-About Barbara Sumner Burstyn
-Contact

Latest Edition
-Front page

Feedback
-Your Letters To Barbara

Website hosted by
- www.spectator.co.nz

point of view - recent works
with barbara sumner burstyn

Get Chipped - Dissident Voice

Nov. 16 2004 - In October the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), approved the VeriChip,™ an inert, encapsulated, microchip the size of a grain of rice, implanted by a syringe under the skin in the flesh of the upper arm. To be used for medical identification purposes the information contained in the chip is accessed through a special reader, not unlike a barcode scanner.

November 11 2004 - Chiron Corporation. Does that name a ring a bell? In North America, it’s gone from barely known to highly recognized in less than a month since 45 million doses of flu vaccine made by the company in its British factory, were found to be contaminated. In Brazil the company made headlines when over 5 million doses of a vaccine were recalled following serious adverse reactions.

October 26 2004 - In July this year the British Medical Journal (BMJ) printed an open letter to our Minister of Health, Annette King from a group of 35 doctors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and the United States. (2) They were decrying the dismantling of New Zealand’s intensive medicines monitoring programme (IMMP). Effusive in their praise, the doctors said the IMMP had contributed very valuably to the safety of medicines in New Zealand and worldwide.

October 2-8 2004 - Linguistic parity profoundly changed Quebec society in one generation. Could it do the same for New Zealand? Is there a way to bridge the cultural and racial chasm that increasingly defines the experience of being a New Zealander? Over the past 26 years, Quebec, a province of Canada, has been undergoing a massive experiment in social renovation through the empowerment of language. In 1977, Quebec officially adopted Bill 101, elevating the French language to official status. Linguistic integration became the means by which a group in society freed themselves from the educational, social, political and financial limitations that had defined them.

July 24-30 2004 - The United States – home of mom, apple pie and countless nice days – radiates optimism everywhere you go, but have Americans been deluded into thinking that good will always triumph over evil and misfortune?

July 3-9 2004 - Hot documentary The Corporation is garnering standing ovations and sparking passionate diatribes around the globe. We meet Canadian producer and director Mark Achbar and ask him about this festival film that features whistle-blowers, gurus, spies, pawns and pundits in its portrayal of corporations as downright psychopathic.

April 12 2004 - It's euthanasia time again. With the guilty verdict in the trial of Lesley Martin, and Act MP Deborah Coddington's odd denial of involvement in, but endorsement of, the death of tetraplegic lawyer Michael Crew 16 years ago, euthanasia is back on the social agenda.

April 5 2004 - One morning recently I woke up and read through my usual array of international media. In the middle of the lead story from the Washington Post about mercury levels in seafood, I began to feel a deep wash of shame.

March 15 2004 - I'm told the fastest way to ruin a columnist's career is to write about abortion. Just the mention of it brings out the letter writers and an entire column on the subject can overwhelm the editor's desk with furious mail. So be it.

March 8 2004 - Letter to William Millman - United States Embassy - Wellington:

Dear Mr Millman (Public Affairs Officer),

Thanks for your letter criticising a recent column on America. It's not often I'm the recipient of an official response, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

March 1 2004 - Last week's political poll showed large numbers of New Zealanders had shifted their support to the National Party on the basis of a single speech that seemed to jump right into the heart of the country.

February 23 2004 - In my living room in Hawkes Bay, half-way through last week's episode of the banal, overhyped The Osbournes, it dawned on me what was so weird: you could hear every word. Watch the same show in the US and you need to lip-read your way round the almost continuous beeping-out of bad words.

February 16 2004 - What is it with film reviewers in this country?

Gaylene Preston's new film Perfect Strangers, a dark tale of a woman kidnapped, the tables turning and then turning again, has been heralded internationally as a major new work. But here, on home turf, it has been panned by reviewers.

February 9 2004 - Writers of columns get a lot of hate mail. Apart from the letters that are personally abusive, the most common theme is my so-called anti-American stance. It seems that if you write anything negative about America, you get branded.

Parents denying the right to know who you are

February 2 2004 - At first reading it seemed like a breakthrough. In Britain, the Government has just announced its plans to remove the right to anonymity for people who donate sperm, eggs and embryos.

