You might want to skip this post (about abortion). Need help? In New Zealand, you can call Lifeline on 0800 543 354 or Youthline on 0800 37 66 33.
A Tauranga schoolgirl had an abortion “arranged” by a school counselor without her parents’ knowledge. Her mum, angry at not being informed, spoke to the media. This promoted calls for girls under 16 to require parental consent to go through with an abortion. Under the Care of Children Act there is no age restriction to give consent to an abortion. In 2004, then opposition MP Judith Collins tried to change this, but it didn’t pass.
Youthline rightly says that everyone should have access to confidential health services regardless of their age. They say that it can’t be assumed that the family home is a safe and loving place. They stress the importance of youth having a strong support network, which may include a counselor who they can talk to in confidence. There’s a risk that vulnerable youth won’t reach out if they fear that their parents will be told. Talking with a counselor about a pregnancy doesn’t mean that a girl won’t talk with her parents about it, she might just need some reassurance first. Not wanting her parents involved doesn’t mean a girl is going it alone. Maybe she feels more comfortable talking with a friend’s mother, the father’s parents or other extended family and that should be okay.
“I’ve been on a board of trustees of a large Auckland school and I’ve seen how some girls were treated by their parents when it was thought they had brought shame on the family. They were physically punished, sometimes to the extent CYFS had to be notified.”
Maybe those calling for this change have a bigger target in mind—discouraging abortions all together. If the parents are informed, maybe the hope is that they will put a stop to the abortion.
Garth George cites a dubious study by Dr Priscilla Coleman that claims there is a link between abortion and mental health:
…a thoroughly scientific study in 2006 by Dr Priscilla Coleman, a research psychologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, refuted a long-standing contention that teenagers are better able to handle an abortion than dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
The study found that adolescent girls who had an abortion were five times more likely to seek help for psychological and emotional problems than those who kept their babies.
The study also found that teenagers who had abortions instead of carrying the pregnancy to term were also more than three times more likely to report subsequent trouble sleeping, and nine times more likely to report subsequent drug use.
Dr Coleman pointed out that, while having a child as a teen might be problematic, “the risks of terminating seem to be even more pronounced”.
“The scientific evidence is now strong and compelling. Abortion poses more risks to women than giving birth.”
Trying to replicate Dr Coleman’s results, researchers concluded:
Because of the potential for confounding, published research claiming to find relations between abortion and poor mental health indicators should be subjected to scrutiny and reanalysis. Using the same data and conducting the same analyses as CCSR (2009), we found that their results were not replicable, nor did our numbers approach theirs in the case of 15 mental health disorders. Moreover, we found little support for the abortion-as-trauma framework. Instead, our findings suggest that structural, psychological, and sociodemographic risk factors associated with both having an abortion and having poor mental health drive a relationship between abortion and mental health. Therefore, policy, practice, and research should focus on addressing the correlates of having mental health problems, such as violence and prior mental health problems.
“We were unable to reproduce the most basic tabulations of Coleman and colleagues,” Steinberg said in a statement released with the paper. “Moreover, their findings were logically inconsistent with other published research — for example, they found higher rates of depression in the last month than other studies found during respondents’ entire lifetimes. This suggests that the results were substantially inflated.” (via)
“…the TFMHA [Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion] reviewed no evidence sufficient to support the claim that an observed association between abortion history and mental health was caused by the abortion per se, as opposed to other factors.” (via)
What life will an unwanted baby have? What is its future? What is the mother’s future? How likely is it that a cycle of teen pregnancy will start?
It’s up to parents to keep lines of nonjudgmental communication open with their children, to be involved with them and to talk with them, but parents should be grateful that their children don’t have to rely on their peers for advice and that there are professionals accessible to their children that they can talk with about things that they don’t feel like they can talk with their parents about.
The people who made TEDxEQChCh possible.Rubble from demolished Christchurch buildings on the stage at TEDxEQChCh.The tweet cathedral: Kunst Buzz (in the in the Netherlands) developed this piece of art of the ChristChurch Cathedral. Made out of a random selection of almost 1000 #eqnz tweets (approximately 98,000 characters) it was on display in the lobby.There was a TEDxJapan poster for signing in the lobby to show our support for them.
Now today, you’re part of a truly remarkable global phenomenon. Around the world, thousands of people have been gathering in meetings to experience the power of ideas. The surprising thing about today’s meeting is that we here at TED have had almost nothing to do with it. We lent our name, our format, a few simple guidelines and some of our content. But the really hard work to make today happen has been down to your local organizers. And we’re truly in awe of the passion and dedication they’ve shown to make something like this work. Thank you to you too for taking the time out to come and be part of this exciting conversation about our shared future. Please write and tell us what you make of the event today. But for now, on with the show. -Chris Anderson
Kaila Colbin thanks the alcohol sponsors who’ll make sure everyone’s too sloshed to care if this all goes badly and admits that TEDxEQChCh is probably the most cumbersome event name ever. The event opened with a performance from Joe Castillo, who was beamed in from overseas, and Ariana Tikao.
Lessons learnt:
Change has to start on a grassroots level. That means every single one of us. CERA etc. are full of smart people, but they aren’t going to read our minds. Do we want decisions to be made for us?
Give the displaced residents control over condemned buildings. If they want to, we need to let them into their yellow and red stickered buildings for a short period of time if they sign a waiver. They need to be there when their building is demolished. People need to be able to go through the rubble piece by piece and recover what they want from their home or business.
