Mary’s Little Lambs

Suffer little children

No, Mary’s little lambs were not children.

Mary’s “little lambs” were medical researchers that she herded together: adults who were driven to find a cure for cancer, even as the children were suffering and dying: by the thousands.  It was a dilemma: how to cure childhood leukemia, where the medical doctors could do nothing — they didn’t understand what cancer was.  Experimenting on children with a cocktail of toxic chemicals was heart rendering, such that the original doctor who opened the door to that reasearch method, couldn’t do it.

I cannot make one child suffer and die, to save two others.
— Sidney Farber

Robert Moses said about Mary: that she had it all—intelligence, vision, generosity, charm, kindness.

Neen Hunt added this: “she also had courage, passion, and indefatigable energy, and the heart and will to apply her gifts and talents to reduce suffering from disease for people all over the world.”

“The strength of our nation depends on the health of our people. We must once again place the priority on research. It’s good for trade, good for jobs, and vital for all Americans. Medical research is our hope for our children and for the building of a healthy America.”

Mary was strategic…  For that vision was for the future…

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Mastermind

It’s Trade, Stupid

He was kicked out.

They had no natural resources: except a natural harbor and being in a central location of the poor South East Asia.

It was a mismash of cultures: Chinese, Malays and Indians, under the British colonial rule, made from the flotsam and jetsam of the Chinese Diaspora and local Malays with a sprinkle of Indians.

Exhausted by World War II, the British wanted out of the colonial business, so they tried to give Singapore to the newly formed Malaysia.   Singapore joined neighboring Malaysia, another former British colony, in 1963. The following year riots between ethnic Chinese and Malays broke out, and Singapore and Malaysia split into separate nations in 1965.

No go there, there was Tunku, he had enough problems with his Chinese. Too many Chinese and Lee was not a weak leader, not easily manipulable.  

Kicked out of the Malaysian Federation, Lee Kuan Yew, leading a newly independent Singapore from 1965, with overwhelming parliamentary control, oversaw the nation’s transformation from a relatively underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resources into an Asian Tiger economy. In the process, he forged a widely admired system of meritocratic, clean, self-reliant and efficient government and civil service, much of which is now taught at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

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Back to the Future

“The news is being flashed far and wide,
and before our earth has revolved on her axis every civilized community
within the reach of the electric wires will have received the tidings that civic freedom has been granted …”
— Kate Sheppard

Even he had to give in: he had lost.  But wait… he was a politician… Here was a opportunity…

A Horse's Ass: Richard Seddon
“King Dick” – Take Credit When Credit is NOT Due: A Politician’s Motto.

He had fought, blocked, and delayed the women’s right to vote in New Zealand. Only to reverse himself and claim he was trying to help, when the bill was passed finally.

Kate knew he was a hypocrite. She understood the political process. She knew that New Zealand was the first nation to “give the women” the right to vote in 1893. So, by letter, announcing to the world she encouraged her predecessor fellow civic activists in America including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony to continue the fight. She had seen the future in 1869 because in the relatively new territory of Wyoming, farmers had given their women the right to vote partly as a reaction to outrageous behavior of brazen and politically connected cattlemen lynching an independent innocent single woman farmer.

Social progress thru politics is on the edge of chaos/order. Two steps forward in the future, one step back to the future. One Vote against, two Votes for.

Richard Seddon, though a member of the Liberal Party, opposed women’s suffrage, and expected it to be again blocked in the upper house. Despite Seddon’s opposition, Members of Parliament assembled sufficient strength in the House of Representatives to pass the bill. When it arrived in the Legislative Council, two previously hostile members, moved to anger at Seddon’s “underhand” behaviour in getting one member to change his vote, voted in favour of the bill. Hence the bill was passed by 20 to 18, and with the Royal Assent [Queen Victoria] it was signed into law on 19 September 1893.

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