an allegedly independent academic but the person was known to the editor to be working at the behest of influential lobby groups, would that be a breach of ethics?

Affiliations that reflect upon the independence of a writer should be disclosed.

- Jim Tully, Lecturer in Journalism

the questions to politicians

Firstly, if an ordinary MP were found to have substantial direct private business dealings with an influential individual or organisation, should such an interest be required to publicly declared?

Secondly, if a Cabinet Minister or Prime Minister were found to have substantial direct private business dealings with an influential individual or organisation, should such an interest be required to be publicly declared?

Thirdly, if a Cabinet Minister were found to have accepted money from an influential individual or organisation, in return for which such an individual or organisation wanted top level access to the Minister to provide advice on policy matters, should such an incident be disclosed to an authority? If so, which authority?

STEPHEN FRANKS:

Conflict of interest rules for Cabinet Ministers are designed to reduce the risks of corruption. I was
interviewed by Al Morrison in North & South several months ago on the topic of corrupt influence.

Interests registers for Cabinet Ministers are a crude form of prophylactic. They signal to the Minister that any use of executive powers to favour his or her personal or family interests is likely to be evident. Executive power is important, because Ministers have all kinds of discretions to exercise, and our law and constitution assume that they will be exercised in the best interests of New Zealanders generally. As the Parliamentary commencement prayer puts it "Putting aside all private and personal interests".

On the other hand, expecting disclosure to deal with most concerns about undue influence is simply puerile. The influences that affect politicians are largely political, but that covers a broad range. For example lobby groups implicitly threaten the political future of MPs by the influence they have with their members and with other media in affecting the politician's reputation. The best lobby groups achieve the most by providing persuasive argument and information which the political decision maker would otherwise not have.

Your questions identify a particular source or potential source of influence, namely the personal profit that might be derived from or disguised in a private business dealing. It is not the fact that the dealing is with an influential individual or organisation that matters, it is whether the dealing is with people who have some interest in a matter in which the politician also has power. Voting in caucus without disclosure of a conflicting interest should be considered completely unethical. Votes on select committees and in Parliament are open, and debated. This differs from the position for Ministers. Many of their exercises of discretion will never attract public attention. The short answer to your questions is then:

1.Ministers should disclose material private business dealings with bodies where any conflict of interest might reasonably be anticipated. To the extent that is feasible the disclosure should be public and prior, and recorded in a register.

2. The argument is much less powerful in relation to ordinary MPs. There are relatively few occasions in which an ordinary MP can secretly procure advantages for "influential individuals or organisations" who might want to "pay off" the MP. I think the rule should be that MPs must disclosure their connection if and when there is some matter on which they are involved, that concerns the individual or organisation.

I favour strong sanctions for failure to make an informative disclosure of any potential conflict of interest.

But to try to require routine registration of dealings would be likely to have four effects:

(a) Involve a numbing recitation of irrelevant detail by law abiding careful folk.

(b) Catch some "innocents" sooner or later with inadvertent non-disclosure, particularly where a connection or interest arises after the specified filing times.

(d) Inevitably the rules grow in an attempt to block perceived loop holes. If they become a cumbersome set of obligations active business people will be further dissuaded from getting involved in politics. They could not be bothered with the trivia and the prurient and envious use to which the register would be put, when it should really be aimed at corruption.

My approach to most of these corruption matters is to have proper enforcement of real penalties when corruption is uncovered rather than potentially futile procedural fences at the tops of cliffs.

REPLY, Wayne Mapp, Nat.

1. Yes, in fact this is a current requirement where an MP is considering legislation in which it could be said that there is a conflict of interest, or a benefit to the MP as a result of the legislation.

2. Yes, the current rules requires full disclosure of interests given the wide range of issues that Ministers consider.

3.Resignation should be the automatic result of "purchasing access".

REPLY, Phil Goff, Lab.

Very clear and stringent rules about Minister's conduct and conflict of interest exist and are spelled out in the Cabinet Office Manual. The Manual is available at:

www.dpmc.govt.nz/cabinet/ manual/index.html

The Government proposes to introduce disclosure of interest rules for all MPs.

REPLY, Rod Donald, Green

1. Yes, and once the register of interests of members of parliament is established then any such interest will be publicly declared. Such a register already operates for cabinet ministers and all members of parliament are already required under Standing orders (165) to declare any pecuniary interests i.e. direct financial benefit that might accrue as a result of the outcome of parliament's consideration of a particular item of business to either the member personally or any trust, company or other business entity in which the member holds an appreciable interest.

2. Yes. In addition to the requirements under standing Order No. 165, any such interest is already required to be publicly declared under the registration of interests for Cabinet Ministers which requires disclosure of remunerated directorships or employment and substantial minority or controlling interests in a business enterprise or professional practice (with a description of the business activity unless the business concerned is listed as a public company), minority ownership of company shares or beneficial interests in a trust (excluding a registered superannuation scheme), ownership of all real property, holding of mortgage or debt instruments, liabilities indicating the nature of the liability and the identity of the creditor, overseas travel or accommodation (unless paid for personally or by immediate family members or from NZ public funds or by another Government as an adjunct to an official parliament visit), gifts received that have an estimated value of over NZ$500 per gift, payments received from any outside activities and liabilities of the member discharged by a third party.

3. Yes. The rules on non compliance in relation to disclosure of interests are well established. Non compliance is addressed by way of publicity and political sanction, a report by the controller and auditor general and contempt of the House. Failure to declare a pecuniary interest in relation to parliament's consideration of a particular item of business also results in contempt of the House. The Clerk of the House is the authority to which any such incidences should be reported.