Give the displaced residents control over their rebuild—phone numbers of builders and workmen working on their new home so it gets built or repaired quickly. Let them manage the process and funds themselves.
Let’s make sure we have a record of what people are feeling. People will want to look back on memories recorded in the years to come.
We want more green, people, pedestrians and trees in the new Christchurch. We want less traffic.
Fill in the gaps that have been created. They can be more than a Wilson’s car park. Some gaps will have to stay gaps because they can’t be built on again, but this gives us options for amazing green community spaces.
We don’t want to be a city of commuters and consumers. We want to be a city of communities.
The first thing to fix is the building codes. Can we retrofit buildings with rollers so they roll with earthquakes like San Fransisco did with their City Hall?
Christchurch and San Fransisco both saw neighborhoods band together. Let’s train rescue and recovery teams in all neighborhoods. Give them the skills they need to help each other get through.
Context
Bob Parker
Bob Parker is here at the Aurora Centre for the third time recently. The first two times were for memorial services because of the earthquake, but this time it’s for something optimistic. Ideas are being shared about how we will move forward.
Hugh Nicholson
“We need to grieve and acknowledge what we’ve lost before moving on. The hardest thing is seeing an empty city—it’s not buildings, cafes and cars that make a city, it’s the people that live, work and breathe within it. As Nicholson has been walking within the central city he’s had to look twice, it’s disconcerting that almost all of the buildings in the central city are unstable or on a lean.”
Hugh’s wearing the central city’s uniform—a hi-vis vest. Christchurch is the only city in the world where you wear a hi-vis vest so you don’t stand out. His love affair with brick is now over. He showed photos of behind the cordon. The photos don’t do the devastation justice. There is rubble on all sides of you, including underfoot. There’s the smell of rotting food. The central city is silent except for the birds singing. There are no people. A photo was shown of workmen busting out the windows of the Brannigans building because the glass was deemed too hazardous to stay.
About 10,000 people attended the Share An Idea community expo. 40,000 ideas were shared.
How long should a building last? 100 years? What will be our perfect city in 100 years?
After Hurricane Katrina, Architecture for Humanity lived in the area and witnessed the issues around re-homing misplaced residents. In Biloxi, Architecture for Humanity got homes designed and built in six weeks. We need a community led design process. Even the craziest ideas are important, like solar powered camels. People care about the small things like: how do I get my business started, how do I get home? There needs to be transparency.
“Follow your heart, break the rules, get it built.”
Coralie Winn
There was already a problem with gaps in the city, but the earthquakes Christchurch had made it worse—“the gaps now are that much bigger and will remain empty that much longer”. Gapfiller proposes that we use those spaces well. Temporary solutions that fill those gaps. The temporary offers us innovation. What incentives could there be for landowners to offer up their land? Possibly a rates rebate. A travelling bar in Melbourne works out of a shipping container. Pallet art fills a vacant space overseas. In a Christchurch gap: 31 bands played, 12 films were shown. The gaps were filled by poets, circus people, galleries. The vacant spaces were used. Gaps were filled.
Marcus Spiller
The New Zealand economy is flexible and Christchurch is blessed with high value businesses. “We need to leverage innovations, skills, infrastructure and leadership.” “After the quake Christchurch will be better equipped, better skilled and still more innovative…”
James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia. To make ourselves feel better we use nature band-aids. You know what the last sentence was at some design meetings—“fuck it”. Let’s build places worth caring about. There’s not enough Prozac in the world to make people feel okay about going down some blocks. We don’t have to have a craft fair to get people to come to good public spaces.
Opportunity
Rod Carr
We must remember our past. Acknowledge those who have created our world. What was it that caused us to want to be here? Christchurch is the gateway to the South Island. This city is still open for business. AMI Stadium will be functioning in February. The university has over 2000 running courses with 15500 students enrolled. We have the amazing revamp of our airport. Let’s not scare the world away, discourage tourists from visiting or define ourselves by what happened on February 22nd. Let’s define ourselves by our response. When our children look back, the defining moment should be us understanding the importance of what we can do for our city, not what the city can do for us.
Karen Blincoe
There’s nothing wrong with dreaming. People have dreamt about creating utopia for their city. Masdar city in Abu Dhabi will be carbon free, totally self sustainable with people traveling around by electric vehicles. Using shadow of buildings to cool spaces. Planned to be completed in 2016 but now 2020/2025 costing $22 billion USD. “Cities are not the problem, they are the solution” – Jaime Lerner.
10 principles of sustainable cities:
Rediscover the city
Redefine city value
Involve everyday experts
Break down silos
Redistribute urban decision making
De-design urban planning
Promote corporate urban responsibility
Go global
Embrace chaos, crisis and change
Encourage passion in urban leadership
She wants to come back and say ‘I can use Christchurch as an example for a sustainable city’. Cities are like living entities with a soul, heart, mind, body. We need to react in the short term but plan for the long term.
Hugh Morrison
We all entered a world of uncertainty after February 22nd. But we also entered a world of opportunity. Huge collaboration and enormous leadership will be needed. Let’s have a clear and shared milestone. The uncertainty is around our homes and where we work.
Christchurch has about 190,000 homes. 5,000 with no insurance. There are homes over the $100,000 ECQ cap. 60% of those homes will be rebuilt. 40% repaired. There has been just under 300,000 building claims, meaning there’s been multiple claims because of the earthquake—it’s reached every house. Hugh Nicholson’s house (previous speaker) is ruined, but he’s still going. Questions homeowners have: will my house be rebuilt? Is the land okay? If I get relocated, where do I move to?
