Dear President Obama....

I was one of the many people who felt that the world had become a slightly better place when you were elected President of the USA.  I didn't forget the betrayals of Blair's Labour government in the UK after 14 years of divisive and destructive Thatcherism. Nor did I forget the betrayal of everything the Labour Party had stood for when the Lange government was swept to power in New Zealand in 1984, and Roger Douglas ushered in the 29 years of neo-liberalism that has divided the country of my birth to an extent unknown in my lifetime. But I still hoped you would be different. 

I know that your background, education and profession make you as distant from the lives and concerns of the mass of American poor and the struggling "middle classes" as George Bush Jnr was, but the emblematic power of your election was enormous. It had profound symbolic meaning, not just to Americans of colour and  to progressive white Americans, but to the whole world – just as it was known it would by the powerful people who backed you.

Sensible people knew that your candidacy was calculated to divert the growing anger of those people whose American Dream has been shattered, but many of us still hoped that you might somehow break your corporate shackles and act to control the destructive forces that dominate American government.  Many people – and not just Americans – desperately want to believe that American democracy and decency exists – that it has just lost its way and is waiting to be liberated. 

It's a hard thing for people reared on the myth of American exceptionalism to confront the fact that most people in the world regard America – not with affection, respect, or approval – but with varying degrees of fear and loathing.  Most see the USA, not as a mature, even-handed, progressive force for good in the world, but the absolute opposite, a country that acts like a paranoid adolescent with a narcissistic personality disorder who has control of a vast arsenal of weapons. How could any rational person not be frightened of such a country?

When intelligent Americans answer the question "why is America the best country in the world'" by listing the many reasons why it is not - they have to add the rider, "but it could be". They have to do that because so many (maybe most) Americans are incapable of facing the truth – that their country has grown powerful by behaving like a psychopathic bully, stamping its illegal authority all over the world to extend and defend its global interests. 

A large proportion of  Americans, by virtue of their narrow education and a politically compliant and vacuous media, are insular, superstition-ridden, and parochial. Through their votes and their inaction, those Americans have not only allowed their government to become the world's bad cop –  on occasion they have demanded it. Most Americans did not care about the USA's carpet bombing of Japanese cities with incendiary bombs, or dropping two nuclear bombs on non-military cities even when the scale of civilian deaths and injuries was made public. Most didn't care about their military raping women and massacring innocents in Vietnam, or the fact that the USA dropped more bombs on that country than had been used in WW2.  A large number feel nothing but pride that no country in history has dropped more bombs on civilian targets than the USA did during WW2 and since.

An outcome of this mindset is that the scales of natural justice for Americans are heavily weighted in their favour. Just under 3000 people (12% of whom were not Americans) died in the September 11th attacks. It was a tragedy, and no person of conscience can defend attacks on non-combatants – whatever the cause is – but, the illegal attacks on Iraq by the USA and its Coalition partners killed twice that number in the two weeks of the USA's "Shock and Awe'" bombardment. Economic sanctions prior to invasion, and the ongoing hostilities since the invasion have killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. Hundreds of thousands have died in Afghanistan and in Libya.

In Syria, 100,000 have already died. And you want to add to that – to appease the Ranting Right whose sole measure of America's "greatness" seems to be the numbers of "enemies" it has killed.

The current tub-thumping and handwringing by politicians and compliant media over the use of chemical weapons in Syria is the grossest hypocrisy. America stockpiled vast quantities of chemical weapons during WW1 and in 1918 prevailed on the British and French to drop them on German cities – having first whipped up extreme anti-German feeling in the USA. Only the wind direction prevented America becoming the first country to use chemical weapons against civilians. The USA has never got rid of its stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. Why would it keep them unless it either had the intention of using them, or wanted the implied threat that it would use them?

That aside, what was the76,000,000 litres of dioxin contaminated herbicide that was sprayed on farm land and forest in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, if not chemical warfare? An estimated 400,000 people died and 500,000 children have birth defects as a result of its use – numbers that are cynically rejected by the Americans as "unrealistic". Attempts by Vietnamese victims to get compensation have been disdainfully dismissed by the US Judiciary.  The budget to clean up contaminated ex-US military bases is insultingly low in light of the profits being made by the principal manufacturers of Agent Orange, Dow and Monsanto – and even more so in light of the fact that the USA spends about $1.3 trillion dollars every year on "defence" of its global empire. 

Is death by a nerve agent any more horrible than death by bombs containing white phosphorus and petroleum jelly? 