TRAVEL: May 05, AU Edition

RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT
Gary A. Warner says that if you look beyond the sleaze, Amsterdam is full of treasures

Forget the canals. Forget the coffeehouses. Forget the acres of Rembrandts and Van Goghs. Forget all that wooden shoes and tulips and silly Hans Brinker and his silver skates stuff you ever heard, read or saw.

Before you go to Amsterdam, get your brain around the other Amsterdam. The in-your-face Amsterdam.

The CBD shops that sell postcards of genitals painted to look like Santa Claus. Where delivery boys on pink bicycles deliver marijuana seeds. Where porn and prostitution flourish in the most picturesque red-light district in the world.

Get ready for it, all of it, because it is going to smack you right in the head whether you like it or not.

How you react will determine whether you see Amsterdam as the most liberal, liberating metropolis in Europe or a beautiful old jewel wrapped in an oily envelope of sleaze.

For the better part of two decades, I fell in the latter category. Four times Amsterdam was penciled in on my itinerary, and four times I found reason to get out the eraser.

But when I realized I’d been to nearly every major European city – I had been to Brussels twice – I decided it was time to give Amsterdam a shot.

I’ve always had a long list of reasons not to go. But I came away with more reasons potential visitors shouldn’t repeat my mistake of waiting so long to experience the Dutch metropolis.

Amsterdam has a great airport. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and Amsterdam gets off on the right foot.

With its one terminal that has just two levels, Schiphol is the easiest, most modern airport in Europe, a dream to navigate compared with the creaking facilities of London, Paris and Rome. A high-speed train leaves every 15 minutes for the 20-minute ride from the airport to the city center.

I don’t go to a city for its airport (if I did, I’d never go back to New York City). But Amsterdam’s is nonetheless a big plus.

The morning after I arrived in Amsterdam, I was fighting jet lag. I stepped out of my canal-side hotel and wandered the quays for hours.
The trees had lost their leaves, revealing glimpses through the bare branches of old houses that line the waterways. Homes were hung with Christmas lights and garlands – even many of the 2,500 houseboats along the canals were decked out in yuletide finery.

The heart of the city is the Grachtengordel, the three concentric canals that half-ring the city center. Viewing the mansions of the Herengracht, the bridges over the Keizergracht and the houseboats fronting the artists’ lofts of the Prisengracht is one of the most popular strolls for visitors.

In all, there are 47 miles of canals in Amsterdam, and each mile seemed to offer a postcard image: A woman carrying a cello on her back as she pedaled her bicycle toward the city center. A mother singing “Jingle Bells” to her kindergartner as they skipped by. Pre-teen boys bundled up against the cold playing soccer on a canal-side strip, making moves that would fool most Australian high school teams.

When you get thirsty, watch your language. Ask for a ‘coffee shop’, and you’ll get more than a caffeine buzz – it’s the popular term for places that legally sell marijuana and hashish. If you ask for a ‘café’, you’ll likely be sent to one of the 1,000-plus bars in the city. (Do go. Drinking is a wonderful pastime in Amsterdam. Try a light-tasting Hoegaarden or a dark De Koninck beer. Or better yet, a traditional jenever, a gin-like drink often infused with fruit or herbs.)

There are the grand cafés whose luxurious interiors will seem familiar to anyone who has walked into a fancy café in Paris, Vienna or Budapest.

I prefer the old, small taverns called “brown cafés” for their stained-wood interiors and dark, drapery-blocked doorways. Press past the curtain at Hoppe near the Spui Square, and you’ll go back three centuries in time. It’s a cramped but cozy place that’s especially good in the off-season, when the hordes of summer tourists aren’t trying to elbow in for a seat.

Another good choice is ‘t Doktertje, which means ‘the little doctor’, another timeworn spot where for less than $10 you can get a drink and sit for as long as you like. I brought along my journal and enjoyed wasting a couple of hours in the corner.

My favorite of all was In De Waag, a bistro and bar inside the last remaining gatehouse of the old city. This imposing brick pile was once the weighing house for goods, and later the site of the city’s executions. I had a bowl of spliter wtensoep, the traditional stick-to-your-gut pea soup with duck rillettes, washed down with two haze-reducing cappuccinos. Between bouts of reading the International Herald Tribune, I perused my e-mail and watched a Webcast of the surf at Pipeline in Hawaii from one of the café’s computers. The total of a bill is called a ‘rekening’. I smiled at the apocalyptic-sounding word for a tab so small.

Go ahead and make your pilgrimage to the Rijksmuseum to see Vermeer’s ‘The Kitchen Maid’. Take in ‘The Sunflowers’ and ‘Wheatfield With Crows’ at the Van Gogh Museum. Just save time for some of the smaller museums around town.

I enjoyed my visit to the Amsterdams Centrum voor Fotografie on a narrow street just off Dam Square. The collections change constantly at the modernist glass-and-steel show space. One day it may be large-format photos juxtaposing cuts of meat or raw animal parts with flowers. Another day it might feature military-installation still lifes from around Europe.

If there is a must-see museum in Amsterdam, it’s Anne Frank Huis, where the young Dutch Jewish girl wrote her famous diary while hiding from the Nazi occupiers during World War II. She and her family were turned in to the police and she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just two months before the war’s end. Her diary describing her hopes while hiding has become one of the most widely translated books in the world.

One of the great charms of Amsterdam – albeit a sometimes dangerous one – is the sea of bicyclists making their way around the city. People wheel wildly around the cobblestone and brick streets as if they are invincible. There’s no headgear, and even at night there are young men and women wearing black on bicycles without lights. Lights and reflectors are just one more thing to get ripped off – Amsterdam logs more than 100,000 stolen bicycles a year.