Building owners, tenants, workers and visitors are all linked.
Old data – 4,300 buildings in the city. 1,000 red stickered, 1,100 yellow stickered. Rest green. 42% of Colliers clients said their buildings were either demolished or red-stickered. Catching up on the fine print of insurance isn’t a happy time or conversation. Insurance and financials are complex for building owners. Without a city plan business owners can’t move forward.
How to create certainty? When is this going to happen? What’s the framework to put my framework around? A programme for building certainty should cover the home, workplace and playground.
10 step programme to building certainty
Land retirement decision – July 2011
Rebuild or repair decisions – December 2011
Residential zoning plan – February 2012
Deliver on ‘Project Restart’ – end of October 2011
Central city plan – February 2012. Probably the most critical plan ever developed.
Demolition penalties post – June 2012
Charter of seed CBD property owners – 2012 build
Government tenants commitments – 2012 build
Government contribution to QEII facility – February 2012
Government contribution to Arts & Entertainment precinct – February 2012
Greening the ghetto. In an emotionally charged talk, MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx — and shows how minority neighborhoods suffer most from flawed urban policy.
Daniel Cullum
Wants to mobilize the young people in the city to rebuild Christchurch but maybe not in the usual way. The human spirit in the city is still strong but has taken a hit. The young people now have an opportunity to rebuild the human spirit of Christchurch.
Barriers for young people to help rebuild:
Isolation. We need to be connected.
Time. On top of school, job etc. It’s difficult for young people to get involved with the community.
Expectations (of themselves). It doesn’t have to be massive.
Dan’s one year t-shirt challenge challenges young people to wear the same shirt for a year (Dan has an ‘I am Dan’ shirt), get sponsored for doing it and donate money to the causes they care about. The city is being rebuilt for young people and the generations after. Even if your idea is simple—like wearing the same t-shirt for a year, run with it.
Humanity
Grant Schofield
Grant explains what walking is to a passing car who thinks he and his kids were walking because their car must be broken down. Kids of today are used to sitting—the new normal. Sitting in front of the TV, in cars—to school etc. Children are 30% less active on weekends.
Grant’s children’s school is putting a fence around the school to keep predators out. They’ve never had a problem with predators. They have a staggered end time because of the huge amount of parents picking up their kids in cars.
Kids need to be outdoors and in constant motion. When you confine kids they suffer badly in all ways. Our kids might be the first generation in human history that was a shorter life span than their parents do. The paradox of this risk aversion is in the long run they’re less able to handle risk. The prefrontal cortex develops during childhood. When is risk better developed? When a kid is six and climbing up a tree, or at 15 behind the wheel of a Subaru. Five when they’re having a fight with the kid next door, or learning about fighting when they’re 25 at a bar. When there’s a huge benefit from a risk, it’s a no brainer. Successful parenting should be based on the number of band-aids used that week, not how many activities you’ve taken them too. The kids are up for it. The parents should be too. It’s easy—hang the car keys up, open the backdoor, kick the kids out and open a bottle of chardonnay. Free range parenting is essential for kids’ health and development.
How did we get here? We became car dependent and built cities for cars and not people. We can redevelop Christchurch where local living is normal. Where kids have a place and permission to range around the neighborhood. We saw this immediately after the earthquake. The children came outside because there was no TV, computer. Neighborhoods connected when utilities were off. Let’s re-imagine Christchurch as a city that doesn’t have just physical change, but social change too. Let’s lead New Zealand into this change. We’re not building the city for us, but for our children, their children and their children again.
Grant Ryan
“Let’s compare San Fransisco to Hamilton”. If our vision of Christchurch is like Hamilton with a smaller river people won’t want to come here. It’s worth being iconic rather than boring. Grant compared Wollongong vs the Gold Coast and Leicester vs Oxford and said that “cities that are innovative, creative and iconic thrive whereas those that are boring do not”. Some cities are such great places to live that people choose to live in the city and commute outside it for work. Grant asked who was here that wasn’t born in Christchurch. A huge majority. They’ve moved and stayed here. We’d be poorer if it wasn’t for those people. When you have a full CBD great ideas come to life.
We should cross off anything that is too expensive, but also anything that’s too boring. People need to want to say to each other once we’re done “have you heard about Christchurch city?” because of how great it is.
We don’t want to be known as the city that got slapped by a couple of earthquakes, but the city that came roaring back from them.
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels rockets through photo/video-mingled stories of his eco-flashy designs. His buildings not only look like nature — they act like nature: blocking the wind, collecting solar energy — and creating stunning views.
Let’s change the idea that a sustainable city is a boring city. The Chinese character for crisis is made up of the Chinese characters danger and opportunity. Christchurch has an opportunity. Bjarke sent a personal message to the audience at TEDxEQChCh that was very well received by the crowd.
Sacha McMeeking
Sacha got the audience to hug their neighbors in the audience. She said that’s what it felt like after the earthquake. The project of rebuilding is ours. We are our own creators. We’re talking to the powers that be. 10,000 people had a linear conversation with the powers that be last weekend at Share An Idea. They have to make decisions that will affect us and our children based on that linear conversation. CERA is populated with good and talented people. This is going to be a decade or more of a collective journey to our future. We have the common trajectory of a sustainable and vibrant city. We’re here not just for recovery, but for transformation and change. We have already experienced the incredibly moving experience of the Christchurch pledge.
