9 posts tagged “murder”

Some more photos to share from around Wellington, New Zealand, and to show it’s not always sunny!

   This is actually Chews Lane but I thought it was strange seeing a second sign, on the opposite side, reading Tow Away Lane—but in the style of a regular street-name sign. Hence the filename Odd Name for a Street. Across the road is the local HQ for the Fairfax Press.    A lot of cities have fleets of so-called “green cabs” and Wellington is no exception. There are these ugly little eggs running around called Toyota Priuses, which may have looked good for about, ooh, one Oscar telecast’s arrivals. After that, they got pretentious.
   This one has the licence plate 0 SMOG. But it’s a hybrid, so when the petrol engine is in play, it does generate something out of the exhaust, surely? I know we have unleaded fuel and catalytic converters, but from what little I know of emissions this still generates more pollution than the regular Ford Falcon LPG cabs that run around Wellington—which, technically, should have this plate. If Wellington’s main taxi company is clever, it can tell us how many LPG Falcons it has running and compare the quantity to the fleet of these Green Cabs.
   I think Green Cabs is doing a good thing, generally, and certainly a Prius’s interior room is sufficient for most journeys, but I can remember the 1980s when most cabs here ran on natural gas, be they Holdens or Fords, and generated far less pollution than modern cars. We have, of course, the National Government of the 1990s to thank for their demise, and the Labour Government to continue its “rival’s” (ha ha) folly.    People my age will remember the Trades’ Hall and how it was the site of a bombing in the mid-1980s. Caretaker Ernie Abbott was the victim of the after-hours blast. I don’t think it was ever solved and I wonder if it qualifies as our first terrorist bombing.
   Trevor Loudon shares some theories on his blog but he admits they are hearsay. He refutes the rumour that it was a right-wing group and instead points to Marxists and various pro-Soviet groups committed to unseating the Muldoon Government. The irony is that the Labour Government that followed proved more anti-union and right-wing than they might have expected. One commenter on Mr Loudon’s blog wrote, ‘If your theory is true Trevor then the irony of the outcome was classic. They got a Labour Government alright, but it contained good’uns like Douglas, Prebble, Bassett, De Cleene, Caygill & Moore.’
   However, Loudon is also right in responding, ‘True Spirit, but the Soviets also got NZ's anti nuclear policies and the destruction of ANZUS. Which do you think the Soviets cared about most?’
   Whatever the case, we began losing a lot of our values and the integrity of our national system that decade, after the change in government. We can trace the growing gap between rich and poor right back to 1984, when we moved from a reasonably egalitarian and fair society to one which has an underclass and domination by foreign corporations.

I only got this today but it’s still Sunday in the US. So please join in this day of prayer for Lauren Richardson, the disabled young lady in Delaware. There are certain parties that want her feeding tube removed and for her to starve to death, even though she is breathing on her own and responsive.
   Lauren’s mother, who has guardianship over her one-year-old daughter, has refused to let the two see each other.
   Even if you do not see this blog post in time, your prayers would still be welcome.

Life for Lauren Richardson has dedicated itself to organize a 24-Hour Prayer Vigil for Lauren beginning Sunday, 2/10. We are asking people to sign-up to pray for Lauren’s situation at the same time every day. Any amount of time is appreciated in anyway you wish. This way, we will storm heaven to get Lauren safe at home where her family waits to love and take care of her. Please respond to this email, letting us know the approximate time you can commit to prayer. A schedule will soon be posted on the website below.
 
Please forward this on to anyone around the world who you know would be interested in helping Lauren. 
 
God bless you all for your generous support!
 
Randy and Melissa Richardson
For more information about our fight to save Lauren’s life, go to: www.lifeforlauren.org