Most Americans neither know nor care about the role their country played in the slaughter of 1.5 million Indonesian communists and socialists by the military and political Islam after the overthrow of Sukarno. That was the first cynical use of political Islam as a reactionary force, and it was so successful it was used again in Afghanistan to suck the USSR into an unwinnable war. The USA has funded, armed and encouraged political Islam, overtly and covertly, and as certain Islamic adherents have been driven into being more and more fundamentalist and reactionary, the monster America created destabilises countries and is the raison d'être for the so-called "war on terror'".

The list of the USA's war crimes and its internal repression exceeds that of many of the regimes it attacks. The use of torture, kidnapping, spying on its own and others' citizens, the illegality and inhumanity of Guantanamo – are matched by the appalling incarceration rates of American citizens, grossly disproportionate numbers of whom are poor and people of colour. 

From a George Bush or a Ronald Reagan we expect nothing better but you were supposed to be different. I know it's silly we should have expected that you, simply because your father happened to be Kenyan, would be the president of the USA the bulk of the world's population longs for.  And despite all your betrayals of the trust that was placed in you, I suspect most of us still feel more sadness than anger, even though your betrayal is arguably worse than the likes of Clinton, Carter and Kennedy. We expected nothing better from the likes of Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and the Bush dynasty – but we did of you. 

Peter Holdem's latest Parole hearing

I wrote an article some time back about Peter Holdem – that most unsympathetic of offenders – a compulsive paedophile and convicted child killer. 

Holdem was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1986 abduction and murder of 6-year-old Louisa Damodram. In 2007, the Parole Board took the unusual action of cancelling his parole hearings for 3 years. That was after a high profile media campaign by The Christchurch Star under the leadership of editor Barry Clark, who interviewed the emotionally fragile and still grieving mother of the victim, and organised a petition calling for Holdem to be be kept in prison.

In 2010, the Board denied parole, and in 2011, it imposed another 2 year postponement.

In 2012,  Nigel Latta included Holdem in his Beyond the Darklands television series and ended the episode with a powerfully worded statement that, in his (professional) opinion, Holdem should never be released.

Holdem's 2013 parole hearing came and went without any prior media comment that I was aware of, and there was a fairly muted response to the further denial of parole. In its report The NZ Herald repeated the inaccurate claim that, when Holdem murdered Louisa Damodran, he had just been released after the abduction and attempted murder of a 10 year-old girl. He was actually charged with attempted rape.

The Parole Board based its decision on a psychological report in February 2013, which described Holdem as "predatory and opportunistic" and "ingratiating" towards authority figures. In addition, it was said that, despite Holdem's claim not to be interested in women or girls, "images of scantily clad females" were found in his cell.  Holdem claimed they had been planted there but the Board did not believe him.  One of the other observations made by the Parole Board was that Holdem has no support network in the community – which is hardly surprising.

The conclusion of the professionals is that rehabilitative programmes at the prison are of no further use; in other words Holdem is  - using Latta's word - "unredeemable".

They may well be right, and who would want to take a chance on a compulsive paedophile and convicted child murderer, of whom Latta, a person of considerable influence, has said:

"I have never come across an offender that I am so unreservedly convinced will reoffend.' ...  'He (Holdem) ‘cannot be rehabilitated, not now, not ever; there are no psychological therapies that can change what this man is and no medications that can control him."

In my opinion, the BTD episode on Holdem was appalling in respect of its errors, bias and sensationalism. I had intended to register a complaint with the Broadcast Standards Authority but for various reasons I didn't. However, I did contact the Parole Board to register my disquiet. I sent my notes to Holdem's solicitor, Mr Vigor-Brown, and I phoned his office on several occasions to ask to speak to him. I got no response from him or even an acknowledgement that he had received the notes.

I had discussions with the Sunday Star Time's crime reporter about collaborating on an article, which did not eventuate, and I have had no reply to a subsequent email. I spoke to the acting editor at The Press who was not interested in the story; he said it was unlikely they would run anything about Holdem until nearer to the Parole hearing.

After several months of sending emails and leaving messages, I finally spoke to Barry Clark about his reasons for using the Christchurch Star to run the 2007 campaign. He claimed it was because it was a "community issue" but he was not willing to discuss the issues in any depth so I have not been able to establish who initiated the campaign. 

Nor do I know who approached who for the Radio New Zealand interview in 2011, but the common denominator is Mel Griebel.

It was clear from Ingrid Leary's email to people whose names she pulled off the Old Friends website, that Griebel was heavily involved in the BTD programme.

Griebel claimed in the email to his contacts which Leary used, that Nigel Latta's mind was already made up. Certainly the impression I gained was that they were looking for information which would confirm the conclusions Latta had already arrived at.