With bikes parked outside where they are pelted by inclement weather and preyed upon by thieves, there’s little incentive to ride a fancy 10-speed or gizmo-laden mountain bike. Most are your simple one-speed models that you brake by backpedaling – not very different from what most Amsterdamers’ ancestors would have ridden.

It’s possible to rent a bicycle and make your way around the city as locals do. Just be prepared for some kidney-jarring old streets and maniac wheelers – especially during the morning and evening rush hours – who will be more than happy to run you right off the road.

Until World War II, the Dutch ruled Indonesia, and one of the great treats of a trip to Amsterdam is to enjoy a rijsttafel – “rice table” – which is made up of up to two dozen small plates presented at the same time, including fried rice with pork called nasi goreng, and satay – skewers of chicken, pork and beef with peanut dipping sauce.

Beware the spicy sambal chili sauce. Two of the best places to experience the rijsttafel are Tempo Doeloe on Utrechtsestraat and Kantjil & De Tijger on Spuistraat.

For a more domesticated taste, try patat, the local version of what we call chips. The crisp, fresh, fried potato strands are only a distant culinary cousin to the greasy slabs served up in fast-food joints. They’re served from outdoor stands scattered all around town. One of the best is Vleminckx on Voetboogstraat. Locals have it with mayonnaise – so speak up when you order unless you want your order drowned in the white stuff.

There are a number of big baroque barracks on the main plazas and a few design-oriented boutique hotels like Blakes, the local branch of Anouska Hempel’s London-based temple of trendiness. But part of the charm of a stay in Amsterdam is cozying into a canal-side hotel that’s been sewn together from neighboring town houses.

I stayed at the Pulitzer Hotel, with its sparkling gold lights outlining the roofs of the 17th-century homes that form its facade. Though it’s affiliated with the Sheraton chain, there’s none of the artificial feel of a business hotel.

A perennial favorite among travelers is the Ambassade Hotel, a small hotel made from a string of canal houses not far from Spui Square. One that’s not in a lot of the guidebooks, but that I found charming, is Hotel van Onna, a nice canal-side budget hotel. The rooms are small and Spartan, but I loved its pretty Christmas ornamentation inside and out.

Another small hotel enjoying a lot of buzz these days is ‘t Hotel, an eight-room mansion turned hotel built in 1690 that houses its own antique shop. Rooms look out either on a canal or over the pretty gardens.

I’ve already got a list of what to explore next time. Yes, there will be a next time. First, a return in the spring – I’ll put up with the crowds to experience the flowers. I’ll wander the pretty Leidsegracht canal and go see the Poezenboot – a barge filled with cats – that’s moored on the Singel. I’ll drop into the Amsterdams Historisch Museum to see if it offers better insight into how the 17th-century stolid commercial town became the free wheeling place of today.

After so long avoiding Amsterdam, I want to go back. It doesn’t intrigue like Berlin or warm like Rome. It doesn’t have the treats of Paris or the ease of London. But it deserves better than the just-passing-through Brussels treatment.

SCIENCE: July 05, AU Edition

COPY CATS
Entrepreneurial American scientists are destined for the dog house, says Susanne Quick

It’s just another brown brick building in a suburban American business park. But Suite J at the Waunakee Business Center in Wisconsin is about to turn into the animal cloning debate’s ground zero. Genetic Savings & Clone Inc. – the entrepreneurial outfit that introduced the first cloned pet cat to the world in December – is opening its doors in this small Madison, Wis., suburb this month. The company’s CEO, Lou Hawthorne, has promised that by year’s end, a dog will be born here.
In the eight years since Dolly the Sheep’s birth was announced to the world, research into animal cloning has progressed in ways few dreamed possible a decade ago.

Scientists have now cloned barnyard animals and endangered species. They’ve created cloned cows from frozen steaks and cloned mice from cancer cells. They’ve talked about resurrecting extinct creatures such as woolly mammoths and Tasmanian tigers. And with the news on Thursday that soft tissue from dinosaurs had been discovered, re-creating these giant lizards does not seem so farfetched. Despite the scientific excitement, creativity and ingenuity that have inspired and driven this research, cloning remains uncomfortable – even freakish – for many people.

Who and what are the clones? Are they healthy animals or deformed monsters? How many animals are sacrificed in the pursuit of one healthy clone? And, in the end, what will it lead to?

As ethicists and scientists weigh the motivations for animal cloning – improving the food supply, fighting disease, saving endangered animals – the arguments for and against cloning mutate and evolve along with the research advances.

That debate is now moving to the backyard.

In December, Genetic Savings & Clone announced the birth of Little Nicky, the first cloned cat to be sold as a pet. The recipient, a Texas woman known only as Julie, paid $50,000 to have her beloved – but dead – kitty cloned. While some say she was swindled, Hawthorne believes she was given an incredible, if expensive, gift.

‘Our product is based on love’, Hawthorne said.

David Magnus, director of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics, scoffed at this claim. He said the high death rates and possible cruelty that go into cloning make Genetic Savings & Clone’s product anything but ‘loving’.

Also, he and other critics said consumers are being duped: The animals they think they are getting – their original pets – cannot be reproduced.

And finally, they think Genetic Savings & Clone’s product is grossly frivolous in light of the number of animals in shelters who need homes.

‘Everything about this is objectionable’, Magnus said.
But Autumn Fiester, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said there isn’t evidence to show that animals are suffering – at least any more than commercially bred dogs or cats.