How do we want our children to learn, play, know each other?
“Democracy—some assembly required.” “One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.” “Collaboration is the new black.” “What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.”
Andie Spargo
You know you live in Christchurch when…:
Every house is a crack house.
Where’s my [item]? It’s on the floor.
A group of students appear on your street and you don’t call the police.
Comedy is watching something happen to someone else. But what if something bad happens to you?
Christchurchians used comedy in the weeks after the quake too, with the ‘You know you live in Christchurch when…’ Facebook group and with the ‘Show us your long drop’ website. A giant rock destroys your house? Are you angry? Yeah. But do you sell the rock on Trade Me in a hilarious auction? Hell yeah.
Things Andie has learned from the earthquake:
The Earth is made up of plates.
Earthquakes were once measured using the Richter scale. In Christchurch we use the HMDIJPIMP scale—the ‘How much did I just piss in my pants scale’.
Drop cover and hold is still the recommended advice from Civil Defence. If you’re in Christchurch, when there’s a 3.0 and over you pause. 4.0 over you pause and hold… your wine glass. 5.0 you pause, hold your wine and put a status update on Facebook. When there’s a 6.0 and over you drop, cover, hold, and scream.
It’s now okay to go to the toilet in your neighbors backyard.
Trips to the doctor are free if they’re earthquake related.
People with 4WDs are now getting to go off road everyday. When they go to work, the shops or back out of their drive.
Yoga is a really good way to calm my nerves, except when we have 5.3, downward facing dog becomes outside screaming scardy cat.
Munted.
A new drink: gin and tectonic. Pour gin. Wait for earthquake. Gin and tectonic.
When a 100 litre fish tank explodes on the floor, highly carbonated Soda Stream water is not the best way to save a catfish.
Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and move on.
James Lunday
We need to change the language we use: ”In the first quake the city got munted. It’s fucked now.”
“There’s no justice in the world. The ugly buildings are still standing. Can you give me a bunch of red stickers so I can run through town and slap them on all the ugly buildings?” “What you’ve created instead of American Pie is a huge donut. A bit stodgy on the outside, a little sweet on the inside, but not good for you. In the middle, fuck all.”
Let’s create new green networks based on nature. Give power back to the communities. Let them be self-reliant. Not being able to build on a space isn’t the end of the world. Gives freedom for open spaces.
Dresden, Germany and Hiroshima both came back from disasters. Remember that leaving memories is okay.
Is it worth resetting, rethinking, rediscovering, re-visioning, regenerating, renewing? Evolution is gone. There’s the opportunity to build a new.
“We live in faceless suburbia—blank meaningless little boxes. Retail centres with no soul. It’s disgusting and offensive and it’s wrecked the CBD. A district plan that is full of rules and regulations yet still delivers terrible outcomes. We have a city of commuters and consumers—is that an aspiration? We can create a city of communities.”
Let’s:
Set
Think
Discover
Vision
Generate
New
Let’s reinforce the villages. Make them real. Let’s turn ourselves away from the car.
With minimal cars you start to see the street. Not being able to build on a space isn’t the end of the world. Gives freedom for open spaces. Forget the CBD.
We’ve got the money, skill, passion and talent to create places to love and live in. There’s opportunity for new beginnings.
Possibilities
Paul Downton
Christchurch is undergoing a crash course in disaster planning and urban reconstruction. What happens to Christchurch is important to all of us, even if we live half a world away. Other countries will be watching our response for when it’s their time.
Everything adapts:
Things breathe where they could not otherwise breathe.
Stay warm where they would otherwise freeze.
Stay cool where they would otherwise be too hot.
Reproduce where they could not.
We build like a bird builds. We need to. When buildings come down it’s personal to us.
Buildings serve many purposes. The rate of change is really really fast. Cities are ecosystems.
Let’s encourage accidental meetings.
“The entire planet is becoming a village, and as a result, the smallest neighborhood or precinct must be planned as a working model of the larger world.” — Lewis Mumford
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Most economists are ecologically illiterate.
We’re going through a fundamental change in society. The highest priority is fundamental change to the economy, moving towards the localization of economic activity.
Opening up the economy of Ladakh with subsidized food, roads and fuel brought in from thousands of miles away destroyed the local market. There was unemployment and friction between people.
Worldwide there’s a split between the government and the interests of their people. The governments are pursuing an economic model that’s outdated. More trade, more export, more foreign investment—they say is the formula for prosperity.
The most inspiring movement is towards local food. People have 10x more conversations while shopping in the Farmer’s Market than in the supermarket.
A kinder, gentler philosophy of success. Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure — and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.
According to your answer to ‘what do you do?’ people are either incredibly delighted to see you or seem to have something else to do. It should be a sin to come to a conclusion on who you should talk to based on their business card.
When you next see someone driving a Ferrari, don’t think they’re greedy, think that they’re vulnerable and need love.
We don’t envy The Queen. She’s weird. She speaks in a funny way.
There’s basically two kinds of self-help books: you can do it, you can make it, anything’s possible. And how to cope with low self-esteem.
The words ‘unfortunate’ vs. ‘loser’: we’re changing the belief in whose responsible for our lives. We’re in the driver’s seat. If you’re doing well that’s great. If you’re not, it leads to increased rates of suicide. People take what happens to them extremely seriously. They own their success but they also own their failure.
Someone may have slept with the wrong person. Taken the wrong substance. Passed the wrong legislation.