Nigel Latta's strongly worded and unconditional pronouncements about Holdem at the end of the BTD episode stood in stark contrast to the sort of information he appeared to have at his disposal i.e. what is in the public domain, and anecdotal evidence from people who knew Holdem at various points in his life all of which was from at least 26 years, and as much as 56 years, prior to the making of the programme.

The in-depth clinical information that should support such a powerfully worded conclusion could only come from careful analysis of police and court records and from Holdem's personal records. The latter can only be accessed by people who are professionally involved with Holdem, or who have his permission.

If an expert had legitimate access to that sort of information, why wouldn't s/he mention that in the programme given it would add immeasurably to the weight that could be given to any conclusions?

If an expert had access to personal information which was given without a person's permission, it could be illegal and certainly would be grossly unethical. 

Griebel has claimed publicly that Department of Corrections staff keep him up to date on Holdem. If true, and in light of Griebel's involvement in the moves to keep Holdem imprisoned, that would surely constitute a serious breach of professional standards.

The political dimension of the BTD programme was as obvious as its sensationalism. A group of people took it upon themselves to use the popular media to influence the judicial process and were confident enough to state their agenda openly.

Do they all have the same motives?

Nigel Latta is selling a commodity, but what about Mel Griebel?  It seems fair to say that Griebel is obsessed with Holdem. His overt and covert statements about what Holdem deserves as punishment, and his statements that Holdem is "evil" indicate that this is a deeply personal issue for him.

It's apparent from things Griebel has said publicly, that the original investigation was flawed. The areas of concern that we know about – persuading Holdem's girl friend that he was guilty and using her in the interrogation to force a confession, taking Holdem and her to the river, keeping Holdem in a motel room overnight without having sufficient evidence to charge him – are bad enough to ask if there were other examples of poor practice. That question must be asked, however horrible the crime was.

It would be easy to let Peter Holdem rot in prison, and it may well be that, despite his sloppy research and populism, Latta's conclusion is right and Holdem does pose such a severe risk to young girls that  he must remain incarcerated for the rest of his life.

There are people who deserve to be in prison who are not; there are people who have been held in prison for decades who are known to be innocent; there are cases of people having been sent to prison after evidence was planted by the police or as a result of poor practice.

Something is not right in this story – and the fact that Peter Holdem is a deeply flawed and possibly dangerous man who has been convicted of an appalling crime does not give the law and order brigade the right to distort the truth and manipulate the system.

Feed lots - and lots and lots

Cattle feedlots are abominations and to argue that they produce meat in a "stress-free" environment is a whopping great lie.

The largest feedlot in New Zealand is the 5 Star feedlot at Wakanui in Ashburton which holds up to 15,000 head of cattle at a time. It is part-owned by a Japanese company and exists to produce the marbled beef some Japanese prefer. I say "some" because the eating of fatty meat is an affectation completely at variance with traditional Japanese diet. They acquired it from the Americans – and we have heaps of evidence wobbling around the world of what adherence to US dietary principles and practices results in.

If you want to see Wakanui – you can find it on Google maps.

Animals are brought into the lot at between 14 and 18 months old and stay for for about 8 to 9 months being fed a grain diet to force weight gain. They will double their weight in their time there which is a bit akin to stuffing geese with grain to create pate de foie gras.

A cow's life span is a bit hard to judge because we seldom let them live out their natural lives but we know that its life expectancy, like race horses, is far shorter than its life span. The oldest known cow was 48 at death and ages of 40 are not uncommon. Average life span is reckoned to be around 25 – 35 years. A dairy cow is considered old at about 9.

A cattle beast naturally matures at 4 to 7 years. Old style beef farming let the animal grow to maturity and hung the meat for up to 4 weeks before consumption. Old style beef is a dark brownish meat, completely unlike the bright red, blood and water rich meat from the recently slaughtered immature animals we see in the supermarket. 

In some respects the Angus beef cattle that end up in the feedlot are better off than many. They live out on grass until they are old enough and big enough to survive the feedlot.  

And these Kiwi cattle are not in such dire straits as those that end up in US feedlots but, confining cattle in barren lots and force feeding them an unnatural (albeit tasty) diet, is hardly designed to ensure healthy, unstressed animals.

In the US feedlots, animals are fed antibiotics prophylactically to counter the inevitable infections – necessary because of the suppression of the immune system by persistently high cortisol levels. I don't know if that is the case in NZ.