She added that the claim that pet owners are being duped is condescending. As for the frivolous argument, she says, ‘Then you’re arguing against buying any luxury good.’ Among those involved in cloning, she is in the minority.

Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology – a Worcester, Mass., company at the forefront of cloning technology – called it ‘troubling.’

Rudolf Jaenisch, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, called pet cloning ‘ridiculous’ and ‘preposterous.’

Somatic cell nuclear transfer – the shop name for cloning – is conceptually a pretty easy process.

A cell – such as a skin cell – is taken from an adult animal. The nucleus, and the DNA it houses, is sucked out and placed next to an empty egg cell that’s had its nucleus removed. The new egg-nucleus combo is then jolted with electricity or bathed in a chemical cocktail.

‘What you want to do is basically trick the egg into thinking it’s been fertilized by a sperm’, said Neal First, a retired professor of animal sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the first researcher to clone cattle.

If all goes well, the duped egg starts to divide, eventually creating an incipient embryo, which researchers implant into a surrogate animal.

While this may sound pretty straightforward, it’s actually a messy, hit-or-miss process that yields few successful clones.

Depending on whom you talk to, the number of successful clones – i.e., those which survive beyond birth – can run as low as one-in-1,000 to as many as 15 percent.

Researchers believe this is the result of a host of molecular issues, some they can pinpoint, others they can’t.

The mystery is in the egg. ‘There are molecules in the egg that allow the DNA to reprogram’ and start anew so that it’s read as the blueprint for an embryo, not an old skin cell, Lanza said.

But what those molecules are and how they work remains elusive.
There is also an issue of extra DNA in the egg. Even though the egg’s nuclear DNA is removed, other genetic material remains floating around the egg cell in a form known as mitochondrial DNA.

No one knows for sure what effects this might have on a developing clone embryo, but it does mean that the clone, despite its name, is not an exact genetic duplicate of the donor. It has some other DNA that may or may not affect its development.

Then there’s the issue of imprinting. Mammals carry two copies of each gene: one set from their mother, the other from their father. But only one of these copies is active at any one time.

In a clone, ‘the normal battle between mom and dad’ is not taking place, Lanza said. The end result: critical messages from the genes are being lost during an embryo’s development, potentially leading to cardiac problems, respiratory ailments and ‘a messed up placenta.’
The hurdles don’t end here.

When DNA is in a quiescent state, it looks like spaghetti noodles with proteins attached to it. This means that when the skin cell DNA is sucked out, it’s carrying a lot of protein baggage. It is possible these proteins may get in the way of the egg-skin cell DNA fusion.
Researchers at Genetic Savings & Clone say they have solved this problem by using a new technique called chromatin transfer that cleans the DNA. The result, according to Hawthorne, is higher efficiency.
‘Our losses are well under 50 percent’, he said, adding that such losses are typical in commercial breeding.

Magnus and others question these claims; scientists at Genetic Savings & Clone have not published their results. But Jim Robl, president of a South Dakota biotech company called Hematech and one of the developers of chromatin transfer, said he, too, had gotten good results using this method to clone cows.

Yet, the battle over pet clones only partially hinges on technical and molecular hurdles.

These animals are behaviorally complex. They are not just products of a strict genetic blueprint, but of the multicolored and textured tapestry of their environment and experiences.

This means that a consumer who’s paying thousands of dollars in hopes of getting the same dog or cat will be getting an animal that behaves differently than the original. That, said Magnus, is ‘a rip-off.’
Finally, critics of pet cloning said there’s the issue of the millions of animals who don’t have homes that are living on the streets or housed in shelters.

Magnus and Spiegel-Miller believe Hawthorne’s business is minimizing the plight of these animals.

They charge that the money Hawthorne’s clients are willing to spend on a clone would be better used on these other animals, that Genetic Savings & Clone clients should head to a local shelter, pay $50 for a cat or dog that needs a home and donate the rest to the shelter.
That would be a more ethical way to spend their money, they say.
Fiester and Hawthorne dismiss the criticism as baseless.

‘Why should someone who loves their cat be more obligated
to donate money or help shelter animals than someone else?’ Fiester said.

He also threw back the notion that cloning for agricultural or medical purposes is somehow more ethical.

In the end, he said, the future of the pet cloning business will depend upon the quality of the product.

If Genetic Savings & Clone can create animals that pet owners are happy with – animals that aren’t sick or compromised and behave in ways similar to the original – the business will succeed, Hawthorne said.

His scientists also are looking into how to enhance pets and make them live longer and healthier.

‘Our clones will be better than normal,’ he said. ‘Clones are going to become the preferred pets.’

LINE ONE: Mar 05

CHRIS CARTER
A state-sponsored frontal lobotomy

How do you finally discover that you have crossed the threshold as it were and become, irrevocably, a grizzly old bastard? Could some of the signs, for instance, be somehow linked to the old chestnut theories that the Coppers now seem indecently young, that Americans rejoicing in names like Snoop Dogg, Eminem and the like who wail frequently obscene or incredibly violent doggerel to a sort of ghetto-like primeval beat is now akin to the prophesied effect that Rock and Roll would have on my generation, (a notably accurate prophesy when you come to think of it.) That women and wimps have taken over our world. That we now live in times where the number one objective of every good person must be, at all costs, to avoid ever letting a word or a phrase cross your lips that may give offense to a fellow human being, or for that matter any living thing that could be thought to have an IQ higher than that of a common amoeba.

Having studied at some length our society since the beginnings of the new millennium, the term dinosaur I have now discovered is no longer a strong enough description to accurately portray the likes of such as I.