January 26 2004 - Okay, so I harbour a sneaking suspicion that the whole moon landing thing was a hoax. When I see President George W. Bush standing calmly before the American flag announcing a new era in moon and Mars exploration, I watch his lips move and imagine he's Captain Kirk, telling us they will go where no man has gone before.

January 19 2004 - In a speech on November 19 last year, President George W. Bush extolled the virtues of democracy.

"We will help the Iraqi people establish a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East," he said. The call for democracy has become so constant that one Gulf-based political analyst, Moghazy al-Badrawy, likens it to a boring, broken record that nobody believes.

True heroes will help beggars through another day

January 12 2004 - Letters to the editor are often a source of inspiration. Like the recent letter to the Herald headlined "Meet a true hero", in which Rob Roche, of Parnell, told us about his trip to the United States.

January 5 2004 - It's confession time again: the photo at the top of this column is not a true likeness. Some of my lines are missing, erased courtesy of Photoshop technology.

February 9 2004 - Writers of columns get a lot of hate mail. Apart from the letters that are personally abusive, the most common theme is my so-called anti-American stance. It seems that if you write anything negative about America, you get branded.

Parents denying the right to know who you are

February 2 2004 - At first reading it seemed like a breakthrough. In Britain, the Government has just announced its plans to remove the right to anonymity for people who donate sperm, eggs and embryos.

January 26 2004 - Okay, so I harbour a sneaking suspicion that the whole moon landing thing was a hoax. When I see President George W. Bush standing calmly before the American flag announcing a new era in moon and Mars exploration, I watch his lips move and imagine he's Captain Kirk, telling us they will go where no man has gone before.

January 19 2004 - In a speech on November 19 last year, President George W. Bush extolled the virtues of democracy.

"We will help the Iraqi people establish a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East," he said. The call for democracy has become so constant that one Gulf-based political analyst, Moghazy al-Badrawy, likens it to a boring, broken record that nobody believes.

True heroes will help beggars through another day

January 12 2004 - Letters to the editor are often a source of inspiration. Like the recent letter to the Herald headlined "Meet a true hero", in which Rob Roche, of Parnell, told us about his trip to the United States.

January 5 2004 - It's confession time again: the photo at the top of this column is not a true likeness. Some of my lines are missing, erased courtesy of Photoshop technology.

December 15 2003 - Now I know I can be a little neurotic. We've been in Salt Lake City for six weeks and after the first week the shortness of breath did not go away.

December 8 2003 - An anonymous web poet describes fear as tasting like oil mixed with steel wool and topped with nails and tacks. But for increasing numbers of Americans fear tastes like fresh fruit and vegetables.

December 1 2003 - TV3 boss Brent Impey says media freedom and political comment are being restricted by the Broadcasting Standards Authority. He was criticising the authority's decision on John Campbell's interview with Prime Minister Helen Clark, in which he alleged the Government had covered up a genetically modified corn release.

November 17 2003 - Years ago a New Zealand publisher of tarnished repute told me his simple secret to life. "Deny, deny, deny," he said, over one of his legendary dinners. I was young and for a short while taken by him and his defective philosophies.

November 10 2003 - Living overseas for two-thirds of my time, I'm furiously proud of being a Kiwi. Anyone who travels will tell you: being a New Zealander confers a certain status, a goodwill that comes attached to the name of our country.

Hooker look in fashion as porn becomes de rigueur

At a party at this year's Toronto Film Festival, I suddenly realised I was surrounded by hookers. From the skin-tight trousers that revealed a part of the rear anatomy normally reserved for builders to the skimpy tops that put a smile on my husband's face, these women had all the requisites - except they weren't prostitutes. They were average young women out for a good time.

Today as I write, 19 people have died in Haifa at the hands of yet another suicide terrorist. This time the terrorist was a woman. The pride of her family, she was about to become a lawyer. But instead of grief at the loss of such a promising person, her family is ecstatic.

Only in America?