At least the British don’t pull out feeding tubes.
   In November 2007, it was reported that a 23-year-old woman, Amy Pickard, who had gone into a coma after a drug overdose (sounds familiar?) woke up thanks to the use of a sleeping pill. The pill, Zolpidem, has various side effects for comatose patients. Ms Pickard has even managed to stand.
   This link comes from the Life for Lauren website and I hope that the courts recognize this, along with the testimony of Kate Adamson, who was once diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Today, Ms Adamson goes around the US as a motivational speaker.
   Ms Adamson, whom some of you may remember appearing on the news around the time of the Terri Schiavo case, was paralysed from the forehead down. She was operated on with insufficient anæsthetic and surgeons did not care, because they deemed her a vegetable and unable to feel. She felt everything they did.
   She was also starved for eight days after her feeding tube was taken out and recalls it was one of the most painful and inhumane experiences a person can have.
   It was only put back in because her husband, a lawyer who had given up his practice to care for her, threatened to sue everyone’s pants off.
   Her left side is not fully able but Ms Adamson is arguably more productive than many of us with what society deems healthy bodies.
   Lauren Richardson is in a better state than Kate Adamson was, able to respond to her father and her dog, according to a video that has since been removed from YouTube. Yet the courts are so far supporting her mother, who believes her daughter’s feeding tube should be removed.
   Edith Towers, Richardson’s mother, says her daughter told her and another relative that she would not want to live this way, after watching the Terri Schiavo case on television.
   Although this evidence is hearsay—and weak at that—the court in Delaware is giving Towers considerable authority over Richardson’s rights. Her father is fighting that judgement.
   This blog also revealed in comments, which I repeat to save readers from searching, additional facts:

You can go to Lauren’s MySpace page and look to see where she states herself that she got along better with her father then with her mother. However, the verdict was based solely on her mother and her mother’s uncle stating that she had said she did not want to live “like that”.
   Not to mention, if Lauren did say those things in 2005 as told in court, she was on drugs and drinking when [she] made them, and she was not a mother. At the same time she allegedly made these statements one of the two witnesses had just gotten out of a mental institution and one was on drugs himself. These do not seem like they should be admissible to me.
   The week that Lauren “accidentally” overdosed, she had been hiding from her mother who was trying to force her to have an abortion. She had been clean for ten months! Her stuff was packed because that weekend she was going to move in with her dad, because she had asked him to help her with the baby.
   Several doctors have requested to see Lauren and try different treatments. Her mother has refused all of them. Her doctor, who is not a neurologist, told the family that she would not wake up, she would not move her body, that she would not respond to pain, that she would not breathe on her own again, that would not respond to people, that she would not show emotion. She does all of these things. She also can swallow and doctors have said with enough therapy she could eat on her own again. If she had gotten that therapy and could feed herself would we then hold her arms down so she cannot eat?

   Towers has even prevented Richardson from seeing her own daughter, to whom she gave birth last year. What sort of mother is that?
   I would have thought news like Amy Pickard’s would be celebrated. There is so much out there that says that Lauren Richardson is less “vegetative” than these other folks—who got out of far worse states than she finds herself in now.
   The courts do listen to “experts” but they also need to look at the strength of the testimony and subject it to the same rules as they might in criminal cases. We are talking about a human life here, and we can’t kill someone based on hearsay.

I was disturbed to note that the video showing Lauren Richardson responding to her father and her dog on YouTube has been removed from the service. The Life for Lauren website states:

Due to an Injunction against Lauren’s father, by the court appointed lawyer ad litem (allegedly representing the interests of Lauren), we may no longer link to the video which showed Lauren responding to family members.  This order, which was signed by Master Samuel Glasscock, asserts the right to privacy of Lauren by the same lawyer who consented to terminating her life.

   How does this work? The folks who say that Lauren is a vegetable and somehow less than human, and that she should starve to death through the removal of her feeding tube, also say that she has the right to privacy.
   So in Delaware I guess the right to privacy is more important than the right to life and to food.
   Sounds like someone doesn’t want the public to have the facts. Can you say, ‘Cover-up’? I knew you could.

A very profound quotation appeared in Lifenews today on the Lauren Richardson case:

“The fight in this case is over whether she lives as a profoundly disabled woman or is made to die slowly over two weeks by dehydration—as Terri Schiavo did,” [attorney and author Wesley J.] Smith explained. “If we did that to a dog, we would go to jail. Do it to a disabled woman who needs a feeding tube and it is called medical ethics.”

   I should post the Life for Lauren URL as I have written two posts already on this subject: www.lifeforlauren.org. Please show your support if you can.
   And folks, this is about what the US should stand for, as a country that prides itself on helping the less fortunate. Cases like Lauren’s and Terri Schiavo’s open up the country to humiliating attacks by places like Red China. Next time the US criticizes Red China over its treatment of Falun Gong members or al-Qaeda for killing non-Muslims, they’ll just turn around and cite these cases. ‘See?’ they’ll say. ‘We’re not so different. We also believe in a Master Race.’