Indeed so decrepit have become my mental processes and general inability to accept change, that together with my plainly unacceptable desire to hold on to such antediluvian principles regarding such matters as the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, truth versus lies etc, this should, without any doubt at all, make me an instant candidate for a state-sponsored frontal lobotomy. Worst of all, and this is a terrible admission to make I’m sure you will agree, I don’t personally give a big rat’s bottom as to either my supposed mental decay, current thought processes or – worse – frequently rabid utterances.

Since liberal socialism and all of its mind numbing, institutionalised gray-matter-destroying rubbish infiltrated our previously very well balanced and indeed pleasant little country, you may be absolutely assured that anything at all that you may say, do, or even think, will be contrary to this brave new world where euphemism, spin, and downright deception is not only the norm, but where advanced practitioners of these new age black arts are rewarded almost beyond measure.

Of course, should you retain, even after some years now of social re-engineering, some small vestige of morality, a lingering perception of what is genuinely right or wrong, even worse the temerity to voice in a public place an opinion or an idea based on these now officially discredited ageist/sexist/racist/homophobic/ etc thoughts or ideas, (and believe me such is the lexicon of the liberal abuse vocabulary that every time you say anything you will be bound to fall foul of one or perhaps all of these catch-all labels), then very quickly you will see the sense in simply joining the mainstream, saying nothing, and indeed most probably earning social promotion to the ranks of the “Metro sexual”, a term that as I understand it describes fairly accurately, anyone at all who has cast aside such unhealthy notions of being either male or female with a normally operating brain and adopting instead the thought patterns and world view probably best described as being that of an earthworm.

Having achieved, well certainly from our metro sexual politicians’ point of view in any case, this most desirous state of near social nirvana, we may then be almost completely relied upon to vote in the expected fashion, although should a last little nudge be required to maintain the sisterhood’s largely undeserved position of power and influence, then common voter bribery using the peoples’ own tax monies you can absolutely guarantee will retain St Helen’s place in this odd-ball political firmament. All of this, even as a self-confessed grizzly old social dinosaur, scares the hell out of me, not so much on my own behalf, but even casting my mind back just a couple of decades, this quickly accelerating decline in just about everything that we all once held to be an integral part of our national character appears to be all just going down the toilet, right under the very noses of people who, like me have had kids, yet appear to have no conception at all as to how we, as parents, should be guarding, if necessary with our very lives, what little that now remains untouched by a series of politicians, who if there was ever any justice at all, would be behind bars for the common good.

Good God, we voters really do have a lot to answer for do we not? In fact, I really do believe that before anyone is allowed to cast a vote at any upcoming elections that it should be made law that each individual voter should have to prove that they have spent at least several hours watching and listening to the people that collectively we have recently chosen to represent us.

It is fair to say that amongst the Members of Parliament there plainly are some good people, but sadly these folk are working in an environment that more commonly resembles a Victorian mad house. The standard of debate is at best puerile and frequently descends to a level where an onlooker might seriously believe that they had stumbled upon an episode of Animal House, where various wild-eyed actors are competing with one another to amuse the watching audience with feats of studied idiocy that – if not genetically based – at least call into severe question the current state of our mental health service.

Ever watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show? The parallels are “astounding,” from the Speaker playing the part of commentator, to the various MPs braying their own particular interpretations of everyone from Odjob to Frankenfurter. I tell you, rent and watch the movie, then sit down and watch Parliament in action, and I’ll guarantee you that apart from the sycophants in the Press Gallery, no one will ever take our current Parliament seriously, ever again.

Which point, one must observe, is in fact no laughing matter at all, because, quite plainly, it is from this appallingly dysfunctional organisation that the very laws that increasingly control our lives are formulated and then enacted, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why it is that the much better organised Government Departments have increasingly taken over the role of Ministers and the MPs by simply being forced to fill the vacuum that their supposed masters have provided by their collective ineptitude.

Our democracy now appears to have devolved to the point where Parliament simply applies itself to the task of prying enormous amounts of tax monies from the people at large, at which point unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats spend up large, usually in the time-honoured manner of increasing the size of their staff levels and therefore power structure, consolidating their increasing grip on the throats of the citizens that they are meant to serve and be working for.

Certainly we still have elections, indeed we all are looking forward to one at the end of this year, but have little doubt at all that when our votes have been cast, little of any worth will have changed, Justice, Health, Education, the Police and various other Departments and Ministries are now, quite clearly self-sufficient unelected entities and most certainly well beyond either censure or the control of the common herd, which I might add is self evident in the cavalier fashion in which they effectively carry on their own sweet ways regardless of which Government we choose to elect. All of which thoughts and observations I freely admit can only really come from a Grizzly old curmudgeon, the younger more liberal freethinkers amongst us continuing to largely believe that Democracy, like Freedom, is simply a word ... perhaps they are right.

TECHNOLOGY: July 05, AU Edition

IT’S A SMALL, SMALL WORLD
From cough syrups to eyeglasses for cows, Martha McKay takes a peek into a very tiny future

At the nanotechnology show in New York City recently, companies touted the state-of-the-art, from quantum dots to microscopes powerful enough to see atoms.And then there were two guys from Cleveland hawking cough syrup.If you follow the nanotechnology industry closely, this sort of thing isn’t surprising.

But if you don’t, such seemingly humdrum technology on display alongside the advances at the fourth annual NanoBusiness conference might seem unusual.

Spend time with nano-experts and one thing becomes clear: nanotechnology is more commonplace than you might think – from nano-engineered eyeglass coatings used on one in five pairs of eyeglasses, to sunscreens and stain-resistant fabrics.