It's a strange feeling to wake up one average, middle-class North American morning and realise your beliefs could get you killed. Not in a random, drive-by, developing-world, terrorist-bombing kind of way. But in an officially sanctioned, totally legal, death by lethal injection way.

My friend Ben emailed me from Vancouver: "Dear Barbara, What happened to you? You've become cynical. Why not look at the positive things happening in our world. Especially in the environment. There are so many good things happening out there."

Published On Dissident Voice 

From the perspective of North America, New Zealand sometimes looks quaint and naive. The recent announcement that the Government is setting up a steering group to co-ordinate policies to promote a work-life balance is a great example.

Published On Dissident Voice 

September 22 2003 - As a columnist, there's a constant tension between aiding the story by revealing the personal and sticking with ideas and facts to neatly shroud it.

September 8 2003 - I have a confession. When Viagra first came out, I gave it a go. Purely in the interests of research, you understand.

It was an unnerving experience. The blood accelerating through my veins to a single destination. Once there, it was as though I had a massive migraine down below. There was a distressing intensity that gave me a new respect for the forces that men must grapple with regularly.

August 25 2003 - Who's to blame for global warming? If you follow the news media in New Zealand, you could be forgiven for thinking that farmers were at fault.

After all, they're about to be levied with a flatulence tax to fund research into the livestock methane emissions deemed responsible for global warming.

August 4 2003 - Summer in Montreal is a sweltering affair. As if to wipe away the memory of -25C months, the temperature soars and the locals throng into the streets and parks.

I'm taking my Kiwi daughter to the park. It doesn't take her long to figure out the bars are set so low that her 9-year-old legs scrape the ground and the edges of the climbing frame are rounded so she can't transform them into a challenging gym.

July 28 2003 - It was bound to happen. Now even the womb has succumbed to the marketplace. In Canada, the first entertainment ultrasound business has opened. 4-D ultrasound provides a realistic picture of your baby before it is born.

No more blurry images of the traditional ultrasound. The stills and live-action video generated are often clear enough to evaluate subtle facial features and to judge who the baby resembles.

July 21 2003 - It seemed like a great idea. Install filtering software on my computer and, voila, no more spam, no unsolicited pornography, no more penis enlargement advertisements or begging letters from Africa.

The censorware promotion heralded a cleaned-up computer and the peace of mind to know that others using my system, especially children, would not be offended.

July 14 2003 - A couple of years ago an editorial in Vanity Fair described magazine feature writers and columnists as short-term obsessives. Ever since, I've considered it a label of prestige, the perfect description for my roving mind and insatiable curiosity. But not any more. I took a test and it seems I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (AADD), otherwise known as Executive Function Disorder (EFD).

July 07 2003 - Here in North America, every time you open a newspaper there's an article about obesity. They all trumpet alarming statistics: two out of three Americans are overweight, while a staggering 25 per cent of American children are obese.

The media respond to this wave of weight with a constant chorus of "do something". Legislators and organisations respond with litanies of regulation or litigation.

June 30 2003 - Last weekend on the roof-top bar of a downtown Toronto hotel, a well-dressed man at the next table crossed his legs, dangled a 7cm spike-heel from his pedicured foot and ordered another blue martini.

Perhaps he was practising for Gay Pride, which is about to begin in Toronto. But while the drag queen may be one public face of the gay community, another - marriage - is asserting itself among the frivolous fun planned for Pride Week.

June 23 2003 - Have you answered the phone at dinner time to a stranger selling you a better mortgage? Or opened your mail box to find a glossy, personally addressed brochure, even though you didn't request it? Or looked up into the blind eye of a security camera and wondered if your privacy was being invaded? It was. But nothing like it's about to be.

Imagine your every move, your every action, even your thoughts tracked and recorded, all without your knowledge. First, there's radio frequency ID (RFID) in your clothes. RFID tags are tracking devices the size of a grain of dust. They're inserted into items like clothing, cosmetics and car tyres.

Hands up if you threw out all your vitamins last month just to be on the safe side, after it was discovered that Australian company Pan Pharmaceuticals had serious deficiencies in manufacturing and quality control.

When the dust settled, though, just one product from Pan, an over-the-counter travel sickness tablet, had caused harm.