I thought there were some fishy things with the Lauren Richardson case and was interested to read the below, from VWarrior, in the comments. I have put in paragraphing and corrected some spellings and punctuation errors for clarity reasons.

This story is not what it seems. It may seem cut and dry to many, but there is a lot that the public does not know. Lauren Richardson’s mother is not mentally stable, she and her daughter did not get along. You can go to Lauren’s MySpace page and look to see where she states herself that she got along better with her father then with her mother. However, the verdict was based solely on her mother and her mother’s uncle stating that she had said she did not want to live “like that”.
   Not to mention, if Lauren did say those things in 2005 as told in court, she was on drugs and drinking when [she] made them, and she was not a mother. At the same time she allegedly made these statements one of the two witnesses had just gotten out of a mental institution and one was on drugs himself. These do not seem like they should be admissible to me.
   The week that Lauren “accidentally” overdosed, she had been hiding from her mother who was trying to force her to have an abortion. She had been clean for ten months! Her stuff was packed because that weekend she was going to move in with her dad, because she had asked him to help her with the baby.
   Several doctors have requested to see Lauren and try different treatments. Her mother has refused all of them. Her doctor, who is not a neurologist, told the family that she would not wake up, she would not move her body, that she would not respond to pain, that she would not breathe on her own again, that would not respond to people, that she would not show emotion. She does all of these things. She also can swallow and doctors have said with enough therapy she could eat on her own again. If she had gotten that therapy and could feed herself would we then hold her arms down so she cannot eat?
   Lauren’s mother waited seven months before stating that these were not “Lauren’s wishes.” And this was something that could have been said in the very beginning, before the fetus was viable. She had ample opportunity. It was only after Lauren seemed to be improving that she came forth with this information. How is that respecting Lauren's wishes? Lauren has never even seen her daughter, her mother will not bring her in drugs for Lauren.
   She went three months without visiting Lauren at all, and only because Randy was going to be granted custody and allowed to take her home, did she come in and see her so no one could claim abandonment. As it currently stands, someone from the Richardson side of the family is there 84 hours of the week at least, whereas someone from her mother’s side of the family is there for approximately 6 hours a week. This can be verified by visitors’ logs. She can come whenever she likes, she chooses not to because the Richardsons are there, evevn though she has been informed that they will leave whenever she wishes to visit.
   Now the Richardsons have been threatened with lawsuits if they continue to speak to the media and if they do not take down her website. If she has the freedom to starve her daughter (who is not a vegetable, not on a breathing machine, not in pain, not dying, and can swallow) he should have the freedom to talk about it with the public. In a country where we cannot legally help someone kill themselves when they are terminally ill and in massive pain, we are awfully quick to kill people who are not, and just based on hearsay.
   There was another group of people who used to kill disabled children and adults. Sometimes they used starving as a method as well. The Nazis.

Please call Governor Ruth Ann Minner and ask her to stop this from happening.