One of the most hyped areas of technology since the Internet, nanotechno- logy is the study and engineering of really small things – particles and gizmos from 1 to 100 nanometres, or a billionth of a metre, in size to be specific. The paper you are reading this on is about 100,000 nanometres thick.

As you might expect, there are hundreds of ways of using nano-sized particles and devices, with new ideas popping up all the time.
The U.S. government will pour an estimated $1.3 billion into nano-based R&D with a particular emphasis on such areas as cancer research. Here in Australia, governments are putting up $100 million for domestic nanotechnology research this year.

Jeffrey M. Jaffe, president of research and advanced technologies for Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs, told conferees how telecommunications networks could be transformed by nano-sized devices. Tiny power supplies working together with nano-sized microphones, tiny sensors and video displays could one day give us a communications ‘wallpaper’.
Even the ability to have ‘several microphones inside a phone would be a tremendous (sound quality) improvement’, he said.

Out at the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium, university researchers have 60 to 80 nano-based projects under way.They include building a stress gauge to strap on the back of a fruit fly. The tiny device will enable scientists to tell if the drosophila is asleep (they don’t have eyelids, in case you wondered). Researchers, who
study fruit flies because they are well-suited to genetic studies, want to be able to test whether their modifications to the fruit fly’s sleeping patterns work.

They are also looking into ways to build an electronic nose that can smell, a real-time DNA analyzer, and what they call a ‘rubber mirror’, which would map the imperfections of your eye and allow the creation of perfect corrective lenses.

‘We could fit a cow with glasses’, says David Bishop, vice president of nanotech-nology research at the labs.

But along with purely scientific uses for nano-devices, many companies hope to turn a profit – the motivation behind Cleveland-based Five Star Technologies and its cough formula. Nano-emulsions and dispersions made using a patented technique called controlled-flow cavitation make the cough syrup adhere to the throat better.
Gerry Weimann, Five Star’s CEO, doesn’t think consumers really care about the ‘nano’ aspect of the syrup, which is made by another company called Improvita Health Products.

‘Most people are just looking for a good experience – not a lot of people wonder about the technology behind it’, says Weimann.

TRAVEL: Sep 05, AU Edition

SUBCONTINENTAL DRIFT
After a whirlwind trip through India’s sights, smells and sounds, Robert Cross vows to return

AIPUR, India – ‘I was told that the first thing you’ll notice is the smell,’ said my friend Dave with a faint leer. Just a friendly word of warning to get me going on the wrong foot.

My wife, Juju, and I had been hearing a lot of secondhand and even firsthand tidbits like Dave’s almost every time we told anyone about our travel plans. Visiting India? Get ready for a shock: Pollution. Dirt. Poverty. Stifling heat. Noise. Weird behaviour. Those odors.
I’m here to testify that any negatives were far outweighed by the beauty, culture, architectural grandeur and spirituality we were privileged to sample during a brief visit to a few cities in the north.

After we cleared the jetway in New Delhi at 5:30 a.m. on an autumn Saturday, the only smell came from the universal airport brew of electric-light ozone, air conditioning and passenger scents no different from those at Sydney or Heathrow.

Instead, the first thing we noticed was the wallpaper on immigration officers’ cubicles, a darling blue-and-pink-flowered pattern of the sort that might decorate a little girl’s nursery.

The officers’ faces remained properly stern, of course, and they worked deliberately. We heard a constant thumping of rubber stamps and piped-in native music that sounded like the whining of a thousand mosquitoes, and after about 45 minutes, a man in uniform summoned Juju and me to his posy-splashed quarters, examined our documents and pounded on them with his stamps.

Still no smell when we finally carted our luggage to the parking lot. Obviously, Dave had been misinformed.

Our driver, Remish, helped with the bags, and we set off on the five-hour drive to Jaipur and the beginning of our seven-day India adventure. Dawn greeted New Delhi with a gray haze of pollution, and my chest felt heavy. Our little white van seemed to be the only passenger vehicle on a highway filled with trucks and bicycles. Huge cows, some gray, others black, lolled on the median strip.

Those trucks provided some color in the otherwise drab outskirts of the big city. Each one had been professionally painted with garlands of flowers, soaring birds, cartoonish tigers, lovable bovines and complex geometric patterns. Some bore neatly scripted slogans on their sides, like ‘I Love My India’ or ‘The Great Indian Spirit’. On the rear end of each lorry, the artists had painted a fervent plea: ‘PLEASE HONK YOUR HORN’. Remish hit the horn incessantly, sticking to the right-hand lane and passing the endless parade of freighters – India is a left-hand-drive country – while deftly avoiding wayward bikes and meandering cows.

Two hours later, as we drove into the state of Rajasthan, the roadside scene abruptly changed. Our divided highway became a two-laner, adding to our excitement the real possibility of head-on collisions.

In downtown Jaipur, Juju and I felt as if we had been dropped into the middle of a Bollywood epic. Film buffs use the term to describe Bombay’s prolific movie industry, and here we had subcontinental action in three dimensions. We entered Jaipur during rush hour, so some of the streets leading to our hotel had been temporarily declared one-way in the wrong direction, apparently an effort – largely futile – to prevent gridlock. While Remish circled the city at a crawl, trying to find a route, we suddenly were interacting with the people. A few tapped on the windows to beg for money or sell us things. But most were in cars or riding mopeds – intent on honking their way through thickets of traffic, but still taking a moment to smile and wave at Juju’s video camera.

We found ourselves in the middle of an enchanting old city, alive with markets and the brilliant colors of the dresses and turbans worn by residents going about their business. Pedestrians skittered between vehicles, which slowed down only when a cow or two decided to lounge in the middle of the street.