There is something a little discomforting about the media furore over the alleged fraud at Te Mangai Paho, the Maori broadcasting agency.

Certainly, if the full extent of the allegations has substance, big changes are needed within the agency. But the attack on Te Mangai Paho smacks of the old collective colonial "I told you so". Not racism exactly, more a subtle sense that this type of white-collar crime is somehow unique to brown skins.

Could there be a more politically correct subject than the Prostitution Reform Bill? Steadily making its way through Parliament, the bill is designed to ensure an environment of occupational health and safety for prostitutes and their clients.

So when I read about the first crops of genetically modified potatoes planned for planting after October when New Zealand's GM moratorium is lifted, I was at first dismissive. But by the end of the article, ably reported for the Herald by Simon Collins, I was almost convinced.

Freed from the oppression of their dictator, Iraqis are now free to complain. From tens of thousands of marchers chanting "down, down USA - don't stay, go away" to individuals spitting at soldiers, Iraqis are flexing a muscle that, paradoxically, had atrophied under Saddam Hussein.

What are schools for? If you answered education, maybe you're a little out of date - at least in Northland where education seems to be low on the list of one school's priorities.

Instead, Kaitaia College principal William Tailby is considering allowing the school to be used by the police to gather information about methamphetamine use outside its gates.

So when I read about the first crops of genetically modified potatoes planned for planting after October when New Zealand's GM moratorium is lifted, I was at first dismissive. But by the end of the article, ably reported for the Herald by Simon Collins, I was almost convinced.

Freed from the oppression of their dictator, Iraqis are now free to complain. From tens of thousands of marchers chanting "down, down USA - don't stay, go away" to individuals spitting at soldiers, Iraqis are flexing a muscle that, paradoxically, had atrophied under Saddam Hussein.

Dear TW, I think it's the vast amounts of fluoride you guys consume; in your water, in your processed food, even in your 'fresh' vegetables - it's numbed your brains, saturating the collective cognitive abilities of otherwise intelligent Americans in a Prozac-like haze...

In the 'if it weren't so tragic it might be funny' file, David Lane the secretary for the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards has once again stumbled into the limelight. Instead of trying to get previously censor-approved movies banned, this time Mr Lane is unhappy with prostitutes. Appearing before a select committee considering a bill to decriminalize prostitution Mr Lane described prostitutes as predators. He suggested there was a weakness in men, which many psychologists describe as an addiction. By targeting these men, said Lane, prostitutes play the role of predators, drawing funds from men who are leaving their families destitute.

So the kids have wised up and following the US trend, have started dealing their Ritalin in the schoolyard. In New Zealand Ritalin retails for around $5 a tablet while in the States the street value is considerably higher - the equivalent of nearly NZ$ 20.00.

And just like in the States, where it's estimated that six million kids are taking the mind-altering drug, New Zealand police have become concerned that parents are pressuring doctors to prescribe Ritalin for their children. Not only as an antidote to the annoyances of parenting but so they can sell it themselves on a growing black market. So perhaps you're also making the connection, wondering how your kid could present with ADHD to help with the family income.

At an Animal Welfare conference in September, New Zealand author Richard Webster declared his dog Bruce had a soul.

Bruce, said Webster, experienced joy, sadness and jealousy and had a reasoning ability. Webster's comments sounded quaint and a little dippy and you could just see him looking deep into Bruce's eyes when he made the discovery. But however Webster came to his conclusion he is, perhaps unwittingly, echoing the 'personhood' debate currently firing philosophers round the world.

Racists in our midst? Without doubt Winston Peters has won first place in the ‘racist we all love to hate,’ category. No right thinking, liberal minded person would embrace his philosophies. Even his deputy, Peter Brown landed in hot water over his comments that Enoch Powell had been right in his warnings on immigration levels. In the subsequent fallout Mr Brown defended himself by saying his argument on immigration was about numbers of immigrants and not about the races involved.

But it seems a thin disguise to say it’s just about the numbers. Of course it’s not. But use any other vehicle to try to open discussion on the topic and you’re automatically branded a racist.