Wilmington Office: 302- 577-3210
Dover Office: 302-744-4101

We’ve ended January 2008 here in New Zealand with 10 murders. The government is saying this is an anomaly, but is it?
   Crime has been rising in New Zealand steadily since I have been observing the numbers and for older New Zealanders, the latest figures are a disgust.
   I am not overly surprised, given the rising gap between rich and poor, suggesting a mismanagement of the economy and an absence of jobs, while values and education have suffered at the same time.
   Those older New Zealanders who can remember back to the 1950s remember a country with roughly half the population and 18 convictions for murder between 1951 and 1957.
   I realize actual murders and successful convictions are different, but assuming that there were a couple of murders in this period that didn’t lead to a conviction, then we’re still looking at 20 over a seven-year period from January 1951 to December 1957.
   That’s roughly three per annum. If there’s double the population now, then we should expect statistics to show that there are six per annum for 2008.
   Remember that medical science wasn’t as advanced, so if we adjust for that, then maybe this estimate isn’t actually that far off.
   In this election year, I wouldn’t buy any party line that says things are all right. I wouldn’t even buy policies that talk about tougher sentencing. Because neither of these address the root problem.
   We need policies in New Zealand that say: we will address this rich–poor gap.
   How? Well, how about recognizing what’s going on instead of kowtowing to multinational corporations operating here?
   Since the end of Muldoonism, New Zealand has become the poster boy of the technocracy, doing everything that the economic experts said should work: privatization, free markets, the ending of tariffs.
   Ask yourself, even in the last five years, can you afford more or less of the things you want in your life? I don’t care if you are a student or a wage-earner or even a small business boss. The answer is probably no.
   When will we wake up and realize that these policies have driven a wedge between the rich and poor in a nation that once prided itself on being a fair, just, middle-class country?
   Since Labour sold off so many state assets in the 1980s, something National continued doing in the 1990s, we now have a lot of things in the hands of foreign corporations.
   Now, if these corporations were running these assets more efficiently, logically the government should be able to increase its tax take, which leads to more money for hospitals, schools and social services.
   But the idea of being a private corporation that spreads its activities across different countries is the ability to minimize the tax you pay, by writing some of it off with the operations you have in other places.
   So the opposite has happened. Meanwhile, these corporations have shed staff so the people who used to work there wound up on the dole, and there’s less money to pay out.
   The rich in cahoots with the big companies have done well while everyone else has suffered.
   To make up the shortfall in government coffers, the Labour Government introduced Lotto and basically became the biggest attraction for gamblers. Now we are reporting a rise in calls to gambling helplines.
   The other idea behind liberalizing our markets was so New Zealanders could go and compete globally. But how were we expected to make that leap? Even the richest New Zealanders of the 1980s didn’t survive the decade in good financial shape.
   We need to innovate and create and start new businesses but the support, as any entrepreneur will tell you, is not there.
   Yet New Zealand is a place of great, novel ideas that often stay dormant, unless that Kiwi goes offshore and has a foreign company become interested.
   I have repeated this example many times: if TradeMe was really that successful, it would have bought Fairfax, not the other way around.
   The solution must be to have New Zealanders own New Zealand businesses, so that New Zealanders have jobs and taxes and profits stay in New Zealand.
   This is not about putting the barriers back up. The multinationals have embedded themselves too much into New Zealand.
   We can only hope to create global businesses that do for us what the multinationals have done here. We also need to encourage entrepreneurship at the small- to medium-sized business level so that everyone can have a chance to get his or her idea off the ground, beating the world. We are still blessed with a fairly good internet infrastructure that can become a useful tool for New Zealanders. 
   We need to consider tax policies that help the poor and penalize the sources for the inequity in New Zealand. The next government needs to play, essentially, Robin Hood. It needs to create policies for the middle class of New Zealand and what makes them happy wage-earners or self-employed business people, because that is where the majority of the tax will come from. ‘Teach a man to fish and he will eat for life.’ Time to stop handing the fish out and pretending it was a conjuror’s trick. (It was only cool when Jesus Christ did it with the 5,000, anyway.)
   And while I am a globalist at heart, this economy is too small at this point to allow technocratic policies to have free reign, without someone seeing to the interests of the Kiwis that need the most help. I want to see food banks disappear in five years because everyone has a job.
   An innovative government that might create new businesses itself can be a useful agent in the business community. In the 1970s and 1980s, New Zealand’s dual-fuel natural gas infrastructure is still a dream for most countries. Yet a huge percentage of the nation’s cars ran on natural gas back then, able to fill up at the majority of stations across New Zealand.
   Government participation in a modernized Keynesian model could just work in 2008 and one only needs to look at Singapore and Malaysia for nearby adaptations of the very policies New Zealand had only 30 years ago.
   No one can claim they are paupers, and Malaysia itself did find, in 1997, that the technocratic way of thinking didn’t work for them. Having a strong man as a prime minister worked in its favour as Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad was able to say what he thought of the corporations wreaking havoc on his country’s financial markets.
   And with relatively little corruption in New Zealand, government innovation is not a bad idea, provided these state enterprises do not get overmanned to the levels they were at in years past.
   Remember, Absolut, the people who make the vodka, is a government-owned enterprise. No one seems to urge the Swedish Government to divest for the sake of the technocracy.
   Then, those who might find themselves in similar situations to the 10 murderers won’t suffer from envy, depression or rage.
   In the 1950s, New Zealand had about nine people unemployed. In the 2010s, we should be looking at 18. Full employment is key and the policies we are following now—policies which Labour and National predict they will essentially follow—won’t lead to any change in our rising crime rate or the widening gap between rich and poor, which neither party has even mentioned in the lead-up to the 2008 elections.

