Dear Prime Minister,
JohnKeyphoto
There are many issues that are of crucial importance to voters in an election campaign – particularly whether political parties have the capability to manage the economy effectively. We acknowledge that.
However, there is one matter that doesn’t rank highly in the polls, but is of such deep concern that it goes to the heart of who we are as New Zealanders. It is the issue of racial privilege and the Maori seats.
Prime Minister, as you know, the Maori seats were created by Parliament in 1867 as a temporary measure to ensure Maori men who owned communal land were able to vote. When universal male suffrage was introduced in 1879, the Maori seats should have been abolished – but they were retained.
In 1986 the Royal Commission on the Electoral...
Lifestyle
Dear friends,
I love having you guys around; being back here reminds me of just how awesome it is to actually have a life! But last night something pretty awful happened and I want to take this opportunity to clear up some things that you may not be aware of.
One of your… associates was getting a little bit grabby with me. When he first rubbed his hand across my backside I just put it down to an accident. Our kitchen is narrow and there wasn’t a lot of space to get through. An honest mistake, right?
Then he did it again. Deliberately. Blatantly. It was the kind of grab that not even my husband would do in public. I looked on in shock and disgust as he continued on his way as if nothing had happened. Suddenly things weren’t so fun anymore and I was on the defensive in my own home...
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Dear Ms. Simkins:
Your public claim that "doctors ignore evidence" on homebirth safety is shocking (President’s Editorial, July 11, 2008). As you know, your organization, the Midwives Alliance of North America, is currently HIDING your OWN safety statistics on homebirth. YOUR OWN evidence almost certainly shows that homebirth with a midwife increases the risk of neonatal death compared to hospital birth for low risk women.
MANA collaborated with Johnson and Daviss on the CPM 2000 project published as a paper in the British Medical Journal in 2005; Ken Johnson is the former Director of Research for MANA and the study was funded by money from a homebirth advocacy foundation. That paper ACTUALLY showed that homebirth in 2000 had almost TRIPLE the neonatal death rate of low risk...
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Dear Dr. Cheyney,
Homebirth midwifery organizations have repeatedly called for transparency in American maternity care. Therefore, it is more than a bit ironic that the Midwives Alliance of North America refuses to make public its own statistics on the safety of homebirth with a certified professional midwife (CPM).
Just last year, your predecessor as Director of Research Peggy Garland notified homebirth midwives:
I am pleased to announce the availability of data from the MANA Statistics Project. We have completed review of almost 13,000 records from late 2004 through the end of 2007. This data was collected through the online version of the data form (referred to as the 2.0 version) initially used for the CPM 2000 study, published in the BMJ in 2005.
The form was extensively...
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Dear Senators:
We urge you to vote “No” on H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015. We also condemn the xenophobic rhetoric that has marked this debate from the start.
Refugees to the United States, particularly those of Syrian origin, are already subject to some of the most stringent security screening procedures in the world. They must first be cleared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and are then required to go through an extensive vetting process, which includes independent background checks by U.S. federal agencies, biometric screening, terrorism database searches, and investigations into personal ties, places of employment and sites of worship. This process takes 12 to 18 months for non-Syrian...
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This is an extraordinary moment in the history of photography and in the history of the International Center of Photography (ICP). Our founder, Cornell Capa, described photography as “the most vital, effective and universal means of communication of facts and ideas.” The power of images to cross barriers of language, geography, and culture is greater today than ever before — and so is their power to influence social change.
As the evolution of imagemaking continues, ICP is expanding to meet new opportunities. We are creating a new kind of institution that will build on the strength of our history while looking toward the future of the image.
Early next year, we will open a dynamic museum space in downtown New York and welcome visitors to our expansive new collection facility at Mana...
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Dear L.A. Times Editors:
It has come to my attention that you will no longer be publishing letters to the editor from Flat-Earthers. This is an outrage, and shows your obvious spherist bias.
By taking the stance that the Earth is round, you are going against six thousand years of obvious truth. Look around you! Do you see the world curving down, away from you? Of course not. And the idea that we live on a thin skin of crust outside a giant sea of molten rock is simply ridiculous. If that were true, the ground would be warmer than the air above it! Duh.
The claim of a scientific consensus is another orbist lie. Have you not seen the Global Flattening Petition Project, which is signed by thousands of scientists* who know the true unbent shape of our planet? And don’t forget...
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Dear Izz,
The hardest thing to do, as a parent, is to let your kid go out into the world on his own, even if it’s just to to kindergarten. Dad and I may talk a tough game about loving that you guys are getting bigger, but if we’re honest, it’s pretty scary.
See, we were here before you. We remember when there was no you at all, and then one day we watched the teeniest flutter on a screen when you were just 9 weeks into being something other than ether. You were only a few millimeters long, but we already loved you.
And when you were born, you were a mysterious and helpless little lump who needed us so entirely that you weren’t even conscious of yourself as an entity yet. And that was a heady experience for Daddy and me. Never before had we known what it was like to create life, and...
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Dear Oprah:
We are writing this letter in response to your programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”. This concerned Jani, a child who hears voices, and was broadcast on the 6th October 2009.
We do so in the hope we can provide a more hopeful and positive alternative to the generally pessimistic picture offered by the members of the mental health community featured in the programme, and in the accompanying article on your website.
What upset us most and moved us to write the letter, is that, as a result of the programme, parents of children who have similar experiences to Jani will be left with the impression that they are powerless and will not be able to do anything constructive to help their children to come to terms with their experience of hearing voices.
For it is simply...
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Dear Neighbor,
Yesterday was a beautiful day, I think you will agree. I decided to take a short walk from my house on Hamilton Street to Dana Park, which I have been coming to almost daily since 1989, the year my son was born. As I often do, I brought my camera, sat on a bench for about 10 minutes, did one lap around the park and headed home.
I had barely gotten across the street when three police cars pulled up: I was told to stop, and swiftly surrounded by six policemen. I was “detained” there for approximately 20 minutes and questioned; another officer returned to the park to find out why you had called them.
My suspected crime, apparently, was having a camera in a public park, and allegedly taking pictures of children. As it turned out, I had taken no pictures that day. But I...
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