Remish at last found the hotel entrance, a discrete opening in a wall and a long driveway leading to the magnificent, cream-colored Jai Mahal Palace. The 250-year-old building had once served as a palace for one of Jaipur’s many royals. Rajasthan has had a bewildering lineup of rulers and high-ranking court figures through its long history, and we soon lost track of the lineage, despite the best efforts of our local guides. But the maharajas sure had good taste in housing.

We felt entitled to a few hours of leisure. The lawns, pools and statuary of the Jai Mahal Palace invited meditation and brought a welcome element of tranquility to soften the jet lag. A pantalooned and turbaned house musician entertained two children with an old stringed instrument while they frolicked on the grass near a pavilion where we and a few other guests ate lunch. Juju and I still felt dragged down by travel overload. A visitor to India should schedule a day of retreat every so often to avoid becoming overwhelmed by exotica and to think about the meaning of it all. Our tight schedule denied us that luxury.

The next morning, our guide, who introduced himself as G.S. Arora, joined us and Remish in the van for a tour of Jaipur. His eyes sparkled mischievously behind his glasses. We would have other guides in the days ahead – a scholarly gentleman in Agra and at the Taj Mahal; a religion expert amid the Hindu temple carvings (some quite erotic) in Khajuraho; the harried scout who showed us the sights in Delhi.

Even so, Arora was the first, and this is a story about first impressions, so the task of satisfying our basic curiosity about the Indian way of doing things fell to him.

We headed for the heart of Old Jaipur, the walled and picturesque enclave known as the Pink City. Arora explained that in 1876 the reigning maharaja, Ram Singh, ordered all buildings near the palace painted pink to celebrate a state visit from the Prince of Wales, who later would ascend to the English throne as King Edward VII. ‘Pink is the color of warmth and welcome,’ Arora informed us, and pink the old city has remained. The buildings within the wall are repainted every couple of years. ‘People can use different shades of pink, but the basic color has to be pink,’ Arora said. ‘The authorities take care of the painting.’

We paused at Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, for what Arora termed ‘a Japanese stop.’ He said that meant a stop for photographs. Although Juju is Asian, she laughed at the stereotype, one that I thought the world and its technology had obliterated. For a second, the guide’s little joke made India seem even more deliciously anachronistic.

The Palace of the Winds was pink, naturally, a beautiful 204-year-old facade about 5 stories high and dotted with tiny windows. From rooms and balconies on the other side, ladies of the court at the adjoining City Palace could discreetly peek down at the street scene.

On Tripolia Bazaar and other streets of the Pink City, merchants with open-air shops were selling everything imaginable. Although we felt the urge to get out and look at the displays of produce, spices, clothing, tools, toys and all the rest, we had a schedule to meet.
Arora did pause long enough to point out a milk market, where farmers had lined up canisters containing the morning’s output from their goats, cows, sheep and buffaloes.

The guide called our attention to a potential customer dipping his hand into a can. ‘To make the milk more profitable, a lot of water is added to this milk’, Arora said. ‘When the buyer comes in, he will put his hand in the milk, shake it out, rub the milk on his fingertips and see how much fat is in it. So the more hands that go into this can of milk, the better the milk becomes because of this added flavor. Thankfully, this is not the milk supplied to your hotel.’

That led to the subject of cows. ‘Every morning people would milk their cows and then leave them in the street to be fed by people,’ he told us. ‘The cow being a sacred animal, every household would try to feed them. After eating, they stand in the middle of the road or sit in the middle of the road and chew cud. This is good, because it slows and controls the traffic. And the cows like it, because the fumes make them feel high. In India, every animal except the husband is sacred.’

‘How do the cows know how to get home?’ Juju asked.

‘They always know. They are like homing pigeons.’

At the Amber Palace, our next stop, we found it easy to avoid eye contact with the hawkers because the palace itself commanded our full attention. The pinkish-beige structure sprawls across the crest of an imposing, rocky hill about 7 miles north of Jaipur. Begun in 1592 and completed in 1639, it served for more than 100 years as the capital of Rajasthan. In 1727, the reigning maharaja, Jai Singh, moved the capital to Jaipur, but the royal family continues to take up residence in the Amber Palace from time to time, even though the government now owns it.

We decided to ride an elephant up the hill to the palace entrance, a popular if somewhat hokey way to get there. Jeeps were also available, and visitors can hike up the steep ramp if they wish. Juju and I climbed onto a little seat behind our elephant driver. It swayed and tilted, while the driver engaged in a long, loud argument with his supervisor. Evidently, the driver wanted two more passengers for his mount, because the seat can hold four. Juju said, ‘I don’t like this at all. It’s scary. I want to get off.’ But before we could figure out how to do that, the elephant started up the ramp.

Arora, not being a tourist, preferred the Jeep. He met us in the palace courtyard, which was crowded with visitors and the elephants they came in on. He showed us around the wonderfully carved and pearl-inlaid areas where rulers held their audiences. We peeked into the artistically decorated private chambers that housed the maharajas and their concubines. A sandstone garrison stood grimly at a higher level, and both buildings spread their ramparts far along the mountainside like a truncated version of China’s Great Wall. Such a display of power and wealth must have intimidated enemies and subjects alike.

In the days that followed, we moved on to Agra and India’s absolute must-see, the Taj Mahal. After taking in the sights of Agra, we flew to Khajuraho, a relatively tranquil village famous for its beautiful Hindu temples dating back to the Chandela dynasty, which ruled for 500 years until overrun by the Moguls early in the 16th Century. The structures were a pleasant contrast to the palaces, tombs, fortifications and congestion of Rajasthan and Agra. We beheld an array of temple towers surrounded by lawns laced with uncrowded pathways.