What’s really alarming here is not whether Peters and his party are racists but how impossible it has become to even discuss the subject of racism in our country without bringing down a cacophony of protest.

Sometimes a scientific breakthrough is so remarkable it stops you in your tracks. The announcement recently that Dr Ina Dobrinski, a researcher at The University of Pennsylvania has created mice with fleshy lumps on their backs is one of those. While the lumps look innocuous they’re actually transplanted goat and pig sperm factories, able to pump out as much pig and goat sperm a day as your average goat or pig. Dr Dobrinski, who is planning human-mouse grafts, is proud of her achievements and maintains the research will benefit infertile men, especially those about to undergo chemo or other invasive techniques. Instead of losing the change to procreate the doctor predicts they’ll soon be storing their sperm on the backs of their pet mice.

Some issues are so black and white they are never examined, let alone criticized. Like whaling. It’s obvious that every pro whaler is bad and all anti whalers are good. That’s why, when a guy like Paul Watson, the icon of anti-whalers weighs anchor in Auckland Harbour we welcome him unquestionably.

Watson who describes his conservation group, Sea Shepherd, as a self-appointed policing organization for whalekind is famous for his Robin Hood like tactics. To make sure whalers and any fisherman breaking Sea Shepherds rules get the message he sails up close, flouting international sailing conventions and declares them under arrest. When they ignore him he begins his campaign of harassment, including water cannons, firing gunpowder and his piece de resistance; the "can opener", a tool apparently capable of ripping open the steel hulls of ships, a technique that has often lead to boat sinkings and a number of close calls for sailors.

Previous Columns: For what ails you. A dose of pregnant mares urine - August 2002

With the recent high profile backtrack on the latest women’s wonder drug HRT; thousands of New Zealand women have gone on high alert. They’re terrified, as one of my Ponsonby friends reported over her soy latté, that the medical profession has once again used their bodies to rack up huge profits.

And certainly with 50% of women aged 50 to 65 years in North America using HRT and over 194,520 prescriptions for HRT written in New Zealand in 2001, that’s undoubtedly a lot of profit from a drug touted to cure everything from hot flushes to Alzheimer’s. Instead the treatment has been shown to increase the relative risk of breast cancer by 30% and amoung other things to raise the risk of heart attack and uterine cancer.

In the new Tom Cruise movie Minority Report the police can predict with chilling accuracy just who will commit future crimes. The film is promoted as science fiction but if you look closely at a new report just released covering a study of 442 Dunedin boys over a period of 26 years you begin to wonder if the chill factor is not just on the screen. The British-New Zealand research team report they have found a gene variation known as monoamine oxidase (MAOA) that signals future anti-social behaviour. (NZ Herald 3.8.02). Claiming a world breakthrough, the researchers say the gene, when combined with childhood abuse, could lead to anti-social and violent adult behaviour. But rather than suggesting the obvious: that the discovery could be used to detect and prevent future criminals, the researchers have instead put a non-threatening public spin on it, saying their findings could be used to screen for people whose genes protect them from the trauma of stress or tragedy, perhaps to recruit them as police, firefighters or soldiers.

It seems a quaint notion now, but parenting used to be a fairly organic experience with the relationship between parent and child evolving in a natural way. But observing new parents you could be forgiven for thinking that today parenting is a whole different ball game than even a decade ago. High on this list of changes would be the anxiety that seems to infuse so many parents; from cleanliness obsessions to emotional and physical over-protecting, it’s easy to see a culture of paranoia creeping in. But perhaps the most chilling change is the increasing demand to ensure your child is intellectually superior.

Perverts and censors - they have more in common than you think. For the moral high-grounders among us the decisions to ban the movie Baise Moi both in New Zealand and Australia must seem like a victory for all that is good in the world. Certainly Baise Moi is pornographic in many aspects. There's real-time sex with nothing left to the imagination and plenty of violence. But I'm wondering if the outrage and subsequent success of the banning bid by the New Zealand Society for the Promotion of Community Standards (SPCS) is because Baise Moi is far more than a smutty, violent film?

In a similar way to the economic upside that is now being attached to divorce - that it doubles the market - researchers are now redefining the economic and social consequences of abortion.