The grain diet changes the pH of the rumen and causes liver damage – it is an uncomfortable fact that these animals could not survive in the feedlot for much longer than they are there. The greater acidity of the rumen means that the animals suffer damage to the digestive tract but also that they carry pathogens which would normally be killed by our high acid stomachs. The way restaurants typically cook feedlot beef is very rare, so the chances of being exposed to acid resistant pathogens from faecal contamination is high. We are not at the stage of the US feedlots which irradiate the meat to kill pathogens, and I imagine that the killing room at Wakanui is very clean so maybe faceal contamination is not so much of an issue. And frankly, if people who want to eat feedlot meat get salmonella poisoning as a result, I don't much care.

I make no apology for the fact that I find these arrangements to be abominable. I abhor industrialised farming of any sort, and it is a lie that it is the only way we can feed people.

Its greatest efficiency is in making money, and its social costs are vast. Typically, the social costs are never borne by those who make the money in the short and medium term. These are long term costs and we bear them – that's all of us.  And that's just the monetary costs – there are other less easily quantified costs. the discussion of which is drowned in the loud demands for short term economic gain.

Unsustainable intensive farming is a form of extractive industry – and unfortunately we have a government which lacks the vision to see beyond short term profits for the few to the long terms costs to the majority.

The poor lack intelligent focus on lifestyle ... yeah right

Is there something in the air that is affecting those with larger than average amygdalas? 

Not too long ago we had the New Zealand First MP with the enticingly rhymable name displaying his ignorance and somehow managing to combine extreme pettiness and petty extremism. He got a bit of a drubbing as a result from both sides of the political spectrum. Things have gone very quiet on the Prosser front which is fortunate as there is only so much right wing smugness I can stomach.

And then there's Canterbury's very own, Lorne Keuhn, correspondent extraordinaire and self-appointed PR man for the good old USofA, who regularly trots out his theory that poverty is the fault of the poor. 

But of course it is. Just as we all know that the world is completely flat, we all know that if the overwhelming majority of the world’s population subsist in states of poverty, it is because they "lack intelligent focus" on their lifestyle. 

Kuehn entertained us with his theories after conducting a study in India as a result of which this alpaca farmer became  an expert on absolute poverty as opposed to the relative poverty we see in  NZ. He offers no explanation of, or solution to the former but proclaims grandly that child poverty in NZ is due to the parents lacking intelligent focus. Ie they are feckless and spend their perfectly adequate incomes on things like fags, booze and gambling. 

In this he is supported by a majority of NZers. In the infamous Yahoo!NZ (such an apt name) on-line news poll, a question about whether welfare reforms were too harsh met with a 75% NO vote. You could almost smell the self-righteousness. 

A disturbingly high proportion of Kiwis like bashing beneficiaries, aka "bludgers". It could become the national sport.   

It is a peculiarly repulsive form of bullying. It's the same mindset that concludes an armed vigilante who decides to pursue an unarmed teenager against the express advice of the police, confronts him and then shoots him dead, is the victim. It's the same mindset that then slanders the dead teenager -– making him the author of his own demise. And it's the same mindset that results in legislation which forces a judge to send a woman to prison for TWENTY years for NOT SHOOTING someone.

How can anyone not see the madness in that? 

We live in a world teetering on the brink of global war and global ecological disaster. The asylum is under the complete control of the lunatics – for the most part, mad old men – aided and abetted by a bigger bunch of mad younger men – and increasingly - women. 

• 1 billion children are deprived of one or more services essential to survival and development
• 148 million under 5s in developing regions are underweight for their age
• 101 million children are not attending primary school, with more girls than boys missing out
• 22 million infants are not protected from diseases by routine immunization
• 7.6 million children worldwide died before their 5th birthday in 2010
• 4 million newborns worldwide are dying in the first month of life
• 2 million children under 15 are living with HIV
• 500,000 women die each year from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth

And the USA spends a third of its VAST budget on its military. The world's economy is totally dependent on the new arms race; the US has exhausted its replacement 'enemy without' – Islamic terrorism (which if course it created and armed) – with its new 'enemy', China. The ruling elites in the US and its close allies created the arms race and continue to fuel it.

If there are any "useless eaters" in this world it is the mad old men and their retinues who control and waste so much of the world's resources.  It's beyond time to wake up to it and realise the role that the obscenely rich play in the creation and perpetuation of poverty instead of taking the easy, bullying, line of stereotyping and scapegoating the poor.

The Twin Evils ....

A while back I wrote a tongue in cheek piece (link below) based on the genre of "red-neck" jokes that are popular in the USA :  "you know you are a redneck if…"  your gene pool has no deep end;  you moved house because you heard that most accidents happen at home; you stare at the orange juice container because it says ‘concentrate’ on the label.  You get the drift.