Success might be seen as having money or being renowned. You can’t be successful at everything. You can’t have it all. Any success has a loss. There’s going to be an element where we’re not successful.
Alain de Botton sent this message to TEDxEQChCh:
I don’t for a minute doubt that your TEDx is going to be a fascinating and highly useful affair. At a time of unprecedented upheaval and pain, ideas – which are at the heart of what TED does – are what will pull us all through and give meaning and direction to our efforts. I so wish I could have been with you today.
Gerry Brownlee
Connecting with the community is great. TEDxEQChCh is awesome because it’s Independently organized so everyone’s views can be shared.
Art Agnos
Knows that it’s extremely important what Gerry Brownlee etc. are doing. Showed footage of San Francisco’s 1989 earthquake. Said he is going to offer some common experiences that he went through and the city went through with the long term recovery process and the politics.
Start with strong building codes. Fight bureaucracy. Alternative channels of communication might have to be used.
Money is an issue. Red Cross raised $70 million dollars. Art only saw it being used on coffee, donuts and blankets. The rest of the money was in a bank far away. He had to fight to get access to the money donated to the city.
There’s always another alternative. When the city needed to use the convention center that was housing homeless people, they moved them to an aircraft carrier. The rooms and sleeping space were too small, but other crew areas were found on the ship that would be suitable.
Their City Hall is much like our Cathedral except it was badly damaged and didn’t collapse. Each piece of the building was marked, photographs were taken and it was taken apart piece by piece. The pieces were stored and rollers were installed in the foundations of the building so it would roll with the tremors. The building was then reassembled.
After watching people standing in lines trying to get access back into their homes for just a few minutes they invented new techniques on the spot. All their residences were tagged red yellow and green like Christchurch’s. If someone insisted on going into building and signed a waiver, they could go in for 15 minutes. It was a risk, but was important to kick start recovery process. People felt they were regaining control over their lives.
Soft take down measures were put in place. Residents could stand in the street and watch the building be demolished and taken down. They were allowed to search through the wreckage of the building floor by floor for things that they missed in the 15 minutes they had in their house when it was standing. The rubble from each house was stored separately in a landfill so homeowners had another chance to go through it. People need to be put first in the recovery process and these were important steps.
Strong emotions weren’t limited just to people who just lost their homes. They got children to write down feelings. People still go back and revisit what was written down.
They revamped their emergency plans with the understanding of what people will do to help others in their neighborhoods after a disaster. All sorts of people from neighborhoods were trained in teams and given valuable rescue and leadership skills.
Perhaps the greatest thing in long term recovery is not to automatically assume things should be put back the way they were.
The capital for a politician is popularity and it comes with doing good and meaningful things for the community, not just things to get themselves reelected. Art ended up losing a reelection after making tough decisions for the long term success of his city. The time frame for important decisions doesn’t necessarily line up with the election time frame.
He said to use the ideas we’ve heard all day. Fix the broken places in the city. And then the whole room stood to take an oath to promise to leave the city better than it was when we came into it.
Closing
We know that we’re not forgotten when people like Art come to talk to us.
The speakers the sponsors, the organizing committee, the volunteers. Wow. Thank you from everyone who was at TEDxEQChCh.
The TEDxEQChCh name tag and programme looking very flash.
The death penalty is nothing new but it caught my eye because of Osama Bin Laden reportedly being killed and because of the “let’s shoot the looters” comments I saw on a Christchurch earthquake Facebook page.
Let’s assume that Bin Laden was killed and buried straight away in the… ocean? This example is interesting as he wasn’t killed after he was sentenced to death by a court. However Obama said he: “…[made] the killing or capture of Bin Laden the top priority…”
Whether Bin Laden was killed intentionally or not I’m not sure. Now his body is in the water so we might not ever know. However I found the outpour of support for Bin Laden’s death and even the celebration resulting on sites like Twitter extremely interesting. And a lot of people were celebrating. I wondered if all of those people would support capital punishment in less extreme circumstances, like for the murder of one person? Or whether this event has changed their views to support the death penalty?
Did this bring about justice? I say no. A civilized trial would have created justice, in my opinion. Some said that the celebrations were justified because it symbolized the fighting and winning against terrorism. Because a figurehead of terrorism was downed. But Bin Laden was just that, a figurehead. Did he encourage hate, hurt and violence? Yes. Did he pull the triggers himself? No. Will someone take over his place leading Al-Qaeda? Yes.
More importantly, does this mean I’ll be able to take my bottle of water through airport security now?
The permanence of capital punishment is concerning. How sure would you need to be of someone’s guilt to support an execution? What if mistakes were made? Are a few false positives alright?
Does the death penalty grant relief to the suffering victim’s families?
This editorial in the New York Times says no: ‘In an open letter to the Connecticut Legislature, relatives of murder victims — 76 parents, children and others — wrote that “the death penalty, rather than preventing violence, only perpetuates it and inflicts further pain on survivors.”’ The death penalty deepens the wounds and the pain of victims’ families and the accused’s family. It creates more victims and continues the cycle of violence.
This page has stories from inmates’ families on how they’ve been affected by an execution. Bill Babbitt turned in his brother for committing a murder and was under the assumption that his brother would get the help he needed. His brother who was a paranoid schizophrenic was sentenced to death. Robert Meeropol talks about having both of his parents executed when he was six-years-old.
The death penalty makes it easy to “solve” re-offending without having to deal with the policies behind parole. It’s also easy to say prison officers would be protected, when in reality issues surrounding staff security need to be sorted.