Abortion used to be a purely moral issue with the debate surrounding termination cantered on the individuals right to choose. But perhaps the moral equation has at last reached its use-by date. Recent research in the United States has come up with a unique angle. Becoming known as the 'abortion bonus', the research centres on the direct correlation between abortion rates and the startling drop in crime in major cities across the United States.

"We need a New York-style zero tolerance approach which has reduced violent crime in that city by 30 percent," said ACT party leader Richard Prebble on March 22. The press release goes on to state that violent crime in New Zealand has risen by 14.9 % since the last election. But is this correct? And is Zero Tolerance the way to go?

Restoring Testosterone What's it like to be a man? No really, what is it like?

Short of putting one into therapy for 10 years and extracting marrow from bone we may never know.

Not because we don't want to or because men are aliens but because men don't seem to know themselves.

POV... final acts - last rights
by barbara sumner burstyn

The ungainly process of dying under the influence of the medical profession.

We're in the ambulance and the medic is asking my elderly mother-in-law a set of simple questions; her name and age, the day of the week, the season and the year.

Previous POV columns

Email Lovers Deleted with Impunity
by barbara sumner burstyn

it can't be good for you

There's a series of tests you can take to see if you have an unhealthy relationship with your computer and specifically your email program.

It takes a while, almost twenty minutes - a major commitment in modem times - so I decide to take this seriously, even though it seems to have escaped the purveyors of the test that if you've surfed long enough to have found this obscure bite of web-life then you don't need a test - your diagnosis is obvious.

Previous POV columns: The Love That Dare Not Bark Its Name...

The Love That Dare Not Bark Its Name - Is the right to fiddle Fido the new civil rights movement? Are dogs the new humans?

Just ask Philip Buble, the 42 year-old writer of the Zoophilia Manifesto and the poster boy for zoosexuals all around the world. Buble, a 'one-dog man' and his four-legged companion 'Lady Buble' consider themselves the first out-of-the-closet zoo couple.

When it comes to immunization, who do we believe?

British leader Tony Blair recently re-ignited an old battle by refusing to say if his young son Leo had been immunized.

Blair's reluctance to reveal his child's immunity status was seen as adding weight to growing fears that immunization, when looked at through the wrong end of the telescope, may end up being more harmful than many of the illnesses now being controlled by it.

Previous POV columns - 100% Pure...

Call me paranoid but after last week's ruling by the Privy Council, I'm installing a mega microfilter on my tap water and importing Fit Fruit and Vegetable Wash, the new North American spray for food obsessives that removes chemical residues from fresh produce. But perhaps I'm overreacting. After all the Privy Council is an august institution, unbiased and learned in all it's dealings and if they say New Zealand's water is fit to drink, then it must be. Right? Well not according to John and Mary Hamilton.

Previous POV columns - Teacher's Pets ...
There's a special place, somewhere between martyrdom and pariahdom we reserve for people who scratch the veneer of our sexual self-deception. And Amy Gehring is going there. After a recent sensational 11-day trial in England, Amy Gehring, a 26-year-old Canadian supply teacher was acquitted of indecently assaulting two brothers, aged 14 and 15, at a school on the outskirts of London where she worked as a teacher. While denying the charges of outright sex, Gehring did admit to joining the boys in a drunken sleep-over and to bunking down with another 16-year-old, who refused to complain to police.

POV: Where Have All The Playgrounds Gone? Do you remember it? Hanging upside down from a parallel bar, your dress tucked into your undies, your hair like a fan beneath you. And you're swinging from your tightly hooked knees, dangling your arms, and imagining yourself flipping up or even letting ...

P.O.V: Cash And Carry... Suddenly money as motive is immoral, at least if you're an impoverished woman renting the only space you have left. Your womb. But what of the people who buy the babies? Are they not the true immorals?

See also other works by Barb...
"Being Neve Campbell (or how to squeeze 41 into 20 something)"
* Canada's MacLean's Magazine
* Unlimited Magazine
* NZ Herald
* Men's News Daily

For more information email: Barbara Sumner Burstyn