Monday, November 30, 2015

Trudeau forces voters to "CHEAT" on the party they love

Does the Canadian Liberal Party push for AV really mean a move to "Adultery" Voting ?

It better not, because to adapt a phrase from long long ago, 'the Trudeau government has no place in the bedrooms of the national ballot box'.

A voter should always have the right to vote for the party or candidate of their first choice.

But a supposed reform of Canada's electoral system, moving to the Rank Ballot and the AV (Adultery Voting) scheme, as favoured by the Trudeau Liberals, would effectively remove that right - virtually forcing voters to cheat on their favourite party and to see their second, third, four or fifth choice take top place instead.

Instead of simply having false majorities created in the governing party's large total seat count versus their smaller total vote count, this adultery voting would ensure new but totally false majorities are created for the ultimate winners in about two thirds of Canada's MP districts.

The system is designed to favour centrist parties in three party systems split left right and centre.

It is designed to favour the Canadian Liberals.

And it forces most voters to cheat on the party they really favour.

It is sleazy and dirty....

Friday, November 20, 2015

How would Jesus have made WWII penicillin ?

Ethical systems aren't usually advocated solely on the basis that they produce 'better outcomes' than other ethical systems.

But what if one claims that a system of ethics is based on the behavior of the tiny, weak and primitive microbes, who have survived all that the Universe has thrown at them for 4 billion years?

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Double V campaign called for a more inclusive WWII Victory

The Double V campaign, mounted by a relatively small number of black journalists for a relatively short time during WWII, is generally considered a failure at the time ---- despite its subsequent fame.

But Henry Dawson's contemporary effort to see abundant natural penicillin produced for all was much more successful, then and now, in changing hearts towards a much inclusive view of humanity and nature.

Though very little attention was ever shone upon it - back then and even today....

Saturday, November 14, 2015

projecting the future, BALLISTICALLY, during WWII

Scientists never ever say mea culpa - they just re-label the big mistakes of earlier scientists as 'pseudo' science.

They dab the mess with some of that orange stuff that stings, give you a kiss and a cookie and croon softly, "all better now ?"

And you definitely better say, "yes mommy."

One of their biggest ever mistakes was High Modernity, that bundle of certitudes that gave us a century of state-organized mass killings, done by people who just knew they were doing the right thing.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Nazi Hunger Politics, Gesine Gerhard - a review

I have read a handful of books that focus on food in WWII because I have always sensed that much of the world was hungry through out some or all of the war, almost all because of man-made decisions.

And that tens and tens of millions died from those man-made hungers.

Interestingly, all these books have been written by women, including the latest one I am currently reading, NAZI HUNGER POLITICS, by Gesine Gerhard.

the ACCIDENTIAL Manhattan Project

 I can't say I was exactly wrong the last eight years to emphasize how different from the much more famous (atomic) Manhattan Project was Henry Dawson's own tiny wartime Manhattan project, involving a little of his homegrown penicillin and a handful of SBE patients.

But I do now think I got it far more right the first time I test-drove the idea of 'comparing and contrasting' the penicillin and atomic Manhattan Projects, back about nine years ago.

For my point then was - my point now is - that both the atomic and penicillin projects started off as very small fry indeed and only became huge when the Allied governments (atomic) or the world's public (penicillin) adopted them as their own.

Dawson's Burrs - Part Two

During the inter-war period and for long time afterwards, medical researchers who wanted to fit inside (and more importantly, rise inside) their profession's norms focussed exclusively on studying virulent microbes and treating acute illnesses.

But right from the start, at two of the world's top medical research centres (Rockefeller Hospital and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital), Henry Dawson defied those norms, taking a wide 'inclusive' view of research possibilities that took him well outside the medical Pale.

And ten billion and counting of us, since 1940, have had better lives, because he chose to do so.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Dawson's burrs - physically small / symbolically big

Part I : the SBEs


Dr Henry Dawson's (non-publicized) decision to quietly inject a truly tiny amount of his homegrown version of an impure and untested new medicine, into two no-account patients in a near empty hospital, surely qualifies as one of the clearest possible examples of a journalistic non-story.

Particularly when set against the really big news story on that same day, October 16 1940 : America's first ever peacetime draft registration.

But yet the sum of an event's symbolic impact can be far larger than its small physical presence - that historical first ever injection of a life-saving antibiotic still echoes down to us today.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Some burr, some saddle

Dr Henry Dawson had never given a single solitary thought to making natural penicillin in industrial pilot plant quantities or of curing the incurable SBE with the same -- until he had had more than his fill of the overheard (and highly irritable) table talk of his colleagues, in the six critical months between May and October 1940.