Instead of putting forward the death penalty as a solution for crime, let’s create better policies. Policies that identify youth that are at-risk of offending. Better mental health services. Let’s remind ourselves that people released from prison need support starting well before they’ve been released to successfully assimilate back into society.
Alternatives to capital punishment might be the way out. Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Johnny Holmes says “you’re not going to find 12 people back-to-back on the same jury that are going to kill somebody when the alternative is throwing away the key.”
Is there a humane way to kill someone?
By poisoning with the lethal injection? Where are those drugs coming from?
Texas was reluctant to release where the drugs they use in their death row come from. Besse Medical, apparently. Feigning ignorance, Besse say they “…[have] no way to determine what its customers, including the Texas corrections department, does with its products.”
That article reports a shortage of U.S. made lethal injection drugs and says states have had to import from overseas. As overseas countries ban the export of those drugs for use in executions (“that supply dried up after the British government in November banned its export for use in executions”) and drugs are imported from dubious sources or drugs are reappropriated, concerns should be raised over the quality and efficiency of the drugs being used. Are they going to kill someone quickly and painlessly? Oklahoma is using an anesthetic, pentobarbital, that’s used in animal euthanasia solutions.
What level of training do the people administering the drugs have regarding administration or dosage?
Short answer: University of Miami researchers say none. It appeared prisoners were assumed to be successfully anaesthetised if they were given a standard dose of thiopental, but this wouldn’t be true if the drug was given incorrectly, the execution took longer than anticipated or the prisoner had anxiety or serious substance abuse issues. After analyzing autopsy data for 49 prisoners who had been executed, researchers found that in 43 cases the concentration of anaesthetic in the prisoners’ blood were lower than required in surgery. Out of those 43, 21 of the concentrations “were consistent with [the prisoner] being aware of what was going on.”
…the researchers, led by Dr Leonardis Koniaris, said: “We certainly cannot conclude that these inmates were unconscious and insensate.”
“However, with no monitoring and with little use of the paralytic agent, any suffering of the inmate would be undetectable.”
They add: “The absence of training and monitoring, and the remote administration of drugs, coupled with eyewitness reports of muscle responses during execution, suggest that the current practice for lethal injection for execution fails to meet veterinary standards.”
As a society we can do better than a primitive band-aid on the long-term problem of crime.
See also: an eye for an eye ends up making everybody blind.
The 90-day trial period that was previously limited to employers with 20 employees or less now applies to all businesses. Despite all the commotion about it, it is unlikely to actually negatively affect most people. Employers are not going to start hiring people for 80 days just to fire them then rehire for the position and retrain someone new. They’re still going to try to get the best person for the job and get it right the first time. Some employers are purposely not using 90-day trials because they think it will create lax recruitment procedures, but that doesn’t seem likely. New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s study seems to show that smaller businesses using the 90-day trial had increased hiring activity.
In the Stokes Valley Pharmacy case (pdf) among other recommendations is that the employer gives feedback in a structured way during the trial. Successfully navigating the 90-day trial process isn’t exactly straightforward for businesses and a number of employers won’t try to use it for fear that they’ll stuff it up.
Medical certificates after one day of sick leave
Brought in with the 90-day trial period is the ability for employers to ask for a medical certificate after an employee is off work for one day. It doesn’t seem like employers will start asking for medical certificates without reason. Most are reasonable and realize that a visit to the doctor that day, if at all, is not always possible. This will probably only affect people if their employer is suspicious of their sick day use.
Union access to workplaces
Union representatives now have to request access to workplaces instead of just rocking up and going in. Businesses have one day to respond to a request for access and another to provide a reason if they refuse access. This seems a long time to just get an answer for two simple questions “can we have access?” and “why?”.
A lot of union members work in the public sector—PSA represents public sector workers and is the largest trade union in New Zealand. Union access won’t become an issue in those workplaces. This will mainly affect workplaces like supermarkets and hospitality related workplaces. However it seems like a lot of the time a visit might not be necessary—newsletters can always be posted or emailed out to union members.
Two arguments put forward by employers were that union visits will affect workers’ productivity and that by allowing access to union representatives workplace security is affected. Neither seem like very good reasons. Union representatives are likely to be responsible and union visits are unlikely to be the only distraction throughout the day. Other third parties like the water guy, the photocopier girl and the cleaners are given access to the workplace, and representatives can always be escorted.
The majority of employers are going to allow visits so this change also seems unlikely to affect most people.
Jury trial threshold
New Zealand’s jury trial threshold at three months or more imprisonment is one of the lowest in the western world. Other countries are up there at a charge having to have a penalty of five years imprisonment or more before the accused can elect trial by jury.
Juries are an important part of the justice system. Statistically a jury is more likely to acquit than a judge is. This isn’t a bad thing. Juries force lawyers and judges to speak in plain English. The jury stands between the state, the accuser and the accused. Common sense ordinary New Zealanders are able to decide when it would be wrong to convict someone of a crime. They “round off the harshness of the justice system”. Money would be saved for an uncertain outcome. Judges will be busier and will have to provide careful written decisions. There will be delays because of reserved judgements. Other countries that have higher jury thresholds have more judges than New Zealand does. A change of the jury threshold from three months to three years requires public input and discussion.
If three months is an arbitrary number, three years is too. As a community there needs to be discussion and we need to ask ourselves at what point do we think an offence or prison sentence becomes serious enough to warrant trial by jury.