Some of the redneck jokes are very witty but I’m uncomfortable with jokes about any group of relatively powerless people like the poor whites who are being stereotyped. US author Joe Baigent wrote about the iniquity of it being socially acceptable to insult and make jokes about the white rural / small town poor, which, if the same things were said about people of colour would cause outrage.  

He’s right of course, so, no redneck jokes. But jokes about politics are a different matter so I changed the genre to "you know you are extremely right-wing if …."  I could have titled it "you know you have a big amygdala if …." because studies have shown that conservatives respond to threatening situations with more aggression than liberals and this cognitive difference is reflected in differences in brain structure.

Put simply, conservatives get angrier when they feel threatened and they have a bigger amygdala, while liberals are more open to change and have a larger anterior cingulate cortex. Quite what causes what is not known but, from a lay person’s perspective it is very amusing and supports my contention that, if the Right can have its Loony Left / PC Brigade as a political scapegoat, natural justice demands there should be its opposite - the Raving Right and its storm troopers, the Amygdala Brigade.

One of my "you know you are extremely right-wing if…" jokes was about the tendency of angry right-wing people to use hyphenated phrases, especially insults, so I was tickled pinker to read Phillip Mathews’ piece in The Christchurch Press about Richard Prosser MP – who has positioned himself as a spokesman for the "libertarian, go-getting, genuine freedom-loving" folk of NZ.

I use the term spokesman because Prosser is very proud of his masculinity and states proudly and publicly that he "possesses gonads". So do green-lipped musssels – and all complex life forms for that matter – so quite why he thinks that makes him exceptional is anyone’s guess.  Maybe it's because he likes to present himself as a "man’s man", the sort who made NZ what it is – or was, before politicians let Māori think they had rights, and allowed immigration from places other than the white bits of the world.

In keeping with Raving Right traditions, Prosser refers to namby-pamby, thumb-sucking, hand-wringing (presumably not both at the same time) fantasy-land morons, and has probably used other RR terms like feral-feminist, tree-hugger, bleeding-heart, do-gooder, loony–left, touchy-feely, wishy-washy etc.

All that is legitimate, if not very intelligent, political comment –  but what sparked off a ferocious storm of recrimination from both sides of the political spectrum was Gonad-man’s call for people who look like Muslims to be banned from flying, and his references to Islam as a "troglodyte religion",and to "Wogistan". 

This resulted in the – getting larger and more florid by the day – MP having to meet with leaders of the Muslim community to apologise for his remarks. I wondered if there were any women in the group of twelve community leaders and if not, given Prosser’s claim to be a champion of women’s rights, did he comment on that? Probably not – and there’s the big problem with writing that sort of tub-thumping, amygdala-stimulating stuff – you simply cannot then engage in a reasoned debate on issues like gender equality. 

Prosser also made a reference to "the twin evils of diversity and multiculturalism", which he sees as being responsible for the "enemy" being "within". To me this was a far more worrying and sinister statement than the petulant nonsense that has been given so much media coverage.

This reference to "the twin evils" reminded me of something written by Ilana Mercer, a South African, post-majority rule émigré to the USA. In a blog bemoaning majority rule in South Africa, she referred to the disappearance of what she calls "English niceties; mannerisms that English speaking people have" which are "disappearing in America ….due largely to the twin evils of multiculturalism and mass immigration."

Given Mercer is the daughter of Jewish Russians who fled the Soviet Union to settle in South Africa, plus the historical facts that mass immigration formed American culture and there are millions of Americans for whom English was/is not their mother tongue, "English niceties" seem a strange thing to be pining for.

Apropos of nothing very much other than it made me laugh - Mercer is described as a "paleolibertarian" author and blogger.  On her website she publishes "raves and reviews" of her writing, one of which was from one Nicki Fellenzer, who is the "national spokesperson" of an organisation intriguingly named Armed Females of America. 

The para-military connotations of the organisation aside, why not "armed women"? And why "spokesperson"? Isn’t that a bit contradictory? 

I'm quite diverted by the idea of Ilana Mercer as Richard Prosser’s political muse – and he has made reference in one of his columns to the "fading of the SA we knew into the twilight of civilisation" and to (white) South Africans and Rhodesians (sic) being NZ’s "closest cousins". 

But, being diverted quickly led to feeling nauseous as I considered the fact that this latest example of foot-in-mouth disease joins the other internationally known examples of Kiwi Kommentator gaucheness such as Paul Holmes’ "cheeky darkie", Tony Veitch’s description of Serena Williams as proof that humans are descended from apes, and Paul Henry’s many and varied examples of crass bigotry.