My Facebook friend Andrew Lau, who heads several Chinese groups, reminded me of a tragic anniversary on December 13: the Rape of Nanking, when Japanese forces killed hundreds of thousands (300,000 to 600,000) as they advanced on the Chinese city. He and others suggest wearing red on this date.
   A bit of history:

The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war.

   On the event wall at Facebook, this comment from Jack He of Toronto, Ont. is important:

The purpose of remembering this event is to prevent such atrocities from happening in the future. However, in this event and the Nazi Holocaust, people become angry and vent their emotions on people around them. In some places Germans are still prejudiced against.
   Please keep that in mind. Most, if not all soldiers who commited these atrocities are long dead. Their children are not responsible for their actions. Keep this a peaceful demonstration.

   I can’t help but not the timing, how this 70th anniversary comes in the week right after Chiang Kai-shek’s name was removed from his memorial, downplaying his and the Allied contribution in winning the war.
   Prayers for the memories of the families affected, on both sides of the war, are welcome. It is clear that people have not healed from this brutal period in history.

Sadly, I had no idea of the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech while I was escorting Laural and Sharaine Barrett around yesterday. In fact, I spent most of the day out or at meetings. I learned about it probably 18 hours after most other people. By today, its impact was felt strongly, particularly at Facebook, where netizens changed their profile photographs to a VT black ribbon.
   I join the millions who are sending prayers and thoughts to the victims, and the families of the victims.
   I am no expert of what happens inside the minds of people such as the alleged shooter, Cho Seung-Hui. The BBC paints a picture of a loner who has aways felt distant, even as a child. The media coverage has tended to discuss gun control, before finding parties to blame, with the Virginia campus being a target.
   If I am to add anything to this debate, I believe we need to go past the same scapegoats. After Columbine, we have already asked these questions and these school shootings continue. In a country like New Zealand, where we are not immune from rampages, we do find armed students a foreign idea associated most strongly with the United States. Le Monde says the massacre taints the American Dream. At the same time, I look at Switzerland which has (unofficially) one firearm for every man, woman and child, yet no one seems to go on rampages there—and this begs the question: why?
   Men like Cho seem to be loners, and in this case, the paranoia that grips post-9-11 USA alerted Virginia Tech staff to his odd behaviour. Despite this, the murders of 30-plus people still could not be prevented. Teachers and counsellors were on alert. There is nothing that could have been done because it seems as though the faculty was diligent, delayed emails and text messages aside.
   My guess is that the issues predate any faculty involvement into Cho’s conduct. I do not know about the Korean community in Virginia. If the Korean community is well integrated, we still hear that Cho’s peers left him alone. Perhaps this is the lesson: to not let our peers be. To be concerned with someone other than ourselves. To end a selfish, me-first society.
   Some teenagers go and get boob jobs for self-image reasons. But negative self-image comes from a society that chooses to shun, forcing some to say, ‘Look at me.’ That same society did not reach out to Cho Seung-Hui. They, we, effectively let Cho stir in his own hatred.
   There is much negativity in the modern United States, and that must seep in to people’s consciousness. I wonder if Cho was sickened by the gulf between his traditional Korean upbringing and what he witnessed among his peers. His family were decent, Christian, and churchgoing. If the United States is about values and honour, would Cho have been sickened by the hypocrisy that he saw through his filter? I often have discussions with Asians—Japanese, Pakistanis, or my own race—and this comes up. We identify sexual promiscuity among westerners as one thing that seems out of place with the stated values of our adopted nations, for example.
   Is it the breakdown of societal values, or his perception thereof, that broke Cho on that horrid, dark day?
   Ironically, through that darkness, there was light. Students and professors who shielded others from the bullets. Those acts of heroism were restatements of American values. It is an indescribable sacrifice, how some gave their lives to show that.
   Why it takes the loss of lives to show us the selflessness of some great Americans, young and old, is sorrowful. But let us not let their passings be in vain. 
   I still hear the huge bollocks here in New Zealand about ‘Asians keep to themselves’ or ‘They don’t like getting involved in public life.’ If the US is anything like that, then the US is dead wrong. I have not sensed this sort of prejudice on my Stateside visits, but I have only been to 10 or 11 states. Cho may have cried out in his own way for help but that was mistaken as a preference to be alone. Others may be crying out right now, and it is our job to help them.
   One school shooting this year is enough to last us through the rest of our lifetimes.