Legal aid
Changes planning to be phased in from October include making single people who earn over $22k a year and an adult with two dependants who earns over $50,934 a year ineligible for legal aid for “less serious criminal cases, most of which cost less than $650.00.” People who earn more can still get legal aid if they prove that they can’t pay for their lawyer or that their case is likely to be expensive.
If someone proves that they need the money they can still get legal aid so that change isn’t a huge deal. A more worrying change happened last year, when legal aid clients lost their right to choose a lawyer for charges that carry a prison sentence of less than 10 years.
Can I choose my legal aid lawyer? The Agency will choose your lawyer for category 1 and 2 cases (these cases include criminal charges that carry a possible prison sentence of less than 10 years)
Depending on income and assets, clients can be required to pay back some of the legal aid money, making it more like a loan than a grant. The Criminal Bar Association said “If a client is required to repay a loan it is only fair that they should be able to choose their lawyer.” A woman might prefer a female lawyer and others might want to choose a lawyer who speaks their first language. Personal choice is removed. Some people might not mind who their lawyer is, but some people have a lawyer who they have rapport with and who they trust. Their lawyer understands them and their issues.
This change supports the expansion of the Public Defence Service which is run by the Legal Services Agency who also assign legal aid cases. They’ll be able to run at their full capacity of 33% of legal aid cases because of these changes.
John Anderson from the Criminal Bar Association said that expanding the PDS will cost more money, that “The Public Defence Service is more expensive than independent lawyers. In 2010, the PDS cost $1612 per criminal legal aid case, whereas lawyers as a whole cost $1343 per case.”
Some legal aid lawyers were taking on too many cases and this is meant to solve that. The Legal Services Agency are able to look at each lawyers legal aid caseload and could have made a decision as to whether someone was taking on too many cases without having to make changes to lawyer choice.
About six months ago anyone on criminal legal aid could specify their lawyer. Now that’s been removed for category one and two offences. Where will we be in six more months?
If 10 years of your freedom was on the line, would you like to be able to choose the person defending you? I would.
Some people have commented that the Royal Wedding is going to encourage support for the monarchy from New Zealanders. I disagree. The wedding highlighted a lack of Kiwiness. A fairy-tale story of princes and princesses. A lavish old-fashioned ceremony. Backward gender roles. People from other countries enjoyed the wedding without being part of the monarchy.
No need for a Rolls-Royce. A Toyota Corolla, a minimalist’s republic, will be fine. –Dean Knight
Becoming a republic could be quite painless: changing the Governor-General from being our head of state in effect to our real head of state. Everything could else could stay the same.
Our Head of State should be chosen by us, from amongst us, and be able to reflect the values of our nation. It’s time for a Kiwi Head of State.
As Dean also points out, becoming a republic doesn’t mean we can’t still be part of the Commonwealth. We’re one of 16 (out of 54) countries that have Queen Elizabeth as our head of state.
Change seems most likely when the current Queen passes away, by referendum. Her mother was 101 when she died, so there might be some waiting to do.
Rachel Whitwell, a former teacher was deregistered after being investigated by the New Zealand Teachers Council after posing naked in Penthouse. Someone complained that “her actions had brought the profession into disrepute”. The NZTC said her actions “…reflect[ed] badly on her fitness to be a teacher and the profession as a whole.” Two of the five members disagreed with the conclusion.
I’m not sure how much control she had over the shoot, but posing over a school desk wasn’t the best idea. Nor was the magazine deciding to focus on her role as a teacher, allegedly quoting Whitwell as saying: “I am submissive in the bedroom because during the day I have to be in control in the classroom.” She denies this and says she was never interviewed by the magazine. I don’t think it would be uncommon for those magazines to use “creative licence”.
Magazines like Penthouse are legal in New Zealand and so is modeling for them. Whitwell wasn’t working as a teacher at the time, however I’m not sure if it should have been a huge issue if she had been. She was working as a primary school teacher, so her being posing naked wouldn’t end up being spread around the playground. Even if she was working at a high school where the chances of students finding out are higher, it should still be her personal choice.
Peter O’Neill brings up a few good points. Where does the line stop? Whitwell worked as a model and this is arguably modeling. What if a teacher was also an author, but the novels she wrote were racy? Is a teacher allowed to be atheist, be pro-choice, support marijuana legalization, have extreme political opinions or hunt animals? If they don’t identify themselves as a teacher while doing so, is that reflecting badly on the profession?
Having different morals doesn’t make someone a bad person. Modeling nude doesn’t reflect on someone’s ability as a teacher.
I wonder if someone could explain what harm was caused?
King & Spalding, the law firm hired by House Republican leaders to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) dropped the case. The U.S. Defense of Marriage Act aims to “define and protect the institution of marriage”. It says that no state etc. is required to recognize a relationship that is considered a same-sex marriage in another state.
It’s concerning when lawyers bow to pressure to not take a case on (or to drop one, in this case) because of public opinion. A similar argument could apply to people accused of rape, murder etc.—that lawyers are horrible people for representing them.
The Human Rights Campaign pressured K&S to drop the case. The cost is capped at $500k and a lot of Americans would rather the focus be on other issues—“when read statements for and against defending DOMA in court, 54 percent of voters oppose the House Republicans’ intervention, while only 32 percent support it.…”.
K&S has a high rating on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, meaning they hire without discrimination. Just because they were going to defend this viewpoint doesn’t mean they supported it.
The pressure should be targeted at the House Republican leaders and not at the people doing their jobs.