Given Holmes’ knighthood and post-mortem veneration, Veitch’s reinvention as a radio commentator worthy of PM John Key's patronage, and Henry’s re-employment in Australian media, can one assume that Prosser will be rewarded eventually for "just saying what a lot of people think"?

What Prosser said is arguably no worse than Veitch’s or Henry’s oafish comments, or Holmes’ gaffe, given his status as a leading broadcaster, but it was judged by almost everyone to have gone too far beyond the political pale.

In fact what was so remarkable about this is not that Prosser said what he said, but that it attracted such universal opprobrium. We seldom hear such outrage from politicians across the spectrum, with conservatives vying with liberals to prove who were the most disgusted. Even the shrill voices of the Amygdala Brigade were silenced although Prosser claims equal numbers expressed approval and disapproval to him privately.

I wonder how many of the people who Prosser offended sent him emails like the ones that academic Margarat Mutu received after a Sunday Star Times article distorted her response to a survey on immigration? Did they email Prosser the ethnic equivalent of “Lol u black nigga if the white man hadn’t come, u would still be eating each other and living in huts you maori nigga c…ts “

Did Prosser find himself attacked viciously and personally on the internet by those he offended in the way that Professor Mary Beard was after she made a mild liberal comment about immigration on Question Time in the UK recently?  

Prof Beard was shocked and upset by the torrent of misogynistic abuse that spilled out on the internet – at the centre of which was a website called Don’t Get Me Started, owned by a male (I cannot bring myself to call him a ‘man’) by the name of Richard White.  DGMS was a forum where members were encouraged to say what they think on any topic and to be as abusive as possible. What its members thought about Mary Beard was largely unprintable but, before we feel too superior, the same sort of splenetic, hate-full things were written here about Helen Clark.

The males who wrote in about Beard weren’t interested in a reasoned debate over the merits of her views – they got off on competing with each other over who could post the most vicious, personalised, misogynistic and cruel comments about her appearance. But they picked on the wrong woman. She went to the media and turned the spotlight back onto the poisonous little turds.  The site’s owner was outed, and, deprived of internet anonymity, he closed the site.  Way to go, Mary!

When Prosser writes about the ‘twin evils of multiculturalism and diversity’ creating an enemy within, he is using Amygdala Brigade code for people of colour. He is drawing on negative sterotypes; demonising whole sections of society and in essence, dehumanising them.  It is an old, ugly and ignoble political tactic and he needs to be ashamed of himself – the more so because he chose to keep writing this tub-thumping racist propaganda after being elected as an MP.

When Prosser refers to Islam’s oppression of women he is appealing to a political mindset that is itself steeped in misogyny. The fact that many of the men who indulge in this rancorous behaviour do so as a compensation for their own impotence and powerlessness makes their conduct no less harmful and hurtful.

But, dislike them as much as I do, I reserve most of my condemnation for the men and women with power who cynically use the impotent rage of the powerless as a weapon against other powerless people. Their's is the far greater offence.

How are the mighty fallen ..

A sports writer for Yahoo!NZ, writing under the pseudonym of The Man in the Stands, joined the feeding frenzy around Lance Armstrong’s professional corpse. 

In a piece that, even by Yahoo!NZ standards, was remarkable for its emotive hyperbole, the writer expressed his disgust, shock, horror and revulsion at the – cowardly, cold-blooded, lying, deceiving, stealing, swindling, pilfering, cheating, con artist, ragbag, scumbag, monster. 

All that in a 440-word blog,

Unlike a lot of people who are queuing up to kick his corpse, I’ve never had a lot of time for Armstrong, but I refuse to join the likes of TMITS in baying for what they call "'justice"– but which, in truth, is vengeance. They want to see Armstrong suffer, and they justify that by claiming that they feel sympathy for his "victims" and outrage at his dishonesty. The truth is they’re full of anger, which prevents them from thinking and creates the potential for them to behave as badly as the object of their ire has done.

Armstrong’s offending is not unique; it’s not even unusual. He's the product of the confluence of massive corporate sponsorship of cycling (which started with American cyclist, Greg LeMond) and European cycling organisations that wanted to break into the rich US market. 

Armstrong was in the first-class carriage of a fast moving gravy train but he wasn’t the driver and he didn’t own the locomotive. He was able to do what he did because his corporate sponsors and sports officials turned a blind eye to what was going on, and they did so because his high-profile success was making them a load of money.

Nor is road cycling the only corporate-funded gravy train in professional sport, and it’s far from being the richest. You have only to look at golf, tennis, football and basketball to see that Armstrong’s wealth and his attitudes are anything but unusual.