WWII's nadir : May - October 1940

Most people consider the tense days and nights of the Blitz to be the low point of the war.

But military historians point to the period between the fall of Singapore and the fall of Tobruk as the lowest point in the war, when the huge British empire was joined by the huge Russian and American empires but the larger Allies still suffered reversal after reversal from the smaller Axis.

I think the actual moral low point was the period between the collapse of the British French front lines in May 1940 and October 1940, when it became apparent to all that the Germans had "postponed" their sea invasion of the UK.

semen in the ear : CP/CBC talk FPTP

Whenever Canada's CBC and CP media outlets use a meaningless phrase like "well established democracies"  you know they are about to frack you in your ear.

On June 17th of this year, a CP story re-posted on the CBC said that FPTP was 'the most common voting system in the world' .

A claim at more variance with the truth is hard to imagine.

Justin's 'reformed' ballot choice is RANK

New Canadian PM Justin Trudeau wants to defeat the persistent calls that 'every vote in Canada finds a voice in Parliament' by quickly moving to a rank ballot system (aka AV) that will only benefit centrist parties like his Liberals.

This is fully consist with the Liberals' belief that they are Canada's natural governing party and any means to that end are morally justified.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Helpers & Helpees Beyond the Pale

Dr Henry Dawson, seemingly so meek and so mild, so the 'Clem Atlee of medicine research' among all the alpha males occupying the upper reaches of the Allied scientific effort.

Or was the terminally ill Henry Dawson really a quietly and deeply subversive 'Inside Agitator' ?

Iraq/TPP : MSM missing in (non) action, AGAIN

We do not actually have a Fourth Estate, that much talked up and supposedly highly independent fourth voice set against the executive, legislative and judicial branches of every nation.

Not in the mainstream media (MSM) anyway, as a recent example out of Canada's election again reveals.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

fermenting the SCIENCE of inclusion

In the Fall of 1940, few people would have used the word "inclusion", fewer people were wholeheartedly practising it and no one - besides Henry Dawson - were defending it for its evolutionary virtues.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Trudeau : 4 Sikhs but zero Blacks, East Asians

Canada talks a talk that it is inclusive --- but its federal Cabinet don't walk the inclusive walk .

In having ministers who are also representative of some large and historically underrepresented minorities, the new Trudeau cabinet is actually less advanced than the earlier and supposedly 'WASP gated community' Harper cabinet.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

IV is the wampum* of initials

What does the letter "V" mean in my term IV ?

Henry Dawson: Fermenting IV, STAT !

Historians of medicine and science, to the small extent that they care at all about it, have never had any problem deciding what in the name of God Dr Henry Dawson was up to, back in the Fall of 1940 seventy five years ago.

But I think they got it completely wrong. And this blog is the result of my doubts - the forum for expressing all my doubts --- and proving them up.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

IV : Inclusive Voices in Legislatures

It is never enough just to allow everybody to vote.

Not if we then deliberately set up the rules of our electoral system to ensure that generally only well to do candidates from parties representing the well to do voters win virtually all the seats in the resulting legislature.

Monday, November 2, 2015

'Inclusive Election' : exclusion vote

Halifax, Canada says it wants to follow many other municipal government worldwide and let every permanent resident - not just Canadian citizens - vote in municipal elections.

Stifle your praise.

Because while most people in Halifax don't vote and only a tiny portion of the pitiful portion who do bother to vote actually see their vote represented by a voice at the municipal council chamber, the non-voters at least have a legitimate excuse.

IV (inclusive voting) is WALK of the talk

Like all of the world's Anglo Saxon democracies, Canadian citizens talk a lot of talk about how their nation is a very inclusive society.

But I have been monitoring the comments under news stories about the new Canadian government's promise to end FPTP voting in time for the next election and I don't believe their talk.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Narrow vs Wide Generosity

Vertical inheritance, the sort of lawyer's Will written to give your estate away only to your closest family and friends, is narrow generosity by any definition.

It works the way we humans and all larger species pass on our genome : narrowly indeed --- only to blood children.

IV Internationale, IVI

This planet needs, STAT ! , a loosely interconnected international citizens' movement to promote inclusive values, above all in the voting systems in all the old line climate-denying nations still excluding most voters from having a voice in government.

l'Internationale pour Valeurs Inclusive, Inclusive Valeurs Internationale, International Inclusive Values, or IVI for short.

An International vision of inclusive values and inclusive voting ...

Trudeau,George III, 'virtual representation'

In King George III's day, the era of the American Revolution, only 3% of Britons (and no colonists) could vote for the Parliament that taxed them and the 97% sought to remind George III that they "wanted in".

Shades of today's Canadians reminding Justin Trudeau that "the 2/3 that didn't vote for him wants In !"