Earthquake moon man silenced
Mr Ring said he also feared he would be prosecuted for inciting a riot following his quake prediction.
“I’ve been virtually told by [ACC minister] Dr Nick Smith and Sir Peter Gluckman [the prime minister’s scientific advisor] that I’m not qualified to put statements out about earthquakes. They will have me legally if I do that.
“Until they reverse that, I’m completely bound to silence. I don’t want to go to jail.
“They said it was like calling out fire in a crowded theatre and that’s against the law — it’s called the riot act, and inciting riot.” –Stuff.co.nz
The Crimes Act defines a riot as “…a group of 6 or more persons who, acting together, are using violence against persons or property…”. It also seems like the Riot Act (or at least the reading of the Riot Act?) was repealed.
To my unqualified eye this seems like a questionable interpretation of the law and a questionable use of status to silence someone.
Website blaming earthquake on gays taken down by host
A website was put up shortly after the Christchurch earthquake at christchurchquake.net (now suspended), blaming the quake on the gay community, and the people supporting it. It was widely covered, including by the Sydney Morning Herald. Bluehost received many complaints about it (in the thousands, according to a source) and said they’d only act if they received a court order to do so (I asked and they said they would accept a New Zealand one), but eventually pulled it down because of a copyright complaint.
People or corporations using copyright complaints to get content taken down that they don’t agree with or would rather not have up isn’t uncommon. In this case a whole site was taken down because of one image.
The complaints used Bluehost’s terms of service, section 9.14 as the reason:
Obscene, Defamatory, Abusive or Threatening Language. Use of the Services to store, post, transmit, display or otherwise make available obscene, defamatory, harassing, abusive or threatening language is prohibited.
Several people have pointed out that web hosts shouldn’t have to decide whether something is legal or not. Bluehost refused to decide and asked for a court order. This reasoning would have been better received by complainers if Bluehost didn’t include clauses in their terms of service that say they will take down a site if it contains x. However I am sure Bluehost isn’t the only host that does this.
The site reportedly suffered a DDoS attack as well, which affected other customers on the same server.
This is a change of tune from what I said immediately after I heard about the website, but I support this decision by Bluehost. The site was in bad taste, however should still be protected as free speech until potentially being deemed illegal by a court. If this had been a pro-gay website and anti-gay people had pressured the host to take it down then succeeded because of a copyright complaint, these same people against this site would be angered.
Bluehost let themselves down by taking down the website because of one copyrighted image. I am curious as to whether the customer behind the website was given a chance to respond to the copyright complaint. They received lots of complaints and bad press about this. This would’ve been a perfect topic for the CEO’s blog on why they weren’t going to take action without a court order.
However this event brings up an interesting idea: that the Internet has unwritten rules and if something or someone goes against those rules, people come together over forums or social media etc. to try fight it. This has happened before with child and animal abuse (the perpetrators tracked down), fights for democracy (help with the spread of information to citizens) and corporations with questionable business practices (unfortunate documents released) and because of the nature of the Internet will continue to happen.
TVNZ won a High Court appeal against the Broadcasting Standards Authority who had ruled a sex scene (the horror!!) in Hung, a show about a male prostitute, airing after 10pm violated the standards of good taste and decency.
Hung airs late at night, in this case at 9.50pm, is rated AO and as the title and advertising suggests an average episode would contain sexual content. Anyone who chooses to watch realizes this and shouldn’t be outraged at sex scenes being included.
The BSA Chair, Peter Radich was the sensible minority and “…consider[ed] that the scene complained about was acceptable in the context in which it appeared: in an AO-classified programme targeted at an informed adult audience”.
The High Court said it was “plainly wrong” to rule against it and Justice Asher said that sex “plays an inevitable part of the narrative”.
We’re all capable of choosing not to watch something and that needs to be reflected in BSA decisions.
Hung’s protagonist is a down and out former teacher who turns to providing sexual companionship to women for pay. Sex plays an inevitable part of the narrative. No viewer could be surprised at a scene with some strong sexual content. The scene formed a natural part of the storyline both of the episode and the series. In its immediate context the scene shows a reversal of the traditional role where sexual exploitation is by men of women, and in a mildly humorous way. In terms of the initiation of sexual contact and payment traditional gender expectations are turned on their head. The themes of role reversal and the exploitation of a male for sexual purposes are reflected in the scene. It is the only sex scene in the particular episode. It demonstrates a modest victory for Lenore in her battle with Tanya for control of Ray. For Ray, it is another dollar. He performs a sexual service for a woman he does not like. It fits naturally into the episode’s storyline. It was not the case, as the majority decided, that the scene was designed “solely to titillate”.
A Tauranga schoolgirl had an abortion “arranged” by a school counselor without her parents’ knowledge. Her mum, angry at not being informed, spoke to the media. This promoted calls for girls under 16 to require parental consent to go through with an abortion. Under the Care of Children Act there is no age restriction to give consent to an abortion. In 2004, then opposition MP Judith Collins tried to change this, but it didn’t pass.
The death penalty is nothing new but it caught my eye because of Osama Bin Laden 
90-day trial
Some people have commented that the Royal Wedding is going to encourage support for the monarchy from New Zealanders. I disagree. The wedding highlighted a lack of Kiwiness. A fairy-tale story of princes and princesses. A lavish old-fashioned ceremony. Backward gender roles. People from other countries enjoyed the wedding without being part of the monarchy.
Rachel Whitwell, a former teacher was 
HRC pressures King & Spalding to drop case defending the 