Armstrong’s an elite and extremely skilled athlete in a demanding and very dangerous team sport; the use of drugs, plus his organisational ability and obsessive competitive drive, made him a phenomenal athlete. 

Had he been content with equaling the tour wins record he may have got away with it, but celebrity and power are notorious corrupters, and he came to believe his own narrative. He also hurt and angered enough people on the way up for his fall from grace to be emotional and very public. But, what made him behave badly is a quality common to all elite athletes – a single-minded determination to win. It is a small step from single-minded to ruthless.  

When Floyd Landis won Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France, anyone who knew cycling could tell he’d taken something, and given the way he was riding, that it was most likely to be testosterone. He went from riding like a stunned mullet the day before, to riding like a man possessed. That was incredibly dumb. 

Armstrong was clever and systematic in his use of banned substances and procedures, just like he was in his training and his team organisation. The training systems and procedures Michele Ferrari developed (EPO use aside) and which Armstrong utilised, and Armstrong’s race tactics, are now part and parcel of how professional cycling works. And Armstrong built on the American revolution in team organisation and application of technology that was started by Greg LeMond.

Did Armstrong force his team to use banned substances? In the sense that, to be of use to him they had to perform to his drug-enhanced level, that’s probably true. But, they did not have to stay with him and if they did so, it was because the rewards, in terms of money and professional profile, were great enough to stifle medical or ethical concerns. 

What of the claims that Armstrong "destroyed" people? 

Tyler Hamilton is doing the reformed character bit with his best-selling confessional book and appearances on the after-dinner speaker circuit. 

The most high-profile accuser is Betsy Andreu who speaks often and emotively about Armstrong having tried to destroy her family. However, Frankie Andreu worked with Armstrong for years after he and Betsy say they heard him admit to using banned substances in 1996, and they all remained close friends. The split came after the Andreus didn’t get the rewards they expected, first a contract renewal, and then a Directeur Sportif job.  

In an interview with Sports Illustrated recently, when Andreu was asked if she felt proud about her moral stance, she said “Yeah, I get that. But sometimes it feels like there's no profit in the truth, right? Would you rather have Lance's money right now, or my reputation?” 

Betsy Andreu may be as hooked on celebrity as Armstrong. She is also an absolutist and is as driven and obsessive as he is but is emotional and an ardent Catholic, while Armstrong hides his emotions and is an atheist. If he suddenly found God, perhaps America and Betsy Andreu would find it easier to forgive him.

Andreu said that she knew Floyd Landis’ Christian upbringing would lead him to confessing his sins but the path to that confession took a remarkably circuitous route via a book called "Positively False," solicitation of legal funds from his fans, and attacking Greg LeMond. 

In 2010, Landis filed a lawsuit against Armstrong and others to force repayment of the $30m+ in government sponsorship of the US Postal team. Landis (eventually) admitted to doping while riding for the team which he now claims "defrauded" the US government, a fraud that he benefitted from, and he now stands to make $millions by suing Armstrong and his financial backers, for that fraud. If successful, the action will give Landis 15-25% of the $300m if the U.S. Department of Justice joins the suit and takes the lead role, or 25-30% if he pursues the case alone. This is a travesty of whistle blowing legislation, but perhaps he’ll donate the proceeds to charity. 

If Landis, or any of the other post-hoc bean-spillers had serious moral scruples about doping they would have distanced themselves from Armstrong.  If Armstrong is personally to blame for what he did, so are they.  The only people who have a right to be aggrieved are the completely clean riders who might otherwise have won stages or tours, and the lower order of domestiques who could reasonably claim to have been pressured into doping.

Armstrong’s greatest mistake was to deny his offending past the point where the denials had any credibility. His nemesis, David Walsh, has been on anti-doping crusade for thirteen years and his pursuit of Armstrong became as obsessive as Armstrong’s pursuit of power and success. Walsh was right but there is a strong vein of moralism running through all this, and it suits that narrative to cast Armstrong in the role of a ruthless Machiavellian mastermind. It also makes for great press and television and now the only way he can slide out from under it is to turn supergrass like Landis – or find God.

Professional sports people and those who back them always skirt the rule boundaries and the rewards, in terms of money and celebrity, are now so enormous that many take the risk of doping. 

The US Olympic cycling team used blood doping in 1984 and it may be endemic in many sports that have not yet had the scrutiny to which road cycling has been subjected. The reason doping became endemic in road cycling is partly due to the physical demands of the sport itself and partly the pressures imposed by corporate sponsorship.