Our guide that afternoon introduced himself as Mr. Singh. Immediately, he began to explain at great length the Hindu religion and how the carvings on those temples – built within a 100-year period, starting in AD 950 – illustrated the complexities of Hinduism and honored its divinities in all of their forms. He said the towers had been constructed in this out-of-the-way place to protect the sandstone images from frequent rains and floods that hit the Chandela capitals.
The masterful carvings encircled the towers in rows all the way to the top. They depicted gods and goddesses, of course, but also aspects of everyday life. Animals hauled farm goods, musicians played, soldiers fought, hunters stalked, and beautiful, exaggeratedly proportioned female dancers swayed. Animals both real and figments of artisans’ imaginations cavorted – leopards, elephants, horses, boars and combinations thereof.

Most famously, human couples were shown locked in carnal embrace, striking many of the positions detailed in the Kama Sutra.
‘You know about yoga?’ Mr. Singh asked. ‘There are a hundred kinds of yoga These are the way to reach the ultimate goal of life that is the next incarnation. These poses are a part of it, specific positions. Even sex could be a part of yoga.’

We were still pondering the complexities of the Hindu religion that night, as we dined at the rooftop Blue Sky Restaurant. Below us, merchants sold souvenirs, fabrics, saris, books and miniature copies of temple carvings. Across the street, the actual temples glowed with golden light and a voice boomed in Hindi – a sound and light show. We filled up on helpings of a dish very much like fried rice but punctuated with masala, a mixture of spices that provided a delicious mosaic of flavors.

Up there on the Blue Sky, we met a young couple from France who had been traveling through India for several weeks. They described wonders we would miss, experiences we wouldn’t have. At least not now. They were merchants, buying materials for their shop in Brittany. ‘We did make a short visit one time’, the man said, ‘and it was very difficult and frustrating. Doing it this way can still be difficult and sometimes frustrating, but there is so much to see.’

Intrepid INDIA

Classic Rajasthan
15 days, ex Delhi
Trip Style: Intrepid Original
Highlights: Delhi, Taj Mahal, Ranthambhore National Park, Pushkar camel safari, Keoladeo Bird Park, Jaipur, castles
Brief: Rajasthan is home to all the colours of India. On our classic Rajasthan adventure we discover hidden forts, majestic palaces, colourful bazaars and of course enjoy a camel safari. This is the essence of Rajasthan.
Departure: Departs every Sunday from September to April and selected dates in July and August.
Price: AU$1020, plus Local Payment of US$200 per
person

Unforgettable India
15 days, ex Delhi
Trip Style: Intrepid Original
Highlights: Delhi, Khajuraho’s erotic temples, the River Ganges, Orchha, Chitrakoot, markets, Varanasi, Taj Mahal
Brief: India is vibrant, intoxicating, inspiring, dramatic and above all, unforgettable. From the Mughal splendour of Delhi and Agra, to the reminders of the Hindu epics in Chitrakoot and memories of prehistoric man in Chanderi, this trip offers it all. Join pilgrims as they undertake their daily rituals on the banks of the Great Mother Ganges.
Departure: Departs every Saturday from September
to April.
Price: AU$920, plus Local Payment of US$200 per person

India Unplugged
22 days Delhi to Kolkata
Trip Style: Intrepid Basix
Highlights: Delhi, Taj Mahal, desert scenery, towns lost in time, palaces, Kolkata
Brief: Chaotic and inspiring, this is the real India. India Unplugged is a far-flung adventure to one of the planet’s most exotic destinations. See towering fortresses and holy rivers, cosy up with camels, try your hand bargaining in bazaars and still have time to check out the Taj Mahal.
Departure: Departs on a Sunday.
Price: AU$1080, plus Local Payment of US$150 per person

India Family Adventure
15 days, ex Delhi
Trip Style: Intrepid Family
Highlights: Delhi, Taj Mahal, Ranthambhore National Park, Bundi, Pushkar, camel safari, Jaipur
Brief: Come and meet India’s people and let them show you their homeland. This itinerary is designed for adults and children alike. Explore some of India’s most famous sights and experience an overnight camel trip into the desert, seek wildlife at Ranthambhore and learn local crafts around Jaipur.
Departure: Departs on a Saturday.
Price: AU$1270, plus Local Payment of US$200 per person
For more information on traveling in India with Intrepid Travel, please visit www.intrepidtravel.com, free call 1300 360 887 or come and see us at 360 Bourke Street, Melbourne.

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

Best time of year to travel? India’s climate varies enormously from region to region and from season to season. While southern India basks in a reasonably constant tropical climate, the temperatures in the Rajasthan desert can vary from 50 degrees Celsius in July to 0 degrees Celsius at night in January. Monsoons bring torrential rain to most areas between June and August.
Religion: 81% Hindu, 12% Muslim, 2% Christian, 2% Sikh, 3% other
Language: Hindi (official) plus 12 other official languages and over 1600 dialects
Currency: Rupee (INR)
Visas: India does not offer visas on arrival - they must be applied for prior to travel. Conditions vary with country of origin and they usually take 1-2 weeks to process. In Australia, most travellers will apply for a 6 month multiple entry visa.
Electricity: 220-240V, 50 Hz
Times to avoid: Because climate changes so much within India, times to avoid certain areas will vary according to season. In addition, India is a land of festivals – best to check whether there is a festival going on in the area you want to travel to and book well in advance!