Before we all drown in the sea of smug, sanctimonious twaddle that is pouring out of the media, let’s consider where the pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs comes from and where performance enhancement starts. It’s okay to use a hyperbaric chamber and to train at altitude but not to use EPO, which has the same effects. 

It can be argued that the prophylactic use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories enhances performance in that it allows athletes to push their body beyond its normal limits in competition. NSAIDs can be bought over the counter, and team doctors hand them out during events and matches, despite the fact that the drugs are a metabolic and circulatory time bomb and especially dangerous if the person taking them is dehydrated. Logically, NSAIDs should be banned in sporting competition just as they are banned in horse racing. 

I’m not excusing Armstrong but I think the greater fault lies with corporate sponsorship of sport and its branding mania. Commentators should reserve some of their hyperbole for Nike, Trek, Oakley, Shimano, the TV networks and all the other corporations that made $billions out of Armstrong and those that are making $billions out of other elite sportspeople.

I reserve my pity and concern for the workers in poorly regulated countries, who are paid a pittance to produce shoddy commodities that mythologised athletes are grossly overpaid to sell to a dumb or uncaring public. 

In that sense, we, the consumers of those products, are as much to blame as athletes who take shortcuts. If we really cared about "cheating", we’d stop buying the products that encourage it. 

Epidemic in 'Middle Earth'

It seems that Jacksonophilia and the closely related conditions of Hobbitomania and Tolkeinomania, are not just severely debilitating, they are also highly communicable and are resistant to treatment.

These conditions have reached epidemic proportions in New Zealand and can be so severe they render the sufferer almost completely incapable of rational thought or action.

Some argue that they are all the same condition, a syndrome arising from that other increasing phenomenon, Amygdalian Psychosis, in which chronic or acute excitation of the amygdala results in a persistent state of the fight or flight response.

For reasons not yet fully understood, most of the sufferers of Tolkeinomania,  Hobbitomania and Jacksonophilia, demonstrate a persistent state of primitive arousal normally manifesting in an extreme fight response. For this reason, some observers have begun to refer to the syndrome as Celebrity Related Amygdalian Psychosis.  

The afflicted person may exhibit paranoic and persecutory delusions in the presence of certain people who they perceive as a threat, especially anyone who questions the existence of the fantasy world the sufferer has immersed him or herself in, or worse, who is perceived as a threat to the profits which accrue from the various businesses associated with it.

This may be coupled with an extreme deference to certain authority figures, especially if they have any kind of celebrity.

Disturbing physical behaviours may be exhibited. In the presence of anyone the sufferer considers to be a Very Important Person, the behaviour may resemble a cringing or grovelling action.  

It is common for the sufferer to grip the hair at the front of the head and tug it violently. Hyperflexion of the knee joints may occur when sufferers are confronted with something they (mis)perceive as a threat, and these spasms are occasionally severe enough for the knee to contact part of the individual's face, which adds the risk of contusion, or even concussion, to the already debilitating symptoms.

Rather different physical symptoms result from the sufferer encountering someone they perceive as a threat. The physical symptoms can become aggressive in nature and may involve spitting, shouting, and the use of threatening language.

Sufferers in position of authority may use their power to persecute those they see as a possible threat.

There is no doubt that prevention is the best cure, but these conditions are now so widely spread and so contagious, it may be impossible to halt their spread. The social costs to the country are huge, especially to its "intellectual capital".

It is also argued that there are powerful people who benefit financially from the epidemic. That may go some way to explain the failure of the New Zealand authorities to act to stem the spread of these conditions, and even to have acted in ways that have had the opposite effect.

An example of what may well be a bad case of CRAP, is to be found in the case of the owner of a Wellington based tour company which runs Lord of the Rings tours.

A person or persons in Tourism New Zealand gave some negative feedback to the owner of the tour company about one of his guides. It was claimed that the guide had made negative comments about Peter Robert Jackson (aka Bracken Jetposserrot, see We are all bros here). Not being a sufferer of CRAP, I can see why the accused might have made such comments, but he denies having made them.

His boss's inability to disengage his amygdala led him to betray the true reason for his outrage.  It was the tour guide's association with a Trade Union (aka the Noturnaides,)

So full of CRAP is this man, he made the statement on Radio NZ that to be a member of a trade union, is not a basic human right in New Zealand and that employing a member of a trade union, even one as innocuous as Actor's Equity, could harm his business. 

Yes, he said that – in public!

Welcome to Middle Earth.

I think a new national anthem is in order.

God of Profits at thy feet,
In the bonds of greed we meet
Hear our voices we entreat
God defend our surplus.

Guard New Zealand's ruling class
From trade unions' stupid farce,
Help us kick their boney arse,
God defend our incomes.